The Grasping Hands of Primates are an Adaptation to Life in the Trees

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There was the first spring, when the roses bloomed in February – or perhaps it was even January – I have forgotten. In the front of the garden lay the double pink and the yellow roses, standing stalwart against the North wind. A late February ice storm beat them back to the ground; I almost thought they were lost, but no, roses are strong.

The second spring came similarly; why were all the storms so strong now, as if sending us a message from on high, something we were supposed to notice? There was the hail storm that felt as if someone was pouring golf-ball size hail from the roof amidst a green sky like one of a tornado. The tornado came later, and we all learned that the scariest parts of tornados is that they are invisibly powerful as they tear off your roof.

My roof remained unscathed; my friend sent me a photo of the tornado traveling just above our house on its way out of town where it wrecked a fine line of homes and barns in a path of destruction.

The changes happen slowly; perhaps we should have known this. I should have known this, as an armchair scientist and teacher of critical thinking, discernment. How could it be fast like in so many stories? It was slow.

I often wonder about princesses in carriages; gazing out the windows at the landscape. What did they think about? Were they in conflict with their material possessions in contrast with the lives of their people? My doctor said to me two weeks ago: we all had gotten way too used to all the Amazon, click-a-button and have it shit, it was time for a change.

A change is here; I feel it settling around me and I am trying to choose how to respond. I keep planting trees. I have planted six so far. My husband said last night, “I will be working in the garden on the day they blow the world apart”.

Could it be? Every day I go into a classroom and turn on lights, log into the internet, kids come in and go and get breakfast and later, lunch. We walk up a green hillside dotted with dandelions and if we have time, go into the woods to walk the trails. Children are friends, get mad at each other, stare into their phone screens, cry, laugh, and make fun of me. I love it. The children everywhere are the best part of the gig. I think every day about children in Israel, Gaza, Yemen, Ukraine, Russia, the Congo, the Sudan, etc. and I wonder do they get to walk into a classroom?

I remember teaching in Philly 12 years ago and how surprised I was at the world within the world I was then a part of. The other day there was an article about that same neighborhood in the New York Times and it made me so sad. Why? I think because I know now that it is worse than it was when I was there, and that fact is so shocking to me. I remember walking to the Dominican restaurant down the block to get lunch or to the little shops under the El to get candy or cookies for kids. There were no homeless people sick from drugs then; there were simply drug markets selling the drugs that would then populate all the blocks, all the corners. I remember taking a photo of a vacant lot with a hurricane fence, overgrown with weeds and wondering why there were no trees there.

For me, peace is coming in tiny moments and I have to actively pursue them. Dusting furniture, looking at the ocean, cooking dinner, planting a tree, refilling a bird feeder; all are tiny moments that are expanding into a greater peace. I look at the pine boughs in late afternoon sun and the way clouds look early in the morning and remember that we are all so tiny in this cosmos, and it will continue long after we are gone, whether through simple mortality or grave human error.

During the eclipse, I watched with awe the power of the Sun, and thought, without that one thing, all is lost! How amazing. We used to think that we were so powerful, before. Now we understand that nothing is certain, clear, or real. Perhaps it is time to jump into the unknown? Perhaps it is time to recognize that our hands are empty, but when we reach out to grasp another, the grasp and the hand are real.

Good night.

I love you, Michelle!

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With her goddess-like beauty (blonde wavy smooth 1920s hair with her beautiful bod! Her smile! Her laugh!), immeasurable intellect, wittiness, caring heart, and a little bit of sass-spice-wicked-impishness, I say goodbye to my friend.

She was lost in the blink of an eye, just. like. that. Gone.

The last two days I have been remembering Michelle and mostly what I find so funny and graceful and beautiful is that I can see her smiling and laughing across a table, like we are sitting at a diner. Her sister today asked me to say a prayer for her and I said I already was: prayers upon prayers upon thoughts and memories and pictures in my mind of her. When I was 18 years old, I thought Michelle was the coolest girl I had ever met. I had met her a few years earlier but actually became friends with her when I moved to Austin. She lived with her smart, cool boyfriend who I had loved and respected for years as one of the good guys in speech and debate. Their apartment was in West Campus, in a small building with a central atrium, open to the elements. They had a patio that looked out on it, and we sat out there and shot the shit. One night she taught me how to make everything I baked vegan by using a banana and some flax seed powder in the place of an egg. Her apartment was painted in all these amazing ways including a room that was matte light blue and metallic silver vertical striped.

