There’s always music on in this house. Always sound. For now, for these morning hours on this day, it is as silent as it will ever be. Lucy is at a friend’s house, waking up soon at a sleepover before spending the day with the sitter. TV is off, there’s no music; every single device on silent. The dog sighs occasionally, the cars pass outside the window. It’s early enough on a Saturday that the general sound of two men having a conversation across the street carry over. I’ve opened the window, the first time in months; there is no breeze, and the shade is still deep. I’ll have to remember to close it soon and turn the AC back on.
Seven years ago, time stopped somewhere on Tuesday morning, July 17th and didn’t start again until 6:34AM on Thursday, July 19th. The time between exists only as a liminal space, a time hung in the balance of disbelief.
Today, at 6:30, I held the tiny urn to my chest, cold stone, until it was warmed through, and I felt the cool patches from where I had given it my warmth. I set it next to his crown, then struck a match; the tiny stick splintered, enough fibers holding together that the flame didn’t fall. I lit the candle, the one given to me by someone else who had similarly birthed stillness, and sat. The Mother watched over, her face serene in the candlelight.
I spoke to him for a minute, words so similar to what I tell Lucy – I love you so much. I’m so proud to be your mama. I love you, I love you – and more that I hope never to say for Lucy – I miss you every day.
My body knows the time without checking my watch. My whispers trail off, and I let the minute of his birth pass in silence, acutely aware of the emptiness of my hands and my womb. They ache for the tiny life they once carried.
Then I rise, and gently lift the baby blanket his Nana made, the only thing I have left that held him besides my own skin. I opened my phone and pulled up the video of Andrea Gibson reading their poem “Love Letter from the Afterlife” to their wife. I let it play, feeling the words echo in the empty parts of me. “One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born –“
The playback stopped. I looked over at my phone, laying on the bed. The video was still up, so I didn’t move, just closed my eyes. Waited.
Waited until my body sobbed, unbidden, and I reached for the phone. I picked it up without touching the screen, and –
“ – and they are all the more excited.”
The mortal death of Andrea Gibson hit me hard this week, in this space between Hawthorne and Oscar’s birthdays. They left right smack between them – 9, 14, 19. I can’t ignore the symmetry of those dates strung together. I haven’t written since their death, but I’ve felt it coming, the words building up behind a dam made from capitalism and parental responsibilities. Apparently now is when the dam breaks.
Every year, I try to be gentler with myself in this between time. I liken it to the days between Christmas and New Year in workplace. There’s no deadlines, no major work being done – I know that’s not true for everyone, but in my world, the fiscal year is separate and tends to be when the rush of deadlines hits. And, in so many ways, it is a new year for me. Forget CE/BCE or BC/AD. Life is divided differently for me, and I think, for all those who have carried both life and death in their bodies. There is the Before Oscar time, and the After Oscar time. And so, when the clock strikes midnight tonight, The Year After Oscar 7 begins. I’ll return friends calls and texts, and get the weekly grocery shopping done. I will set the new year off with music in my soul-home state, and dance with my amazing, brilliant, feral child as it echoes off the lush green mountains. Hawthorne and I played that music for hours and hours for both of the little lives we shepherded. How fitting to find the concert there, ten miles from Lucy’s birthplace, on the first day of AO 7. It also feels a little strange to think that’s what I’ll be doing merely 36 hours from now, from these moment of heaviness that drag my fingers to the keyboard to catch everything that is pouring out of me faster than the pen can. The reams of paper I already go through.
Seven years. I’ve written before how “should” is a four-letter word. He should be seven; he should be starting second grade a few days before Lucy has her first day of kindergarten. We should be shopping in West Lebanon for new clothes for them to start school in our tiny town of Stockbridge, Vermont. Should sucks.
Lately I have been feeling called to lean into my witchy aspects more. I started keeping my tarot cards closer, and being less prescriptive with my own self on when I use them. I’ve been reading more, and while I roll my eyes at the algorithms, enjoyed the content that’s crossed my feeds. I’ve been listening to my horoscope from an astrologer and witch I feel a connection to, and have finally done my star chart. But I find myself wondering, this year, about the symbolism and signs around Oscar. So, I did his star chart – and downloaded the full explanatory report, because again, I’m just learning. He’s a Cancer sun, like his Papa, that I knew; also Libra moon and Leo rising.
Today, he would be seven years old. Today, grief weighs seven pounds and one ounce, and is the heaviest it ever is. I’ve tried to explore numerology before to no avail, and today is no different. I feel no connection to it; maybe I don’t understand it enough, but today does not feel like the day to pursue it, either.
Today is a day to give myself the space to feel what needs to be felt, just like I did on Hawthorne’s birthday last week. That day I walked over 18,000 steps on the beach and on a hike at the (poorly named) World’s End park, and I found what I needed. Today I have some options after writing – writing is compulsory, after all – and whatever feels good, I’ll follow. Last week my therapist asked what containers I have for all this grief; how do I hold it? And really, the containers are the same as they have always been. Writing, and natural spaces where the air isn’t crowded with voices.
So if you see me today, just give me a wave. Leave a message at the tone, drop me a text or a DM, and just know that I’ll get back to you in the new year.
But even the anger is tired. I’ve grown used to you not being here to bear it. And still, to this day, my frustration with you is heavily laced with affection. Ass.
You would be 42 today, and I wonder what you’d look like, what you’d sound like.
I see you in her, in this feral thing we named together. I remember the awe in your eyes when you came back to me, the nurse holding her so I could finally see here, and you held my hand. You may not share genetics, but shit, she’s definitely your kid. 100% chaos muppet. We have therapy together, and she’s been officially diagnosed. “ADHD… AF,” the doctor said. You’d have liked her.
I see you in her. She’s brilliant; her vocabulary is absolutely bananas. I remember Tristan telling her something was a four-syllable word, and she wouldn’t have to worry about it for a long time. Yeah, right. This kid understood “non-negotiable” and used the word “consequences” over a year ago. And she’s a little engineer – she wants to know how everything works, and why. She’s going to have the upper hand on you in math in a few years, but don’t worry – she’ll probably be taller than me at that point, too.
She doesn’t remember where the remote is, and sometimes forgets to take off both shoes, but she remembers Ella.
She knows that when we die, our bodies go to the earth, and some part of us goes to the stars; and that’s where you and Oscar – and Ella – are.
We talk about you every day. She recognizes you in pictures, and she’s so drawn to music. She is impatient to read, and on nights she can’t sleep, I find her half-buried in books the next morning.
Things are so different now. I still don’t feel cut out for the suburbs; I ache for our mountains, our house that withstood hurricane floods in a time where we lose hundreds of people at a time to those “storms of the century.” I think centuries got a lot shorter.
I miss our garden, our little budding homestead; our river, our fireplace. I couldn’t stay. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to. You were in every river stone, every wildflower in the field. It was too fresh to bring me comfort then.
Today, I’m going to Nantasket. There are trails to explore that we talked about, and beaches that we walked. I’ll never forget your laugh when you dragged me into the water in early May – it was the first beach I took you to, and had I fully realized your love for the ocean, I would have waited a few months to let the water warm first. Ah well.
There’s a bakery, and a diner. I’m packing my writing stuff, my binoculars, your camera, our fishing gear. I want to be ready for where the day brings me, wherever your memory leads me. I remember how important birthdays were to you. I admit, I tried to work on your birthday last year; it didn’t go well, and I went home. Well, not home – I left work, and I went to the woods.
