Third photo taken pre-cancer diagnosis but only 6 months before her passing.
Mother lies like an Etruscan noblewoman on the bed, arms crossed over her bosom. A little pot of pansies on the sill was a gift I brought months ago.
Somebody waters the plant, I suppose, now and then, but it is withering slowly like her breasts, once like sovereign orbs, now androgynous swells beneath her hands.
Her eyes open. I strain to remember what color they were, once. I watch as they stare into middle distance, the cogs clicking awkwardly as she registers:
the ceiling, her daughter, and, I imagine last of all, “I am still alive.” Their color, now a black translucency behind which all is hidden,
was once golden, a darker shade to match her youthful, cotton candy hair, now slicked in gray strands to her head. Somebody loves us all.
*Inspired by a poetry prompt from my son, Maggie Haas, during one or another poetry month in recent times. The prompt was to use a line from “Filling Station” by Elizabeth Bishop. I chose her last line, which is also mine: “Somebody loves us all.”
To say there has been “clamoring” for the second part of the Passport Office would be an overstatement. However, I am very gratified that several folks said they would prefer to see part 2 sooner rather than later. I’m not completely sure, but the day described in this chapter may be the most surreal of my life. Also, it was the first time I was faced directly, full-frontal, with Lee’s not-to-be-denied state of delusional mental illness. This day unfolded just a few months before her first arrest and hospitalization. Thank you for reading.
The scene: Boar’s Head Inn, Charlottesville, VA. (This picture is the right era, circa early 1980s.)
The Passport Office Part 2
Scene VI
In car heading south on Rt. 29.
LEE has her eyes closed and is leaning back against the headrest. Vanessa reaches for the stereo to turn the music back on.
STEREO (loud)
Love from the bottom to the top Turn like a—
Vanessa quickly reduces volume
STEREO (faint)
…wheel—(he’s alright) See for yourself (the Lord won’t mind) We’re gonna move (right now) Turn like a wheel inside a wheel
Scene VII
The car is pulled over on the side of the highway along with seven or eight other vehicles. Several State Troopers are issuing tickets. VANESSA has shut off the music again.
VANESSA
(Looking around.)
I don’t get it. Why did they stop us?
LEE
(Looks horrorstruck—her eyes are huge, mouth opening and closing around words she cannot muster. It looks as if she’s gasping for air. Suddenly, she pulls herself together. Making a decision, she opens her car door.)
VANESSA
(Reaching for her mother’s arm to pull her back)
No! Mother, you absolutely cannot get out of the car at a traffic stop!
LEE
(Looks at VANESSA over her shoulder and hisses)
We’ve done nothing wrong!
VANESSA
Don’t get out of this car! It’s totally not okay!
LEE
(Gets out of car)
Excuse me! (Imperiously,gesturing at nearby trooper)
Cars speed by on the highway just feet from the pulled-over cars and troopers. The neckline of LEE’s beige silk blouse flaps in the wind. She holds it closed with one hand and slants the other hand over her eyes to shield them from the lowering sun. The trooper sees her and walks briskly to her.
TROOPER
Ma’am, please, get back in your vehicle.
LEE
(Talking over him)
You need to let us go. We can’t be late.
TROOPER
Ma’am, get back in the car.
LEE
Why have you stopped us? And all these people?
TROOPER
We will get to you as soon as possible.
LEE
But we did nothing wrong!
TROOPER
(clearly exasperated)
You were driving in an HOV lane.
LEE
What is that?
TROOPER
Ma’am, please get back in your vehicle.
LEE
How can you pull us over for driving in a lane we don’t know about?
TROOPER
The HOV lanes are well marked, Ma’am. High occupancy lanes are for carpoolers during rush hour. A driver and at least two passengers to utilize this lane.
LEE
(Flicking her hand in the general direction of the highway)
That’s ridiculous.
TROOPER
Ma’am…
LEE
(Talking over him, voice pitched a bit high. VANESSA, in the car, hears the panic in her mother’s voice.)
If you don’t let us leave, it could well create an international incident. That is all I am permitted to say due to extremely intricate matters of state.
VANESSA
(In the car, slouches lower in her seat, exuding pure devastation.
TROOPER
Ma’am (he reaches for her arm to guide her back to the car)
LEE
(Flinches away from him and takes a step backwards)
No! Don’t touch me. (Pauses. The trooper looks briefly paralyzed.) You do not understand what is at stake. We cannot be late. My future husband—that’s all I can tell you at this moment—will be most displeased with you. He wants everything to go smoothly. Time is of the essence.
VANESSA
(Murmuring under her breath)
“Time is of the essence?” Oh God.
LEE
I don’t mean to be rude, but my daughter and I are leaving. You can’t stop us.
TROOPER
Ma’am, please do not do that. Of course we can stop you. A traffic ticket is not worth becoming a fugitive and having one of these officers go after you. (He bends to look into the car at VANESSA behind the wheel and addresses her) Young lady, do not drive away. Do you understand?
VANESSA
(Nods vigorously)
LEE glares at VANESSA and then at the TROOPER. She returns to the car, walking stiffly, her body reflecting equal parts rage and fear. VANESSA turns the music back on.
STEREO
God help us, help us to surmise
These slippery people help us understand
VANESSA and LEE sit in silence.
Scene VIII
VANESSA pulls the car gingerly into traffic. LEE holds the paper given to her by the trooper.
VANESSA
You know, I saw those signs saying HOV but I didn’t really pay attention. They must be new. At least we just got a warning.
LEE
(Looking anxiously out her window. Bites at a cuticle.)
Mm-hmm.
STEREO
No one here can recognize you Here is everything that you like
Feelings without explanations
Some things are hard to describe
The sound of a cigarette burning
A place where everything spins
And the sound inside your mind is playing all the time
You’re playing with a heart of steel…
LEE
(Softly)
Let’s turn the music off, shall we, Darling?
VANESSA snaps the off button and ejects the tape. She lifts one butt cheek and stuffs the tape into her back pocket.
Scene IX
VANESSA is pulling off Rt. X onto X. LEE has pulled her lipstick out of her purse. She applies a fresh coat of some tawny beige-pink color. Drops the tube into her bag and removes her new passport. In the light of the dash, VANESSA sees her mother run her fingers over it, riffle the pages, lift it to her nose.
VANESSA
Does it have a smell? The brand-new smell of government issue vinyl?