Like all of us, there was tragedy as well as success and hilarity. I am beginning to wonder so much about our generation and our tendency toward a) having a history of traumatic childhood experiences b) coupled with addictive tendencies for alcohol, drugs, relationships, etc. There seem to be so many of us that struggle with these two issues, and I suppose that the addictions are the coping mechanisms for the childhoods. I hate to blame the parents, but there is something in our generation; kids raising themselves as parents were absentee due to work or their own addictive tendencies or whatever it was. Parenting now, speaking as a parent myself, is so different than the parenting that I remember experiencing.

Michelle was one of the first people who encouraged me to say “fuck off” to parents who said hurtful, shaming, or mean things to their kids. She was an advocate for the no bullshit philosophy that many of us now understand is this thing called “having boundaries” and “standing up for oneself”. In the 90s, this wasn’t common especially among women who had grown up in the South (or in English-Texan households, like myself). Her attitude of being ok with who she was was inspiring to me as a young adult, and I wanted to be just like her. She took me in like a friend or like a little sister, showed me a world that was new, and was always loving and laughing.

A few years ago she asked me to go to breakfast with her at Kerbey Lane, a small cafe in central Austin that used to be so easy to get into, and now, like everything else in that super-saturated town, is impossible. But Michelle was worth it, so we went and we talked about divorce and how terrible it is, about bad boyfriends and husbands (turns out that the smart, cool college boyfriend became a not great husband (there’s so much of that, too, but that is a meditation for another time), and about what we do next once we learn all this information. That was the last time that I saw her, and she looked great with her beautiful blonde hair and her smiling face and her laugh and her true beautiful self. Since then, we have talked alot, consistently every few weeks, chatting here and there about things both meaningful and not.

In August we lost another mutual friend who I wasn’t as close with but still respected as another one of the good guys of debate (they were few and far between), the person who introduced me to David Byrne and the Talking Heads, Henri Foucault and disciplinary power, the importance of developing our own mechanisms for complex, critical thought and the role that music and art have in helping us find joy and calm amidst desperation. It is terribly hard to know that Brian died the way he did when so many people loved and respected him. It is terribly hard to know that Michelle died so randomly, so quickly; we still don’t know her cause of death, but I know what I want to say to her.

Dear Michelle,

I am so thankful for the people who gave me the time of day when I couldn’t see anything clearly. Now, being older, I realize that I know very little except the importance of being available and loving to others. If I could say this to you in person, I would. I want to tell you how formative you were to who I am now and how thankful I am for that and all these years in between. When I found out that we had lost you in a moment that no one planned for, no one could have expected, all I guess I can do is pray and hope that wherever you are, your energy is at peace. I love you.

Love, your friend, Patience

I hope to take more time to pay attention to my life and the friends in it, spending the time wherever and whenever I can. The one thing I do know after living these last 5 years is that life is so precious and it can be taken away in a moment, a day, a few weeks, a month. You never really know. Grief-love is our ultimate learning experience, I think. That’s all for today.

A 2024 New Year Love Letter

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Maxfield Parrish “Hilltop Farm, Winter” 1949 – he just ***knows*** winter light so well

[I am loving this new album by Andre 3000]

January.

Today I spent the day watching snow fall, steadily, increasingly fast, then slowing down to a peaceful stop around sunset. I took my dog out for a walk in the half-light; everything was cast in blue and so quiet, as it is after it snows.

This is a new year, one that comes after many hard ones. There has been so much LIFE in these last four or five years. Starting with taking care of my husband’s grandma in the summer of 2019 followed by a global pandemic, Masters degrees, the death of my father, of a dear friend who was more like a brother-father than a friend, and the passing of one of my best friends. Add to the mix, changing jobs, confronting a school system that I found morally injurious, navigating the first few years of marriage to a wonderful guy, getting a sweet little dog, selling our amazing magical house, and moving here to Maine.

Maine is calm and quiet; every night I look out the window at stars (as long as it isn’t cloudy) that hover above the tree line. We have no visible neighbors here, but do hear the sounds of cars passing on the highway. Our house is peaceful and warm and cozy and laid out so well; we each have space to be and to do, and I love the kitchen.

