Hello lovelies.
This is the first year Z’s really been excited about Halloween, and we are rocking it hard core. She wanted to decorate, so we put a few tombstones in the vegetable garden and have been creating “mosaics” with bats and witches and other spooky things to hang indoors. In related news, I am now the proud owner of an adult sized unicorn onesie, complete with wings and tail.
Continue reading “The (belated) Sunday Review: Unicorn Onesie Edition”
Hello lovelies.
I flew out to New York on Father’s Day and back on Midsummer’s. The quick trips are the hardest ones. There’s no time to adjust to the time zone, and the ratio of plane time to ground time is less than ideal. Even so, I’m going to miss all the travel when it ends. Continue reading “The Sunday Review: Your Private New York Edition”
Churches make me nervous. I never feel like I belong in them. Still. I measure my decisions with the likelihood of future regret. This, I know, I will regret not doing.
***
There’s a small courtyard between the office building and the church, inside the church gate. There are always a few drifter sitting on the benches or the steps leading up to the side door of the sanctuary. The office is in the back. I take a deep breath, push the door open, walk in.
The girl in the office has short fuchsia hair and a permanent scowl.
“Is your labyrinth open?” I ask.
She looks me up and down, taking in the business casual. “There’s a Muslim congregation worshipping,” she says. “If they’re finished, you can go in.” I’ve no idea why you’d want to, lingers, unspoken.
The main doors to the sanctuary stand open. A few men are clustered outside, telling each other goodbye. I drift up the steps, hesitating at the inner doors. A few more men sit on the pews in the sanctuary proper. Someone stands at the edge of the dais, rolling up a large mat.
I don’t see what I have come here for, but there’s nowhere else it could be. I consider turning around, going back to the office. I don’t belong here. This is not my church.
Still. Setting my hand on the brass handle, I close my eyes and open the door.
The men inside talk back and forth, neither ignoring not acknowledging me. I make my way up the aisle, eyes on the floor in front of me.
Pass-a-grille ids white paint on concrete pavers. Grace Cathedral is metal set into stone. This is a hardwood floor, polyurethane shiny, the path laid down on top like a vinyl sticker. Behind me, the men continue to talk. I’m not sure if they’re speaking English. I’m not sure if they’re entirely with it. I step into the labyrinth.
***
Breathe in, breathe out, I tell myself. Focus on your breath. Focus on your feet.
I’m here because there are decisions I don’t know how to make. Things that don’t lend themselves to a neat table of pro and con.
One foot and then the other. It’s an easy path to walk, wide enough to contain me, narrow enough to keep my focus. Breathe in, breathe out. Some of the men leave, some stay. The conversation is softer now. Nobody pays any attention to me.
I’m not expecting answers. I’m not expecting anything, really. Still. I walk more slowly as I wind closer to the center. What do you want most? I ask myself, thinking I am asking a question about my job, about where I live, about how I want my marriage to be.
The voice that answers doesn’t care about any of these things. I want to write, it says, as I find the center of the labyrinth. One hour or one thousand words, I promise myself.
I am light, I am breath, I am air. I no longer feel like an outsider in this space.
***
I know I will fail. I know some days it will be too much. I hope that when I am tired and telling myself there’s no point, I will remember the way I feel right now, the surety certainty solidity.
***
I walk out the same way I came in, following the path laid onto the floor, the subtle curves, the long sweeps. The men have left, all but one who sits reading a paper in the middle of an otherwise empty pew.
I walk out the same way I came in, eyes on the floor in front of me, feet infinitely lighter.
I’ve more or less gotten to the point where time zone shifts don’t bother me. Another week, another city. I tell myself where and when I am and hold to it. Flying to the East Coast and back every few weeks isn’t crazy; it’s what I do.
It didn’t occur to me until after the fact that I might have hit my limit last week.
***
I planned to go to New York the week of the 10th for some much needed face time with my team. Passover was on Monday, though, which meant I’d fly in Tuesday and leave Saturday. Easy.
The day after I bought my ticket, plans changed – I had to be in Dallas on Wednesday the 12th for an all day meeting. Less easy, but manageable. I changed flights around, flying into Dallas Tuesday and New York Wednesday evening.
Friday of that week, plans changed again – I now had to be in DC for a meeting on Wednesday the 19th. Any other weekend I’d have stayed on the East Coast. Easter and Christmas are the two holidays that firmly belong to my psuedo-sister, though, and while she’d have forgiven me if I missed it, I wouldn’t have. So I changed my Saturday evening flight home to a morning flight (to maximize Z time over the weekend) and booked an in-Tuesday out-Wednesday trip to D.C.
Monday the 17th, our Wednesday meeting got moved to afternoon, late enough that I’d miss the last flight out of both National and Dulles Wednesday evening and would have to fly home Thursday.
***
After a while, pretty much anything acclimates to normal. I expect the last minute travel, the meetings that change times and dates half a dozen times. I never plan on taking the flight home that I booked – I’m almost always catching something earlier or later. So while I was a bit frustrated by the time I got on the plane to D.C., it was mostly because I had very much wanted to come home Wednesday night.
It was when my paralegals emailed me a simple question Thursday afternoon, and I replied that I’d been through four cities and five time zones in the last 10 days and could they PLEASE JUST HANDLE IT WITHOUT ME, that the full force of how insane the prior two weeks had been came crashing down on me.
***
I fell into How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful on the plane ride home from D.C. Headphones on and the album on repeat, wondering how I’d waited so damn long to listen to it. Except that the music always finds me when I need it. This one wouldn’t have resonated the way it does now if I’d listened to it when it came out two years ago. I’m still breathing it in, letting it play over and through me, waiting to get to the point where it’s inked into my memory.
***
Lately, I’ve been trying to make more time for connections. Looking at where I am in the world and who’s nearby. Reaching out to one or two people in a city rather than doing the blast email trying to see everyone and failing thing. I’m happier for it, seeing and talking to the people I want to spend time with.
February is Letter Month, and I always mean to do it then never do. Too much time on planes, on hikes with Z, juggling bedtime and dishes and laundry and the jungle-that-is-our-yard. I miss it, though, miss the quiet silence of ink and paper, miss the tangled rush of thoughts into sentences. I miss the summer my best friend and I spent writing to each other, miss the long notes I used to write, the ones that rambled and meandered.
So. If you’d like a letter, let me know in the comments or by text or whatever.
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.