LEE
(Still muted)
Yes, it does, in fact. (After a pause, she goes on, in a much stronger voice, giving instructions.) I’ve been receiving last-minute information. (Turns to look at her daughter.) This is what we are to do. When we pull in at the Boar’s Head, drive directly to the pond. On that road there will be three sedans waiting. You are not to get out of the car. I’m to tell you quite specifically that only I am to get out, and only after the security guards have reached my door. You and I are to say our goodbyes in the car. Once I’m out, you must drive away. I asked when I can contact you and was told that within 48 hours you will receive a message. A phone call, I believe.
VANESSA is silent, staring ahead into the yellow path of the headlights.
LEE
Do you understand, Vanessa?
VANESSA
Yes.
LEE
Darling, don’t worry. It will be perfectly fine. You must trust me.
VANESSA glances at her mother. Golden halo of soft hair around a strong face, lit by orange dash lights. LEE does not turn her head to her daughter until VANESSA has returned her eyes to the road.
LEE
You have always trusted me, haven’t you. (This was not a question but a statement.) I am your momma after all.
VANESSA cannot speak.
Scene X
VANESSA drives, according to instructions, through the darkened campus of the Boar’s Head Inn towards the pond. As they get close, it is evident in the light from the headlamps that there are no cars waiting. VANESSA drives along the pond road and turns right at the next intersection, heading in the direction of the exit. She pulls over and stops. VANESSA gets out of the car and walks a few feet onto the grass. She bends in half, her head dangling lower than her knees, her hands touching the grass. After a minute she rights herself. She opens the car door and sits on the seat, feet still on the ground. She feels her mother’s touch, briefly, in the middle of her back. A few fingertips, there and gone in an instant. VANESSA turns, closes the door, puts the car in gear and starts to drive.
VANESSA
Sorry about that.
VANESSA glances at her mother who is looking out her window, hands folded in her lap. Nothing makes sense. There is nothing LEE could possibly do now that would seem like a logical response to everything that has happened. As she pulls out onto 250, VANESSA sees LEE put her fingers into her purse and lay them atop the new passport lying innocently on top of her wallet.
In a few minutes, VANESSA turns left, toward home. Neither woman speaks. VANESSA pulls into the semi-circular front driveway. She had remembered to turn the front light on this morning, so very long ago, before they left on their errand. When LEE gets out, she has just enough light to see clearly as she unlocks the front door. VANESSA reaches into the backseat for her sweater and follows her mother, who has already begun turning on the lights.
Welcome to the second post in SpiralWoman’s newly purposed blog. This installment is chronologically in approximately 1983, about 11 years before the Pick Up and Drop Off I last posted. It is the first part of a longer chapter that is written in script form. It came to me to write the scene this way, and I tried it. Thus far, reviews are mixed. Two people have read it. One was not sure and the other gave a thumbs up. Wait until the second installment next week before deciding what you think. For now, part 1, The Passport Office.
CAPTION: After a certain age, Lee was always conscious of how she was seen. Photos were hard for her because she could not help posing. It mattered so much to her to control perception of her. This became increasingly challenging as her mental illness worsened through from the late 1970s on. Descriptions of all photos can be found at bottom of this post.
THE PASSPORT OFFICE part 1
Scene I
The living room, early morning.
Vanessa enters, rubbing her eyes, and passes through to the kitchen. When she comes back in, her mother is emerging from the room she calls “The Study.”
LEE
There is something important we have to do today. Get dressed. I need you to go with me to DC. If you drive, I can run into the Passport Office and not have to worry about parking.
VANESSA
Why are you going to the Passport Office? (Gulps hot coffee. Spits it back into cup.)
LEE
I need an expedited passport. I had not realized that mine expired. Okay, time is short. Let’s go! (Stalks elegantly out of the room, towards the hallway leading to bedrooms.)
VANESSA stands still in her red and white striped PJs gazing after her mother.
LEE
(callingfrom offstage)
TIME IS SHORT.
VANESSA follows the sound of LEE’s voice.
Scene II
Northbound on 29 towards Washington DC.
VANESSA is driving her mother’s Honda.
LEE
(half turned toward her daughter)
I believe you know a little bit about the communication channel that has opened up in my brain. The last few weeks I’ve been receiving truly life altering, loving, and inspiring messages from the King of Burma. It seems he is a compassionate forward-thinking ruler who needs a strong, loving woman by his side to rule. He has chosen me.
VANESSA
(trying to quell rising panic)
Is this real?
LEE
(face animated with shock)
Darling, of course it’s real! I would never lie to you! What do you mean is it real?
VANESSA
You realize most people do not have direct brain-to-brain channels of communication. Why doesn’t he call you? Or write a letter?
LEE
(looking patient as she tries to explain)
Of course, most people don’t. But these last years I’ve been evolving to a higher plane, as I thought you knew and understood. We have not spoken directly about it much because I sense it upsets you. And you are busy with work, and DAN, and still getting healthy… (Takes a skinny brown cigarette out of her bag and lights up.)
VANESSA
Window please, Mother.
LEE
(opens window, blows out a plume of smoke)
And he can’t call or write. Security reasons. There’s danger if the wrong people get wind of the plan. That’s why we have to be so careful. Why we can’t tell a soul. He’s sending emissaries to pick me up this evening at the Boar’s Head Inn. When you get back to the house after, you may find press there. He warned me that might happen, though we hope not.
VANESSA
You didn’t pack anything.
LEE
I’m not to worry about any of that. Everything I need will be waiting for me when we land.
LEE gazes at the scenery, mostly more lanes of highway and the occasional massive building behind soundproofed walls. VANESSA drives, her mind gradually shutting down. She thinks about her boyfriend, DAN, and how she had to cancel their plans for the day. She thinks what an absurd way to spend her day off. She’d rather be sitting by a lake with DAN and a cooler.
Scene III
Honda Accord, VANESSA behind the wheel, LEE gone
VANESSA is driving in circles around the Washington DC neighborhood of the Passport Agency. It’s a chilly day in late March, too early for the cherry blossoms.
STEREO
(blasting song from Talking Heads “Speaking in Tongues” cassette)
Hold tight, wait till the party’s over Hold tight, we’re in for nasty weather…
VANESSA tries to turn onto 19th St. NW and three cars converge at the intersection, blocking her. Horns blare. She circles the block again and tries again, making it this time. Leans toward the windshield to check if her mother is standing out on the steps as arranged.
VANESSA
(singing along)
Burning down the house! (drums fingers on steering wheel in time to the music as she pulls away to circle again)
Scene IV
VANESSA pulls up in front of the Passport Agency and double parks.
STEREO
Ha! Takes over slowly But doesn’t last very long Ha ha ha ha no need to worry Everything’s under control
LEE descends the steps of the Passport Agency, already a queen, moving only her legs, upper body motionless. She could carry a book on her head and it would not budge. A car honks somewhere behind VANESSA, and another passing to her left.
