Abby Rosmarin's Blog, page 10

The Expressions We Make

“Well, someone is looking chipper.”

She’s sitting on one of the larger rocks off to the side.  A fellow hiker, one of the countless people you meet and effortlessly talk to and then equally as effortlessly part ways with while on the trails.  I’m probably a quarter mile in to what is about a solid half mile of pure uphill rock climbing.  I’m far enough away that she can’t hear my huffing and puffing (I’m assuming).

“Look at that smile.  You look like you could go another 10 miles of this,” she adds on.  Her pack is off and she is in the middle of eating.  A break from the trail.

“Don’t let the demeanor fool you,” I reply. “My legs are absolutely pissed I’m putting them through this.”

And they are.  My calf muscles are screaming and my quad muscles have fatigued out.  I’m already having trouble lifting my feet high enough up and I keep tripping over roots.  I’ve been periodically pushing myself up the mountain by clamping down on my bent leg’s thigh and pushing off it, as if to simultaneously keep the knee down while propelling the rest of me up.

It’s fitting that I’m having this conversation.  Perhaps a mile or so back on the trail, back when the terrain was relatively level, I had just realized that, when I’m knee-deep in the trail and too physically exhausted for the chitter-chatter of my mind to sustain itself, the corners of my mouth naturally turn up.

At that point, I was about two or so miles in to a solo hike, getting what might’ve been my last hike of 2016 before training and travel and work would fill up my weekends from now until the holidays.  I was already breathing heavily, my mouth slightly agape (and…smiling).  It was an expression I would keep as the terrain got rockier, as the incline got more extreme, and as I found myself essentially on my tiptoes as I scaled the mountainside.

“You couldn’t tell with that smile,” another hiker interjects, responding to what I had just said about pissed off legs, hoisting himself up the rock with hiking sticks that I start wishing I had brought along as well.

My natural smile as I hike.  Perhaps even part of why I hike in the first place.  But it’s not the expression I tend to get in other forms of exercise.

When I run, there’s almost a scowl on my face.  Brows naturally furrowing, as if focusing in on a complex question — or determined to push through an arduous project.  If my race pictures are of any indication, I can even look angry at times.  It’s as if running is a slow burn to whatever it is I’m dealing with.  Like I’m unearthing every demon, forcing them to the surface so they can be dealt with accordingly.  It’s really no wonder, then, that nearly every running playlist has Eminem’s “Not Afraid” on it.

But it’s time to exercise these demons / These motherfuckers are doing jumping jacks now

Surprisingly, none of that anger shows up behind the heavy bag.  The look I get when boxing or kickboxing is more laser-focused.  Instead of a slow burn, I feel like Artemis, goddess of the hunt, zeroing in with the kind of clarity a mountain lion must feel before striking at its prey.  It’s a similar look I get when practicing yoga.  Stoic grace.  Zeroed in.  A heavy calm.

And, when I hike, apparently I smile.

I spend a good portion of my remaining hiking contemplating this.  The faces I make as I get too exhausted for anything else but the activity at hand.  When the chitter-chatter of my brain is mercifully turned down and pretenses fall by the wayside and all that matters is that I keep going.

It’s beautiful, in a way.  The way they’re all so different.  The smile, the scowl, the focus.  Each activity bringing out something that — I hope, at least — rests at my core.  The furious, determined side of me.  The precise and focused side of me.

And – most importantly – the content side.  The side that is at peace.  The side that smiles effortlessly.  The side that, despite the brain’s chitter-chatter and the fatigue of it all, makes people go, “You couldn’t tell with that smile.”

I finish the trail in half of the time I had allotted myself.  I use up the other hours meandering back, avoiding the highway and opting instead for the deliriously gorgeous backroads.  I end up at an intersection in Meredith, NH — one that is about 15 minutes from the highway, with a McDonald’s and a few traffic lights and nothing else.

I’ve come to this intersection by accident once before.  Thirteen months back, when I was driving up to Freedom NH to find my childhood campground in a fevered haze, just days before my father would pass away.  When I realized what I had found back last September, I burst into tears.

It’s one of those memories that make no sense as to why they stick the way that they did.  The way a child’s mind will latch on to a passing sign, or a casual comment by an adult, and remember it for the rest of their lives.

But that intersection meant something.

I have a snapshot-like memory of it, coming up to it in my father’s pick-up truck, knowing that it meant we were almost there.  Almost to the campground.  Almost to vacation.  After an exhausting 4-hour drive through Boston and into New Hampshire, we were barely 30 minutes out from that beloved childhood campground — a campground that has long since gone out of business and replaced by a more upscale RV-and-cabin company.

This time around, I calmly pull into the McDonald’s — something we never did as a family, no matter how many times we passed it — and order myself a post-hike treat.  I gravitate towards the things that feel like poetry, and I try to piece together exactly why this gesture feels as so.

It’s been an intensely retrospective year, and an intensely introspective past few years.  All of it marked by runs and hikes and time behind the heavy bag.  Time on the yoga mat and time teaching alongside it (fittingly enough, when I teach yoga, I naturally smile, and the chitter-chatter of the mind mercifully slides away).  All of it marked by things that remind me of what I am of.  The strength.  The anger.  The determination.  The focus.

And the natural smile.  What rises to the surface when everything else is too tired to take up space.  A reminder of what I am at my core.

Procession

There is time to pause when coming upon a funeral procession.

Waiting in your own vehicle, the steady steam of little purple flags and highbeams and hazards passing you by.  It’s a moment to reflect.

Music gets turned down when I come upon a funeral procession.  I might be on my way to get groceries.  Or to a class.  Or to a meeting.  For me, I’m going about a standard day.  For them, they are bringing a loved one to rest.  My morning’s agenda will bleed into the afternoon’s without much thought.  I will forget most of what I do that morning, none of it really lingering.  Their morning’s agenda will signal the start of something irrevocably different.

The funeral procession is universal.  It spans cultures, countries, centuries & millennia.  Somehow we have all banded together in this collective ritual.  By foot, by horse, by carriage, by hearse.  To the pyre, the temple, the gravesite.  We travel single file to lay the dead to rest.

This morning, I’m on the other side.  Now I’m the one in the procession, watching the cars that have to wait at intersections and streetlights.  I stare at the drivers, the passengers.  I see exhausted, impatient faces.  Are any of them reflecting?  Any taking that moment to pause?  Will any of them go to the grocery store or the gym or work with a little more reverence?

The procession for my brother-in-law is vast.  Two towns are essentially on pause as we pass through.  It gives the smallest hint as to how loved he was.  The impact he had.  The legacy he is leaving behind.

Tired, exasperated faces.  A few visibly showing regret — even annoyance — that they picked that time to be on the road, that time to turn left.  And now they are stuck in traffic.  Now they have to wait.

I want to huff out a, “Show some respect.”  But I know it’s easier to be angry than in pain.  Easier to be aggressive than confront mortality.  It’s something even more pervasive in human beings than funeral processions.

We pass by a yard sale on the way to the cemetery.  People perusing tables filled with knick-knacks and used appliances and old clothes.  A few miles from that, we pass a group of three girls in a front yard.  Whatever game they were playing has been put on pause.  All three watch us, hands on hips.  They’re middle school aged, at the absolute oldest.

A procession so long and vast that we snake around multiple roads in the cemetery.    As we park along the roadsides, an SUV attempts to pass by us.  As we come in to lay our loved one to rest, they are coming out after visiting theirs.

The weather holds out for us: what was promising to be a cold and cloudy and drizzly day has stayed relatively warm and sunny.  It is a sea of black around the new gravesite, around a casket with treble clefs carved into the corners (the smallest hint of his time as a drummer, his unyielding passion for music).  A large crow flies overhead as the minister gives the final words.  Some see crows as a bad omen.  Death.  Destruction.  Disease and dis-ease.  I see them as symbolic of change.  Of fearlessness.  They’re seen as spiritual guides in some cultures.  One foot in our world, one foot in the other.  They’re intelligent, resourceful creatures.  In some ways, it is the perfect bird to be flying overhead.

It’s been a long and vast morning.  I focus in on my sister.  I focus in on my niece, on my sister’s youngest daughter.  I lose my composure all over again.  I’ve reached the point where I’m crying for the pain of those around me.  It hurts because it hurts.  It hurts because tragedy ripples out.

Rituals around death.  Every culture has it.  Every religion has them.  Processions, prayers, tears.  Flowers, music, food.  Moments to pause.  Moments to reflect.  Moments to hold each other up because we all feel like collapsing.  Moments to move forward with a little more reverence.

