It has been three years.
I sit here this morning, heart heavy but failing to weigh me down. I may find myself sinking later, pressing down to the floor, our songs playing and the curtains pulled. For now, I’m following what feels good, what feels fitting; and so this finds me at my favorite local café with a hot mocha, coffee cake, and classical music to cover the soft sounds of the other patrons studying. I came to write, and through that, hope to process the past weekend in a way I couldn’t while I was in it.
It’s been so long since I have written here in this space, and the years have been so full of both planned breaks and impromptu hiatus, I almost don’t remember what I’ve written. I’m not even sure I know where to start. But Sunday morning found me sitting there in the mountains that I called mine for nearly six years, and I felt more at peace and at home than I have in a long time.
It was almost the anniversary: almost three years to the day since Hawthorne died, and this stopped feeling like home. At least, I thought it did. The immediate loss and grief, the overwhelming urge to run away is not forgotten. Neither, though, was the slide of my shoulder blades down my back as the mountains came into view on I-89. The folds in the rolling fabric of trees that covered them, growing shabby as summer so quickly faded, blanketed me with warm welcome.
I was visiting with dear friends, a trip that got postponed from a summer of illness followed by Covid last year. Lucy was there, of course, and nearly twice as tall as when we left. The magic within her is likewise sparked by the return. She’s asked to watch TV a couple times but is mostly content to play with one of us, read her books, and plow through the donuts she asks for. Plus, I’ve told her that the TV isn’t working, just like every AirBnB we have stayed in. An unfortunate coincidence, should she ever call me on it (and one day, she will — she’s not yet four, and has already asked if it is plugged in, needs to charge, or needs new batteries).
I’ve been here twice more since the people’s jam for Hawthorne the July following their death, which was the most fitting celebration of their life I could have ever hoped for. The first was earlier this year, a random rainy Saturday in June where I let the tires point where they may, and stumbled upon a local author/book fair in the center of Woodstock. Lucy and I got maple creemees, and we took the dog and played at the river in the rain, driving all the way home stripped and wrapped in blankets with the heat on. Then just last month, another branch of my village spent two nights here, soaking in the music and the mountains. We stayed in Killington, and as the stars prick through the dark sky, I felt at home.
Those trips were lovely and I’m so glad I went both times, but now, I don’t ever want to leave.
Overnight the mountains started to dapple with color; green, still, with tints of yellow and ochre. The wind rustled leaves gone dry at the edges as the first showers of foliage began to fall. Every now and then a beech nut clanged off the metal roof above me on the covered porch, making me jump in the relative silence of the forest.
The whole weekend was magical. Friday morning, I took Lucy home, and brought our friends to see the river and the road we had called ours for almost six years. I took the backroad, turned onto the dirt road that warned against using GPS in that area. I parked just over the bridge and we walked the same path I had walked for so long, the same run that I’d taken with Lucy asleep in the stroller before the world changed under our feet. But this road was the same. The house, no longer ours, stood the same; there was evidence of updated utilities and the skeleton of a structure where the woodpile had been, likely for the same purpose. The grass had been recently mowed, and the meadow looked more natural than ever.
The streams that tumbled down the mountain looked the same, and the track of the river hadn’t changed much. It sounded like home in the water, and the air tasted of it as it crossed my lips. Lucy dragged a stick around in the dirt, running to my outstretched hand as cars announced themselves far enough away for her to be safe running ahead. We walked up to my Mother tree, standing tall and proud as ever. I leaned forward and placed my hand along her bark, and felt the warm beat of recognition.
Later that day, we had a picnic in the cemetery where Hawthorne and I would walk. We all trekked up the hill, leaving the blanket (and most of Lucy’s lunch) at the bottom. I spread myself over the thick green moss and let myself sink, sink, gentle and slow. I tried to teach Lucy how to respectfully explore the graves, with gentle hands and careful feet. Most of it went unheeded, and she log-rolled away from us down the hill, laughing wildly, whenever possible.
We journeyed throughout the day, my friends exceedingly patient with multiple stops where I’d see friends and folks I hadn’t spoken with in two or three years. I continued to be shocked and humbled by how many people recognized me, and more, recognized Lucy as the little tiny potato that Hawthorne and I had so welcomed and wanted to share, only to be mostly denied by the onset of Covid.
We did all the beautiful, mundane things that made up our lives in Vermont – went to the coffee shop and bookstore, got sandwiches at the local general store, visited the library, and shopped at the little grocery store. I bought eggs and tomatoes for dinner at the farmer’s market, and sat in clean air on green grass while Lucy played and danced. I ate a whole pint of small tomatoes, the aromatic scent of their stems filling my head with memories of tilling, digging, and planting.