VANESSA
(to herself)
Mother, is hurrying not an option now that you are the queen on deck?
LEE
(opens passenger door and flows into the seat like molten gold)
We need to be back at 1:00. (Checks her bracelet watch.)
VANESSA
What now?
LEE
Let’s find a park.
VANESSA
The Mall is nearby if we can find parking. I hope it’s not as jammed as this neighborhood.
All practicality now, LEE opens a map from her glove box and directs VANESSA. As if already a monarch with power over things not yet imagined, LEE manifests a parking place one block from the Mall.
VANESSA
(laughing as she parallel parks)
I drive around for an hour and a half and you get in the car and find a parking place in five minutes.
LEE
(grinning)
What can I say?
VANESSA
(laughing)
Take a bow.
LEE gestures broadly with her arms, accepting the imaginary applause of her audience, then laughs with genuine mirth. VANESSA spontaneously leans over and kisses her mother’s temple. They get out of the car and start walking.
Scene V
LEE and VANESSA approach an empty bench facing the reflecting pool. Each of them holds a paper-wrapped hot dog and a bottle of water. VANESSA sits. LEE puts her water bottle on the bench and eats standing up, leaning out at a 45-degree angle.
VANESSA
(biting her hotdog)
I never came to DC till I was in college.
LEE
You know better than talk with your mouth full.
VANESSA
(Grinning, mouth still full)
Sure do.
LEE
I wish we had come down here when you were a child. We could have taken the train and spent a weekend. I don’t know why we never did things like that.
VANESSA
You were working all the time.
LEE
Yes. My career was very important to me. And it will be again—when I’ve cleared my name.
VANESSA
What about the King of Burma? I thought queen was your next career.
LEE
Oh well that’s true. (Looks down at the top of VANESSA’s head.) I’ll miss you, you know. In time I hope we can arrange for you to come for a nice long visit.
VANESSA
(silent for several beats then…)
Mother, I shouldn’t have brought it up. Let’s just sit here and enjoy the fresh air. I’ll take you back to the passport office. You can do your thing. Then we’ll go home.
LEE
(Tosses her wrapper into a bin and wets her napkin from the water bottle. Wipes her mouth delicately and then her fingers.)
Whatever you want, Darling. I know this is hard. It’s a lot to take in.
To be continued …
The photos in this blog: posing in her majorette gear (1940s), posing in her bathing suit (1940s/50s?), posing with a riding helmet (1960s) performing at work in costume and posing on the deck of her home (1970s). Grandiosity was always part of her personality, but schizophrenia simply amplified that. After reading today’s post, you’ll understand that even her delusions were grandiose.
It has been a long 4+ years since I posted on my beloved SpiralWoman blog. I will not even try to explain why, mostly because it’s a combination of such complex reasons that I don’t really understand it fully myself. I am going to start posting again. Different material entirely. Instead of personal blogs and dives into my wide-ranging areas of passion, concern, or love, I will be posting sections of a book I’m working on. A memoir written by a woman who has an extremely spotty memory of her life. I am experimenting with an approach that is episodic, multi-genre, and in some instances actual short stories or semi-fictionalized narratives based on a combination of my own memory, research into my life, research into the life of my mother, and my imagination. Most of what I post will not necessarily be sequential so even if you have not read the last entry, you will be able to understand and follow the next. These entries are distinctly first drafts so read accordingly. I am eager for feedback if you are inclined to provide it. No expectations, however.
I have selected the following “chapter” at random from my ever-growing folder of pieces that will ultimately (probably) end up in the book. Hoping to post weekly. Thanks for reading.The photo below was taken when she was probably in her 40s, maybe by me (she once took me with her to the Bahamas on a business trip).
The Pick-Up and Drop-Off
She had agreed to take her meds, so the hospital agreed to release her. I had learned to take nothing at face value and was absolutely sure that she had no intention of taking her meds.
Until the day she died, she never admitted she was ill. According to my mother, her only problem was everyone else in the known universe—and their commitment to sabotaging her until there was nothing left of her life.
It was Valentine’s weekend. My husband, toddler son, and baby daughter drove down with me from New York. As my mother’s next of kin, I was to receive her. I left my husband and children at Grandpa’s house in Northern Virginia and drove up to the Springfield Hospital Center in Maryland.
Passing through a series of locked doors, I arrived in her ward. Tooth enamel white walls gleamed under dozens of fluorescent lights. The nurse’s station was behind glass with lockable doors. Just in case.
She was waiting at the back of the room, nearly dwarfed by an enormous suitcase and dressed in immaculate cornflower blue jeans and a crisp white blouse. Later, I saw that the neck of the blouse showed signs of fraying and there was a circular brown stain on the placket the size of a pencil eraser. Around her neck was a designer silk scarf—creamy beige with navy blue swirls. She might have had it for 25 years, but it looked elegant and unmarred. When she saw me, she picked up her purse. The cheap teal colored vinyl had bald spots and the gold-tone clasp was missing most of its gold. Purses get stolen more than most things when you’re homeless.
An empress in jeans, she allowed herself a tight smile when she got close and let me pull her suitcase. She walked toward the exit doors.
The nurse behind the glass spoke into a microphone. “Mrs. Lynch? Norma?”
Haughty as ever, my mother turned and looked at her. “Yes, Evelyn?”
“Mrs. Lynch you can’t leave without your medication and you and your daughter both have to sign some papers.”
“Very well,” enunciated Empress Mother.
We left the suitcase against the wall and approached the nurse’s station. Before she signed anything, she read every word of every document, glasses off, eyes two inches from the page. I watched as she signed. I never got used to her new name: Norma Lynch. Norma, the first name on her birth certificate—one that only her mother ever used. Lynch, the name of her second husband, Don.
The signature was no longer the big looping Lee Park I knew so well. This was much more straightlaced— Norma Lynch, as if a name could determine a signature. The unknowable Norma Lynch inhabited the body of my very own mother.
The nurse gave her a pharmacy bag. She shoved it into her purse, turned, and walked away. I paused and said, “Thank you, Evelyn, for your help and compassion toward my mother.”
Evelyn smiled. “Norma is God’s creature, and a unique one at that. We had a few long chats. I know for a fact she’s very proud of you.”
When I joined my mother at the door, someone pushed the unlock button and a buzzer vibrated the air. I leaned into the heavy door, and we walked out.
“You did not need to speak to that woman and there is certainly nothing to thank her for. She’s paid by my enemies to keep me here. She might not know it, but she is.”
“But you are leaving. And she was kind to you.”
“Darling, a kind jailer is still a jailer.”