As a lone car in randomized traffic, my husband and I pass four more yard sales on our way to the funeral’s reception (how food permeates every ritual, big and small. Punctuating everything from weddings to funerals to meetings with this life-sustaining activity).  People milling about in driveways, looking at someone else’s possessions, taking advantage of the unexpectedly nice weather.  I look out, wondering how many people are looking in.  Seeing two people with black clothes and tired faces.  I wonder how their mornings are going.  What’s on their minds.  Is today as simple as finding a cheap, used bicycle — or is something else lingering in the background?  What wars are being waged against their mortality, or at least against the fear of it?

Our highbeams and hazards are off.  The little purple flag with FUNERAL in white letters has been removed.  The morning signaled the start of something irrevocably different.  And now we are removed from the procession, from our long, unbreakable line.  A lone car in a sea of SUVs, pick-up trucks, sedans.  Everyone going in all sorts of directions.  Morning agendas blending into the afternoon’s.  Yard sales and children playing and people annoyed by the delays in life.

Wasp

A wasp has made my back porch door its final resting place.  As the days and nights get colder and colder, it stays on the glass panel, moving minimally.  Far from its nest and, as far as I can tell, waiting to die.

It’s funny.  I viciously hate wasps.  I think nothing of spraying neurotoxin into the air and risking poisoning myself in order to effectively kill them off.  For this one, I wouldn’t even need poison to kill him off: I’d simply need something broad to hit the door with, and it would be gone.

And yet, I let it stay.

In this state, the wasp loses all menace.  From inside the house, I can watch its feelers slowly move and bend.  I can watch it attempt to get closer to where the sun hits.  It inches across the glass pane slowly, each leg a deliberate move.  It’s so innocent in this state.  I give him his spot, even opening the porch door slowly when I step outside.

On day three of the visit from the dying wasp, I get word from my sister.  My brother-in-law has passed away.

I am stunned into speechlessness.  Stunned into disbelief.  He had been on the losing end of a cancer battle, but he had been charging forward, regardless and relentless.

And we thought we had time.  Just a little more time.  One more family event.  One more outing.  One more barbecue.  One more baby shower.  One more cancer treatment trial, and maybe — just maybe — this one would be it.

Stunned.  Silent.  Numb.  It’s the calm before the storm.  The tsunami tide receding back before the big wave hits.

I get the news barely half a week after the one-year anniversary of my father’s passing — and barely a month after my older siblings’ mother had passed away as well.  It comes on the heels of health scares, an organ transplant rejection, a premature birth.  It comes on the heels of my little brother finally having the wires removed from his jaw, as he returns to life as usual before the motorcycle accident.  In the hurricane of unfortunate events, nothing is left dry.  When the tsunami hits, everything gets washed away.

“What are you going to do to take care of yourself?” asks my best friend.

“Do you need me to come home?” asks my husband.

“Keep telling me things you’re thankful for,” says a dear friend.

In this storm, I vacillate wildly between incoherent tears and a cascade of thoughts & words.  I vacillate between my stomach clenched & knotted and my stomach gurgling — a gentle reminder that I haven’t eaten since my morning run.  That my plans for the day had been upended the second I stepped out of the shower and checked my phone.  That I react to trauma by accidental starvation.

By the porch door, on the inside staring out, my black cat whines.  He wants to be hooked up to the harness and leash set-up we have in our backyard.  Well, truth be told, he wants to be allowed outside to roam the forest freely and terrorize the chipmunks & garter snakes, but this is our compromise.

I leash him up and let him outside to prowl.  I open the chicken coop cage and allow the chickens out to range as well.  The weather is warm and the skies are a vibrant blue. It’s a perfect fall day and I stand in my backyard, bare feet in the grass, hands in my sweater pockets, eyes drifting between the trees & deeper into the forest.

I am thankful for good weather and good friends and snuggly cats and only having one class on the roster tonight.  I’m going to take care of myself by making homemade potato chips fried in bacon grease & then eating the whole batch.  I’ll be fine — no one needs to come home yet.

The cat gets his leash tangled up in the stone walkway and whines at me to unravel him.  The chickens continue to putter along, bobbing their heads at the ground, pecking at whatever might pass for food.

I am thankful for finishing assignments early and appointments being mercifully cancelled and warm sunlight and living by the mountains.  I’m going to take care of myself by drinking another cup of tea and taking another shower and then going on a drive.  No one needs to come home yet — I don’t even plan on being home for much longer today, anyway.

I turn to go back inside — to prepare everything to make homemade potato chips, to brew me another cup of tea.  The animals will be fine without my supervision for a little while.

I am thankful he lived long enough to walk his stepdaughter down the aisle.  I am thankful the world got to bear witness to such a kind and generous soul.

I step up onto the porch again, realizing that the wasp wasn’t in his usual spot.  I know he was there this morning.  But in getting the cat outside and my breathing to normalize, I didn’t even register him when coming out.  And he’s not there as I come back.

I check both panes of glass.  I check in between them.  I check the runners on both sides.  I check the corners.  I check the ground, the crevasses in the porch, the edges of the welcome mat.  Whether he had finally passed on and one of the chickens plucked him up or he got second wind and was able to fly away, fly back to a nest I would be destroying under any other circumstances, I don’t know.  All I know is that he’s gone.

The little wasp has left me, and I’m completely heartbroken about it.

I Feel 30.

I never feel my age.

When people remark on my youthful appearance, I feel exactly the age they say I look like.  When faced with a major responsibility or task, I feel younger.  When I look at what people typically do at my age, I lose numbers and feel nothing & everything at once.

By the same token, I never felt birthdays.  I never woke up on September 17th and remarked on how I now felt a sweet 16, or 21, or 25, or any of the years in between.

A new age was typically a slow burn, a gentle rumble.  Slipping into another year older like I’m slipping into a new routine.  A gentle recognition that I’m no longer the previous age.  And sometimes the age itself slips away and I have to do a quick set of math in my head — the current year minus 1986, or my little brother’s age plus 2.

But I felt 30.  I felt 30 wash over me as the nighttime festivities happening the day before my birthday slowly gave way and I sat in my car, sunroof open, my eyes on the night sky, counting down the minutes to midnight like it’s New Years.  I felt 30 slip into the car like a welcomed passenger when the clock struck 12 and it was technically, officially my birthday.

My hippy, mystical side points to everything that happened on September 16th – full moon, lunar eclipse, the last harvest moon falling close to the equinox, and all of this happening in my astrological house.  Right before my birthday, no less.  All the astrologists pointing to important changes, a sense of empowerment, new beginnings.  And even if it’s all mumbo-jumbo and pattern-matching and yet another bit of human folly, I appreciate it.  Bare minimum, it’s symbolic.  Regardless as to its validity, I feel all of it ushered in with my new age.

Amidst a weekend filled to the brim with exciting, fun, slightly scary, slightly exhausting adventures, I give myself a chance to look in the mirror.  Really look.  The lines in my forehead have been getting more pronounced.  The skin around my eyes folds a little more when I smile.  My face has become more angular.  I stare at my reflection and she stares back, her gaze a little more intimidating than before, her eyes telling a slightly different story than they did when they were younger.  And I walk away owning it, owning everything, owning the person I’m turning into.  If I could’ve, I would’ve owned the air around me.

I feel it.  I feel 30 like the dawn of a new season, like the day after a rainstorm.  I feel 30 come at me not like a truck or a hurricane, but like a beloved, sassy friend, exclaiming, “There you are, you sexy bitch.  What took you so long?” before taking me in their arms.

I wear 30 like a form-fitting dress, hugging everything that needs to be hugged, accentuating everything that I want accentuated.  I wear 30 like the perfect pair of jeans, like the shoes that give your stride power and purpose, like the necklace that proves how elegant you were in the first place.  And 30 fits like the outfit I should’ve been wearing all along.

I carry my new age with me, through daredevil adventures that I hope I never give up on, around friends that I hope I never lose, across trips down paths that harken back to timeless moments.  I carry my new age with me as people continue to remark that I don’t look this age, look that age — that I look straight out of college, even though the college grads all look like babies to me.

I carry 30 as I make plans — new plans, old plans, vital plans.  I carry 30 as I let other things go uncharted.  I carry 30 the way I want to always be carrying myself: with pride, with dignity, like a badge of honor.

I carry 30 like one last “fuck you” to all things I thought I was supposed to be, all the outdated, toxic programming that held me back, all the expectations that kept things stagnant.  I carry 30 like a prominent middle finger, thrilled to be adding on the years so long as I keep making sure those years mean something.

I feel 30 the way I feel the glow of a sunrise.  I feel 30 the way I feel that first sip of coffee.  I feel 30 the way I feel things clicking into place, cards falling the way they’re destined to fall, the world making perfect sense through the rearview mirror.