It was Saturday night that hangs on a string around my neck and pressed to my heart, never to be lost. We were at the Wild Fern, a pizza café that defies simple explanation. It is the heart of the magic of that corner of the world, and is fed by the rivers and the trees all around it. I had planned for this to be as beautiful as it could be, and was given more than I thought possible. I had taken some edibles a couple hours before the show, and they kicked in just in time for the ride to the Fern. Once there, once inside, I was caught between two worlds. The front view – a 180-degree semicircle that bisected my body along the coronal plane – was the present, the now, the moment. Pressed up against that, all behind me, it was a Thursday night in the late winter, with Lucy a tiny bundle being passed from person to person, the cold night outside no match for the warmth of the kitchen and the music inside. I existed there, in that liminal space between, fully present in both. If I turned quick enough, I had a flash of that night before it slipped back behind me out of view. I could see the lights and the darkness outside, I could feel Hawthorne’s hands on the small of my back or my hips. It was as real as the Saturday night I faced.
This feeling stayed with me for hours, and I sank into the comfort of it, of being deeply aware of its transience, and soaking in every moment I had. On the stage outside was Rick Redington and Tuff Luv. With three fire pits glowing and Lucy dancing for hours, the band played. Bass, guitar, and drums all seamlessly blended to evoke emotions that swirled along with the fire smoke and prompted Lucy to yell, “rock and roll!” half a million times as she played air guitar and punched her fists in the air.
The music paused for a bit, as Rick introduced the next song and from the shadows pulled out a different guitar. It was unusual; small, double-necked, and heartbreakingly familiar.
Hawthorne had found this old guitar, a bit busted and unstrung, at the local dump on a Saturday morning that we were set to return to Buffalo for a visit. They didn’t know anything about it other that it clearly needed to come home with us, as every cast off guitar they’d found before had.
But this one was different (and more, I remember writing about it here). We brought it to our local luthier (because of course, hidden in the Vermont mountains we have an incredible luthier), who took wonderful care and brought the guitar back to life. It turns out it was a custom build, a small harp guitar, most likely from the late 1800s. One neck was strung like a guitar with a fretboard, and the other side reminded me more of a viola or cello. I wasn’t the expert, that’s for sure, but Hawthorne held that guitar with the highest reverence.
When they passed, they left thirteen guitars that I suddenly had to figure out what to do with. I kept a few that I knew were intended for very specific people, and the rest went to Rick, as I knew Hawthorne would have approved. That was a bond between musicians, and the harp guitar was a natural fit.
So there, sitting around the fire with our daughter dancing, Rick and I told the story of the guitar, before he played. I’d heard him play the song before, but not like this. Not holding a piece of Hawthorne so close that I could hear them in every note. Not with the stars shining down on me and Lucy. My tears fell fast and hot, soaking into the ground as my breath sobbed out. My friend held on and let me lean even as she cried herself.
For weeks, our closest chosen family has been telling me the ways they’re feeling Hawthorne and experiencing their presence, especially with the advent of fall and the time spent in Vermont. It’s been hard to respond over the feelings of anger and jealousy that I have not felt them.
Sitting there, listening to the harp guitar sing under Rick’s skilled fingers and vocals, I felt Hawthorne’s embrace. My face pressed against the night sky, against their chest, I wept out the pain and sorrow of the years prior – the words unsaid, the “I love yous” and “where are you for this?” unanswered. My soul cried out and was soothed; my heart broken and gently held. I was wrapped with the long-ago night of music and family and Hawthorne and magic against my back, and the current moment of unimaginable community and love and love and love.
The night continued on after that, and the nights began to blur together. Lucy fell asleep in friends arms with the stage lights shining and bass line thumping, just as before. I had one of Hawthorne’s flannels to keep me warm, and we stayed until the crickets took over for the band and it was the music of the night that echoed off the mountains.
It’s daylight now, and I’m nearly two hundred miles away. It was – is – hard to come back. I look up from the computer now and then to the café around me, half expecting the music to be wafting through the trees that surround me as I feel myself back in my forest. Everyone seems blurry and little unreal, as if the café has been the image imposed over the forest and not the other way around. The image fades when I remember to remove my reading glasses, so I don’t. Let me be there, in that other world, with the industrious squirrels under the music of the fairies.
There is a melancholy in me, sorrow that has softened with time and carries gentle waves of yearning – to have Hawthorne back, to feel the warmth of their love, to return home to our mountains and their arms. And while those things will never be realized, I can easily trade any windswept moors to wander despondent for the cool forests and running rivers of Vermont.
I will make my way back there. To visit, and one day, to stay. To return to a place that gave me so many memories, so much community, and family and music and love. That time isn’t here yet – I’m still in that space where I need the distance as much as I need to know it is there. I will get there; after all, I am forever a child of the woods.
Queer Mama Rising 