My car was in the adjacent lot. I lifted her bag—it must have weighed 60 pounds—into the back seat of my car and opened the passenger door for her. We didn’t speak.
Within thirty minutes, we were driving through dusk-darkened streets looking for a parking spot.
With every block, my chest tightened with anticipated grief as my breasts swelled agonizingly with milk. Maggie had not nursed since wake-up.
I parked two blocks from the shelter. We walked in silence. I pulled the suitcase with one hand, and with the other I held my mother’s hand, as I’d done ten million times in my life. It was as warm and soft as ever. She gestured with her chin. “It’s up there. What time is it?”
“I don’t know. We left the hospital just before 5:00. It’s already dark so I bet it’s closing in on 6:00.”
“We aren’t allowed to line up until 6:30.”
How could I leave her? Just walk away from her as she paced the block dragging her suitcase, waiting for check-in time?
There was a Burger King on the corner. As soon as we entered, she pulled the medication bottle out of her purse and dropped it in the trash bin near the door. Two steps behind her, I pulled it back out.
She sat at a booth shaped out of a single piece of orange plastic while I bought two cups of coffee. I dumped the contents of five creamer pods into her cup and returned to the booth. My straight-backed mother stared ahead out the dark window, the monstrous suitcase taking up space in the narrow aisle.
She held the cup delicately between the outstretched fingers of both hands. It was such a subtle thing, but a signature of hers. A simple, delicate, oft-repeated gesture, more memorable in many ways than her former magnetism and the way she could fill a room with her personality and glow.
A digital clock on the wall said 5:56. Do I leave now, knowing she’s only across the street from the shelter? Do I wait till 6:30 and walk her to a spot in line? Exactly how do I navigate what will be less than one minute of my life? The single minute, one of so many impossible minutes. This one would be me, saying goodbye-I-love-you, kissing her cheek, and turning to walk away.
I finally said, “I need to get to Maggie soon. I’m really engorged.”
“Your place is with me. I know you don’t see it that way. You’ve made that clear enough.”
“Momma, I’m a momma now too.” She turned away, refusing to look at me, staring intently at the frail man slouched in the booth across from ours.
I reached out to take hold of her hand. She gripped mine fiercely, as if enduring awful pain and relying on me to ease it. Then she let go and withdrew her hand until it lay on her lap, below the table, inaccessible.
I looked at her face, unlined at 64, hair thin and darkening from blond to steel gray. Full lips set in a grim line. Bitter endurance had become her resting state. I put the bottle of pills on the table. She pretended not to see. I half stood to reach across and lift her shabby teal blue purse from the bench to the tabletop. Snapping open the chipped gold clasp, I dropped the bottle inside and put her bag back down beside her.
She pretended, again, not to see. I knew they’d be back in the trash the minute I was out of sight. I was shamefully grateful that she decided this time not to do battle, shout imprecations, or lunge across the table as if to wrestle me to the ground.
“Go if you have to. I’ll be fine.” She glanced at the clock. “I only have ten minutes to wait.” She was looking at me again. Her words were perfunctory, but her eyes were soft. Her mouth relaxed. Then she smiled. I could tell it cost her something, but she meant well. She felt love. She always did, somehow, when it came to me. She was being kind, in her way. Letting me go to my children was a gracious act. The daughter who chose to leave her at a homeless shelter rather than take her into her own home. The cruelty she attributed to me was a burden that pained her heart—and mine—every day. I was resigned to the fact that she’d never understand.
From inside her mind, the entire world had betrayed her, but the worst betrayal of all was mine.
As I walked to my car, my throat clamped down. In the driver’s seat, the sobs roared out of my chest. I sat like that for some minutes. Finally, as I tried to get out of the neighborhood and find a highway heading south, I did figure eights around the same two blocks a few times, and then found myself driving past the shelter. My mother was third in line, her enormous black suitcase blocking out half her body. Her gaze was fixed on the dusk-shrouded rooftops of high rises beyond her reach in more ways than one. She did not see me.
Human beings don’t make it easy on themselves. That truism can come in the form of setting challenges, taking gutsy risks, insisting on growth and healing in the face of trauma, grief, or the simple fact that you don’t have the tools—yet—but forge ahead anyway. It can be taking a chance at second love after heartbreak. Not easy. But so many do it. It can be reinventing yourself in a new career to seek greater fulfillment or after a professional train wreck. It can show up as continuing to live and love after the incomprehensible loss of a child, a home, a limb… We get back up again, we humans. I love that about us. And the capacity for altruism, grace, and love is seemingly endless within our quirky, remarkable species.
But 2020 has opened my eyes and propped them open with toothpicks—opened them, beyond forgetting, to the painful truth that the dark side of humanity exists and can wreak untold havoc, misery, and harm. People will trash their lives and—even worse—endanger or destroy the lives of others for no other reason than pure selfishness. Self-interest heightened to the point of cruelty, brutality, and rage perpetrated on anyone who may be perceived to threaten it by simply existing and wanting their human rights.
Over the past four years, the self-interest of politicians seeking power and the money necessary to keep it has led to ugly, inhuman acts of injustice, from the caging of children to the groveling and pandering to the wealthy, whether via pardons for heinous crimes or tax laws intended only to further line their pockets.
This year, those in the highest offices in the nation have refused to see to the basic needs of American citizens during a deadly pandemic. They’ve ignored the horror, cast blame everywhere but on themselves, and done a hell of a lot of golfing.
But, to return to my original thought—that human beings don’t make it easy on themselves…
What about all the people who refuse to wear masks because… what is it again? “My body, my choice?” And then lots of people get sick and die. Including the mask-refusers. Not making it easy on themselves… The motto “Live free or die” has real teeth again.
As the death toll climbs into the 300 thousands, people still expound, with absolute certainty, that Covid is a left-wing hoax, as they host maskless parties to prove they are willing to double-down on that wacky, baseless, and deadly theory.
The dystopian flavor of 2020 leaves us all vulnerable, many of us appalled, and too many of us dead or with permanently compromised health.
We are literally dying.
It is no coincidence that 2020 was the year the BLM movement was thrust finally into the consciousness of the nation in a way it had not managed before. The threshold for so many Americans has lowered. We are pissed, scared, in despair as never before. The last four years since our 45th president took office have been bad enough, but when people start getting sick and dying and that president lies, denies science, refuses to acknowledge what is happening, leaves his citizens exposed and unprotected, then starts a Twitter war to support police who have ended black lives at a statistically improbable, ethically heinous rate–well then. The reality of sanctioned racism and murder finally caught some much needed attention.
People of color, as we know, are far more vulnerable to Covid. Am I paranoid to think that our leadership is secretly hoping that letting this pandemic “run its course” will help them make America white?
