It's All About the Journey

Some nights are like this in Suwanee, Georgia. I'm watching true crime and having a glass of that fancy box wine. I am alone. I believe that the new ottoman is on the stoop, but ottoman situation is still presently standard. It's drawing to a close and that is...okay and good and painful all at the same time. I'm ready. I love that. The house is empty. This house is too big to be ever empty. I want to bring three more people here to fill the spaces. Okay, that's odd. My whole existence smells so strongly of the Tiger Balm on my shoulder that my eyes are watering. But it feels damn good. I've rolled the fuck out of it and it seems soothed for the time being. I had my annual physical today. My blood pressure is perfect. My EKG is perfect. My lungs are clear. My weight is good. My waist-to-hip ratio indicates that I won't die of a heart attack. Let's see what my cholesterol predicts for that. I even peed the right color. I am an exciting woman. I do need to fin...

Holiday Tip 1: Wear just enough makeup so that Nanny tells you that you look pretty, but not so much that she compliments anything specific or the look will live in infamy as the year you "showed up to Christmas dinner looking like a streetwalker." Holiday Tip 2: If you're going to help spread the freshly-laundered, starched tablecloth, do not then immediately dump extremely strong coffee all over it. Holiday Tip 3: Do not curse when asked if your husband is coming to dinner. Just politely say "no ma'am." Holiday Tip 4: Wear layers and accept that the temperature inside the house will help you burn off your big meal. Drink plenty of water and if you feel faint, step outside. Bottle in the trunk optional. Holiday Tip 5: No matter how you arrange the chairs around the table, it will be wrong. Just deliver them to the kitchen and then exit the room so that the woman using the walker can drag them around to her liking. Listen for sounds of a broken hip. Holiday ...

I relayed this story and was told I need to write it. I'm told I can tell a story. And what better a story than a real life one. I went "home" for Christmas. Something in me felt unsettled as a I drove over the ridge into my hometown. I hate that part of the drive. I always feel as if that will be the end of me. Maybe today, maybe not. But I felt this urgency. I was headed for the barn and could not get there fast enough, my only in the seat beside me, quiet and comforting. My mind across a rhyme "going by the bottle shop where I'm certain that my father stopped." I'll maybe work that into something. We got there and as usual, it was so dark you couldn't see your own hand in front of your face. Moonless in the clouds and an inky kind of dark gray in the sky, just light enough that you could see the outlines of the tree tops and the house if you looked up. But looking ahead, nothing but black. I stepped carefully out to the edge of the driveway toward...

 The cookies. The story goes thus. As a kid, it seemed like my whole family realized I was...odd. I think I found the recipe for homemade modeling clay in a magazine. Play-Doh never lasted long in my house. I did not follow the recipe precisely, as I had no idea that there were different kinds of flour. Like I thought that butter tasted like plastic and came out of a tub. I got better. So the intent was dragon's teeth. Listen, you were twelve once too. That was 1998. Been a year or two. They turned out to be weird, puffy, vaguely triangular, pale blobs of failure. I have no idea how they story got to be that they were supposed to be cookies. But it stuck like shit to a bear's ass and I will never live it down. And I plan to live long. They ended up in the yard and even the dogs wouldn't dare. I think the deer and smaller managed to do away with them for the salt content. The best way to get me to excel is to tell me I cannot. Or tell me that I am bad at what I want to do. S...

 Some nights are like this in Suwanee, Georgia. Ottoman situation: typical but likely the final from said. Last week, I went to three shows in five days. I had excellent company for every one of them. I may have been a little too wild at that last one and prior to the event. So now I'm paying for it. This respiratory stuff can get fucked, y'all. I obviously tested for covid first because I have been patient zero for that and it felt like shit to know that I made some older folks and a baby sick.  First symptom: sore throat. Then it escalated to a low-grade fever and a cough like I have not experienced in a decade. It's not the insistent cough of covid. It's the painful, productive, rattly cough of that one time I was hospitalized with bronchitis. Of course, I immediately freak all the way out. I have a round of antibiotics and a round of steroids on reserve in the event that I'm sick through the holidays and can't get in with my PC or pulmonologist. I'm not ...

Today is my father's birthday. He would have been 75. This one has been really hard. I have missed him so much of late. I suppose it's all of the emotional upheaval. It feels like losing him all over again. I guess a heart is a heart no matter what causes the grief. I like to think that our particular relationship was special. I suppose all daddies and daddy's girls want to think the same thing. All I can say in that respect is that he showed me how to be loved. How to be loved with abandon. I hold to that lesson today. He taught me how to love people where they are. It seems that he was hard to love. Or maybe the other way around. It was hard to make him love. Maybe that's what made me feel special in that particular love. Something was different than it ever had been with his previous three daughters. I tell myself it was because I'm good at loving. I have to believe that right now.  I remember thinking as a child that he was so tall that he was barely under the s...

