The Grey Puddle

We drove up to the house after 10 long, hot hours in the car. Finally, the trip was over and we could rest.
The house looked much the same and as I entered, it smelled the same. There were papers and toys and cups on the coffee table in the front room. The piano was cluttered with papers and trinkets from music to be played in Primary the next week and sea shells from the beach. The same green couches lined the walls with the same lighthouse pictures on the wall in sequential order as a wave crashed around it. Finally, after the long, hot drive that transformed me from one stage of life to the next, I was home.
I write this memoir not as I remember it--but as it happens. I write so that I may better understand my life. So that I may confide it not only to those who are not here but mostly to myself. I need to write the things that are happening to me. I need to feel them as they happen. Otherwise I risk not realizing them as they do. I risk missing my life as it happens to me.
I sit on the floor in what was not long ago the dining area; the table having been given away so as to make room for my arrival. This is the coolest room in the house. The water is unseasonably warm for Oregon, and the humidity hangs like an oppressive feeling in the air. My hair curls despite my best attempts with the straightener.
I shower at night to wash the grime of the day away, to relax and to cool down. Another transition. Yesterday, I washed my body, my hair, my feet three times. Still, the water pooled in grey around the tub's drain.
Today I colored my hair. Dark. In the shower tonight it did the same. The grey pool. The grime from my yesterday, gone.
Do I want to wash myself of it? Do I want to be done and move on? Tomorrow, will there still be grey? Some perverse part of me wants there to be. Wants that subtle reminder that I still carry with myself a little piece of that yesterday. It clings to me--as part of me--and as part of who I am. What will I do when the water runs clear and I no more look for that puddle?