Who are we?
All the people I hold dear, that I fill my life with—the ones I’ve collected over the years and loved, with whom I’ve nourished relationships … they dazzle me, each in their own way, with how they pursue life. The deep love they bring to bear in their lives. The earnest, valiant, often deeply courageous efforts they make to learn and become and grow. To know better, do better, be better. Their innate compassion. Their ability to admit what they don’t know. Their ability to value science while maintaining an openness to spirit—in whatever way that works for them. Their kindness, humanity, and, not to be forgotten, their humor.
I’m spoiled, have existed in a lovely bubble. I know that. 2020 has burst my bubble.
All humans are capable of both goodness and greatness, but far too many choose self-aggrandizement, power, and levels of opulence exponentially greater than their ability to enjoy it. They choose these things over their own humanity.
I see this now in a way I never let myself before. This learning is part of the legacy of 2020. A bitter pill for an innate optimist to swallow, but for which I’m deeply grateful.
We can make change every day with our actions, thoughts, and words. We must use our actions, thoughts, and words without surcease to shift, however infinitesimally, the paradigm preferred by some, but rejected by most. We may feel helpless because we do not walk the halls of power, but we are not.
If you doubt me, then you probably don’t believe in prayer. Many people don’t. In fact, a child of the 60s who was raised by atheists, I didn’t either until I realized that “prayer” is just another term for “words matter.”
Whether it is a mantra, a prayer, an affirmation, a dark-of-night wish uttered with a full heart, or just the words “I love you” spoken again and again to your beloved people—the utterance of words is powerful. Either aloud or in the silence of your mind.
Throughout history priests, imams, and rabbis have urged their followers to “pray together” to right a wrong or heal a hurt. Foolishness? I don’t think so. Maybe it didn’t work the way they expected it to—via the intercession of a supreme omnipotent being. But those hopeful, fervent prayers equate to energy, belief, and thought. Our thoughts and beliefs create our actions—we cannot think and believe “hate” and act from a place of love. We cannot think and believe “I’m worthless” and act from a place of optimism and confidence. We cannot think and believe “I’m a victim” and behave any differently than as a victim.
Chanting, meditating, journeying, manifesting, affirming, singing (I swear gospel singers can change the world), even drumming, whatever you do or whatever you call it, it is (in the terminology of the Western/Judeo-Christian paradigm, forgive me) a kind of prayer.
Fear is an inverted prayer. Fear consumes our minds. Our bodies even. It takes root. Without meaning to, we perseverate on all the thoughts and beliefs darkly birthed by fear. They become unintentional prayers to manifest the worst that can happen.
Do we want that? No! Of course not. So how do we feel fear and also act to defeat it?
Well it sure is hard and I’m no expert. I’m not going to glibly state that “all you have to do is…” and then lay some platitudes on you. But understanding how it works has helped me a lot. Internalizing that knowing has helped my body react to its own fear by overlaying images of light beings flooded with love on top of fear’s dark thunderheads. It actually works for me, I’m happy to say. Well, most of the time. A pandemic and an authoritarian commander-in- chief would challenge Buddha himself. (Okay, maybe not, but all us regular folks for sure.)
What made me want to write this blog is thinking about the 2020 election. As I write this, Biden/Harris have won the majority of electoral votes. Depending on when you read this, who knows what you will know about the outcome of it all. Still, I am optimistic for the future and flooded with relief. Oh, and ready to keep on working.
If there is one thing the Trump presidency has taught us it is that words matter. They have power to destroy and incite. They also have the ability to heal and soothe, but we’ve seen precious little of that for the last four years.
I’ve noticed people casually lying lately. Blatant, but casual, while I sit and listen and know the truth. I imagine it has become normalized for so many who realize lying of all kinds can be used to one’s advantage, as evidenced by the man in the White House.
The president’s lies and his vile, hate-steeped language have both altered reality. His platform is so prominent, and his voice so amplified by his power, it didn’t take long at all for him to get inside our heads. Think of all the actions that have resulted from his words.
The activism and resistance of millions of progressive citizens. People never before activated in this way—well they are now. A reaction in opposition to the ugliness because we all believe we can create change. We say it, believe it, act accordingly.
And on the other side—the open hostility, violence, and rage of haters and bigots. I’m not naïve enough to think Trump created those people. They were there all along. But his words empowered them. Big time.
Trump and his enablers have cast a spell on this nation. I do not know exactly how we will reverse it, but I know we can.
Love is, ultimately, the most powerful force in the universe. I try every day to let my thoughts and words be those of hope, action, tolerance, justice, optimism, courage, and love. Sometimes I get scared and then it’s hard.
A battle for the soul of our country requires that we cast our spells with every word and thought.
Speak up when we witness cruelty, injustice, or bigotry. Speak silent prayers inside our own hearts about what we intend for ourselves, our loved ones, our neighbors, and all humanity. Don’t shortchange all of humanity. I mean, words matter.
“I wronged you in the past,” came the LinkedIn message notification on my phone. It was late on a Friday afternoon. I was at work, plowing through as much as I could before the weekend.
I did not recognize the name on the message. Whoever it was, he wanted to apologize.
For what? Who was he?
About an hour later, my brain miraculously coughed up a possible answer to the second of those questions. My friend Molly and I had once rented a house in Charlottesville from someone whose son also lived there. Could that guy be this guy? We used a nickname for him—one that seemed to align with his adult, LinkedIn name. This is an example of a brain doing something remarkable, because that is literally the only thing it has offered up to me from the locked vault since I received that message.
It turns out my brain’s suggestion was correct. That guy was this guy.
And at that moment, I had to face a hard fact. I had virtually no memory of the entire year. The only thing from that year that has been in my active memory files in the 40 years since is that I was living in that house when John Lennon was killed. That sliver is what allowed me to figure out what year it was. I Googled it. 1980. Got it.
That’s it. No actual memory of the house, my room, the street, any events from the year either at work, school, or home. I have subsequently learned that there were two other housemates, who lived in the basement. In a late-night Messenger conversation, Molly texted me numerous specific memories of all the roommates, the house, stuff we talked about and did— that I cannot conjure no matter how I try. An entire year—gone.
Including the rape that took place in my bedroom one night. I eventually listened to my rapist tell the story. It was not the story of a shared memory, where my brain provided images and feelings to fill in the edges. It was a brand-new story he told me, and the main characters were named “You” and “I.”
Let me back up a bit. Why did I ask for a call with my self-professed rapist?
I wanted my questions answered.
I wanted at least one black hole in my mind to be filled in.