You would have liked the woods around here.
I know we drove by the highway exit I live closest to a number of times; I know I told you I used to go to Saturday school down there, and you shuddered. Hate to tell you, but if I can afford it, I’m going to send Lucy to those classes, too – she’d love it. By the way, your kid loves rock climbing, and she loves fishing and swimming and baseball. Oh, and skateboarding, though I’m not sure where that one came from.
I don’t want to say that I’m glad you aren’t here, but… fuck, this world has gotten so much scarier since you left it. Much like when the Arab Spring and following wards engulfed the lands that my parents had met and married on, and I was glad they didn’t have to see that… that’s how I feel now. The insurrection and everything that followed, a second term, ever-increasing violence against trans folks, and way too much more to mention… I don’t know if your broken bluebird heard could still sing. I wish for your strength and your presence to help me get through it, but it makes my heart ache to think of you having to endure this current hellscape.
You told me more than once that you never thought you’d make it to 30, that you worried you would be part of the forever 27 club. Instead, you kissed me at 27. And you were supposed to be a one-night stand.
I’m forever grateful that you weren’t.
I miss you. I wish I could be taking today off to celebrate with you, instead of just celebrating you. I’m going to go to the beach, and a coffee shop. Maybe the fishing stop; maybe the liquor store, though I think I have just enough Laphroiagh at home to toast you later. Oh, I gave away your scotch glasses to a friend who will use them as they were meant to be.
The blankets we slept under have too many tears to mend, and I’ve thrown all but one pack of your cigarettes away. Your fishing rod and camera are both in perfect working order.
Your memory lives on; you’re still part of the group chat. It’s funny to think about the thousands upon thousands of messages that are still being sent to you. Facebook says we’re married and reminds me today is your birthday. As if the date wasn’t carved into my heart already.
It’s almost seven AM; time for me to get the kid ready for the day. Actually, it’s hilarious – she hates getting dressed in the morning and tries to lay there like a dead fish. Every morning she reminds me of when you used to do that, just flop back and demand I dress you. How frustrated I’d get, swearing at you while I pulled clothes onto your limp and heavy body, you laying there like deadweight and laughing like a loon the whole time. Good practice for kids, you said, and goddammit if you weren’t spot fucking on. Ass.
I’m going to wrap this up, get her going, get packed up. I’ll talk to you again once I hit the ocean.
I love you so. Happy birthday to you, my OG chaos muppet.
Today is Mother’s Day. Historically, not one of my easiest holidays.
The intensity of difficulty has eased over the past couple years. To be a little emo about it, the song lyric in my head is from the Goo Goo Dolls – “scars are souvenirs you never lose, the past is never far.” And yeah, I’m smiling as I type it out to put it on YouTube.
For a long time, the day was hard because of the strained (to put it gently) relationship with my own mother. It also made me think of my bio-mom, a missing piece of a puzzle that I got to place with warmth and love when I met her a few years ago (happy Mother’s Day, Kelly!). I had a couple of women in my life who were not my mother who I did occasionally send cards to for this day. I hope they understood why; I was never looking for a replacement, I just wanted to be able to express gratitude for what I saw as any maternal love.
I have a lot of love to give. I always have.
They say grief is love with nowhere else to go. I have a lot of that, too.
I was pregnant with Oscar for this day in 2018. Happy, fat, physically aching, dreaming of the next year when I’d be holding him in my arms for pictures that never got to be taken.
2019, I was pregnant with Lucy. Terrified, distraught, and afraid to dream, and already in love with the little bean.
In 2020, it was the pandemic, but that was fine with me. I wanted pictures, nice pictures, of Hawthorne and Lucy in their little matchy outfits, and I got that.
2021, I couldn’t function. I don’t remember it. I don’t have any pictures.
2022, I took Lucy for beach adventure, just the two of us.
2023, we spent with the family, where I was gifted with their supervision and got to add an edible to the mix (highly recommended, by the way).
2024, my brother-in-law watched the kiddo, and my sister took me to a beautiful tea. My neighbor stole the kiddo when we got home and brought her back ten minutes later with a card she’d helped Lucy make.
This year, I have no plans. It’s a sunny day, I want to enjoy that. I’m going to be headed to the grocery store soon, hopefully avoid most of the dads who decided to take the kids and (hopefully) the shopping list and have no idea how to navigate the crowded aisles. Lucy wants the skatepark, I want to see some baseball, I want to eat something tasty and follow it up with cake.
The grief is there, a backbeat that never ends. It’s poised, kinetic, waiting for it’s time to be the singular sound or be overlaid with bright notes.
I find myself particularly contemplative this morning. I opened my journal to pages I had once promised to read daily, and continuously skip in the name of expediency.
Reading my word of the year and my affirmations, I felt like I had started a song I liked and then zoned out, and had to restart, because I wasn’t appreciating it the way I wanted to in that moment. I did that a few times, until I finally slowed down enough to read it out loud, each word of the definition of my word of the year, each of my affirmations.
It’s striking me today that the word I picked for the year – flex – can be considered a Janus word, or contranym. Janus was the ancient Roman god with two faces, each looking 180 degrees from each other. Two meanings (both alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene…) that oppose each other.
The duality is fascinating to me today. Boasting, an ostentatious display… or pliancy, an ability to yield.
This is something I love about choosing a word of the year, as well as tarot and oracle cards. It provides a new angle more often than I could imagine on my own. It makes me think, and question, and play. My psyche is a kitten and the string today is a word. I’m going to let my soul tangle with it, see what happens.
(being a mother is a flex, a demonstration of the shit I have walked through to get the both of us here for the five and a half years of her life; mothering has taught me more about flexibility than anything else could)
It’s Mother’s Day, and I am a mother, noun and verb.
Noun: I am a mother to a starside child who never knew doubt or cold, only love and warmth.
Verb: I am mother to a wild and wonderful, fierce and feral force to be reckoned with. She challenges me daily, and brings me such joy. She has a shockingly wide vocabulary and the most incredible imagination. She feels so deeply, and she has so much love to give. She looks at me with my own eyes, and the mirror she holds up to me is warped in the best possible way. She has no concept of sin, and the most adventurous soul. She is going to be so much taller than me.
May she take the best of the notes I have given her – the crapshoot of DNA, the creativity, the deep well of feelings, the love of sunshine and wind in her hair, the wide-eyed willingness to learn. And while she will need balance, may she find her own, and not pick the strings of my anxiety, my mental health struggles, my fears and doubts and traumas.
May she write her own affirmations, and choose her own words with care. May she find her own way that is not mine, make her own mistakes, go to therapy for different reasons than I do.
Because I am Mama, and so much more. She is my child, and so very much more.
I’m not one of those people who has a birthday month, or even a birthday week – unless it’s the usage of the extra day of PTO given to me by work, or coupons in my email that I mostly discard. It’s never been a big deal. As a kid, there was always a family dinner on the day of; I’d still get chastised for what or how much I ate, dessert was often forcibly shared. Honestly, looking back, I can’t remember most of the parties with friends; those that I do remember, were they mine, or my sister’s that I helped with? No idea, especially since my parents were pretty content with “this worked for the first one, let’s do it again.”
I remember my 16th birthday, not for any sort of license or freedom, but because it was the first time I had to call 9-1-1.
