Solo

Hello, friend. Thank you for joining me here!

It’s been a while. I started writing another post, about our porch addition, but I stopped. I couldn’t focus. I’ve been preoccupied by everything that happened last week and the aftershocks that just keep coming. I don’t know how to process it all. And actually, it’s also been a hard couple of weeks around here. I wanted to write about the house, and our crazy renovation journey, but my heart resisted. There were other topics gnawing at me. Looking back, I see that my personal feelings of malaise started just after Christmas.

December 26th brought us a big family shift. David’s teenage son has been staying with us since October, and prior to the winter break, he was attending classes (virtually) for his freshman year of college. The plan was for him to return to his mom in New Jersey on December 27th. But, at the last minute, that changed. For a variety of reasons, he decided to stay here until he reports to his Midwest college in person—if all goes as planned—at the end of January. This is all ok. But, it was a huge alteration in our New Year plans. I recognize that the New Year is arbitrary, however, I don’t think anybody doubts the power of setting intentions and a clearly defined fresh start—especially after what we’ve all been through in 2020. There’s nothing bad about our new plan, except for the fact that it knocked my equilibrium, and I have struggled somewhat to recover. 

Every January 1st for the past few years, I do something called the Whole30. Have you heard of it? It’s where you basically eat only produce, meat and nuts—whole foods—for 30 days. There is no sugar, no grains, no legumes, no alcohol, and no dairy, and it gives both your body and your mind a complete reset. I have done this five times with amazing results, and it was something that I was longing to start. However, David’s son has specific nutritional needs and allergies that make the Whole30 impossible to do while he is staying with us. Of course, we can easily switch and start it on February 1, but all of my months of mental preparation to begin the new year with great habits changed in about 12 hours. If I’m being super honest, I was disappointed. Not disappointed that he stayed, but disappointed that the thing I was holding onto to make myself feel better and more hopeful and to give me some sense of control over the chaos of our world right now was abruptly delayed. Life does that to you, doesn’t it? Turns left without signaling? In the scheme of things, I was fully aware that this was a high-class problem. But in my day-to-day life, the way I am able to nourish my mind and body through food is actually exceedingly impactful. I felt a little desperate knowing I couldn’t do this thing I knew would make life better, and I started thinking hard about what other actions I could take that might have different, but helpful results.

In an effort to counterbalance our new situation for the month of January, I made a few requests. Though I couldn’t shift our menus much, I desperately wanted to shake up meal times. I had the idea that during dinner we would watch something together. Finley goes to sleep around 7:30 or eight, and normally David and I eat an adult dinner after that and watch a an episode of some great series. We have not done that since we moved here in August—mostly because we have no cable set up and the TV wasn’t even plugged in until November, ha! Though our Fall dinners were a good time to connect with David’s son, I had really been missing some form of narrative entertainment—and some plain old escape. I also wanted to inject some fun into the bleak evenings of January in Minnesota. In racking my brain for something that all of us would enjoy, I had the idea to watch the entire Star Wars cannon, most of which David and I had not seen. His son is a fan and was excited by the prospect. Win, win! Conveniently, our very large dining room table had been temporarily squeezed into the middle of our future family room/parlor (where we keep our one television) for Thanksgiving dinner, and left up for Christmas meals as well. We had been planning on taking it down in January, but it has served as the perfect spot for our ‘dinner and a movie’ evenings. We decided to watch the movies in release date order. We watched some in one night, but others we spaced out over two nights, depending upon their length and how tired we were. Last week, we made it through the prequels. I cannot tell you how chilling and ironic it was to watch the battle between good and evil as represented by the Jedi and the Sith while the events of our country unfolded. On the night of the invasion of our Capitol following the President’s rally filled with cheers from his worshipful followers, we watched Episode III in which Senator Amidala says, “So this is how liberty dies…with thunderous applause.” Prescient, to say the least. And you know, once The Emperor had that hood on, he looked a little Trumpy in the chin, to my eye. Maybe I’m making that up, but I couldn’t help drawing the comparison.

In addition to overseeing our Star Wars education, I also asked David’s son if he would be willing to play with Finley for one hour each day so I could take a walk alone. This was not possible while his school was in session, but he has this month off. If you’ve been following my writing, you know that one of the ways I survived the Spring Covid lockdown in New Jersey was by getting out for an hour a day to walk, sometimes pushing Finley in a stroller to do so. It truly kept me sane. Unfortunately, since we got to Minnesota, I have barely had time (nor bathroom) to brush my teeth, and walking fell by the wayside. In that New Year’s attempt at health and recalibration, I could feel a longing to move again. Perhaps I couldn’t start the diet I was intending, but I could get more exercise. I definitely know myself well enough to recognize that moving my body changes my mind. So, starting on December 27, I got out there again. Granted, the weather here is a challenge. Layers help! It is especially difficult, though, to find the right footwear to walk in Minnesota in the winter. I have great sneakers, and I have warm snow boots, but no real combination of the two. I started out wearing a warm pair of boots with decent traction, but little support. After a week, my left foot started to ache. I knew what that meant. The same thing had happened to me 11 years ago— almost to the day. And that leads me to the shadow reason for my January unrest. I think I always think that the anniversary of tragic days lessens over time. I think I’m wrong. Those days are always there, they just lurk in different corners, waiting for you to discover them, year after year. Although I never consciously think about it until the day is upon me, I have a New Year’s wound that will always make this time of year unsettled. Here is what happened…