I wanted to control the conversation—no more surprising messages on LinkedIn or an apology via letter or email where he got to spin the narrative.
I asked him to talk the following Sunday. He agreed.
Friday afternoon—I was numb… like, kind of fine, actually, for a few hours. I called my sister and told her about the messages. “Are you okay?” was her first question. And I said, “I think so.”
Friday night into Saturday… definitely not okay. I have no clear explanation for the mental and emotional processes of the next several days. Rollercoaster, though painfully trite, gets close to being descriptive. Information overload. Brain overdrive. Heartache.
I had been raped a second time—a little over a year after the first one. And I had erased it, and all the months around it.
I felt as if he had just raped me, because until that Friday afternoon, I did not know he had.
The complete blank in my brain resulted in massive uneasiness and anxiety.
What happened?
I forget things. My brain learned the trick when I was very young. I forget so I can be strong. I forget so I can live as if it didn’t happen. I erase huge swaths of my life so I can feel better about my life.
So much forgotten time. Entire years, it turns out. That fact is a punch in my gut almost as heartbreaking as realizing I’d been raped not just once, but twice.
My housemate rapist looked for me, forty years later. He sought me out, found me on LinkedIn, and assumed I’d remember, just as he did, the events that took place. Also that I’d likely welcome his request to apologize. How could he have known that the event that has been with him for 40 years was only introduced into my consciousness by him?
His first messages were clumsy, unintentionally hurtful because rather clueless, and made me nervous about speaking to him. But I knew I needed to. Wanted to.
I processed the shit out of the whole situation all day Saturday. I spoke to my sister and my daughter, on the phone. My friends Mary (by chance she was in town) and Beth came over to sit with me that afternoon. We made a plan. I wrote my notes, my script, to help me get through the call. I got mad. At him: “How dare he contact me!” At myself. For forgetting. I sobbed intermittently with utter helplessness—once again I had to face my own vulnerability at the whim/hands/intentions of a man. I raged with fierce strength: “This does not define me.” I was exhausted.
The next day, Beth returned, to be by my side while I was on the phone.
I tapped in the number he’d given me. I vibrated all over as floods of adrenaline and cortisol had their way with my central nervous system. My voice shook when he answered the phone and I said hello.
Here’s the thing. I knew he wanted to apologize. That seemed, on the face of it, good. But I was not at all sure if he wanted to take responsibility—which was the only kind of apology that would actually help me. If his apology was for his own sake alone, I would know it. And it would hurt.
But it wasn’t.
Nothing can change what he did. He will have to live with that self-knowledge forever. But his actions on that Sunday afternoon on the phone were everything I could have hoped for, but had not hoped for.
He wanted the call to be healing. I did not think it could be.
But it was.
I led, he followed. I asked, he answered—with brutal honesty and full ownership of the awfulness of his choices and actions. He said the correct words: “I raped you.” He offered no excuses, and lay no blame or responsibility at my feet, as happens all too often.
I am not the only woman he is trying to find. There are two others. And for their sake, at the very end of our phone call, I offered him some suggestions about how he might do it differently next time. He thanked me.
He told me he had read my Me Too blog before he reached out to me—found my blog link on LinkedIn and then typed the words Me Too in the search bar. He thought he might find himself there—but it was someone else. When he messaged me, he already knew he was not the only man to violate me.
His wife was raped in college too, he told me. When she shared that information with him, when they were dating, he told her, “I did that.” He confessed the truth, that there are women out there, like her, because of him. He told me that their ability to work through those brutal facts, and every emotion on both sides, made all the difference to them. It took a long time and I don’t think it was easy. In the end, I had to respect him for that honesty with the woman he loved, and whom he could have lost.
It turns out we were housemates, not close, not friends, but friendly. He said he wasn’t the best housemate. I had to remind him to do his dishes.
After he told me what happened, I asked, “Why did you do it?”
“I was a privileged little shit.” Like so many upper-middle class white boys on college campuses, he imagined himself to be entitled to whatever he wanted. He thought he had magical powers to make women want his penis inside them. However it got there. The fact that he recognizes that now, and owns it, and refuses to be that guy anymore—well, it made an impression on me. As my heart broke for 20-year-old me, I recognized the growth and humility in him that makes him a human on a path, just as I am.
As for forgiveness, I’m not there yet, but I want to be. And I hope I’ll find my way to that place. I usually do.
The night he raped me, he knocked on my door. “I was lonely,” he said. “I asked if I could get in bed with you.”
His words triggered no memory. Still a blank. I sat in my sunny Sunday living room, tears dripping from my chin as I listened
He went on. “You were surprised, but you said, okay. Just to sleep.”
How did I maintain equilibrium and a sense of peace and happiness through many years when some pretty basic things about my life were painful, unfulfilling, or difficult? High stress around a mentally ill, often homeless, mother. A rural life that did not align with my basic needs. Abstinence from the one thing that had always defined me: writing. And what was essentially a profoundly unsatisfactory marriage. But if you’d asked me at the time, through those years, “Are you happy?” I would have said yes.
There was a family and it was full of love. The love my husband and I felt for our children filled up the gaps and fissures in our own relationship. And I now know, with the clarity of time and distance, there was another thing that was fundamental to my sense of comfort within my life.
Touch.
My kids
The moment I gave birth to my first child, the human need we all have for touch was satisfied. Holding, hugging, cuddling my babies as they grew was, to paraphrase Michelangelo, what gave me life. At least it’s a very very big part of it. And I’m happy to say, I raised two humans as cuddly as I am, and not as uncuddly as their dad is. (He has many great qualities; cuddliness is not one.) Our grown children are paying that warm gift of touch forward in their adult primary attachment relationships—aka with their girlfriends.
After waking up the other day having dreamt I was writing something titled “Touch,” I obviously had to write something titled “Touch.”
My new motto is: Touch—I’m into it. And looking for outlets for my touch, beyond the friendly fluff of my resident feline.
Once I knew I was going to write this blog called “Touch,” I decided to click around on the internet to see if what I intuitively know to be true is backed up by science. Cuz science is cool.
As predicted, all the studies (and they have been numerous in recent decades) support what is obvious to you, or anyone, who has hugged or been hugged, cuddled, stroked, held hands, made love, or driven a car with a lover’s hand resting on your leg as the miles rolled sweetly by. Touch is incredibly healing for us, and, in fact, vital not just to humans, but to animals of all kinds.