I remember my 21st birthday, going to Fenway with my boyfriend and my bestie and spending $16 on one beer and two hot dogs. I’ve always been a lightweight, so the pint of Sam Adams kept me warm in the chilly April evening.
I remember misunderstandings and hurt feeling with Hawthorne until we figured out birthday traditions. It had always been far more special for them than me, and it took time to get used to it. They wanted me to take the day off and spend it with them, both for their birthday and ours. I always prioritized theirs, when it came back to the issue of PTO. We got the hang of it, and spent most of them fishing, with some sort of seafood for dinner and chocolate for dessert, and cards we delighted in picking for each other.
I remember the first birthday after Oscar died, and how I felt like I didn’t deserve one.
I remember the first birthday after Hawthorne died, and how desperately I wanted no one to acknowledge it. I didn’t want to celebrate. One of my besties ordered dinner to be delivered to my house, and that was the perfect balance of being taken care of and left alone.
I remember writing about birthdays before; but if I go looking to make sure I don’t repeat myself, I’ll get distracted, and this post will end up in the growing file of “unfinished and-or unpublished blog posts.”
I remember turning 37 and feeling unable to function, turning the age Hawthorne was when they died. I remember the jokes with their friends about careening towards forty, and feeling like they stopped mid-pinwheel.
I know the most recent years have been dinner with the cousins and cake; I remember last year being the first time I wanted to celebrate in what felt like forever. I got to spend the weekend with some forged family. I was only recently back on my feet from my health scare, so things were a little weird.
This year, I was excited for the things surrounding my birthday, the time I’d get to spend doing things I loved. 2025 has been full of change, heartaches and utter joy smashing into each other. With so much in flux, I was even less concerned with the actual date than usual.
It rolled in like any day, which honestly, is the way I like it. The child was a creature – I believe putting on shoes was the breaking point, but that could have been another day. I went to work, saw a friend who’d stopped by for a visit; her little man being exactly 38 years and 10 months younger than me, we obviously celebrated with sweet baby snuggles. I spoiled myself rotten at the bakery with croissants the size of my face and two different types of cake. My own man was celebrating, his first day at his new job, and he came over afterwards. We dragged the kid out for a walk, managing to catch that golden hour in warm spring air before diving into literal pounds of seafood – fried catfish for me, mussels and shrimp for him – and hot dogs for Lucy. We’d had edibles for an appetizer, and cupcakes throughout the night.
And it was wonderful. A normal day, a normal amount of stress and grief and work shit; magic and cake and love sprinkled throughout like Funfetti.
I don’t stress much about aging. I have a few grays – still a countable amount. I’m starting to see fine lines at the corners of my mouth and my eyes, evidence of a lifetime of emotion. My belly is round and soft after carrying kiddos, a little extra flesh under arms when I flex. My knees ache when my weight goes up, old sports (and general lack of grace) injuries make themselves known. I groan when I have to change positions at the end of the day, and I use the heated seat in the car to make my back feel better no matter the temperature outside. I’ve got probiotics and aspirin in my pillbox, and the biggest contained of ibuprofen you can get.
I am always learning to take better care of myself; it is an ever-continuing education. I got new reading glasses with the blue light thingy, and a recommendation for yellow-tinted lenses for night driving with the influx of stupid LED headlights. I’ve had my cervical cancer screening, and check my skin for changes in freckles regularly. I finally hit my weight loss goals, and am trying to focus more on movement than scale numbers. I’ve dealt with consecutive injuries – right bicep, right ankle sprain, left bicep – so just now feeling ready to dust off the gym membership.
I am trying to incorporate both physical activity (walking, gardening) and deliberate rest and relaxation into my days. My man has been teaching me to play video games on the Switch – resurrecting my love of Tetris and Spyro, and introducing me to Spiritfarer.
I’ve been working on a social media exit plan and reboot, working to cut down the time I lose to anxiety and distraction on my phone. I’ve fully deleted TikTok, tumblr, and Twitter. I’ve closed my personal Instagram, keeping my author IG and Threads accounts, as well as my Facebook. However, one of the best things I did was to delete Facebook from my phone. Not my account – I still have it, personal and professional, but now I have to use the computer to use it. I don’t know about you, but scrolling on a laptop is not the same thing as just thumbing the screen on my phone.
The screen time itself was not the issue; it was what lead to the screen in the first place. I remember Hawthorne telling me they used their phone (reddit, mostly) to keep themselves distracted from their physical pain. I remember with extreme clarity the moment I decided that was a good idea – sitting on the red couch in the new spot I’d chosen after they died, Lucy napping in her swing. I couldn’t read. I didn’t want to watch anything; everything reminded me of them and I couldn’t choose something new. I picked up my phone.
More recently I’ve come to realize just how much I rely on scrolling to “manage” my anxiety. Once that rise of overwhelm started, that whiny, physical discomfort of having to do something I didn’t want to, or was anxious/nervous about, or I just… didn’t want to be so damn present, I picked up my phone. And I hated it. I didn’t want to do it, but I had conditioned myself. And then it got to the point where it didn’t matter why I’d picked it up – to make an important call, check the weather for the day, see the picture from Lucy’s school or message from my man – I’d end up scrolling. I tried setting limits and alarms; that only worked when I handed someone else the control to set the password on the parental limits so that once 11pm rolled around, my phone became just a phone with an alarm and messaging. But that didn’t stop the scrolling the other 18 hours of the day.
I need environmental and engineering controls. I don’t respect self-imposed limits; if someone else were to tell me “no, you can’t go there,” but they leave me with the key? Eventually I’m going to be the horror-movie blonde who finds a way to justify exploring it and discovering the consequences for herself. For something like breaking self-imposed limits on screen time, the consequences (feeling guilty) just fed back into the reason I picked the damn thing up in the first place.
I don’t want to be scrolling. If I’m using my phone, I want it to be because I want to be – not mindless distraction. I kept my games – Wordle and Squardle and Killer Sudoku. Those are daily things I enjoy spending time on, sipping coffee sitting in the car or on the couch. No guilt. I kept Instagram on my phone, and Messenger – I don’t get stuck in those and lose time. I kept Threads – now that one I have a limit for, because I do get distracted, but so far, it’s quite easy to come back from and there haven’t been any negative feelings. Reacting to everyone for Facebook birthday wishes on the computer was a pain in the ass, and forced me to take the time to do it by hand and actually read the names of everyone who left one.
There’s no guilt for me in deciding to pick up the Switch, or play an extra Sudoku game, or indulge in more smut on my Kindle. There’s no uncomfortable shame in using my laptop to make a post, or edit, or put new words down. To me, that means that my amount of time using screens is within healthy parameters.
It’s also forcing me to face my anxieties differently, especially at work, or with interpersonal things. I no longer have that easy distraction. It might not seem like deleting a few apps and accounts could do that, but I simply don’t use what remains the same way. I’ve sat on less emails, had to apologize for not getting back to people sooner less, been (somewhat) more prepared for things. I’ve managed to do not distract myself away from some emotionally painful things, both work and personal. I’m fact-checking what I do hear, trying to be more responsive and less reactionary. It feels impossible sometimes, what with the current state of the politics, but it’s absolutely necessary to my mental health.