 A USPS box. Unremarkable. It sat at the door for a day or two before I even knew it was there. My ex-husband has  a stack and I have a stack. They no longer mingle and wait to be sorted out. This afternoon, I moved it over to the kitchen counter so I'd remember to open it.  Later, I opened and took out the little packages wrapped in cardinal napkins. I immediately thought of decoupage. I set them on the counter for later and broke down the box and the rest of the boxes that contained cat food and melatonin and other mundane things. I went back later when I had time to enjoy and unwrapped one, a candle that smells like home. Like summer flowers and air. The whole box was fragrant with this Mason jar romance. The other box looked like a vintage ornament, green and white, Santa Claus all over,  and so midcentury. I've seen these my whole life. I've seen Nanny take them out one by one and unbox and then unwrap them in the same way this one was packed. So very much exact...

Photo: David Zapatka Every night, I have this crisis of confidence. So I write. People tell me it's good stuff. People tell me to write a book. I guess it's the one thing that I've stopped doubting, even if the NYT and the New Yorker opted not to publish me. I don't know, I just don't feel like that's my fault. Which is odd. I think everything is my fault. But I think I'm a good writer. I've said that for a lot of years now. I guess after you say it a few times, it becomes less something you have to think about and more something you just are. Today was good. It was launch day. I couldn't think of a soul who would care to see my spec pages. It's how I spend more time than anything else in my life and I don't know anyone who is actually interested in it. The strangest thing happened today. So, when I was 23 or maybe 24, I made my first online dating profile. That was what 2009? Yikes. I'd given up on organic even then. Probably because the...

So this is a weird thing for me. I hate that it took 37 years. 43, if you ask my friend, Shotwell. I'm only writing about this because it's really uncomfortable. And that's what we're supposed to do. Let me just get started with a reminder that sometimes, you remember things differently. This time, it was a correction that was in his favor. Now, I'm not kink-shaming, I'm just kink asking why. It was feet. He was really into feet. Which is fine. But I'm not into feet and I'm a runner. We ain't got great feet. Maybe if my feet were great, I'd be less weird about it. I had to get that out of the way. My best friend reminded me. I wish he hadn't. It's so much better to remember the best of people. Okay, moving on to the meat of this post. I'm writing this because one of my sweet friends said something to the effect of "of course he calls you 'gorgeous'. Any man who isn't blind would see that." Of course I think of my...

Some nights are like this. Where are you? Some nights are like this there. It's been a Monday. Except better. It's been all the terrible and wonderful at the same time. I'm sitting here with a smile, planning a weekend. Unless a Friday night changes it all. I don't think it will. But everything in me wants it to. I don't know why. I baked bread. I gave away two loaves to important people who have given me the thing I needed most at the time they came along. Two such different gifts between them. But oddly, so bizarrely close. A torn shirt pocket and gentleness and gorgeous and wonder. I've been compelled to paint for someone. I only paint from love. My best efforts are love. I think rarely the person I paint for sees what it makes me feel. Or more accurately, what it helps me express that I feel. I paint when the words aren't enough. And I always have words. Sometimes just not the ones that show the depth and height and the wild color and growth and breadth ...

 I've been back to baking my grandmother's bread. She's baked it as long as I remember and there is absolutely no telling how old that starter she split off for me the day after Thanksgiving really is. She typed the recipe onto several sheets of paper with a typewriter around 1994. I remember that. I remember the typewriter. The edges of the half page with her recipe still have carbon traces across the paper. I framed it up in pale yellow with a Wedgewood blue mat. It's that precious to me. It sits on my bookshelf with the photographs I most prize, my father's graduation photo, my mother with her guitar, baby me on Daddy's lap, Gabe one Christmas Eve at the park in his little blue sweater and smiling cheeks, a photo I took of my best friend that he says is the best one ever taken, Gabe looking up at me, around five or so, his pale blue eyes as earnest as they have remained. There are so many memories wrapped up in all my senses with this bread. My entire childho...

 Some nights are like this in Suwanee, Georgia. Ottoman situation, same. My Christmas tree is up and decorated. My darling friend flew from Vermont to see me intentionally right after my divorce became final. She loves Christmas. I never did. So we had brunch at my favorite local place and then drove up to the fancy outlets for some Christmas shopping. We came home and I dragged the giant ass tree bag and the ornament box out of the basement and into the formal sitting room that has only ever contained formal guitars and briefly a couple hundred vinyl records in the stand I made for my turntable.  I don't think my shoulder is happy about that slip in my judgement. But, I'm the one. So I do what I have to. We put the tree up and decorated it with the peach and minty ornaments I chose last year. I love them just the same as I did then. I popped some proper popcorn and we watched Elf. The 2th Anniversary edition. Because I am old. Candice was up early this morning because she we...

 I went to two shows for the same band in three days, told they put on a fun show by someone I would have called a friend. Motherfucker was right. Damn him. Saturday night in Atlanta is one of the better shows in my recent memory. I'll always be able to tell about music. When nothing else moves me to words, someone else's set to music can bring me back up. BJ Barnum writes a song that's sad enough to be relatable, but not so sad that your drunk ass cries in public. Probably why the motherfucker loves the band. I sure as hell screamed along to "I Hope He Breaks Your Heart" and "Burn. Flicker. Die." It would be a sad thing for me not to lend my voice to a song that starts "Dollar bill prescriptions in the bathroom stall. Red-headed women and alcohol. Say it ain't so, say it ain't last call. Whiskey on the rocks and Adderall." Is it a little too on the nose, absolutely. But that's part of the beauty in this writing, you can feel it on ...