I feel 30.  And damn it feels good.

Chicago, Virgil, and In This World – An Ode

Prologue: Character Study

“The neighborhoods here, they’re very reasonable.  It’s not expensive,” my taxi driver explains. “I mean, don’t get me wrong.  There are areas where it’s getting so expensive.  But those are the areas where, like, people are going around, saying how cool it is.  Those people with the, like, Van Dyke mustaches and like going to restaurants where they sit on milk crakes and eat their food off of, like, a freakin’ shovel…”

His energy is making a 5:30 a.m. taxi drive a little less foggy.  I listen to him talk about Chicago and his family and his life (in school for Linux Systems administration, wife with two lovely kids, dreams of troubleshooting remotely while living in the Bahamas) and I try to pinpoint his elusive accent.  His accent is vaguely Eastern European, and the way he structures his sentences supports that – but the occasional aqui and eso makes me doubt my initial observation.

“No, it’s so good to travel.  It’s so good.  My wife and I, we just spent some time in California, in Nevada…have you ever been to Zion National Park?  Oh my God, it is so beautiful.  And we spend all day driving around, and we find this inn, this, like, Summer Ranch Inn or something.  And this place is, like, spooky.  No one is around and there’s this old rocking horse in the yard and like I’m going, ‘someone is going to smack me in the face with a shovel or something here…’”

After spending the last 4 days traveling by public transit and by foot, it’s nice to just sit back and be delivered straight to the terminal for my flight back home.  It’s been a whirlwind of a trip, and the constant go-go-go is catching up on me.

O’Hare comes into a view after a string of tall, glassy hotels – hotels that, as my driver explains, were built that way because of all the regulations on reusing things like beams and stones and bricks.  I’ll be back home in a few hours – crossing over timezones, losing the time I gained getting here.

Back to reality.

My taxi driver continues to be jovial as he pulls up to the United entranceway.  He reminds me to make sure I have all the things, that it’s important not to forget anything, and he wishes me a safe trip.  I wish him the best of luck with everything and go off to check in.

Chapter One: Tattoos and Rings

“Let me see your ring!”

“Let me see your tattoos!”

We first have that exchange in 2010, when my best friend got her first sets of tattoos (an anchor, a stanza of a Pablo Neruda poem) and I got engaged around the same time.  It seemed so fitting – here we were, our lives clearly not on the same trajectory, but so insanely excited for the other’s milestone.

It would be an exchange we have, downright verbatim, in 2016, when I make my way to her job, my head popping into her office after not seeing her in person for a little under 2 years.  After we jump into each others arms and squeal like we’re 16 again.  Now it’s my turn to show off my first sets of tattoos (a Celtic knot variation, a line in a Pablo Neruda poem) and it’s her turn to show me her ring.

It’s a perfect little example of the type of friendship we’ve had over the last 20 years.  The weird parallels our lives tend to take, little synchronicities that I see as proof of the people who need to be crossing your path.

Our respective Neruda poems also serve as a loving reminder of our dynamic.  Our lines are from different poems.  Hers is a full stanza.  Mine a single line.  Hers is in English.  Mine in Spanish.  On the surface they look like completely different tattoos.  But it doesn’t take much to realize how similar they are.  Unexpected mis-matched, matching tattoos.  Our friendship in a nutshell.

We go out for a drink after she wraps up work.  We sit down, chilling, talking as if we go out to this pub every Thursday.

“I feel like I should be doing more right now, because I haven’t seen you in forever,” she says. “But…this just feels right.”

“It’s like no time has passed at all,” I agree.

Interlude: Character Study

Early Thursday morning, after taking one of the first flights out of Boston, I take a bus from the blue line to my best friend’s apartment to drop my things off.  I have a considerable amount of time to kill until my best friend gets off work.  On the bus, I listen to the conversation behind me.  Two strangers, one who got on before me, one who didn’t, talking about the man who yelled at a lady for sitting in the seat he was going to sit in.

“You see that guy up front?  Drunk as hell.  Just thinking he can order around people, tell them that that’s his seat, like he owns it or something.”

“Some people, man.  They’re just so negative.”

“And that’s why it’s so important to be positive.  That’s what I do.  I love everyone, and I love Jesus.”

“And I love Jesus, too.  And I love you too, man, because you love Jesus.”

“That’s what it’s all about.  Love and positivity.  That’s all we need in this world.”

 

Chapter Two: A Matter of Circumstance

I’ve known my best friend since I was 9, when she was the somewhat-neighborhood friend of another somewhat-neighborhood friend.  The three of us would spend our days in Great Esker Park, the epicenter of our little area of town.  When we were older, we’d couple that with a trip to the local 7-11, using whatever meager money we had to buy Big Gulps and other junk food.  Eventually my best friend and I would hang out more and more one-on-one.  We’d later recognize it as the type of other-worldly pull that happens when you know on some unconscious level that the other person’s dings and dents line up well with your own. When you gravitate to your type of damaged, your brand of crazy.

We’d watch our relationship morph and evolve.  We’d become each other’s best friends by junior high.  By high school, the English department knew us well: the two little writers with their respective cliques, but still not exactly fitting into any particular social circle.  Long after graduation, when we’d check in on those beloved English teachers, they’d all remark on how much they loved that we stayed so close throughout the years.

They say friendship is a matter of circumstance.  And in some cases that’s true.  I would’ve never had the chance to meet and know my best friend if she didn’t live a few miles down the street, if we weren’t able to walk to our friend’s house (a midway point between our two places), if we didn’t all go to the same schools.  And I can’t count the number of friends I had purely because they were there – purely because, despite my shyness, I adore having people around and they were the people who were around.

Some friendships build their foundation on circumstance.  And when those circumstances are taken away, the friendships topple in on themselves.  A few casual “We have to do lunch sometime”s and perhaps a few interactions on social media before it all gives way.  And I’ve watched more friendships than I can count fade into obscurity in that exact fashion.

I think it’s saying something, how strong and resilient our friendship is.  It survived the terrible teenaged years, when friends become enemies at the drop of a hormonal hat.  It survived the transition to college, when we watched so many other friendships fall die off the second those homeroom & cafeteria hangouts were removed.  It survived life outside of college, when the Capital R Capital W Real World hit and hit with a vengeance.

It survived when I got engaged, and the people around us were quick to go, “You know, friendships change after marriage.  She’ll want to be around married friends now.”  It survived when I left Boston for New Hampshire, when she left Boston for Chicago.

It survived and it flourished.  Two misfits who looked like they were on separate, incongruent paths.  One looking like a damn dirty hippie and the other looking like a damn rockstar.  Thelma and Louise, constantly clasping our hands together as we got ready to drive off our metaphorical cliffs.  A timezone and milestones and a thousand other little things separating us, but none of it mattered.  If friendships are built on circumstances, then this something far more than that.

We were two kids whose childhood horror stories spoke of different monsters but would make the readers toes curl in the same way. Two artists, two writers, two lost souls.  Perhaps even two people of the same lost soul.  Perhaps two people who proved that the concept of soulmates has been far too much Disney-fied – that sometimes the matches and mates for your soul won’t necessarily be the person you Happily Ever After with, but will be the people who prove to be a corresponding puzzle piece for one of your sides, people who keep you on the path you’re destined to be on.

Interlude: Character Study

I’m wandering the downtown area, navigating around a sea of people.  I approach a couple, the woman pushing a stroller.  After a few steps, the man stops walking, planting his feet as a cement tile separates the two.  The woman turns around to face the man.  Both have been and continue to bicker.  Both are clearly exasperated with each other.  They yell at each other about places they’re supposed to be and things they’re supposed to doing. The toddler in the stroller starts babbling, the loud bark of his nonsensical words matching the same barking sound of his parents.

—

Chapter Three: She’s/He’s Gone.

I got the phone call at 4 in the morning.

It was nearing the end of January.  Where I was, a brutal cold had set in.  It was technically sunny and warm where she was, but it’s hard to appreciate it when you have been spending the last few days in a hospice center.

“She’s gone!” I heard her cry out from the other line.  I threw the blankets off me, got out of bed, and started pacing the apartment.

“She’s gone, she’s gone, my mother is gone.”

Shell-shocked.  There’s no other way to describe the reaction.  The same shock I felt when she called me the day after Christmas, telling me that her mom had just informed her that she had advanced lung cancer.  Back then, I offered what I could, stubbornly optimistic that it’ll all be okay.  That she’ll win this fight.  That my best friend is not about to lose her mom.

And now there I was again, not knowing what to say other than, “I’m so sorry”s and “If there’s anything I can do”s.  The conversation was short and long and outside the realm of time.