Best of all, it’s re-lighting some of the creative candles that have sputtered out. This right here, case in point; like I said, multiple unfinished posts that may never see the light of internet fame. I’ve been playing more with collage, with markers, with coloring and stickers. I’ve picked Master Class back up, and have been watching the creative folks I follow on Youtube more than fifteen-years old sad music videos.
One of the posts I have hidden away is mostly memes about why we need art; about art as revolution, creativity as response – to injustice, to war, to fascism, to a government that doesn’t seem to want so many of us to exist. I may resurrect it (though Easter Sunday would have been better for that I suppose).
At the moment, however, I feel like I am the center of six orbits that both intersect, and remain out of sync, with each other. I don’t like this much unknown, this much simultaneous change and ambiguity. It’s not comfortable. It doesn’t feel good in my body. But if wisdom comes with aging, maybe this is the evidence – my phone is in the other room, and my battery is dying; I don’t have time for distraction. I’ve cultivated what I am able to take in, and focusing on what I’m able to do, to take action in the ways that don’t empty me.
And so I leave you with this; one quote in one picture, what would have been the capstone to the other post (and the article above about Ethan Hawke’s TED Talk).
Let us grow and age and create, speak and write and do language; and let the 39 dripping birthday candles blow out, and not one more.
I miss Hawthorne maybe the most on Election Day. Voting has always been a family affair, and it hurts that they aren’t here to take Lucy to the polls with me.
It’s a stunningly gorgeous day; it’s already 63 degrees, sunny, with pretty wisps of clouds that don’t create any shade, and fluttering cascades of orange and gold with every breeze. It feels too beautiful for things to go wrong today.
But the leaves that are left on the trees tremble, and the mid-morning shadows are deep. Schools are closed to students and open to registered voters, and the roads feel strangely empty. My mind darts wildly from work tasks to what feels like imminent violence to wondering if this is the last election.
Shit’s scary, and I want to escape, but that’s not possible. The internet says America is waiting for an STD test, a biopsy result. That this time is equivalent to waiting in an airport, where there are no rules and calories don’t count. They say democracy is at stake, that rule of law is questioned, that we have learned nothing from history. They’re right.
The news reports are scary – footage of invoking religious dog-whistles, targeted ads designed to cultivate fear and distrust, pundits outright inciting panic and violence.
My workplace sends out emails reminding me of the benefits of deep breathing, community, and exercising as ways to combat election stress. Shockingly, it’s not helping.
Everywhere I walk and drive, there are signs – on lawns, on billboards, on cars. Even those that support a viable candidate make my stomach clench.
I had to turn off NPR last week when they played a clip of Ben Carson warning that Christians are being persecuted for their politics, just like Trump is, but that God sees that and knows who is standing strong (I’m paraphrasing, because I refuse to look it up). I wanted to vomit.
I am physically ill over this election. I know I’m not alone in that; I have been hearing about the increase in anxiety and suicidality, in anger and violence, in people seeking help to deal with all the unexpected ways the stress is manifesting.
I have educated myself on the ballot questions, and I have cast my ballot. I cannot give any more of my attention, energy, or spoons to this – and that in and of itself is an action. I am choosing to try to distance myself from the pervasive politics, and that makes me feel guilty. I have been of the mind – as was Hawthorne – that the political is personal. When your rights have been decided by court decisions, it’s important to pay attention.
I still agree.
And.
I need to put on my oxygen mask on first. Right now, that means trying to avoid anything else to do with the election until the results come in
My kid has gone to the polls with me for every election since they were born. Their first, I embroidered RBG’s dissent collar on their black onesie – it was days before the first Covid lockdowns, Town Meeting day in Vermont. It was the only election that the three of us were able to vote together in, and Hawthorne’s last.
Eight months later, the onesie didn’t fit anymore. The babysitter and I met up at the polling location to swap kids, and I cast my vote before taking her home and getting each of us a bottle.
2021 saw us in a new home in a new state with a new polling place. We were able to walk to cast our votes, but it was too cold to go to the adjacent playground.
In 2022, the primaries were on Lucy’s first day of preschool. We walked again, jumping in the puddles the warm fall rain had left.
Last year was the first election I missed. My mental health was terrible; it was all I could do to keep things together, let alone leave the house after getting home from work. Lucy was enamored with watching Frozen II and didn’t understand why I was weeping on the couch from both guilt and inertia.
We also missed the primaries this year, because I had been in the hospital just the day before with a significant issue, and I was out of commission. I honestly don’t think I thought about it, but my memory of March 2024 is mostly nonexistent.
But we went back this fall.
It was after work, and I was running late for some reason. My friend picked up the kids from their school and we met up at a playground so she could run in and cast her vote, before I took Lucy across town to do the same. We talked about what was for dinner and what we were doing first. It was the first time my kid has been old enough/verbal enough to really engage in a conversation about elections and voting, and they were much more interested in if I had fresh dill (aka “the spiky leaves”) for the salmon we were going to eat. I hadn’t, and was told, “well maybe you should think about that next time, Mama.” (No, I have no idea where they get their attitude from.)
Now here we are, on a day that feels like the tipping point, and I don’t have any confidence in what tomorrow will look like. I’ve had my plan to vote, and my aftercare plan for tonight, for several weeks.
Even though we were starting our day at the dentist, this morning my kid had a million questions about why we had to go vote before I took them to school. They just had a birthday, so I’m truly living “explain like I’m 5” these days. I said voting is one of the most important chores a grown-up has; it’s when we choose the people to make decisions for our town, state, and country, and when we get to agree or disagree with changing certain rules. We talked about “little d democracy” from the book “A is for Activist,” and I hoped we will still have one by time our library books are due.
We had to take the highway between the dentist’s office and the polling place. We passed under a bridge where Trump supporters waved flags and held up signs about protecting children and Jesus is their Lord, but Trump is their president. There were uniformed officers standing with them; road safety did not seem to be the reason, and there was not enough of a crowd to warrant control.
I was reminded of something my friend had recently said: I’ve managed to hide my dislike of spiders so much so that my kid becomes friends with the creatures, but I’m not nearly so good at hiding my distrust of police. In a group chat with others just this morning, a friend raised concern when her 5 year old said that he hated those guys standing on the corner supporting Trump.
There’s a hard line to walk with kids. We don’t want to teach them to hate in any sort of blanket approach; we also don’t want to teach them to fear that way, either. But the kids in my extended village also have lessons to learn that some kids don’t. Our kids are black and brown and queer and trans and neurodiverse. They are going to learn, someday, that they aren’t wanted everywhere, that they aren’t safe everywhere. There are people who will hate them on sight, and we have to teach them to not respond in kind. There are people who wish violence on them, don’t think they should have rights, or even exist; and we have to teach them to protect themselves and those rights. We have to teach them that not only “of course your existence is valid and matters,” we have to figure out how to teach them that “yeah, the ones that hate you and don’t even know you? Their existence is valid and matters, too.”
Obey the uniforms, even if they don’t follow the same rules.
Protect yourself, but don’t retaliate.
The world isn’t fair, but you should treat people fairly.
It’s not “live and let live,” it’s “try to survive, and let live.”
The world is scary, and I’m not sure what this election will bring, and I’m not sure what I am more immediately scared of – four more years of Trump, or what a Trump loss will incite. Either way, I believe we are looking at more violence and discord and a very uncertain future.
It’s a warm sunny day in November, and I am a terrified voter.
It’s been four years since they died, because time is both nonsense and inescapable.