Lately, I have been thinking about my thought processes and where I am in my life. I have been asking myself: am I happy? Will I be happy? Is this happiness? What is this all about, anyway? I have watched so many people that I love go through so much during these pandemic years. We are all changed. But we would be even if there hadn’t been COVID. Perhaps it has helped a lot of us get somewhere? I know it has helped me.

For most of my life I have struggled with staying in one place. My father was a ramblin’ man to be sure; he was a traveler who worked internationally and never wanted to be in one place, I don’t think. I have said many times that I am glad that he had my brother and I, but that he wasn’t really cut out for family life. Even when my brother and I were alive and growing up, it seemed to be painful for him to be with us and be a father who helped our mother with all the things that are necessary for a life in America at the time they were trying it out. When he died, I sat with his body in the hospital and held his hand wondering where he was. I knew that he was somewhere fabulous, somewhere in the world of memory that he lived in. I am sure he was drinking really good booze and eating really good food while wearing a fancy pair of shoes and a glittering wristwatch. He had such good taste in things.

I think I inherited so much from my dad; my temperament, my intelligence, my fear of staying, my fear of disappointing everyone. For many years I was worried that if someone knew my inner persona that they would know I wasn’t worth knowing; poor little girl inherited that from somewhere. It was an idea plucked from the ether of family and history and had/has no bearing on reality. I came to that conclusion after many years of therapy and talking with friends. I don’t think my dad ever felt he could do that. I inherited my anxiety from him, my emotional temper that (luckily) very rarely shows up. With him, he wore it on his sleeve and it was almost ever-present. Last semester, when I was trying to decide to leave a job that was not right for me for so many reasons, I was consumed by worry and I immediately thought of him and wondered if that was why he seemed so angry all the time. I feel relief that my journey with these feelings has been different.

I have realized since starting my new job last week that I do not want a stressful job, maybe ever again. It is wonderful to be in a positive environment where things are easy going and most everyone is happy enough. I go at 7:30 and I come home at 3. The ease of it is helping me process the lingering stressors and confusions that still swirl in my mind; it is also helping me figure out what I want my future to look like.

Choosing stability when one has grown up without it is very challenging; I inherently am distrustful of myself and my decisions, despite how they look from the outside. I can look at myself rationally and say: you have done a very good job in being a grown up. I can look at myself emotionally and say: but it doesn’t feel right (the problem being I don’t know what does). In times like this I am so thankful for my husband and his family and their constancy with each other and their normal behavior with each other and with me. They have showed me what it can be like. So have my friends and their parents.

The snow fell and I was sewing a quilt for my son and meditating on trust. Trusting myself, trusting others, trusting the process, trusting that life will unfold. I was reading a new year meditation today, one of those goofy ones on Instagram that flash by your eyes in an instant but nevertheless make a mark. It asked: what if what you wish for comes true? What if it all works out? My stomach hurts when I think of things this way as there are deep-seated core cells of my body that don’t trust that these things could ever be true, despite all the hard evidence to the contrary. As I was sewing his baby blanket into the back side of his quilt, I thought about how he is in college now, and starting his life, and I remembered when I was his age, starting mine. It was so long ago now: 25 years ago. A quarter of a century ago, I was a baby grown-up.

In Maine right now I am a long-term substitute teacher who makes quilts and who is brainstorming a line of jewelry for 2024. I am helping my friend with an online quilt class she is hosting which is incredible and is using my Masters degree, which makes me happy. I am cooking in a kitchen that is so well set-up for me. I am dreaming in a king-size bed with a dog, two cats, and a sweet husband, who, I am sure, is going through the same wending thought processes as me.

My goals for the year are to stay in the present and to worry less. I hope I can do this, with the help of more therapy, which I just re-started with a therapist I know and trust who I can see in person. I hope to focus on my own creativity and developing my skills at sharing it with others as well as building a career integrating technology with the arts and using the internet as a meaningful teaching avenue for myself and others. I want to keep the slow pace. I want to spend time with friends and let people in to who I am without being so scared all the time. I want to stay grateful and do what I want to do because I want to take advantage of every moment that I have on this beautiful earth. So many times I think Mary Ann is sitting in the back seat of my car as I drive around, or is standing behind me when I am doing something. Sometimes I feel her poking me gently in the right shoulder blade, reminding me to BE ALIVE, BE ALIVE, BE ALIVE!