Some nights are like this in Suwanee, Georgia. Ottoman situation: normal. I haven't even been able to write in days. I just feel heavy. Today was heavy. I suppose that the mess I've made was prone to drag me down. I guess this is the part where I just keep my head up and let the rapids take me where they will, hoping not to get crushed to pulp on the rocks. Some of the weight isn't mine to put down, so let me just skip that part. I feel it on my heart and I cannot help it. That helpless feeling tears me apart like nothing else really can. I was born into a world where my greatest hope was to be helpmate to something I was taught was better than myself. I've tried to put down the feeling of being less, but I still carry in me that need to be helpful. It's funny the things you had pressed into you so hard they become you. How hard it is to untangle them from your blood vessels and ligaments and draw them out of your bones. Feels like I might be hitting that wall now....

Some nights are like this back at home in Suwanee, Georgia. I was out so late tonight. I went to see a band that washed in from a tide pool. And I am so glad that I did. Leave the tide pools, take what they bring. What a show. What a...okay...woman. Six feet or more in a red jumpsuit and these so very trendy '60s glasses. I was stood up. By a man. He was not six feet or more. She's slender, North Italian if I have a guess. I could write pages of prose to her nose. The way her hands move. The way she stands like a model, like a goddess. When she said she prefers the company of women after an introduction from a mutual, I think I must have sighed. There's a photo of us together. Me looking up at her starstruck. I have no self-control. I should have learned that by my age. The show always leaves me feeling brave and stupid and feral and half lovestruck. And what a show. My whole heart is right there on the rail. If you want to love me, if you want me to love you, I'll see ...

Some nights are like this. I don't think it's just where I am or where you are or any specific place. I think some nights are like this everywhere. Tomorrow is going to be hard. The man whose wife I'll no longer be can't see this. And it isn't that I intend to say anything harmful. I just know that at some point, you have to stop granting access to your feelings. Even if there was a time not so long ago that you let him drive your car and you screamed the lyrics to a song you both know on your way somewhere you really wanted to be. That you still wish you could be going. One unhealthy habit can't take the place of another, even if it can sort of be a crutch for a while. Lesson learned. Trauma bond broken. Like this damn finger, I suspect. Learning how to be alone. I crushed my finger in a drawer on the way to take my medication. I don't sleep. I never did do much of it, but now it's clinical. My left middle finger. Hurts to type. Unironic in so many ways...

Some nights are like this in Teloga, Georgia. There is no ottoman. I am at home. Gabe is watching television with his head against my thigh. I’m sitting with my legs pulled up, knees to my chest. Nanny is making a hat. Mom is fiddling with her phone and my cousin’s daughter is yawning and giggling on the sofa beside me. My belly is full. My heart is full. There is no internet for miles. It’s just a fact of life this far out. And that’s okay. I’ll post this later. It’s so dark outside with no moon that I have tripped over all manner of stuff in my own yard. Out here on a clear night, you can see the whole milky way, a luminescing streak poured out over the sky. It’s something you never forget seeing. It’s something you miss when you grew up without the orange glow of light pollution and your neighbor’s motion lights and street lamps, where you can only see the brightest stars and a few planets on occasion. You never see a plane at night out here. Out here under the bright stars, I can b...

I thought I was fine. I've been ready for this day for a long time. I sorted through the feelings, I did the work and the support group and the therapy preparing for this. I'm ready to have my father's name back. I cannot believe to this day that I gave it up. I can't wait to change that status on Facebook and change my name back. All of those people who also could not believe it. I never gave so much of who I am and I don't think anyone I ever gave a damn thing to ever saw it less.  Funny how divorce and death feel the same. I never expected that. Grief is grief. What am I grieving, precisely? I'm not sure this time. His mother said to me that the night he proposed, he looked at me like people are supposed to look at Jesus. It was mutual. It was that way since a week in. I loved him so hard and so powerfully. You can't wear  that as armor no matter how much you want to. Love won't save you and you can't use it to save anyone else. I thought this one...

Every once in a while, I get a question that prompts a whole story, sometimes a whole flood of them. Standing outside after the show Saturday, with the wind cutting through my favorite old green canvas jacket, I was asked "What does Possum mean to you?" I've been so struck lately by the way different people ask questions and the thoughtful, caring, curious questions people ask. I'm uncertain if there is anything in me that has changed the nature of the questions or if for the first time, I'm just finally seeing the beauty in them. I can't remember any of this first part, so forgive my second hand telling. My father was a tall man, 6'3" or 6'4", I think. He was rangy and kind of had this rolling gait occasionally punctuated by a near limp if the weather was wrong or he'd been standing on concrete too long. He had long legs, especially from hip to knee, a trait he passed to his youngest and tallest daughter.  When I was born, I was automat...