Four years. The memories come in italics now; softer around the edges, less of a bloodied scalpel excising moments to peer at under the microscope, watching the grief-heavy wounds lay open. They weave in and out of ordinary moments like sutures stitching past to present; I rarely flinch at the piercing anymore. The big days, though – the anniversaries, the birthdays – those still make the scars throb in remembrance.
Four years since I was held in their strong arms, since I whispered I loved them and kissed their forehead. Four years since I rubbed my fingers over their baby duck hair, newly buzzed; four years since they could laugh with delight. I think of all that laughter silenced, all those stories that died with them. They are by no means the origin story of my own writing, but on my dark days, I am reminded of all the stories I carry – Hawthorne’s and Oscar’s and my parents and father-in-law – that may also, one day, die unwritten.
Recently I’ve been frustrated with writing, having trouble with the final edits and the publishing aspect of finishing my current book. Someone close to me, unafraid to ask hard questions in hard moments, reminded me that I have Hawthorne’s stories to finish, too – and my own. The combined taste of frustration and “I love you” is familiar, one we share between us over Hawthorne, who introduced us. I’m forever grateful.
And so, I woke up this morning to write, the still-full moon hanging in my window. It is Mabon, when the days and nights are cleaved in two, a changing of the seasons that heralds the rise of the Holly King. There was a partial lunar eclipse last night, and I felt both the weight of memory and the breeze of Hawthorne’s laughter as I watched the little bite disappear. Hawthorne had been adamant about charging our crystals during a lunar eclipse just before their birthday in their last summer, and so we laid them out on the windowsill at the top of the stairs. On nights like that, with the moon full and glowing, we spoke smugly of the lack of light from streetlamps and local businesses. We reveled in the quiet and dark of our mountain, scoffing at our days in the city, so clearly behind us now. We were never leaving this place where we didn’t have to play “were those gunshots or fireworks?” during the summer (they were gunshots) and there were no neon or LED lights to interfere with the moon.
When the pain from their last surgery didn’t fade, and they struggled to hold on to hope, they cursed themselves for trying to charge the crystals during an eclipse and vowed to never do that again. I’ve kept that vow for them, though mostly unintentionally.
I often wonder if Hawthorne had lived, and been somehow left unchecked, if they would have become a hoarder. They were a collector, a maximalist, someone who could fill an empty space in haphazard form and sit happily in the chaos (until they needed to find their inhaler). When we cleaned, I could hand them a shoebox or a junk drawer full of random, stuffed-in things, and that would keep them occupied for the three hours it took me to clear out six totes old clothes and switch the summer and winter wardrobes. They’d tell me stories that the items represented, or reminded them of, or had absolutely no discernible connection to anyone but themselves – and only in that moment. The thread between the item and stories sometimes never revealed itself again.
I’ll admit it took years for me to get comfortable with this dichotomy of tidying. I know I look back with far more fondness than I felt most of the time. I would be able to empty boxes (for a while, it felt like we were always moving to a new place) and find new homes for things I wasn’t allowed to throw away at a comparatively ridiculous rate while they sprawled on the bed, a box of treasures spread before them. This would happen, too, when we were just tidying the house. One day I removed a small bowl (meant for food) from the windowsill to cries of “no, don’t, I was saving that!” only to look in it and see an empty stem of grapes, a small rock, a guitar pick, and some pistachio shells.
“Why, muppet?” I asked, showing them the bowl.
They peered in and shrugged, their signature sound for “I don’t know” sitting in the air between us until their peal of laughter as they looked up and caught my eye. I threw the contents into the trash bag, squealing “Noooo! Grapey! Rocky! Shelly!” as they laughed harder, tears gathering in their eyes. “P-p-p-picky! Not Picky!” By this time, they were on the floor giggling uncontrollably, braced against the chair they’d been sitting in. I shook my head and put the dish in the sink.
I miss their laugh. I miss their stories, and their music.
Dawn is breaking now, the tallest trees burning with color as pink clouds streak slowly across the sky. Most of the leaves are still deeply green here, but I remember that morning in Vermont. The world was turning gold and amber around us, the remaining greens poised to flame into vibrant yellows and reds. The sun sparkled on the dewy grass, the not-quite frost sliding off at the first rays of light. The sky was sharp and blue, horse-tail clouds distant and starkly white. By the time I stepped outside, there were no other cars in the driveway, those of the first responders pulled over on the side of the road instead. Lucy sat in her stroller, entertaining the half-circle of volunteer firefighters who watched her. The men stood far enough away to be able to claim “not it” for a dirty diaper, and close enough that they would get anything she dropped. She babbled and laughed, and that moment crystallized in my mind.
Recently I (finally) cleaned out the toolboxes. I had been meaning to for years, just one of those projects that is always somewhere in the back of my mind (untangling the clump of broken necklaces, hanging up my hats, scrubbing the walls along the stairs where I spilled coffee about knee-height). I put my music on and emptied it, wrench by hammer by screwdriver. I grouped them, then gathered the random hardware – the screws and loose zip ties and washers to who-knows-what. When that was done, I looked back inside; what was left behind could be read like tea leaves.
Hawthorne would have had a field day about this collection here. It would have resulted in hours of stories and laughter, and too many beers. It’s fascinating to me how a handful of random shit could representatively encapsulate them, or at least, the version of them they brought to a shared space with hammers and drill bits. I swear I could create a miniature museum dedicated to my wife, and everything pictured here would be in it, tokens from seasons and phases of their life. They would remind me where the rosary came from that they couldn’t just throw away. They’d talk about JPUSA, and the beautiful girl they fell in love with before being shunned. We would remember EMS stories together, the good and the bad, and the silly flogger they made with a nasal cannula, gloves, and medical tape. They would swim the shark (box cutter) through the air and make up a little song, if Baby Shark hadn’t come out yet. They’d call Ella over, all high-pitched and hysterical, and explain to her that she could not eat this old-ass piece of dog food, but it was OK, they’d go get her a treat (ella had been sleeping until this point). They’d defend keeping a stray match, and they’d want to leave the half-finished toolbox and take the weight and go fishing (we didn’t use weights). They would ask the shark (again, box cutter) to chomp open the Altoids tin, because they couldn’t remember if it was an emergency fishing kit or emergency fire starter kit; clearly it had to be one or the other, as indicated by the stray match and fishing weight. At some point they would have dropped the (BOX CUTTER) and screamed “AH! SWIM AWAY! I DROPPED THE SHARK!”
Elsewhere in the house, I still have the drivers’ licenses of two other people that were not me or Hawthorne. There are countless keys and pieces of bike locks that don’t go together. There are lists and half-filled notebooks with turtles and absolutely no concept of how to chemically write H2O.
In which strand of the thread did they live? I want to find the one where Hawthorne woke up without the blinding pain, without the need for 90-proof medicine in plastic handles. I want the one where we went to couple’s therapy and figured out shit out, and bought a place in the mountains to raise our feral child and sheep and chickens. I want the one where I finally got them on a plane, where we went fishing in Alaska, where we vacationed once in Trinidad. I want the one where they never fell down the stairs, where the medical system believed them and treated them appropriately, where they didn’t lose their wedding ring in the river.
I want the one where our memories come back in bold, in large font, in a Spread Eagle Feminist shirt and fist raised. I want the mornings of serving them coffee and first breakfast while they played guitar, eager for the People’s Jam and Heather’s bagels.