Everything is brand new, and yet familiar. Happy New Year.

Maxfield Parrish, “Birches in Winter”, 1946

Moving Cross Country at Almost 43

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Today it got dark at about 415pm but it was darkening as I drove off the island back to Ellsworth for a job interview. It was 3:30 as I peeled out of the school driveway onto the highway, watching the light rays bend down down down, closer to the ground.

There are still some yellow leaves on the trees and the pine boughs seem to hang extra low as if to say they are tired, too. Everyone is ready for a rest.

We have been here for almost 5 months and it has zipped by; I find it disturbing how fast time passes these days. I suppose the rate only increases with time. I think it’s the rate that makes every moment feel so precious, as if you must satiate yourself and appreciate everything around you at any given moment. Or at least, that’s how I feel.

Last week was the two year anniversary of my Dad’s death and the week before that was the year anniversary of my dear friend, Mary Ann. A little while ago I was standing in the kitchen of the small school I have been assisting since August and she stood behind me telling me get my act together and get out of there. I made the decision, there and then, but it took me another two weeks to actually resign.

Time. Time passing. Time passing quickly. Time passing quickly, so. Time passing quickly, so notice. Time passing quickly so notice everything. Don’t waste time.

I am doing something I have never done before, which is to quit a job without having another one to take its place. I am trusting that it will all work out. Every evening I stare up at the sparkling stars rising on the east side of the house and thank them for buoying me through this, inspiring trust and providing a backdrop of understanding that it will be all right.

Moving across country at almost 43 was really, really hard. Much harder than I had thought. I was used to my rhythms and routines and the expectations of my day. Since coming here, I haven’t been able to find a rhythm or routine just yet but it feels like it might be just around the corner. Here’s hoping.

We bought a house in this little town named Hancock, about 2 seconds from the east border of Ellsworth. I love it, love the house and all its spaces. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and look out the windows and see a sea of stars, sparkling in the darkness. It is so dark here: no streetlights, no people. Just the footprints of deer, some great rooms, some beautiful windows, time to breathe and think: peace.

Lamb Chops

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Lamb chops were the last meal we had together, almost a year ago, on the 16th. I had taken her to the doctor two weeks or so before, and we knew the end was coming. But, like in so many other things and situations, we didn’t know how fast.

That night when I helped her up the stairs to bed in that big airy room with the big bed with the white sheets and en suite bathroom with a clawfoot tub, I noticed her eyes looked funny, as if there were tiny pieces of cotton wool in each pupil. It wasn’t effecting her eyesight yet. I gave her a massage and she fell asleep. I went downstairs and called Vivien from the patio, telling her about her eyes and how I was worried we didn’t have alot of time left. Vivien said, “no one knows how much time is left.”

She left us two weeks later, which is now about a year ago. It is so strange to be able to re-read texts sent to you by your friend who is now gone. Where has she gone? Where is that twinkling laugh, those snapping fingers, that sense of grace and class and perfect hostess charm?

Just gone. Into the wind, into the air, into the trees and the stars. Just gone.

I spent this past weekend at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts with about 100 Maine artists and it was wonderful and inspiring and the food was delicious. It made me think about time and possibility and creativity and it made me ask myself why I doubt myself so much and where my lack of confidence comes from. (Still working on that one). The weekend made me think of Melody and how she always told us all to relish the present day and not waste time.

I went to work today and felt very quiet. All I wanted to do was curl up under a blanket with the dog. So tomorrow I am taking a half day to do just that.

When I think about that time, a year ago, bearing witness to one friend who was dying and the other friends who were experiencing death, most for the first time, I remember how odd it all was and how rich and raw. I felt like an observer: a fly on the wall of so many lives. I spent my visits making sure Melody was comfortable and could sit up or eat food or drink dandelion tea. I rubbed her pretty little legs and her shoulders and her arms and back because they hurt so much. I watched those tiny pieces of cotton wool in her eyes grow larger and flatten out as her body slowly filled with ammonia; her liver function was so limited about one month before she died and it slowly, slowly, stopped. Melody didn’t die of cancer; Melody died of chemotherapy rending her beautiful body into one that could no longer get rid of the waste it needed to, no longer could it filter out the bad in favor of the good.