“I need to call other people, I need to…I just wanted to tell you.”

“I’m here for you.  Call me throughout the day.  I’m here.”

By the time I get off the phone and back into bed, my ears are ringing.  Echoes of the conversation would rattle in my head for the rest of the morning and for years to come.

Four years later, I would watch my father’s health spin out.  I could sit back and blame Parkinson’s but the reality is far more complicated than that.  I would watch things deteriorate, then plateau, then nose dive, then plateau, then show signs of improvement, then decline on a steady and merciless pace.

I would be talking with a lady from hospice a week after my 28th birthday.  I would be told if was a matter of hours, maybe days, a week later.

On the last day of September, I’d get a call on the landline at 6 in the morning.  I knew exactly what it was going to be.  My mom is on the other line, trying to relay information.  It sounds and feels like a young child attempting to give horrifying, overwhelming news and it breaks my heart as much as the news itself.  His heart had stopped beating two hours prior.  My older brother – whose birthday was that day, no less – was going to drive my mom to the hospital, to the funeral people, to help out in ways that broke my heart just a little bit more.

My husband’s walking down the steps within minutes of the phone ringing.  I eventually hang up and I collapse into his arms.  That old shock has returned.  All I have in my head is a variation of that echo, on repeat until I call my best friend and tell her the same thing.

He’s gone.

 

Chapter Four: Dress Shopping

My official business in Chicago is to be Maid of Honor to my best friend’s upcoming nuptials.  We have a bridal gown appointment that Thursday afternoon.  The place is exactly the type of boutique I pictured it, with svelte gray mannequins wearing lace and beads.  The lady helping us is exactly the type of peppy girl you want by your side when looking at an overwhelming mountain of bridal gowns.

I look through the gowns as well, noting which ones are beautiful and which ones are a little much – which ones seem like Her Type of Dress and which ones would look great on anyone.

We get our own dressing room area and champagne.  I’m alongside another bridesmaids – a fellow Massachusetts expat with a wonderful, quirky energy about her.  We watch our friend try on dress after dress.  The first looks like an expensive nightgown.  The next is very pretty, a potential dress if nothing else works.

The third dress comes out and I deliberately keep myself from giving my opinion, lest I accidentally convince my best friend into something she wasn’t planning on.  Even though it’s a sample size dress, it fits her perfectly.  It hugs were it needs to hug, billows out where it needs to billow out.

“Oh my God!  Look at my butt!” she says, turning her backside to the mirror.  The lady helping us admits that that was the best reaction to a dress she’s had all day.

Pictures are taken.  A few other dresses are reluctantly tried on before quickly being nixed.  The original dress is put on a second time.

“Seriously, my butt looks amazing in this,” my best friend says.  The lady helping us comes out with accessories to complete the look.  A delicate headband is placed over her short black hair and we dissolve into tears.

This is it.  The Dress.  It is perfectly hers.

 

Chapter Five: Virgil

“It’s going to be hell,” my best friend had told me, months before my father died. “And there’s no way people who haven’t been through it can really relate.  Especially if their relationship with the parent was never complicated.”

I agree.  I know my own attempts at being there for my best friend after her mother died were never enough.  Times when I was at a loss of what to say, so I slipped into infuriating clichés.  Times I watched friends who had lost parents as well step forward for her, and I instinctively took a step to the side.  Vital middle ground had given way and I knew I spent as much time getting my footing again as I did providing support.

It’s a complicated time, losing a parent, and it gets even more complicated if your relationship with the parents was estranged in some way.  When you find yourself mourning way more than the loss of someone’s life.  When you realize that the death was not just a traumatic event but the opening of Pandora’s box.  Demons have been given the chance to roam freely, and they were ready to wreak havoc.

“Let me be your Virgil,” she says. “I’ll help lead you through the circles of hell.”

Interlude: Chicago

“You are comfortable in your own company, and I really admire that,” a friend back home tells me.

Thursday and Friday mornings/early afternoons are mine for the taking while my best friend and her fiancé work.  I have nothing really on the itinerary – there are a few neighborhoods I want to make sure I walk through, I want to get at least one yoga class in, but that’s really it.

I am content to walk around and wander.  Content to people watch.  Content to explore the edge of Lake Michigan and take in the comfort that only vast bodies of water can provide.  Content to listen to music and look up at the sky and have no particular idea where I’m going.

I’d drive a Type A traveler up the wall with this itinerary, and I’ve definitely tested my travel companions’ stamina with the amount of walking I’m willing to do.  And perhaps this is why I’m so amazingly content in my own company.  Why I’m keen on solo travel.  I’m too antsy for resorts and I’ve grown impatient with tourist traps.  I just want to be in a new location with new buildings and new nuances to social graces.  I want to be dropped in like a mouse in a maze and allowed to slowly figure her way out.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” my best friend asks. “I’ll try to leave work early.”

“I’ll be perfectly fine,” I say.

 

Chapter Five: He Can Hang

My trip to Chicago also means meeting the fiancé for the first time.

My best friend and I have been our respective wingmen for decades.  We’ve seen each other’s first loves, first heartbreaks, first serious-douche-bag-that-was-a-bad-choice-for-a-dating-option-s.  We’ve been there for each other when the rug was pulled out from our romantic lives, when something we swore would be forever turned out to have a shelf life, when something we swore would be a nice time turned into a horrific experience.  We’ve been there for each other when we’ve made stupid decisions that only confirmed our own insecurities and we’ve been there for each other when the boys we were with made stupid decisions that only confirms theirs.

We’ve played devil’s advocate for each other, pointing things out from a different perspective, calling things out when they needed calling out.  We’ve been each other’s safety net when all we would want to do is collapse and give up our hearts and be done with this unnecessary concept called “love”.

And we have been/will be each other’s respective maids of honor.  And we both approached our respective positions with a, “Well OF COURSE…” because who else could even think of filling that slot?

It’s Friday night and I’m a few pints of hard cider in.  It doesn’t take much for me these days to get me flying, and I certainly feel it.  In my state, I want to hug all the friends, tell the people I just met how cool they are, extrapolate on how much friendship means to me.  I’ve already pulled my best friend in for a kiss on the temple a few times that night.  Inhibitions are down, and apparently when mine are down, all I want to do is snuggle and tell people I love them.

“So, what do you want to do in Chicago?” my best friend’s fiancé asks.  It’s been the million dollar question and I almost feel bad that I don’t have an answer. “Seriously, anything at all.  What do you want to do before you leave?”

“I think I want to eat a live baby,” I deadpan.  A statement I make partly because I’m flying high on two whole pints, and partly because I feel like I can.  There was never an awkward “nice to meet you” phase – the phase where everyone paves over their actual personality and stays as nondescript as possible until they can get a feel for the other person (or until they stop having the energy to pretend).  And there’s zero paved over personality right now.  Out came that horrible, terrible sense of humor that only comes out when I know I’m around people who’ll get my positively twisted how-are-you-allowed-to-be-a-yoga-instructor brain.  And, even then, I can count on one hand the number of people who have witnessed my twisted sense of humor unveiled to its fullest, gnarliest extent.

“Y’know, I think I know a guy,” the fiancé deadpans back.

I snort laugh.

This guy can hang. I think to myself.  An official, slightly drunken seal of approval

“Well now I know what I’m doing after Millenium Park,” I add in.

Chapter Six: False Start

This Chicago trip was supposed to have happened last November.

The call to visit had been there since the moment my best friend had found her footing in the city.  After my father died, the call only intensified.

“You need to get out of there,” said my best friend, and also basically one of only a handful of people who knew just how much of a shitshow my life had become over the last year or so. “You’re drowning in everything that’s going on and you need your head above water.”

I agreed.  And so I purchased plane tickets.  I was going to spend a long weekend with my Virgil.  A weekend in November, just before the cold would get too brutal.  I figured I would be in the clear when it came to anything involving my father, but I still contacted my mom, telling her that I would out of the area that weekend and to – please – not have anything scheduled for that weekend.  I was reassured that wouldn’t be a problem (possibly a late October memorial service, a little later than usual but still gets the job done).

I was at a wedding at the end of October, two weeks out from Chicago.  I make the mistake of checking social media during a lull in the reception.  Facebook lets me know that four of my family members have posted a link to a memorial service.  With my skin cold and my heart weighted, I click on the link.

I’m not sure what strikes me first: the fact that I’m learning about the date of my own father’s memorial service on Facebook, the fact that cousins knew about it before one of his own daughters did, or the fact that the memorial is happening on the exact weekend I’m supposed to be in Chicago.