I want them to know their kid loves fresh dill on salmon and barely eats bread. I want them to know the laughter of their kid is just as raucous and infectious as theirs, but with less albuterol and more lung power. I want these things that will never happen.
The ink has long since faded from the receipts in their wallet, the thin paper blank and smooth. There are still moments, hours, days that I am angry, days where grief strips me raw so I can do no more than scream at the sea. And it’s okay. I’m not fighting them or trying to get rid of them. They come, and they go.
I’ll take the memories I get and keep them, become the hoarder of their tokens and their left-behinds. I’ll tell their stories, and let their old guitar be played. I have kept the notes and given away the books. I’ve bundled the zip ties and let go of duplicate tools. I’ve kept the pictures and trashed the hat box. I am down to a single box of nostalgia clothes, tucked away in the closet, and I wear their socks in the winter. I might hoard these moments, but I will continue to curate the collection, and let go what no longer brings forward the immeasurable love that we shared.
And fuck knows I’ll be finding these in random places until the day I die.
I miss you, in this place that looks like home. I wouldn’t give up my solo time here – it was needed – but I was silly to forget that it’s here in the mountains and fields that I find you.
Through the window of this bus, I can see the cat o’ nine tails that fill the low-lying edge of the next property, and little bunnies dash from the thicket of untamed raspberry bushes between us. Beyond that are the low stone walls that we traced years of journeys on around New England, a hazy field with a few black cattle, and the forest beyond that, rising off into the distance. More birds than you’d care to hear about flit around, but you’d be sitting with your camera, cursing my bird facts as you took me pictures of my favored bluebirds. “UNSUBSCRIBE!” You’d shout when you finally had the shot and could make noise again.
You would have slept on the outside of the bed that took up the whole end of the bus because you were claustrophobic, and been worried about biffing it on the tiny stool that was definitely necessary to climb in. I can hear you guffaw at it being sturdy enough to hold you up, then giggling as you pranced up the tiny steps. You would have touched everything, and wanted me to stitch a couch like this one. You would have teased me for how much I loved it, for the style and the demands it made to be fainted upon.
You would have wanted to break into the tiny shack, with its short door and little window, except you would have wanted me to do it, because spiders. You would insist on peeing outside instead of the dedicated porta potty – until your morning coffee hit and you grabbed your phone to keep you distracted. Because spiders.
You would have been delighted with the spotted frog that claimed the path when the rain fell. You would have laughed too hard to be helpful watching me try to get the fan into the window the first night, dropping it out twice. You’d have loved the sound of the thunderstorm that rolled through the valley, beating on the roof of the bus like it used to on our metal roof.
We’d have talked about how much it reminded us of home, of those first months in Vermont, where it was too hot to stay inside, and we cooled our beer in the river as we made our grand plans. We’d have whole days where we didn’t leave the property and spoke to no one but each other, and been perfectly content.
I wrote my own tarot pull yesterday, out here in the clear air and setting sun. The second question I had was, what didn’t I know I needed to fill my cup on this trip? I pulled the 5 of Cups, a card of grief. I thought it odd; the whole pull seemed odd, truly, and I tried to remain open to the possibilities since the trip wasn’t over yet.
This morning I woke up with songs in my head – you know what that’s like. So I set up a Youtube playlist for myself as I got ready for the trip home and onward to my event. When “Give Heaven Some Hell” came on, which I had added as an afterthought, I sang along (loudly, as I had been all morning) until my voice broke. I cleared my throat, and tried again, and the tears started.
I don’t believe in heaven, but you did.
You didn’t like country music, but I do.
So here, where the pastoral view meets the forest, the Five of Cups suddenly makes sense.
Songs like Give Heaven some Hell help me sometimes, pulling the tears out in safe places where I can cleanse myself of the grief for a few minutes. What I didn’t know I needed to fill my cup was giving myself the space to miss you, to grieve for you, since your dumb ass up and died on me almost four years ago.
I don’t know how many times I played the song, adding Where the Wild Things Are and I Hold On after that. I cried; I sobbed myself empty sitting here at the desk, your motorcycle dreams and your love for me wrapping me like your arms used to. When I was finally out of tears, I walked outside and pulled you back into my lungs, breathing in the clean mountain air until I could function.
There are phoebes here, remember the nest on our porch for years? They say hi, and they miss you too.
I’m half-packed, the bus is damp and getting warmer since I already took the fans out (I didn’t drop them this time). I haven’t finished what I needed to do this morning because I had to stop and write to you. I’m going to see Dierks Bentley this week, who you teased me endlessly about – and I’m going with one of your (our, my) best friends. We’re going to get a little tipsy, a little high, and sing along really loud and really queer. We have lawn seats; I hope it rains and we dance across the muddy grass. We’ll both feel you roll your eyes and hear your snark, and we’ll laugh and flip you off.
I just opened six new documents in my haste to start writing this. It’s been ages since I felt like I could sit down with the intent to write and the ability to do so, but my therapist reminded me to write from where I’m at, so, there it be.
It’s been a hell of a start to 2024. I’ve had a major health scare, some new diagnoses, a rough medication taper and subsequent change that has absolutely leveled me (stay tuned, more to come on all that another time) and on top of all that, I’m in the midst of moving.
I wasn’t looking for a new place; I haven’t been unhappy where we are, in fact, I was rather content with everything except the commute time to work and other things. I haven’t been able to build the community I want here, so I knew it wasn’t forever, but it was good enough for now. But then a good friend told me about an apartment opening up in her town with an excellent school system and extremely reasonable rent. Over the next few weeks, piece by piece fell into place, and now the second quarter of 2024 will dawn in a new home.
Now, one of the most daunting aspects of moving is packing, and while I’ve managed to reduce the amount of stuff I own, I’m no exception… especially because I’m (not-so-)secretly just three little book goblins with DSM-V diagnoses in a trench coat. Every time Hawthorne and I moved, the two things that everyone who helped us – paid professionals or paid-in-pizza friends – were the sheer amount of books and guitars. Oh, and the heavy boxes clearly labeled “rocks.”
I honestly don’t remember much about my last move; packing and moving away from Vermont was an undertaking that I know I had an immense amount of help with, and very little memory of. The newness of the grief was too encompassing for me to hold those memories. I know a ton of folks stepped up, and while I might not remember everyone by name, I’m forever grateful.
This time, however, I am fully in it. I am packing, and I’m ready to go through things that I know were simply just transported before. To do this, I have been leaning on my friends, and they have been instrumental in letting me process through my emotions with them. I am no longer overwhelmed by the absence of Hawthorne, and don’t feel compelled to keep every pair of socks they wore, every book they bought, or every item they touched. There are still many, many things I’m not ready to look at – our wedding planning, their notebooks, old family pictures – but I am now comfortable letting go of a lot more than I was in those first weeks after they died.
Hawthorne and I had never shied away from talking about deaths, in particular, theirs. They didn’t expect to make it to thirty, and when they did, they spent their remaining years rather shocked that they had. We both had suffered significant personal losses before we met, and since we had met in EMS and had witnessed the cruelty of both the universe and people, there wasn’t much taboo about death for us. I remain eternally grateful for all those conversations, as morbid as they might have been from the outside. I knew their wishes and beliefs, and it has brought me so much comfort over the past few years knowing their death was not intentional. I knew who was supposed to get certain guitars, and I knew to look through any books carefully before donating them.
