Today is Halloween, Samhain (sow’een), the day when the veils between the worlds lift, just a fraction, just enough to see the restless dead. And my dead are restless today.
The Week in Review – This is Why We Walk Edition
1. Avon 39 reflections. There’s a lot I could write about: all the people on the route who cheered us on, including the San Jose bike cops and a local motorcycle club; the fact that I could barely walk on Monday; the incredible rush of finishing and seeing D and M right at the line waiting for us. But what I want to leave you with is this: In among all the cheering, sandwiched between the tutus and the rhinestones and the boobie jokes, was real, unadulterated loss. People walked with pictures, with names, with messages for their dead. We met a woman and her stepdaughter at breakfast. “Her mother died of breast cancer,” the stepmother said. “We’re doing this for her.”
2. 5 years and counting. Let’s face it, marriage is hard. It’s learning to live with all of your spouse’s tics and all of your own. It’s compromise, endless compromise, long after you’ve given in to all the things you said you wouldn’t do. And it is glorious. It’s that smile you share in the morning, when you know all is right with the world because you’ve woken up next to each other. It’s the way your pace changes when you walk next to each other, so that your strides are exactly the same length. It’s striving, constantly, to be a better wife, a better husband, a better parent, a better person. Marriage is change, and it is growth, and it is a celebration of the little victories, day after day.
3. Shut up and write. I made my way to a writing group on Sunday, after a series of messages with a fellow writer that culminated in the realization that the only way I’ll ever have time to write is if I take it. So I did, and got almost 3,000 words down in an hour and a half. Good words. I think I’m setting myself up to fail if I try to make it every week, but once a month would be a good thing.
4. How we speak. I grew up in the era of the phone call, of the enviable coolness of the kids who had their own phone line, of paying the long distance bill for spending hours talking to my friends who lived on the other side of the state. I thought nothing of calling someone just to say hey, while scrupulously observing the 10 am to 10 pm rule. These days? I don’t call unless I have something important to say. I’ll text at all hours of the night, confident that if whomever I’m messaging is asleep, they’ve put their phone on silent. Conversations can take hours or days, snatched in between folding laundry and doing dishes. It changes the way we speak, the way we think about speaking. We are always on, always available – and rarely present.
5. Grace. I’ve moved around too much to have a giant group of friends. Instead, I’ve held onto a few people from each place I’ve lived. The kind of friends I can go without talking to for years, and then fall right back into where we were the next time we see each other. This has been a rough year, with lots of soul searching and self doubt and wondering if I’ve made the right decisions. And just when I needed it, one of those friends came back into my life and said exactly what I needed to hear.
Detour
There will be days when the mountain calls your name. Answer her.
Take the fun car.
The one that will zip you down to Highway One, to the place, where the hills open and the ocean shows through.
It doesn’t last long. The road twists through another switchback and you’re in the woods again. Keep driving.
Faster now. Down the side of the mountain, down through the redwoods, through the tourists and the Buddhists.
Here.
Where the mountain falls away, where you are left with grass and dune and blue.
This is how you know you are home. There is sand between your toes and water licking up your feet.
There will be days when the ocean calls your name. Go to her.
The Weekly Review – This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things Edition
1. Toddler’d. Step one to parenting a toddler: admit that you are not in control. A and I lined everything up perfectly for the Avon walk. Childcare. Hotels. Transportation. Fundraising. Then at 7:30 Friday night, after we’d been in the city all of 3 hours, we got a call that Z was sick. We ended up walking today, but we had to sit yesterday out. So we’ll be doing this again next year, with the goal of walking both days!
2. Faerie(tale) hair.
3. Shut up and listen. The seating for the concert I went to last week was at shared tables, and I was at a table with a group of four couples who’d come together. They seemed ok at first, but when the show started it became pretty obvious that they were there to get hammered and talk to each other. And that made me angry. Because I’d spent a pretty penny for a seat closer to the stage, where I could really see and feel and taste the music, and they were one giant distraction. I thought about going home after Matt Nathanson’s set (it was a double header with Philip Phillips) but moved to the back of the venue instead. Where, even though I wasn’t so much into the music, I had a great time because the vibe was way more chill. Plus I got to do the meet and greet and get a big giant Matt Nathanson hug (highly recommended). On the whole it was a good evening, and a lesson in maintaining calm in the face of jerkitude.
4. Seeking concert buddies. Do you need more music in your life? Do you feel like you never go out because it’s to darn hard to find a sitter? Hit me up. We can do a kid swap date night or a girls only date night or any combo thereof.
5. The older I get, the more I appreciate spending time with family. Cliche but true. Having my brother out here last weekend was delightful, and Z, even not feeling well, is happy as can be that her Papa is here this weekend. I saw my grandparents and my aunt a few months ago It was the first time I’d spent time with them solo as an adult, and it was a fun visit.
The Weekly Review – City with an Attitude Problem Edition
1. Do something that scares you. I dyed my hair purple this afternoon, for the Avon walk and my friend Dawn. Ever since A started doing his beard again, it’s been like an itch I couldn’t scratch – dyed hair does not go over well at a law firm. Which means that if I dye it, I have to cut it. And that’s what scares me. Long hair, fairy tale hair, has always been a part of my identity. Even when I’ve cut it short from time to time – and I’ve never gone pixie cut short, which is probably what it will take to look “professional” again” – it’s always been on the understanding that short was a temporary measure. So I’ve held off on doing something I really wanted to do. Well, fuck cancer, and to hell with fear. I’m doing something that scares me.
2. You haven’t lived until you’ve played mini golf with a two and a half year old. My brother came to see us for the weekend, and we took Z mini golfing for the first time. It was a riot. She rolled the balls, granny bowling style. She walked them down the green and gently dropped them into the cup.She picked up our balls, sometimes returning them to us, sometimes bringing them to a “better” spot. And a few times, she even hit the ball with the putter.
3. Invincible with my headphones on. I fell in love with Matt Nathanson’s music way back in ’04, but I’ve rarely been able to see him play live. A and I got tickets and a babysitter for the show tomorrow, but then the babysitter had to cancel. So if anyone’s interested, I still have an open ticket for dinner and the show. And if all else fails, I will totally rock going to see him play by myself. Because Matt Nathanson.
4. I might be addicted to New York. I’m not sure how or when or why, but the city has slipped under my skin and settled in to stay. Most of my trips back east lately have been to the D.C. office (because, reasons), but this last one was NYC. It hit me on the walk from the hotel to the office – the frantic, throbbing energy, the pulse of subway and bus and taxi, tourists jostling mothers jostling suits. All the time we lived in the city, I felt like it was pushing me away, telling me I didn’t belong. Maybe it’s the distance. Maybe it’s because I am finally home. But I can finally see that while the city might have been saying “leave,” what it meant was “stay.”
5. Love each other. It’s been a rough week, and I don’t think it’s going to let up any time soon. Hug your loves, reach out to someone you haven’t spoken to in awhile, and above all, be gentle with each other. We are all of us fragile things.