I hope I never forget how her hair felt in my hands during those last few weeks. I hope I never forget how her voice became oh so muffled, and how she would always take pain pills when I asked her if she wanted them, even though with others she would refuse. Melody was everyone’s best friend, and she treated us each uniquely as she recognized the differences in us and that each of us knew different things. On the morning she died, I walked outside into my garden. It was dark and cool and humid and maybe a bit rainy. The air hung in the branches of the pecans and post oaks. It was as if she was standing there, waiting for me to come outside and tell her it was ok to go.

Where did she go? Just gone. I miss you. I miss her. I wish we could talk and laugh and she could make fun of me for being so ridiculous and at the same time, so capable and so grown up. I miss her. I can feel her in my arms right now as I write.

The community I feel here, in Maine, is so loving and full of possibility. This place begs you to Just Do It because you can, in a way that is different than a place full of traffic, the rat race, expectations, and a focus on possessions and fancy brunch establishments. At the woods’ edge here, on my new property in rural Maine, I half expect to see her standing against a tree, just for a moment. I suppose she’s here, there, everywhere now, everywhere we look and seek to listen. I love the idea of community supporting each other, even when and perhaps especially when we lost one of us. When Melody died, the whole group of friends splintered along these weird lines of class, privilege, love, and the length of friendship. It was crazy sad and showed me that, probably, we never were really friends to begin with. I am friends with Melody, Vivien, Lucy, and Melody’s sister, Pru. Everyone else was just there. Now that I am enmeshed in a community again, I see how each of us can passively and lovingly support one another from near and from afar. Whatever we do with that goal matters. If people aren’t able to do that, it is good to give them space to find their own way; there is no point in fighting.

This has turned a bit rambly, but that is ok. It is dark outside and I am sitting in my new living room thinking about tomorrow, thinking about lamb chops and Port O’Connor and London and frozen rose and laughing laughing laughing.

There she is.

A Special God for Children

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There is a little girl who landed on our doorstep about a month ago named Krystal. Krystal is in 3rd grade by age, but cannot read or write. Krystal is deaf but does not know American Sign Language. Krystal cannot eat but is fed via a gastro-intestinal (GI) tube twice a day at school by her mother, who is having a hard time getting on Medicaid in Texas. Krystal is always happy.

Krystal’s hair is parted beautifully every day in a centered, zig-zag pattern and every day she wears a clean bib with some paper towels folded in the pocket to catch her drool as she smiles at us, nods, and gurgles throughout the day.

Every time I see Krystal, I say “Hi!” with bright eyes and a full smile, and she nods to me and says hi in her own way and gives me a hug. The children love her and have brought her into the school in the most amazing ways; gently tossing a ball to her in PE, looking after her at recess, and asking sweet questions about her when she cannot hear them (they don’t understand deafness). They ask: “Why does that little girl not speak? Can she hear us? No hearing?!?” They are mostly unaware of life’s greatest mysteries.

The other day I was walking with Krystal out to the Special Education room, which is where she spends most of her days. Her paperwork that came from California is out of date and it looks like she hasn’t been in school for about three years. Her mom was living in Orange County and said it was hard for her. Our district won’t use the old paperwork as they claim it is too out of date. This is a way they can keep her at our campus despite our lack of a Life Skills classroom. They say they have to follow policy and that until Mom gets doctor’s orders for Krystal, there is nothing they can do to help her. So we help her, every day assigning someone to walk around with her, hold her hand, and take her to meet her mother.

I was just watching “Fried Green Tomatoes” tonight. It is an early spring night and it is very cool out. When I was walking with Krystal the other day I thought about the part of the movie during which Ninny mentions Ruth’s belief in there being a special God for children. When I am with Krystal and she is smiling at me and gurgle-laughing, or when I am drawing with Jade and trying to get her to talk to me about why she is so violent, when Zoe is screaming at me over and over and over again, when Tara is able to calm down and come out of her hiding space and walk off her upset feelings, I think about that God. There are few mercies for little children who are in the dire straits of poverty during late-stage capitalism, parents who are under-employed, houses that aren’t sanitary or safe, in a school system that is only designed for children who would make it even if the system just went away.