If we were ever to get rid of a book, we had to page through it carefully first, and make sure there was nothing inside it we didn’t want to keep. It might be a dried flower or four-leaf clover, an old picture, or, as Hawthorne would excitedly tell me, there might long-forgotten money tucked in between the pages (I have no idea where they got that one). So before I even knew for certain I was going to be moving, I began to cull the shelves. I had done a mini-clean out a couple years ago, discarding things we had multiple copies of (three copies of Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet, for example, or several bibles) or the books on Christianity that extended family had foisted on us, but it was nothing like this. I made piles in the kitchen of books I didn’t have attachment to, or want to keep, or felt like I should. It wasn’t so Marie-Kondo as to spark joy, but if I felt a connection to a book for whatever reason, or if it would be handy to have the knowledge in print (think apocalyptic scenario and I couldn’t use the internet to figure out how to pluck a chicken), it stayed. The object wasn’t to reach some percentage of less books; it was to continue letting go of things that did not serve me.
Unsurprisingly, with that mindset, most of those piles ended up being things that Hawthorne had needed for school. I certainly didn’t need eight different books on Kierkegaard, or the life works of Becker and Weber (sorry, sociologist friends). There were also some things that I remembered from my parents’ shelves that had moved house to house with me since my mom’s death a dozen years ago; I didn’t see the need for 1970’s paperbacks of Freudian theory or a 1990’s guide to local fishing.
Pulling them off the shelves was only the first steps. As books began to lean and even slide down to lay flat on the shelves, I began to feel like maybe I was getting rid of too much. Was I really going to throw away four years of education that I had been supporting? Was I really throwing away memories of conversations and stories and other unknown super important things, that my anxiety brain was trying to tell me? It was a discomfort I had to sit in for a bit. But I let myself take the time to see those shelves with a little space as opposed to jam-packed, and resisted the urge to immediately get more books to fill them. I also gave myself the space to add things back to the shelves if I decided to keep them after all (at the end of it, seven were returned to the shelves; 3 were good apocalypse books, and four were inscribed).
The piles lived in the kitchen for several days before I felt up to actually going through them and pack them into totes for donation. I knew once I started doing that, I was going to have to complete it quickly, or live in limbo with bags and bags of books in my car for who knows how long. [Quick poll, how many of you reading this have a bag of something spring-cleaning to donate in your vehicle right now?]
Finally one evening, with my sister visiting and helping out with Lucy, I was able to start.
The process itself wasn’t bad; flip through each book, checking the back and front cover an additional time. A small pile started on the counter of papers and other ephemera (spoiler alert: there was no money. I seriously don’t know where the hell Hawthorne ever got that idea). I was able to remain rather emotionally distant, since I wasn’t looking at any of that stuff yet; my focus was on getting the books out of the apartment before they got factored into packing. I got through a few stacks, and then the next morning before Lucy was awake, I finished, sitting on the floor of the kitchen with thick socks and iced coffee. I packed up the books into reusable grocery bags – seven full bags all told – and loaded them into the car. I dropped off the kid and stopped at the book donation bin on the way back from the school, and stood in a soft drizzle as I let them go, three or four at a time, into the bottom of the dumpster-sized donation bin.
The time it took for me to go through the books and send them off was just under 13 hours. The four books that remained, and the short stack of stuff I found inside the rest, has been sitting in a pile in the five weeks since. I knew I wanted to write about it, but writing itself has been a struggle; another topic for another blog post.
Now, with my six open documents, I am mid-pack; my sister has stepped in and is giving me the bossiness I need to get things done, and I swear she’s the only reason I’m going to get through this move. Today is my day to work on my desk, and I’ve got the top cleared off except for the things I need daily, a small stack of mail to handle, and the Hawthorne pile.
Once again I find myself immensely grateful for all the times we talked about this. I’m so glad it was embedded in me to go through each book, because this is such a beautiful encapsulation of my wife. The books contained:
A circulation card from a Hampshire College Library book
There’s no title or author on the card, and I wish I could remember which book it came from; I’m guessing it was something they “forgot to return” when they visited a friend at their campus.
A doctor’s appointment reminder for Tuesday, August 5, 2014 at 4:00 PM
A receipt from the Buffalo State College bookstore, paid with Financial Aid
The receipt is a good indication of the first time I heard “fucking Latour, what the fuck is this shit?”
A post-it with Stacey’s number and some doodles
I have no idea who Stacey was or is, but it’s not the Staci I know.
A $25 Lane Bryant gift cheque, valid through July 18, 2010
Two co-pay receipts from Buffalo Cardiology and Pulmonary Associates
An index card with predictions and favorites for RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 10
We had to start writing these down, because as the season went on, Hawthorne would forget who we had each picked and we’d argue about which one of us one that season; reading the names brought back such clear memories of some of the fantastic queens from that season, particularly Blair St Clair and Miss Vanjie (still, always, forever my fave)
A blank yellow index card
A blank piece of paper from a notepad that had some sort of design on the edging
A scribbled drawing of a pregnancy craving I had for chocolate-dipped candy lemon slices* on a Holiday Inn notepad
The syllabus for Introduction to Sociology (SOC 100) with Dr. Lindsey Freeman
An empty circulation card for Margaret Mead’s The Golden Age of American Anthropology
A circulation card from the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library for an unknown book, last checked out October 16, 1963
Two general admissions tickets (valued at $10.00!) to see Bob Dylan on July 18, 2013, with listed openers Wilco and My Morning Jacket
This was a fun day; some blacked-out SUVs drove past us and we were convinced they were for the unlisted opener, who was Brandi freakin’ Carlile, and the real reason we went. We only stayed for 4 songs of Bob Dylan.
A black-and-white picture of Hawthorne playing guitar in their early twenties
Their hair is a short faux-hawk, and their ears don’t appear to be gauged yet, so that’s the best guess on age. I’ve seen the other pictures from around that time and I want to say their brother was about 18, which would put Hawthorne at 21, best guess.
A page of notes from sociology class on 2/28/2013
It looks like they had forgotten their notebook and borrowed a sheet of paper from someone else. Based on the notes, this is likely one of Allen Shelton’s classes, but it could have been a different one I suppose.
A term paper for Dr. Staci Newmahr’s spring 2013 sociology class
This wasn’t the graded one, so I don’t know how they did – but I know it was lower than an A-, because they all were, much to their consternation.
An engagement picture of Hawthorne and I leaning on the fence of the posting location where we first kissed
Hawthorne’s social security number written down
This honestly baffles me, even knowing my wife. It was actually written into the blank first page of a book called The Cost of Being Christian; I just ripped the page out. Who writes their SSN down like that?? WHY?? C’mon, babe, what the hell.
Four photos printed at the one-hour photo on 9/3/2000 of someone on a corded phone with the following captions written on the back:
This was taken before you realized you had missed your train.
This was taken when you realized you had missed your time.
When you realized that you had missed your train and it was costing you money.
I didn’t understand the whole “little” things but I took a picture anyway
So I showed these to some of Hawthorne’s best friends, and no one could ID the folks in the pictures, but we did rule out a lot of people. Since I don’t know them, I’m not going to post them here.
The four (non-apocalypse) books I kept each have inscriptions, all from different people.
Destiny of the Republic, by Candice Millard
This was a Bookmas gift from 2016 and has a lovely inscription from my cousin to my wife. Our family swaps books, gifted along with chocolate, on Christmas Eve every year.