A cat, dog, or horse will push head against human hand, demanding pats, nuzzles, and ear scratches. Children who feel safe and nourished by our love will fling themselves at us, arms out, knowing that the hug is waiting. My children, as mentioned, always felt comfortable seeking loving touch, hugs, cuddles, booboo kisses. My son loved to excuse himself from his dinner seat and come sit on my lap when he was finished eating. From toddlerhood on, this routine rarely altered. The result was lovely for everyone—a longer time lingering at table, the family talking about the day, my husband and I making plans, gossiping about work, as I finished my wine or just sat with my little, and eventually less little, boy on my lap. He did that till he was 11 or 12 and just did not fit any more.
To this day, my all-grown daughter will stick her arm into my lap when we are watching a movie, hanging out, talking… and I know she wants some touch. I will stroke her arm as I have done for over 25 years, or maybe her back, and why wouldn’t I? But as adults, we rarely ask for the touch we need. (It would never have occurred to me to ask for a hug or a backrub from either of my parents even when I was a child, let alone an adult.) Humans, at least in this culture, are programmed not to ask for touch, no matter how needed. We don’t push our head against people’s hands or stick our arms into people’s laps. I suspect most Americans would think that saying, “I need a hug” is a sign of weakness. And that’s sad.
My son with pup.
Now that my kids are out of the house, I am a single woman living alone. I don’t mind living alone, but I am usually pretty touch-deprived. Like many Americans, I suspect. Having a pet helps immensely. If you have that warm furball pressed up against you and can nest your fingers in a fluffy cat belly or stroke a dog’s silky face, you have a leg up. Also, if you are a woman, you are likely to receive more touch than your male counterparts. We women are more likely to hug hello and goodbye, and to really squeeze when we hug, too. The other day I burst into tears while confiding something painful to a friend of mine. She immediately hugged me—a real hug, and I accepted gratefully.
A hug is best when it rests for a minute. When you and your hug-partner can feel your heart rates match, and the day’s tension drain from your bodies. Except when we hold our children or our lovers… if we have them… we rarely hug like that. I suspect most Americans would find a hug like that, from a friend who is not a lover, awkward at best, creepy at worst.
And it’s a shame.
But the studies do show that even simple conversational touch is immensely beneficial. (Did you know that in the US we touch during conversation with friends about 2 times an hour but in France it’s 110 times an hour and in Puerto Rico… 180!)
What Michelangelo actually said, according to Google, was: “To touch is to give life.” And in all the ways we can interpret “life,” it seems to be true. The benefits to mental, physical, and psychic health abound. Here’s one quick example—one study of women looked at increased numbers of hugs from their partners in correlation to blood pressure and heart rates and the results were stunning. Both numbers dropped. And that is not the only study that links hugs with cardiovascular health.
We’ve known for a long time that babies and children need lots of touch. Children who are raised with plenty of touch are calmer, better adjusted, and more resilient, while children who are not touched fail to thrive or grow, for starters, and the rest of the outcomes are just as awful.
My dad and I wrapped my then 3 year old daughter in loving touch
But we grown-ups need touch too. Touch! I’m into it…
Touch creates cooperative relationships. Is it possible to incorporate touch into the work place in the Me Too era? Not sure how we’d navigate that… (My boss is a hugger. At first I was taken by surprise by this daily greeting for everyone she encounters in the office. But I grew to love it. Her hugs are real, and she looks you in the eye as she comes in for the squeeze. I feel seen and cared about. I’m good with it. If she were a man, I honestly can’t say if I would be, but that is a topic for another blog.)
It produces oxytocin—the mothering hormone it is sometimes called, also known as the sex hormone, but really it’s the love hormone, as it is released not just by breastfeeding and sex but also by simple touch. Oxytocin enhances positive thinking, optimism, bonding, compassion, and trust.
Speaking of compassion—one study showed that when a toucher was feeling compassion, the touched person knew it about 80% of the time. (This study was done so that the two people could not see each other and hands reached out through a hole in the wall—very sciency.) The touched person could also sense other emotions, but compassion was the big winner.) So if you touch people, they will feel your compassion for them. So do it.
Touch also releases the neurotransmitters, dopamine and serotonin. They help us regulate our moods and they relieve anxiety and stress. So—touch is part of a solid care plan for folks with an anxiety disorder, not to mention just good practice for all of us living high-stress lives in a high-stress country with high-stress headlines bombarding us daily.
Not just heart related disease, but all disease is affected positively by touch simply because (and the evidence is clear) touch boosts our immune systems. Do you get a lot of colds? Hug your kid. Cuddle your partner.
But seriously, do we really need data and studies to make us practice something so elemental to our beings as touch? The people in France don’t need a scientist to tell them, “Touch your friends approximately 110 times each hour that you are in conversation. Here is a printout of the health benefits of this practice. Call me for a follow-up in three weeks.” They touch because it is part of who they are and their society accepts safe, warm, friendly touch.
Chimps groom each other several hours out of every day. Have you ever seen a cat lick another cat for … ages? I mean their tongues must be pretty tough to endure that much exercise. But I digress. Horses in a paddock will nuzzle one another and many will trot right over to be scratched and stroked by the nearest human. Touch is encoded in the DNA of countless species. If we don’t touch enough, it’s because we have allowed cultural norms and social taboos to override our instincts. And of course, I am not advocating that men grab pussies—that is not touch, that’s assault. And also of course, we have to be very aware of what other people are comfortable with. Consent is vital and boundaries are to be respected.
I hope you will practice more touch when talking to a close friend—reach out to touch her hand as you tell her a story or ask her how she feels. If you are lucky enough to have a partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, friend with benefits… touch that person more. Let’s make cuddling our national pastime instead of school shootings. If you still live with your children—no matter how old they are—up the hug quotient. And whenever you see that family member or friend who makes your heart sing—show it with touch and share the love. That’s what I’m going to do.
Postscript. I have found over the years that when I carefully link to all my sources and online articles in a blog, zero readers click on them. (That’s zero as in absolutely none at all.) So if you want to find the research I refer to in this blog, a simple Google search will do the trick, as it did for me. Or ask me for my sources in the comments.
30 miles out to sea… the little comma-shaped island is Nantucket.
Thinking too much about things. It’s a lifetime habit I have not yet entirely broken. Thinking has its place and I’m pretty good at it, truth be told. But as powerful as my brain happens to be, my heart is even better.
When I seat my Self there, I am at my best. I can easily know what my gray cells can never deliver.
I’m grateful for my brain, don’t get me wrong. And all the other parts of me, as I explained in one of my favorite Thanksgiving blogs. But what is the lesson I learn again and again— when I feel the need to know “why?” Ask my heart.
A few days ago, I started to write a blog in honor of Thanksgiving. I was having my long anticipated (and partially dreaded) solo Thanksgiving. Once I knew neither my children nor my sisters could be with me, I turned down several invitations in order to carry out the holiday my heart knew was right. Me and my cat, Boo Radley, a 12-pound turkey and a few fixings, and solitude.