I leave the reception area, find a secluded spot by a nature path, and cry.  It’s striking directly at the tender spot that reminds how guarded I’ve actually become, despite my insistence that I wear my heart on my sleeve.  I attempt to pull it together when I hear the DJ call off in the distance that the cake-cutting is about to happen.  I return, only to realize absolutely nothing is going to stay held together.  The slightest provocation and I shake my head and walk away.  This time my husband joins me as I walk one of the nature paths, find a bench, and sit down.

By now, the cold skin and weighted heart are replaced with blinding anger.  I’m shaking with how upset I am.

“This was supposed to be my one chance – one chance – to get a break.  A fucking break, and I don’t even get that.”

I would be monstrously upset about it – all aspects of it – for weeks.  It wouldn’t be until after the memorial service came and went and I learned about what was going on in Chicago at the time that I’d understand it wasn’t the right time to come out, for either of us.  One of those moments where I’d look back in hindsight and recognize the perfect timing of all things.

Nothing will make up for that night, shaking on a stone bench because oh my god how this clusterfuck of new information so succinctly summed up how messed up the situation had become.  But it reminded me to have patience.  That things come into place when they’re supposed to, even if it feels like punishment in the meanwhile.

Chapter Seven: Hanging Out

It’s a breezy Saturday afternoon and we’re making our way back from the Renegade Craft Fair.  After constant go-go-go for the last 72 hours, there’s something wonderful about just driving.  We talk a little bit, but eventually it gives way to the sun and the neighborhoods (vast patchworks of neighborhoods, putting the downtown area to shame).

It’s like old times.  When we’d drive along the coastline just south of Boston.  When we’d fill the afternoon with talking and listening to the radio and just being. There is no such thing as awkward silence.  It’s effortless.

“It’s weird, thinking it’s not always like this,” my best friend admits.

“I still can’t believe I fly out Monday morning,” I say.

It was breezy afternoons driving like just this that kept our heads above water during those impossible teenage years.  It was during a breezy afternoon driving that we decided on whim to go skydiving.  It was those drives that felt most like homecoming when I’d return back to my hometown area.

Sometimes, when I’m pressed to think about those formative years – and I think about the important memories, the ones that had every positive reason to stick – I bypass so much.  I bypass so much of my family life, so much of my time with crappy boyfriends who only confirmed my crappy demons.  I bypass my retail job and I even bypass a lot of what I learned in school.

But those drives?  Those were and continue to mean everything.  I sum that time up with the smell of the ocean and the breeze drifting through our open windows.

Interlude: Church

I probably go to church 2 to 3 times a year, and all those times are usually when I’m in Ohio.  The church just outside of Chicago is simple and elegant and unassuming.  My best friend’s fiancé plays the piano for the choir.  The people are immensely friendly.  Everything about the morning is unassumingly inviting.

I’m transported into the past the second church service actually starts.  It’s been years since I’ve sung them, but I swear I know the first hymn being played.  The familiar melody through an old piano and sung by a choir brings me back to the days when I went to church weekly, when Sunday mornings meant Sunday best and a quick drive to our own inviting little church.

Unlike so many other former-Christians, my memories of church are some of my favorite.  The memories are innocent and clean and beautiful — and the first song of the service transports me back.

The sermon is as open and friendly as the church members themselves.  The words of the Good Book ring not as truth, but as poetry in my ears.  The energy of the minister and the congregation as a whole is comforting.  I find myself staring at the cross stationed on the back wall, taking deep breaths and hoping whatever Power That Be is currently hearing my wordless prayer.

This stopped being my path a long time ago, but the piano chords resonate against a sacred spot in my heart.  And it makes me ache for something that looks a bit like salvation.

Chapter Eight: You Could Stay

Sunday night is spent with a glass of red wine and one last fire in the fire pit.

“I can’t believe I have to wake up at 5,” I moan.

“Or you could stay,” my best friend’s fiancé offers.

And that has been the offer from the get-go.  They do have a guest bedroom.  It’s mine if I ever need it, temporarily or otherwise.  It’s an immensely comforting gesture – a bit of a net as I feel like everything else is in freefall.

My cheeks red with a bit of a wine drunk, I prattle off cautionary tales of people who ran off to the city to escape their problems.  I adore Chicago, and I know I could always make it my home, but my time right now is to be spent in New Hampshire.  I know it on an energetic level that it’s not my time to be searching the realty sections of different areas of the globe.  I am meant to be in New Hampshire, even if the Northeast feels like the epicenter of all my problems.  There’s a lot to be done between now and that hypothetical future.  I’ve got promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.  Miles to go before I sleep.

Epilogue: Become An Island

The sun is rising as I board my plane back home.  I’ve got Sara Bareilles – particularly her song “Island” – playing on repeat in my headphones.  I luck out and get a window seat for the flight back.

            Waiting for the concrete blacktop to settle down / Long enough for me to get off and get a little ground

            The couple next to me is friendly, looking out for me when the flight attendant comes along for drinks, advocating for the drink of water alongside my coffee that the attendant originally forgot, asking if I need extra sugar for my coffee.

            Cause I still count on one hand the number of good men I know

            I’ve been told a time or two that there’s something about me that makes people want to look out for me, protect me, take care of me.  And I’d be lying if I said I never I allowed myself to slip into that role a time or two.  I’d be lying if I said part of the reason I’ve become so keen on solo travel is because I’ve grown sick of the fact that I lean so heavily on people that I collapse every time I need to stand on my own two feet – and instead of learning to strengthen what has been weakened, I spent that energy rationalizing why it’s okay being a crumpled mess on the floor.

I get a beautiful view of the downtown skyline on takeoff.  The morning is cloudy and hazy, but the skyscrapers stick out like the giants they are.  One last little sendoff before I return.

            It’s like I’m standing on the edge with just a telephone wire / Trying to get to you first to say the world’s on fire

            “You a writer?” the wife asks.  I’ve been typing wildly at my laptop since the moment we were allowed to move about the cabin.  Typing the first few chapters of this blog, no less.

“Heh, yeah,” I say with a shrug. “Little freelance work here and there.”

There’s a part of me that is so annoyed at myself: You worked like a dog to get where you are right now.  Be proud of it!  Don’t shrug it off.  You write for major websites.  You have three books out.  The most recent one cracked the Top 100 in its genre for a hot second, no less — and you’re in talks to get your first one out in paperback.  Be proud!

“My daughter, her professors always told her that she needed to get into writing.  She’s such a good writer.  She’s in the medical field now.  But the New England Medical Journal published her dissertation!”

“Wow, that’s amazing.  Best of both worlds, there.  The medical field and writing.”

Boston comes into view in record time.  Not to be outdone by Chicago, Boston gives me its skyline in it’s pure, beautiful, simplistic glory.  A miniature city compared to Chicago, but it catches my breath regardless.

It’s my reminder that this city will always have my heart.  That I can separate myself and distance myself and swear that I’ve outgrown it, but at my core I will always be desperate to return to it, to see it unfold before me.  That I will always love it in ways that will make living elsewhere just a little more complicated.  The city is that my city, but not my city.  Cuidiadcita mia.

            You must become an island / You must become an island / And see for yourself that that’s what I am

 

I go from a city whose public transit system is completely foreign to me to a city whose public transit system is committed to muscle memory.  I take the orange line out to my car and drive home.  I start my car and immediately hear a slightly outdated pop song.  It’s a song that started weirdly resonating with me almost two years back – a song I would love when it came on the radio, as if it were some type of weird reassurance that my heart & soul were going to survive this crazy life.  A song I would then come to resent when it came on the radio, during low points without hope and I felt like I was just getting mocked by the DJ.  A song that plays three more times that day, on various radio stations, on the drive home.

If that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is, I think to myself.  What time of sign it actually is remains to be seen.  Like so many things, only time is going to tell.

I get home with just enough time to shower, to say hello to a few cats who clearly weren’t fazed by my departure, and dart off to teach a few evening classes.  Right back into the swing of things.

As my best friend’s wedding To Do list takes a temporary lull, I find myself now with a long list of maid of honor stuff to get done.  I order a potential bridesmaid dress and I look up ideas for bridal showers and bachelorette parties.  I’ll be flying out to the Chicago area at least one more time between now and June, before the big day, before the wedding in New Jersey to a man who matches her so well energetically that God help anyone who doubts the validity of this union.

“How’s it back in New Hampshire?” my best friend asks right before my first class is going to start.

“Good – busy, though.  I just want to stay at home and blog,” I respond.

Later that evening, she’ll send me a link to her own most recent writing – a ritual we’ve been doing since long before the internet was popular.  Two little writers with our own little horror stories attempting to piece ourselves together one experience at a time.  Thelma and Louise.  Dante and Virgil.  Jess and Abby.