Right now the stool holding up society isn’t steady and it’s because we are missing a huge part of its structure: the children. I wish it was as simple as praying to that God and asking her/him to step in and help us. For now, it seems that no one will help, and no one knows how, anyway. For now, we will walk around with our Krystals and try to soothe our Jades and try to figure out our Taras so we can make it through the school days. It seems so strange for a country to, over and over again, ignore and leave behind its children. Just as in the Pied Piper of Hamlin, we are trading so much for our children. What happens when the Piper comes to call in his debts?

Midnight in an Imperfect World

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I feel this intense sadness as I sit here, right now, listening to the rain beat on the roof of my school. The sadness comes from many corners of my emotional life; the loss of a best friend in November, the many issues at my school that all stem from a lack of organization and care for its most vulnerable children, the process of clearing and sorting and packing and selling of my home so that we can relocate. Grief is complex, and for me, extremely so.

Yesterday I sat here, in my office, and asked myself why it is so hard to let all of this go (the job), even though I have already resigned and am content (if not happy) with that decision. A friend of mine told me it is because I care so much, and that is most likely true. I wonder if caring so much is a bad thing when one is in the midst of a perfect storm of state-sponsored destruction of public schools, high poverty, a pool of inexperienced or low quality candidates, and district-level administrators who are cut off from the issues at the campus level.

I don’t know.

As the end of this year approaches, and fast at that, I find myself again in a position where I feel I know less than I thought I knew before the year started. I always keep the faith that people truly care for children and know how to treat and interact with them. I have learned this year that that is not true. I always keep the faith that people in positions of power and influence want to exert that power and influence to better the lives of children and improve the outcomes of schools. I have learned this year that that is not true, either. Sometimes people get in those positions simply because they want to be in them, whether it be for money, title, or lack of responsibility/accountability.

Working within a system that has no true sense of accountability for employees coupled with a lack of incentive for improvement can lead to pits of complacency. This feels especially true in schools and districts that are under-resourced and have parents who are less involved. Parents often trust the schools entirely, or distrust them entirely; there is little in between. Unlike wealthier districts in which parents feel entitled to advocate for anything they feel like they or their children deserve, districts that are under-resourced do not have demanding parents hammering at the schoolhouse door; they therefore can hide many things from parents who really need to know that there is no research-based curriculum, ineffective district-level administrators in programs like special education and bilingual education, lack of effort toward building inclusive, positive campus culture, responsive education, and trauma-informed practices.

I am about to step away from public school, again. I did this once before in 2012. Here I am again in 2023: time for a break. Time for some reflection and repair of my heart space. So many times this year I have felt my heart break, for different reasons. I have felt my soul tug at me; saying, what are you doing here? I am thankful to say that I have a new opportunity at a wonderful, small, experimental, place-based school where we are moving. There is a stream through the property, a learning forest, a barn in which middle schoolers learn, and a view of the ocean.

Time to heal, to read, to write. I wish Texas schools all the best.

In the Dark

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In the dark, I sit in my room; lamps glowing on the newly white walls. This week I will sell my house to someone new. I love this house; it has been a wonderful 5.5 years here and I will miss it.

In the dark, I sit in my room and reflect on this year of growth, learning, and heartache. I think about how heart broken I am on the one hand, and grateful on the other. How is it possible to have both?

The other day I had to send a child to the mental hospital. She became so upset that she cut herself and made herself bleed and she rubbed blood all over her face and hands and she looked like a doll or as if she was wearing a mask. She required sedation three times before she left campus and two more times in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Someone asked me afterward what I was thinking about when it was happening and I didn’t know the answer.

After that happened I went on a walk to the park that is down the street from the school. It was a beautiful spring day and, as I walked, I began to notice flowers and spring leaves: neon green baby spring leaves. I arrived at the park and smiled and felt the wind flow around me; it was almost saying to me, “don’t worry as you are on your way away from here, I am carrying you away”. I could see the ocean in my mind’s eye and smell the salt air. I smiled and realized how much I love that park and all of its trees and the way its gravel always gets into my shoes somehow. When Oscar was a little puppy this was where I trained him to walk on a leash. This is where I ran into Paola the custodian who retired (she walks each day).