I started the blog, and it was rolling out as a kind of “this is my choice/ here is what I’m doing/ this is good/ let me explain myself/ allow me to excuse myself for being the windswept hero on the clifftop with tangled hair and a fistful of crumpled poems.” I digress. Plus, there are no clifftops here, nor are there poems to be crumpled. The thinking blog I started to write… well, it was horrible.
Analysis and a careful breakdown of pros and cons is not going to answer the questions that sneak into my head late at night since arriving in my new life/job/home/island ten months ago. The questions run like this: Did I do the right thing? Why am I here? Is this going to work out? Have I made a terrible mistake? Will I be able to afford this? Are there any men on this island? Why is my life like this?
Wrong questions.
And I know that. The minute I feel my brain firing like that, I roll my eyes. They roll all the way back into that brain and frown at all those neurons freaking out and having a panic party. If eyeballs could enunciate, mine would probably say, “tsk, tsk, tsk.”
So when that happens, I make myself a nice cup of tea, light the candles, and remind myself that there is learning happening.
Because—this is my life and why am I here if not to learn? Yes, and grow. Yes, and trust the universe. Even when things seem objectively nuts, both out there in the world and in here in my confused state.
There is not much more to say, except that it seems pretty obvious to my cardiac muscle’s figurative counterpart that there is a reason for all of this.
I am an introvert living a literal and metaphorical insular life. I am on an island, but I think obsessively about how to get off of it to see my children, the world, tall buildings, friends. Doing so is not easy. Residents are very often trapped here by weather. And if you have a demanding job, well, you are mostly doing that, anyway. So what is in store for me here—to learn and become? Here where I am trapped by ocean and wind?
Wind-blown after a short walk in my neighborhood on Thanksgiving.
I’ve never liked wind. It has always made me extremely uneasy. So now I live in the birthplace of all wind. The place wind gets trained to be a Superwind. The elite wind mall, bragging a variety of winds never before imagined. Isn’t that interesting? Perhaps I am here to be blown away.
My life, though still clearly privileged by any objective standard, is extremely pared down. I have downsized to 500 square feet of coziness. I am blessed to have a place I can even remotely afford here in Nantucket, and so why the dark thoughts? I love where I live. Why do I feel insecure? I let myself worry about meaningless what-ifs until I remember I don’t want a big house. I don’t want a mortgage, a lawn to mow, an oil tank to replace. I can spend my Saturdays writing a blog, exploring the beach, or the Whaling Museum, or walking through town with a friend as I did today… instead of cleaning, calling plumbers, and repainting the bathroom. Much is possible.
A pared-down life on an isolated windy island is life as I know it, for now. It is exactly where I need to be, and my heart is learning why.
In a recent email exchange with an old friend from grad school, 25-year-old Vanessa appeared, invited by his words. It was as if he added water to a freeze-dried me, and I reconstituted before my own eyes.
There she was, that other, prior me. A young woman who had done one thing consistently since she could hold a pencil: write.
That Me-Who-Wrote refused to be vanquished or even dimmed, no matter what. While working full time, putting myself through college, juggling night working with day studenting, and acing my classes, I wrote. Riding the roller coaster of teenaged misery and the even more distracting bumper-car ride of 20-something angst and ecstasy, I wrote. Living fully (like 24 hour a day LIVING LIFE), loving with an ease and joy that defined me, offering my heart to the wrong men and having it cast away—no matter what, the stories poured out. And then there was that eating disorder, an abortion, and my mother’s descent into psychosis. And still, I wrote, just about every day.
The thing is, I could not NOT write. I had plenty of options, and many choices to make… every day. Whether I sat down, pad in hand, or before my typewriter (yes… typewriter) was not a choice, any more than breathing or eating are choices.
But now that I think of it, eating was a choice. For almost three years in my twenties, I actually chose not to EAT. Why did I stop eating? There are answers to that, I believe. Explanations. I’m pretty sure I know what that was all about. But that episode in my life troubles me less than the much longer episode of abstinence that makes far less sense to me.
Why did I stop writing for 25 years?
75% of the work I’ve done over the last 15 years—in my shamanic journey, my spiritual questioning, my self-healing— has been focused on that singular question, which is like an ice pick in my heart. And I still don’t have good answers.
Yesterday, on the phone with my sister, I grieved freely for the first time. I cried and cried. It was a conscious grief. I let myself feel the loss fully. It felt like shit. But why had I repressed the emotion for so long? I had allowed the loss of a piece of myself to exist only in my mind, where I could manage it, look at it, “think about it.”
I have put words to this fact—that I was a writer who stopped writing—many times. Friends and family who knew me in the before time could never reconcile the non-writing me with the person they knew. I had handydandy answers ready. Answers about having a family, raising kids, that my (then) husband was the writer in the family now. Excuses about being a working mom, a teacher with hours spent reading the writing of 13-year-olds and helping them make it the best it could be. All the writing I did for other people, clients who needed my words and skills to say what they wanted to say. I enjoy that work, don’t get me wrong. But I have, for years and years, put all of myself into helping other people be writers, or giving other people the words they could not find on their own.
Writing did return to me for a while when I invited it in, about seven years ago when my marriage ended. It came easily for a time. I became prolific again, briefly.
I often wonder if one of the reasons that marriage had to end was that I realized I would never write from inside it. Not writing was a defining factor in how I saw myself in that relationship. As hard as it was for my husband to allow himself to grow as a partner within our couplehood, it was just as hard for me to return to the writer I had been. That is not on him. It is all on me.
But even though the words flooded back for a while, the act of ending a marriage is never going to be enough. There needs to be so much more.
For a short time, I was in a relationship with a man whose belief in me as a writer spurred me on. But there needs to be so much more.
I need to believe in myself as a writer. I need to accept the loss of 25 years and reclaim the part of me that I lost. The part that snapped off. The giant organic piece of my soul that just broke the fuck off and rolled down the cellar stairs.
When my friend John reminded me: “You were always a serious and optimistic writer,” my heart jumpstarted as if I’d said those words myself.
Yes, Self, you can be serious again. You can be optimistic again. That means… you write.
I started this blog in 2013 so I’d have a reason to use my voice again. It seemed an easy (er) way to find the flow of words that had once been a cascade. It has been fun. I am not sure if it paved the way as much as it filled the gap. I am grateful for it, but it is not enough.
What I need to do now: feel my grief. Let it move through me and pass away. Integrate the learning. Return to myself.
There is only one way to know if these lessons will take. If the writing starts again.