“But – OMG – let me tell you about the taxi driver I had this morning…”

Force Me Bold

“You really don’t want to go any smaller than this,” she says as she looks at the tattoo print-out. “Any smaller and you’ll lose definition.”

She says something similar about the second printout: “At this size, some of these closer lines will start blending together in about 5 years’ time.”

“Neither of those are to scale,” I had warned in my ultra-cautious, nauseatingly-meek voice.  “I was actually thinking of something smaller?”

Two tattoo ideas — both meticulously researched, although one way more so than the other.  For one tattoo, I spent hours on a design website, agonizing over the perfect cursive font for the words.  The other tattoo had been mulled over for the last 8 years.  One is a line in a Spanish language poem.  The other is a variation of the Celtic trinity knot.  But both shared the same theme: small, subtle, unassuming.

And both were met with the same answer: that’s really not an option.

For both, the random printout size is roughly as small as it can go.  The poem line will have to be about one and a half times bigger than planned.  The Celtic knot variation will easily have to be twice its planned size.  Maybe bigger.

well this was a fun experiment it’s time to go home now sorry to waste your time guess I’m never actually getting a tattoo.

Instead, I press forward.  I’ve wanted the Celtic knot variation ever since my summer in Belfast — a tattoo idea I originally (and whimsically) dreamt of getting upon returning to some part of the Motherland again (which, for me, meant Northern Ireland, or Ireland, or Scotland, or even England).  As the years wore on, such a plan received an asterisk at the end of its statement:

Return to the Motherland*

*or before I turn 30, whichever comes first.

Now, here I am, 4 weeks away from turning 30, my stomach dropping over being told how big my tattoos need to be in order for them to work — and still confirming an appointment date.

No, but it was supposed to be small.  Like, a square inch small.  Tiny.  Like it’s not even there.  Nothing crazy.  No bold statements.

I’m deliberately pushing myself out of my comfort zone.  When we get home, I cut out the Celtic knot’s printout and place it on my back, in between my shoulder blade and spine — the planned location for the tattoo (after wanting it on my ankle, then my shoulder, then the opposite side of my ankle, then back to my shoulder, then maybe on the hip, but, no, definitely on the shoulder).  I use my hypermobile shoulders to place the cutout printout on my back, careening backwards at the mirror to see what it will look like.

I smirk.  It actually looks pretty badass at that size.

*

“Now, I know I’m basically calling you out in front of people, but, remember, if something isn’t right, this is your time to speak up.  This is going to be on your body forever.”

“I know.  I definitely know.  And it’s something I’m already telling myself,” I respond.

My husband is keeping a watching eye out for me as the stencils are applied to my back.  His statements are not unfounded.  I have a nasty track record of just dealing with things.  Forever the Cool Girl, even when it’s a really stupid idea to be the Cool Girl.  Forever fearing making waves, so pretending I’m just going with the flow instead.  Never speaking up or advocating for myself.  Never putting my foot down.  I already know far too well that things have to be outright unbearable before I even dare do anything.  And — even then — I would circumnavigate and rebel in the shadows.

“This is definitely the time to be fussy,” says the tattoo artist.

I look in the mirror at the tattoo stencils.  They are so incredibly close to the location I want, but ever-so-slightly too low on my back.

This is not a time to deal with it.  Take that energy you usually spend on figuring out how you can live with it and apply it to actually saying what’s on your mind.

I turn from the mirror and make a slight grimace, as if it hurts me to actually ask for something different.

“If both could be moved up by, like, a half centimeter, that would be amazing,” I say.

“They’re really close to hitting the mark, but just a little bit too low.”

Without any trouble, the stencils are cleaned off and reapplied.  I look in the mirror a second time.  They’re exactly where I want them to be.  For a split second, I panic and am tempted to just back out.  This is it.  Those stencils turn into ink in about 2 minutes.  No going back after that.

“Let’s do this,” I say.

*

It forced me bold.  That’s how I explained it to my best friend after the initial meeting.  I was told my little square inch tattoo was going to be an impossibility with such an intricate and interwoven design.  I was told the lines in my lettering would need to be bigger and wider or else they’d lose distinctiveness before the decade was out.  Forced me to go from small and subtle to what felt like a bold statement.

(Although, now that they’re on my back, they seem so tiny and adorable.)

And because we both speak in metaphors and analogies, similes and symbolism, I quickly see the parallel between my tattoos and the last couple of years.  I don my best Maureen from Rent impression and yelp out, “It’s a metaphor!!”

Because, really, if I could sum up the last few years in three words, it would be: “force me bold”.

Force me bold.  Pry me away from all comforts of routine.  Throw me in the deep end.  Make it necessary to reevaluate everything, because the safety net is gone and there’s nothing for you to fall back on.  Create a trial by fire so that everything that needs to be burned can be burned.  Be told in no uncertain terms that there is no going back to the old way of doing things, that the only way forward is to carve out a new path.

Because I’m the perennial Cool Girl.  Because I’m the girl who’ll let herself drown before she makes waves.  Because I’m the girl who couldn’t leave a job no matter how terrible it was unless she had a sneaky excuse like moving away or returning to school.  Because I’m the girl who wouldn’t leave a profession until her burnout was so severe that it took a solid month after leaving before she could even find her footing again.

I will always need to be forced bold, because there’ll always be reason enough to deal.  Deal with a toxic environment, a toxic person.  Deal with less than desirable circumstances.  Deal with a scenario that wouldn’t exist if I had just a little bit of spine, a little bit of assertiveness.

I got my tattoos in the midst of yet more family shakeups.  More death.  More dying.  More pain.  More muddled & confusing uncertainty and the paralyzing anxiety it causes.  More reason for me to throw my hands in the air and go, “I am done with this phase of my life.”

But these phases force people bold, if they can let themselves be forced bold.  If they can let life pry away what it was going to take away from you anyway and be ready to stand on both feet.  To say what needs to be said.  Reach out when you need to reach out.  Do something that feels like going against character, only to realize you were simply going against outdated programming.

Be bold, be bold, and — yes — too bold.  Lest that your heart’s blood should run cold.

*

Getting inked up becomes a great practice on focusing outwards.  When I’d feel a little antsy.  When the needle would hit an area without much muscle.  Time to look around the room, observe and perceive and make note.  I became very familiar with the tattoo artist’s books, her postcards for tattoo artist conventions, her sketches taped to the walls.

After a while, I notice the clock in the far back.  My eagle eyesight is starting to soften as I close in on 30, but I can still make out the 12 motorcycles in lieu of numbers, with the Harley Davidson logo in the center.  It might seem like obvious kitsch: a Harley decoration in a tattoo parlor, but such a discovery reassures me.  On that bench, hunched over as my designs became a reality, I was not even 24 hours out from my 3-day job with Harley Davidson.  And now I’m staring at 12 motorcycles arranged in a circle.

Even if it’s blind reassurance, it’s still reassuring me that I’m on the right path.  It’s a perfect coincidence.  It’s one of those little synchronicities that gives hint to the bigger plan for all of this.

Model Me

It’s Day One of a three-day modeling job — my first paid gig in over a year and a half.  I’m working the floor of Harley Davidson’s annual trade show, wearing clothes that won’t even be in stores for an additional year.  No one from the public is allowed in.  We had to sign confidentiality agreements beforehand — no pictures, no sharing, no nothing.  We need laminated credentials on a lanyard just to get through the door.

The floor of the trade show is massive.  I understand intellectually that it’s a big name at a big venue, but I’m not ready for the scene when the coordinator brings us through the glass doors.  The landscape can’t be taken in with just one glance around.  The sites and the sounds, the lights and production and special effects.  Motorcycles and tables and aisles and rows and columns.  A gigantic Harley decal on the glass corridor suspended from the ceiling.  Beautiful and intriguing excess that makes it easy to go blind to the types of hardships that are going on in the world around us.

I’m surrounded by strangers that I gladly go up to and shake hands with.  I’m full of smiles and a few jokes.  I’m Model Me: an aspect of myself that used to shine only in modeling situations.  It’s as close to an alternate persona as you can get.  The Sasha Fierce to the Beyonce.  Only I don’t believe in alternate personas — only situations where we feel freer to let certain sides of ourselves out.

Model Me is given her main outfit — black tank top, black skinny jeans, take-no-bullshit biker boots.  I station myself by the row of clothes I’ve been assigned to that day, just a stone’s throw from a gray mannequin.  I look over at the mannequin and smirk.  I’m not blind to what my job is, especially on a day like today; the only difference between the mannequin and me is that I move and talk and put the clothes on all by myself.