Parables of Kierkegaard, edited by Thomas C. Oden
This one has 3 names with phone numbers, an extra phone number from a Rochester area code, and a note to Hawthorne from a friend who visited while they were in the hospital for their asthma. This one also has a scrap of a note with someone else’s handwriting about neurocardiogenic syncope and a tilt-table test. The scrap looks like it was grabbed from a nurse’s station that used the back of misprinted documents, and there’s a timestamp that says 4/26/2005 – 19:30.
Hamlet by Shakespeare, a Dover Thrift Edition
This is “an average teenage girl note” with bubble-dotted i’s, written in pencil, from a friend of Hawthorne’s growing up. If it’s who I think it is, I’ve only met them once, but I cannot bring myself to let go of something from their “BFF!!”
Mere Christianity by CS Lewis
This was an interesting one. There are four lines of what sounds like a poem or a song that Hawthorne wrote down on the inside first page, under the publisher’s mark. I knew that Hawthorne had written songs, once upon a time, so at first glance I figured it was theirs. Good thing there’s Google, though, because once I really read the lines, it didn’t sound like them at all. Sure enough, the stanzas come from a book called The Singer Trilogy by Calvin Miller, which is a mythic retelling of the New Testament. Which made sense, considering the book and topic. Since I ended up handling this one more, I discovered an additional four lines on the blank back page of the book, from the same source.
I love when I find things tucked into old books that find their way into my hands. It feels like a glimpse of someone else’s story, no matter what it is. I feel like all the things I found in our books are just prompts – for memories, for writing, it doesn’t matter which. And while I’m always happy to stumble on other’s ephemera like this, I’m being true to my little book goblin self and hoarding these ones. I want to keep them for myself a little longer. I’ve thrown away the appointment reminders and the blank index cards and the receipts. The little library bits, their papers, the ticket stubs and photos – well, let’s just say when I eventually get around to making that scrapbook, I’ll have plenty of stuff that Hawthorne left to contribute. There’s a lot more to say about unfinished stories, and the threads we leave behind as we move on through apartments and lives and states of being. I’ll be picking at some of these threads another time, from another town.
*If you’re reading this far, and you noticed the asterisk, this story is for you.
So these lemon slices. Pregnant me did not have good taste. Pregnant me got sick at scent of sweetened hot coffee, and really loved the smell of Ella’s joint supplements, like, thought they smelled delicious. Anyway. I had been at a conference held at a Holiday Inn, and had used the notepad at my seat. All I could think about that morning was these candied lemon slices we had bought at Trader Joe’s after one of our appointments in Burlington, and I had been watching too much Great British Baking Show. I thought that fresh candied lemon slices, half-dipped in semi-sweet chocolate with a little abstract line design of white chocolate on it, would be the most amazing thing I’d ever tasted. Now, Hawthorne was an excellent cook, and always did love to make my dreams come true. So I had drawn this little thing to look like one of the signature challenge sketches from the show, and sent it to them. I think I also talked about it when I got home, and then promptly forgot about it by the next day (pregnancy brain was real). A few days later, I was having an angry emotional pregnancy day. I felt fat and miserable and uncomfortable and gross, and my beautiful, wonderful wife wanted to cheer me up. I’m standing at the counter crying and they tell me to close my eyes. I do, and I hear them banging around in the pantry before I feel their arms come around me and they tell me to open my mouth. I do, and they put something in my mouth. I immediately start horking it out, trying to get the offending concoction of absolute ass and garbage out of my existence. “What the FUCK was that?” I’m over here, trying to bend over the sink to run water on my tongue, and poor Hawthorne is standing there, eyes all wide, holding one of the candied lemon slices and a tub of dark chocolate frosting.
“I thought that was what you wanted! I thought you liked it! It was your craving!”
“Oh my god, my cravings are stupid.”
So yeah. They did make me feel better, though not at all how they had intended. We laughed about it every time I had another craving, like wanting to eat the dog’s medicine. We kept that little drawing, and I think it actually lived on the fridge for a while, probably until Hawthorne walked into the kitchen reading something and decided they needed a bookmark. Y’know, like you do.
The offrenda is small this year. Symbols and touchstones take the place of photographs. A tussy-mussy of marigolds snatched from the last scraggly pot at a pumpkin farm lie wilting in front of the tiny urn and crystals. The light from the small candles barely reaches to the floor before the altar. This simple and unplanned space is all I could manage this year.
It has been a rough six months, on the heels of a difficult winter.
Every time I feel like I’m turning a corner, that my mood and energy will start to improve – with this new therapist, this new medication, the hours of sunlight a day – something interrupts my anticipated progress, and I am grieving all over again.
I grieve the hours stolen from me – by the depression, by the job, by the stupid amount of time I spend driving place to place. I am grateful for the pay and the health insurance, and the meaning buried deeply in the work I do. The traffic exhausts me and by the time I arrive home, it is all I can do to empty lunch boxes and get dinner together.
I grieve the energy and patience lost to having to shoulder parenting a toddler alone. I am grateful for my village, without whom Lucy would not have had a birthday celebration or trick-or-treating on Halloween. My Target receipt would be miles longer for clothes and shoes, and I would have missed out on music and so much conversation with other adults.
I grieve for my wife, as a widow. I grieve for my son, as a loss mom. I grieve for my daughter, as any parent does, as there aren’t enough hours in the day to both function in this world and to focus on her joy and her journey.
I grieve for my friends and family who have suffered at the hands of others, even as they fight back against oppressive systems. I grieve for strangers who went bowling, for strangers who find themselves displaced and endangered as war rages in front of their eyes and ravages their families.
I know that I cannot take on the sadness of the world, and that is not my intent. Nor is it my intent today to use this platform to provide a beacon of hope or light or whatever positivity I can muster.
Because right now, even as I wait for my daughter to awake, for dear friends to arrive, even as a new exciting chapter is opening its pages – amidst the small joys, I am weighed down by everything from war to neurotransmitters. There will always be people who measure their power in the taking of human lives. The oceans are warming and the sea is still rising. My first child and my wife will still be gone from this plane. My brain will never make its serotonin quota on its own. These aren’t lamentations or intrusive thoughts; these are irreversible facts that I have to acknowledge every day.
I think we do a disservice to people suffering when we cannot acknowledge it without also providing some sort of golden thread of hope.
I’m not saying give up on hope. I’m not saying that we, collectively, should stop lighting candles or saying prayers or looking for the helpers. I’m not saying don’t continue seeking and demanding justice and ceasefires. I’m not saying little moments, gestures of kindness, or offerings of hope aren’t massively important.
I’m saying that shit’s just heavy sometimes, and the presence of heavy shouldn’t automatically trigger a response of lightness. The “equal and opposite response” law isn’t an evenly spread layer of karma that makes the balance evident. Balance in the universe doesn’t trickle down to the individual level, and we don’t need to fall into the trap of false or toxic positivity to try to make ourselves or others feel better.
So if all you can see right now is dark, I get it. I see it too. And it’s enough to acknowledge that. Whatever you can muster, in whatever season you’re in, is enough. You don’t need to look for the lesson or the silver lining. You don’t have to think your flaws are beautiful, or that blessings always wear disguises.
There will always be heavy shit, there will always be darkness, and the seasons will change. If all you can do is acknowledge that, it’s enough.
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 