On Friday I had a meeting with the director of Special Education and she was very angry with us and criticized us and told us we would get used to these things and disassociate with time and experience. She mentioned the importance of running through scenarios with the team so that we could know what better to do next time. I looked at her as if she was insane, remembering my morning the day before and thinking there was no way in hell I would ever run through that scenario with anyone except the people who happened to be there at that one, specific moment. She mentioned that when she was lifeguarding this is what she would do with the other guards to anticipate things happening. I sat there, in my mind saying “lifeguarding?” and asked, over and over, for help, training, ideas, solutions. I was batting zero.

I love this beautiful place. I have loved it every day for 5.5 years and now it is on its way to becoming someone else’s and I can just sit here, remembering, feeling the heartbreak and hearing the song and understanding it is two sides to the same coin of life. There is pain and gratitude: bewilderment and truth all at the same time.

This Too Was A Gift

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(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

The Uses of Sorrow – Mary Oliver

Years ago, I was younger and didn’t understand myself, or the bumpy ride of Life I was embarking upon. There was a time when I thought all fathers screamed and made their mothers cry, made their daughters scream back, lost all of their families’ money (repeatedly), and didn’t remember friends’ names. At this same time, I knew the core understanding was that no one was to know what happened in our house. It was like the sitting room in every one of my parents’ houses with its Ethan Allen sofas upholstered in blue, the mahogany coffee table, and the china cabinet, in which no one ever sat. The only time I remember sitting in that room was the day that my mother and my boyfriend Chris’ parents and I and Chris discussed how I had to get an abortion and that was our only option. (It was the best thing, don’t get me wrong, but the approach could have used some work. But then again, what the hell are you going to do when your 15-year-olds end up pregnant? Probably make a lot of mistakes and say the wrong thing.) There was a china set in my parents’ house that was purple with gold metallic rims and I always loved the dishes because purple is my favorite color, but we could never use them because they were so “expensive” then one Christmas in my 20s they were “worth more than you” and then there was a threat to break all of them (from 20 something me) and then one Christmas they were used for a guest who I informed should feel very valuable, and now, after death, are used all the time.

I used to think that all the things that happened in my parents’ house were normal until I became an adult and began to see how other peoples’ families worked. For some reason, as a child, I didn’t or couldn’t see it as clearly as I could as an adult.

My dad died in November of 2021 after a very short burst of a battle with lung cancer. As he died, my mom became extremely angry at him, at everything probably, and lashed out a lot. He died very quickly, 9 days after he was admitted to the hospital which was just a few days after being diagnosed. I had forgiven him before he died, partially as a by-product of COVID (we couldn’t see each other for almost two years) and partially as an effect of years of therapy including CBT and EMDR.

Beth died in November of 2022, the same week as my dad a year before. I can hear her laughing at me right now and rolling her eyes at me as I type about how great she was and how painful it was to lose her. Lately, I have been hearing her laughing and it’s like this twinkle in my heart-mind as if tiny gold bells are jingling together and I can see her laughing at the same time. She would not want me to be sad. It was out of my sadness at losing her that I began to find my way to understanding myself; no doubt this process has actually been cooking on the back burner for years, but the reality is that the grief I have felt and still feel for Beth has been one of my greatest gifts and one that she uniquely could give to me.

I mentioned above that I have been in therapy for years. I have had several therapists but two really are the most significant: my therapist in Ellsworth, Maine, and my therapist here in Austin, Texas. My Maine therapist was my kind of therapist: practical, insightful, focused, and pro-active. She told me when I decided to move back to Texas, to seek out a provider to do CBT next. And so, trusting her, I did. I began to work with my therapist in Austin and we first worked using CBT and then combined it with EMDR and, slowly, ideas began percolating in my heart-mind, and here we are.

This year has been incredibly stressful for me. I am a new assistant principal at a high-needs campus in a small, rural district that doesn’t seem to understand how to find adequate resources to help with serious needs in reading, teacher training, and changing student behavior. They are big fans of Joan Didion’s book “The Year of Magical Thinking”, or so it would seem: they appear to believe that if they just wait it out long enough, solutions will appear and they themselves don’t need to seek out experts or helpers or research or……anything. I have noticed this year, in moments of desperation, that my mind follows the path built for it during my CBT, and if I close my eyes for a few seconds, I go to the forest up the hill from Duck Brook, the location I chose years ago in a therapy session which, even to me, was fairly random because I haven’t even spent that much time there throughout my life, but apparently my heart-mind thinks it is the calmest place I have ever been. Visualizing Duck Brook makes the seething, buzzing stress disappear, calm down, and become manageable.