The trade show begins with a mass of people streaming through the aisles.  I stand in my current outfit — now with a Harley Davidson t-shirt over my tank top — with my hands on my hips, my chin up, my eyes decidedly not on the ground.  Model posture.  One that exudes confidence and poise.  I meet people’s eye contact and greet everyone.

Representatives from over 82 countries make their way around everything Harley Davidson has to offer.  It is an outright tour of the world as people approach my area of the trade show.  People browsing through the samples, accents from all corners of the globe.  Talking to each other in fast foreign languages before turning to me and asking me in broken English to do a turn in my outfit, or try on a different outfit.  I change outfits and offer to try on outfits and remind people that I’m here for exactly that.  I smile broadly at people from cultures where broad smiles are indicative of fools and morons.

At one point I find myself next to a full-length mirror, leather jacket now adorning my skinny jeans and take-no-bullshit boots attire.  Off in the distance, “Back in Black” is playing.  There are few things in the world quite as badass-feeling as standing akimbo wearing a leather jacket and boots, with AC/DC in the background.  I desperately wish I could take a picture of this, if only to capture the moment.  Instead, I steal glimpses into the mirror.  Badass Model Me, at your service.

Working the floor as a model leaves a lot of time to get lost in your thoughts.  I bounce around all sorts of things — song lyrics, ideas for the manuscript I’m currently shin-deep in, memories that sing sweetly & hauntingly, random streams of consciousness & thought exercises — as I stand there and offer to try on another coat, another shirt, another blouse.

I think about the idea of Model Me — a concept that is almost as old as my modeling career.  I think about how Model Me and “Real” Me were so different for so long, as if I took the phrases “mild mannered” and “Superman” a little too much to heart.  For so long, there was a meek, shy, small & unassuming version of me — and then there was the exuberant, confident, strides-across-the-room-and-smiles-broadly-at-anyone version of me.  For so, so long, those two never really existed in the same place.

And why?  Was it because modeling gave me a confidence boost?  Now that one, I know is bullshit. This industry is not in the business of self-esteem boosting.  There had been far too many times where I was taken down a notch, sometimes from direct comments, and sometimes from just being in a room where I knew I was the oldest, the least-skinniest, certainly not the most gorgeous.  Plenty of reason to resort back to old ways, even in the modeling world.

Was it because it was a different environment?  I think we’re on to something there.  The modeling world removed me from my usual context and placed me square in the middle of one where being outgoing and social and confident was expected.  Far from any context where — if it even hinted at the idea that me staying small and unassuming would be in my best interest — I dove headfirst into old habits.

And now I’m a decade into my modeling career — and who knows how many years in removing the “Model” variable from Model Me.  I know I’m not that meek 19-year-old anymore.  Hell, I’m not even the meek 24-year-old anymore.  Or the meek 27-year-old.  In many ways, I’ve grown more into Actual Me (not Model Me, not quote-unquote “Real” Me) in the last two years than I have in the previous 27.  But, still, I know I can revert.  Become small, unassuming, meek.  Prove that I can take a 5’11” girl with broad shoulders & muscular arms & gargantuan legs and make her the smallest person in the room.

I crack jokes with the model who is stationed across the aisle from me.  I watch a man in a blue polo shirt walk the aisles with a black lab dog — the words “Bomb Detection K9” on his collar.  A reminder even in this opulence of the type of hardships that are going on in the world around us.

The day wears on and I lose energy — fast.  After nearly 9 hours on the floor — and with one hour left to go — I’m exceptionally silent.  I find myself engaging less and observing more.  Making noncommittal noises in response to smalltalk.  Exhaustion strips away layers and I’m reminded what rests at the core of Actual Me.  It starts taking more and more work to interact, to be both in the world and of it, not just the former.

At the end of Day One, we return to our street clothes and I hit the streets.  I fish out my headphones and open up the music on my phone and wander the streets of Boston.  Even after all that time on my feet, what I need most is yet more time on my feet.  I need a walk.  I need to be a pedestrian and talk to no one and observe everyone.  It recharges me, gets me ready for a long drive home — a drive spent alone, with yet more music, weirdly content on the road, even in the midst of the traffic.

Again, a reminder of what rests at the core of Actual Me.  That I can shift the things that need shifting — demolish old defenses and fortify what feels good & proper & right — but, at the core of it all, I know I am Most Me when my feet hit the pavement, when not a word needs to be spoken, when I can watch the world unfold around me with nothing more than the wind in my hair and music in my ears.

*since no pictures are allowed of the trade show, I included a smattering of modeling pictures from throughout the years, almost all from the years 2007 – 2010.

Through the Radio

I.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon in the heart of autumn.  I’m driving farther and farther north.  I just need away.

Away from what?  That’s a bit of a story.  And maybe someday I’ll tell that story in full.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon and I’ve finished teaching for the day.  Three yoga classes, and not a single student caught on to the fact that I was a burning ball of anxiety and dread.  Or, if they did, they were too kind to say anything.

I’m thinking of one of my regulars telling me that she comes as much for my positive, smiling face as she does for the yoga.  I’m thinking of the night before, teaching a Monday evening class, my mind so clearly not where it needed to be that I end up locking myself out of the studio with nothing but my yoga mat and cell phone in hand — and as I scramble to find someone with a key, I kept thinking to myself, “I can’t tell if this is rock bottom or if I’m just banging off one of the sides again.”

I leave behind all the major cities of New Hampshire for the great, wide wilderness.  I’m desperately hoping the sight of mountaintops and foliage and open road will do something for the soul.  The car’s FM radio is on and I’m desperately hoping to find a song on the radio to reassure me, to lull me, to give me something.  I’m desperately hoping to find something to sing to me.

Always, always desperately hoping.

I’m desperately hoping for a moment to breathe because hot damn I don’t know if I have it in me for yet another hit.  I’m exhausted and weary and anxious and none of the little gold stars I’ve been collecting in my professional life will mean anything if I can’t catch a break in my personal life.

I’m desperately hoping for a break.

I drive and I detour.  I take lefts when I feel like taking lefts.  I turn around to see something whenever something catches my eye.  The weather is cloudy and I can’t see the sun, but — for a moment — I’m at ease.

I pull onto a familiar road — the road that brings me back to my neighborhood — a Top 40 country music station left haphazardly on my radio.  For all my escapism into the realm of music, I forget the station is even on.  I’m lost in my thoughts as I return, the murk of it all muffling my hearing.  It takes the next song to snap me back to reality.

It takes a song that has absolutely no business being on a Top 40 Country Station to snap me back to reality.

It takes a song that I haven’t heard in nearly 20 years to snap me back to reality.

A nearly 40-year-old Canadian pop song.

My parents’ wedding song.

I’m going to get into a car accident.  I’m going to throw up.  I’m going to pass out.

Before Anne Murray can even say, “Dreaming.  I must be dreaming…” I am hysterical.  The road blurs as I attempt to get into my neighborhood, my street, my house.  The tears well up from a place so immensely and frighteningly deep that I am reminded of just how many protective layers I put up just to survive the day.  I think of the last time I heard that song: in the back seat of my father’s truck, the look of simple joy on my mother’s face when the song came on the easy listening radio station, the gentle peck of a kiss they gave each other in commemoration; one of those precious, fragile memories I scoop up like porcelain figurines and cradle close because without them I’ll completely harden up; a naïve little elementary school girl who — despite already having a handful of memories no 8-year-old should have — still saw her family in only the best of lights.

Now, over 20 years later, the song is the very last song I hear on a very long car ride.  I stay in the garage after the song ends — a song so perfectly timed that it plays in full just as I get to my driveway.  I sit there like a survivor after a natural disaster.  I numbly take in what’s in front of me.  I’m not even half sure it happened.  It takes a moment for me to even register that an outdated pop song has just played on a country music station that plays only the latest hits.  It takes a moment for the timing of it all to really sink in.  And, for a moment, I am reassured.  I am filled with light.

This is a sign.  I know it is.

The next morning, barely past 6 a.m., I get the call from my mother.

He’s gone.

A week after they had removed the feeding tube.  Four years after he’d been diagnosed with Parkinson’s.  Decades after the body had started its decline.  More than a half century after the start of one of the most common social activities out there that had at some point mutated into one of the most devastating addictions.

My father has passed away.

—

II.

At this point, I know it’s “Man in the Mirror” from the first two notes.  Possibly even just the first.

When he — our mentor, our teacher, our friend — first recommended it, I had never heard of it before.  Even though I was 15 at the time, I was still — in many ways — as naïve and deaf to the world as that 8-year-old.  I knew the major Michael Jackson hits, but that was basically it.