On New Year’s Day of 2010 in New Zealand, my stepmother, Deborah, was killed in a horrible accident. She and my father, Peter, were on a “trip of a lifetime“ and she asked the driver of the car they had hired to pull over so she could take a picture of a beautiful vineyard. When she got out of the car and was crossing the road with her camera, she must’ve forgotten that in New Zealand, they drive on the other side of the street. She was struck by two cars and died. She was 68 years old. It was so incredibly shocking and horrific and unreal. Even now, more than a decade later, if I let myself sink into the raw truth of what happened, it feels as if my body begins to turn inside out from its core in order to expel it away. It’s like when you have food poisoning and your body has to get it out? There is violence in the absolute rejection.

In trying to survive the immediate aftermath of her death, I began exercising fiendishly. I would set the treadmill on an elevation of 10, and pound away as fast as I could—though I remember feeling almost nothing. I also spent hours and hours walking with Peter through their neighborhood in the bleak nights of that new year. We would walk and talk, he at times in a run-on, manic avalanche of desperate words. I think it help to get it out. I hope it helped him. That was our time to try to process what had happened. In the end, I walked so much, that I did myself an injury. I developed plantar fasciitis in both feet and had to completely stop exercising—actually limiting all my movement until it got better. Isn’t that ironic? Turns out, you cannot outrun grief.

So, as that familiar ache returned last week, in another January of another year of hard times, I almost had to laugh. Of course. I know how to rehab more quickly this time, and I have ordered better boots. Some days off and careful use of inserts and icing should keep me on the trail in the long term. But it really brought back the idea of trauma and how there’s no avoiding the pain. Really fucking bad things happen in this world. People with so much life ahead of them die in stupid accidents. Others are infected by a pandemic because someone simply didn’t wear a mask around them. Regular citizens are brainwashed into trying to overthrow Democracy. These are unbelievable truths. 

Everything that’s happened for most of the past four years has seemed sort of unreal to me. But, in looking at the pictures from last Wednesday, there were pieces of the images that were so ordinary that it all sunk in a whole new way. I don’t quite have the words to describe what I mean, just that the people who did those awful things were plain old Americans. They wore jeans and baseball caps. They needed haircuts and took iPhone pics to show friends. They didn’t look like enemies. It was a very real attack, and it was definitely nothing like Star Wars. There was no flash, nor Hollywood ending—nothing to allow us to push it away as fantasy. These were average, real people doing this thing. It was awkward, but effective, chaotic, but clearly organized. It wasn’t how you’d write it, and because the images and footage lacked any sheen, it hit me harder: how much they hate us. How insane things have become. How far people are willing to go. Not just in movies. Not just in crazy, George-Lucas-madness-mind. Even without Storm Trooper whites (or KKK hoods) it is pretty clear that we are witnessing the power of the dark side.

As so much tumult rages, I’m trying to sit inside myself and recognize how scary all of this is, and has been, and will probably continue to be, and how life is just hard at times. I can’t distract myself with sweeping resolutions. I’m just doing the best I can, and sometimes it’s not so successful—depends on the day. There are moments when the good and the bad seem to blend. The one afternoon I attempted a walk last week, I went at magic hour. The sun was just above the horizon, and it glowed forth all orangey-gold onto everything I could see. It was so pretty it ached. As I closed my eyes and lifted my face toward the light, I quite suddenly remembered back to lent in 2010. It was like a grainy Kodak slide that flashed momentarily across the inside of my eyelids, and it was the piece of my discomfort puzzle I’d been missing. 