The other day I was in the bathroom washing my hands and thinking about a friend’s house who I was going to go to on Friday. I was nervous as right now I feel so stressed out that I feel a bit insane, despite knowing this is very temporary, and I wonder if it shows on my face or in my words, or will make people not want to talk to me. A voice in my head said to me, “you don’t have to be perfect all the time”. Wow! Really? And I said, wow! Really? It’s working! My messages to myself, in my heart-mind, are changing.

How does this connect to losing Beth and having my heart squished, smashed, twisted, and transformed with grief? Last weekend two friends and I talked about how we could hear her laughing all day. It was magical and funny. Lucy and I talked about how we felt that she was becoming a part of us like her spirit is living inside our body and that’s how we can hear her and feel her all over the place. I told her that last Saturday I kept thinking I would turn around and she would be sitting next to me. I love this idea of processing loss as a process of transforming with the person, and I love the words shared with me by my coworker Mr. Moore who assured me those we love don’t want us to be sad.

I remember one trip to the coast we were in Port Lavaca, walking along its dirty in-town beaches looking for a roseate spoonbill skull or a pelican skull or both (skulls were the main focus of those trips) and we found this tiny vegetarian or vegan restaurant on one of the shore roads. It was in an old Victorian house and had a traveler-esque caravan in the front yard. We sat on a couch in front of the bay window that looked out to the ocean and found a copy of “You Can Heal Your Life” by Louise Hay in the stacks of reading material. We were waiting for our fancy teas (or smoothies? I can’t remember) to be ready and she told me the story of Louise Hay and her belief that past traumas can “live” in the body and make you sick and how she believed you could heal yourself, and how she loved her because of what she did for gay men in the 1980s who were dying of AIDS and made them feel better and that it wasn’t their fault what had happened. I knew then that Louise Hay’s ideas had made a huge impression on Beth and that they had informed a lot of what she thought in terms of keeping her cancer at bay, which she was able to do for almost 15 years.

Beth was blessed because she was a blessing and was loved by many people. Some of them helped her change her life away from how she had grown up in Oklahoma (something about her early life she fundamentally decided she had to change), brought her to Texas, and helped her feel a sense of functional, supportive family, something she had never had. She began to learn about possibility and began to repeat the teachings shared with her by that family’s father figure, Mr. Rusque.

Throughout our friendship, Beth taught me a lot about living, not be afraid of dying, and being honest and present with oneself and with others; to not judge but also not judge oneself too harshly. These lessons sank in, slowly, despite my stubbornness and fear (the fear probably will linger forever, it is in there deep), and I think she was speaking to me last weekend when I heard that message about not having to be perfect. When she was alive, I heard her say the things she said, I heard her reflect on her life and her death, I listened to her reflect on people and laugh at things that had happened and never try to force anything to happen one way or another, but just to be delightful and loving and funny and extremely beautifully dressed.

In death, in transforming my heart, in creating a space within it in which she will always live, I can hear her words, clear as tinkling golden bells, and I can begin to take them to heart. It is an amazing feeling to feel someone so deeply, to miss them so much, to have them so close. It is the best way I can honor her, to hear her speaking, to hear myself speaking, to practice what I have learned in therapy and in life, and to move forward. She liked to say during the last few months about how she was getting out before it all fell apart. Little did she know she wasn’t leaving, not really. She was giving herself to us.

Acceptance

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Lately, there has been an elephant sitting on my heart. It is not sad, or a mean elephant: it is just elephant-sized. A weight.

I remember when I began to accept my Dad’s death last year. I felt like I had just gotten into the bath or taken a sip of perfectly-warm-hot delicious special tea, but only for the tiniest of moments. But it is a window, so that feels good.

I work with a wise man named Mr. Moore. He grew up in Smithville and has been a teacher, assistant principal, principal, and now, counselor. I have learned so much from him and he is the person I am most thankful for this year. Anyway. The other day we were talking and he said that the person who loves us wouldn’t want us to be sad about them passing away. I logically agree, my heart was in disagreement, but I think today we leveled up a bit to understanding.

A week from today is my friend Beth’s birthday; she would have been 44. ❤