I am not religious, but Deborah was. She and Peter were active members of their neighborhood Episcopal church, and when she died the congregation mourned with us.  After her funeral, I stayed with Peter for another month and returning for long visits multiple times throughout that year. We attended their church every Sunday, and to be frank, it helped. I needed a place where I could be alone together and find comfort through words and music. My return to California, where I lived at the time, coincided with the beginning of lent. Other than a vague recollection of Ash Wednesday, which had a whole new significance under the circumstances, I had never had any real associations with those 40 days. I was raised in the Lutheran Church and had some unsettling brushes with Southern Baptists when I dated one in high school. That said, I never paid much attention to the period leading up to Easter. But back in 2010 I had found a rhythm of Sunday solace with Peter, and I needed it to continue. For many days that year, I sat in a pew at All Saints Church in Pasadena, and listened hungrily to Rev. Ed Bacon. I was hurting so badly and looking for some way to understand. I also went to therapy and joined a grief support group, and those were good things. But there was something about the lenten journey that gave me the safest place to turn. I knew no one in the large congregation. I attended alone. I wept silently, bathed weekly in tears. I sat up front, about six rows from the pulpit because I needed the words to have a direct path. I wanted to see Ed’s kind eyes clearly and feel his powerful voice resonate in my chest. I wanted to fall inside of his sermons. I wanted them to cover me and stop the bleeding. Rev. Bacon lead us through those dark Sundays both delicately and profoundly. I thought Lent was about giving up chocolate. Not so. I’m no biblical scholar and my memory is a bit iffy, but I remember what lent gave me during that time: permission to feel incredibly alone. Jesus went into the desert to fast and pray by himself in order to connect more deeply with God. Going without to go within. I wanted that. Not to starve my body, but to starve my soul. I felt so much survivor’s guilt. How could I allow joy in my life when Deborah’s was stolen? I craved a penance for getting to live. It sunk in deep that Jesus needed to go on the journey by himself. Though Deborah was loved by many, relationships are between two people. When she was gone, I was the only one who knew us anymore. I was the only one with our memories and our plans and our very particular connection. I knew what was good between us and what was hard. I knew how she treated me and what parts of her only I could miss. I had to face the loss of all of that by myself because I was the only one who knew what had died with her for me.

It’s strange to be writing about diets, riots and personal loss all at once. I’m not entirely sure what thread holds them together. I’m sorry if this is a bit all over the place, but so am I right now. Are you, too? All I know is that this season, these past few weeks, have held a lot of turmoil. As 2021 approached, I had intentions for positive change, and my plan was altered by circumstances outside my control. Familiar, that. However, the changes I did make had bright spots: Star Wars bonding and long desired walks. Then the walks began to hurt, and I had to stay put for a time which brought back painful memories. And right then, during the week I sat still, with Vader and The Emperor booming in the background, the real world burst into chaos anew. So much anger and hate. So much disbelief. Just as it felt like things would get better, on the very day the election was to be settled at last and a new hope was on the horizon, unthinkable crimes were committed. Add to this the ongoing pandemic and the hell that is distance learning… It would be a challenge to frame the first weeks of this year in a positive light. And writing that leads me here: we don’t have to. 

There was no gift in Deborah dying. There was no silver lining, nor meaning. If you believe in God, you cannot tell me it was in his plan. She just forgot to turn her head to check for traffic. That’s it. As I came out of that year of mourning—they say it takes a year—I had made no sense of her death because there was no sense to be made. Perhaps all Januarys and the subsequent times of lent during dark winters, edged by muddy early springs, will always remind me that it is ok to be not ok. When nothing makes sense it may not actually be figure-out-able. My job in times like these is not to force a falseness, neither outwardly nor inside. My job, taught to me on the well-worn wooden pew where I grieved, is to let life be what it is. When it is hard and shocking and exhausting, there’s not a meal plan in the world that will change it. There is just staying present with all of it for as long as it takes for the roots that survived your winter to be ready to bloom again. They will rise, like stories tell of Jesus. Easter is all about that rebirth. But we are not there yet. Our country isn’t, nor am I. So I wait. I sit in the middle of the disappointment and the disillusionment and the dog-tired day-to-day of it all. I know it will change, as spring follows winter, but there is no fast forwarding life.

Today, January 15th, is Deborah’s birthday. It is also the day, 11 years ago, that we held her funeral at The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. It felt fitting to celebrate her life on the anniversary of her birth. Full circle somehow. This is a tender day. I miss her. I always will. In my reckoning with all of the above, I hold the largest space for you today, dear Deborah. I imagine what you would have thought of this strange and difficult time. When I am still, I can still hear your voice. Perhaps that is what I sought in lent. My own desert to commune with you. I think I wasn’t looking for God. I was just looking for you. 

There is no getting out of the things that hurt. There is only in. This time we are living through has dealt so many blows. I need some time to nurse the wounds and water the roots of hope that are left in me with all the tears that need to get out. Maybe the salt makes them stronger, who knows? I like that image. Perhaps one day in spring, when global and national and personal change has come in its own time, instead of turning inside out from pain, I will feel around my core and find a garden pushing through. On a long walk, I will turn to the shining sun and let the petals in my heart open again. And then I will hear a familiar and clever Texas twang whisper… 

“She is risen, indeed.”