And that’s all it was: a brief discussion about music, a simple recommendation.  But he had that type of effortless leadership over those teenagers that a solid chunk of us then scrambled after school to hear this song.  In a time before smartphones or fast internet — when music sharing was in its supreme infancy — we became super sleuths to find this song we had never heard before.

Because that’s just the type of person he was.  He spoke and you listened — not out of submission to authority, not out of fear, but because you simply wanted to hear what he had to say.

To hear what he had to say.  That’s all we wanted when, less than a year later, we found out one cold, January morning that he had lost his battle with depression.

It was a battle we had no idea was even being waged.  A battle the adults were so painfully and frustratingly slow and hesitant to talk about.  A battle we’d desperately retrace our steps over in order to see if there had been any sign of it the last time we all had respectively seen him.  All we wanted then was to hear what he had to say.  We thought of every discussion that was now nothing more than a set of memories, and we desperately wished it wasn’t the case.  When we went to war with Iraq, when the Red Sox broke the curse, when life would twist and curve the way life always does, so many of us wanted to do just that: file into a room and hear his thoughts on the world around us.  To listen to what he had to say one last time.

That’s when “Man in the Mirror” took on new life.  That’s when every school dance had a “Man in the Mirror” moment — now as much of a staple as the Electric Slide and Stairway to Heaven — and those of us who had him as our teacher & mentor would huddle around and cry or laugh or just hug each other.  That’s when listening to the song brought a well of emotions that no 16-year-old is or should be equipped to handle.

That’s when I wrote to Casey Kasem and the American Top 40 to do a long-distance dedication.  That’s when, a few Saturdays later, as I’m driving my mom and my brother back from some type of event, I turn on the radio at just the right time.

(The timing of all things.)

That’s when I pull into the closest neighborhood and park the car and hear Casey Kasem read my words out loud and play the very song I requested.

To this day, there is no channel-changing when “Man in the Mirror” comes on.  The song is played in full, always.  Bare minimum, a time for reflection — but, because I’m crazy enough to believe in the timing of all things, I pay close attention to when I hear it.  What times the song comes on the radio, and when there’s an uptick of that song on the radio.

And there are upticks — across all receivable stations –sometimes.  I channel surf the radio enough and spend enough time next to my car’s radio enough to notice trends across the dial.  And since I’m crazy enough to believe in the timing of all things, I’m crazy enough to believe it means something.  Crazy enough to notice that the upticks always seem to coincide with when I’m most at a loss.  When this 29-year-old old — 13 years removed from the tragedy and already 2 years older than he’ll ever be in this lifetime — is the most desperate for reassurance that she’s on the right path, that’s she’s not just shooting blindly in the dark and praying nothing ricochets back.

Sometimes the song comes on the radio when I’m way too deep in unhealthy, unhelpful thought patterns — thinking patterns that I know are leading me down a no-good path, are going to put me in the wrong headspace, are going to do more harm than good — and the song snaps me out of my reverie.  It always feels like a gentle chastising.  A reminder to keep your head on straight, from a mentor who’ll never be as old as you are now.

I can think of two psychological phenomena off the bat to pragmatically explain that timing of all things, but it’s not enough to sway my faith — that what’s coming through the radio is preordained and meaningful and exactly what I’m supposed to be hearing.

—

III.

We sang before we spoke.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve defended the vital need for music with that statement.  We communicated in tones long before complicated syllables.  We sang while sitting around our fires. Before written word, we communicated and transmitted vital information by singing it to the younger generations.  We sang the stories of our ancestors.  It’s the same reason we’ll sing out a little diddy in order to remember a phone number.  The reason singing has a long history of lifting spirits when they were truly at their lowest

Because music connects us.  Because it gets under the skin and strikes cleanly at the soul in a way the monotone never could.  Because there are few things as reassuring as hearing someone sing out your experience or your emotions — as if reminding us better than paintings or sculptures or even the written word that, if art can be created from such a jagged crevasse in the human condition, then the suffering is not completely for naught.

And because I’m crazy enough to believe in the timing of all things, I deliberately leave the car radio on during the countless hours I spend on the road — both for voluntarily and for work.  I deliberately channel surf, throwing it out there to the universe and the powers that be, “Okay.  Tell me what I need to hear.”  — as if I’m two steps away from waiting on the microwave to give me the next set of directions.

There are countless phenomena — exhausting, scientific, psychological, statistical reasons — to explain away hearing the right song at the right time.  That song you swear was written about you, or to reassure you, or to mock you.  A song that pops up at just the right/wrong time and makes you want to go, “Oh, shut the fuck up, radio,” before checking your own insanity (and checking your own mindset that would cause such an easy derailment in the first place).

And the radio gives me exactly that.  Gives me the beat to free my soul when I need it.  Reminds me to be brave when I need that reminding.  Calls out my bullshit when I apparently need to call myself out on my own bullshit.  Reminds me that these feelings, these emotions, these experiences, are completely, 100% valid.  Reminds me that there is life outside of these feelings.  Reminds me that there will always be a reason to dance.

I live a bit through the radio.  I’m nutso enough to believe I’m hearing what I need to hear through the radio.  I am reassured through the radio.  I am reminded what it is to be alive through the radio.

And sometimes the radio goes off and the deliberate playlists — the songs saved to my phone or the Cloud or wherever — come on, because sometimes I’m not waiting on the universe to tell me what I need to hear.  Sometimes I’ll seek out exactly what I want to hear and drift into the cadence, the melody, the lyrics.  Swim inside a world where even the most nuanced experience and complicated heartbreak can be explained in quarter beats and refrains and choruses.  Find that momentary stay against the confusion.  Sort out the world one note at a time.

And dance.  Always, always the chance to dance.

The Perfect Type of Failing

If a tree falls on an Abby and she definitely makes a noise — how far is the closest ER?

The joke pops into my brain as I’m clipping the smaller branches.  A sign that I’m in a better headspace.  A usual rule of thumb: if I can joke, I’m gonna be okay.

For the first couple of minutes after the incident, I speak in shaky, clipped statements, adrenaline rushing through my system as I attempt to discuss the failed tree cutting — as I attempt to sound calm and collected and my husband eventually asks, “Are you okay?  Because it sounds like you’re on the verge of having emotions.”

(Code for: having an emotional breakdown.)

For the next couple of minutes after, I force myself into the present moment.  The weight of the branch cutters in hand.  The smell of the mint that has proliferated by the side of our back porch.  The leaves on the downed tree that are vibrant green with a pastel underbelly.  The task at hand.  Cut this branch.  Cut this other branch.  Bring them over to this pile.  Repeat.  I notice the warm sun.  The slight breeze.  The sound of the branch cutters against bark.

I do that because, until I can start joking, I’m in a bad headspace — now that the adrenaline has subsided and I’m no longer on the verge of having emotions.  Because I’m replaying the events and I’m frustratingly unhappy with myself.  Because there’s a side of me, reminiscent of the Old Me, that is desperate to pop up, and I refuse to give it a platform.

I refuse to give it a platform because that side of me is like Donald Trump: give it even the smallest chance to grab the mic and nothing good will come of it.  But, regardless, that side relentlessly persists, like a toddler bent on getting my attention, a little voice on constant rotation, desperate for me to actually listen in.

“You saw the angle was a little off and you didn’t say anything.  You saw the angle and you knew it was off and you just assumed you didn’t know what you were talking about.  You saw the angle and you said nothing and the tree went off path and maybe that wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t assume you were wrong and stayed silent.”

(I can hear my counselor say, “You’re incredibly quick to invalidate yourself.”)

Before all that — before the smell of mint in the warm sun and the persistent sound of a negative voice and the surge of adrenaline — I was standing by one of the paracord, next to our chicken coop.  One end of the cord was tied to a chain around the tree, the other to a post by our chicken coop.  I was standing about 30 feet away from a large tree that had been hanging precariously over the roof of our house — a tree that was probably one large blizzard away from damaging said roof, said house.  I was standing guard, watching the first notch be cut.  A notch that seemed to be facing 20 or 30 degrees closer in my direction than it should be.

It’ll be fine. I had reasoned. I’m probably just seeing things.  No reason to say anything.

Within minutes, we hear the distinctive crack that lets us know the tree’s about to fall over.  The paracord by me goes slack — far too quickly and far too early.  The paracord dips towards the ground instead of sloping to the side.  I look up to watch the tree start to loom over me.

Apparently my husband shouts, “Run!”  I don’t hear it.  I’ve already bolted.  I get tunnel vision as I dart away from the chicken coop, down our gravel path, down our stone steps.  I run like hell and don’t even look back until the tree has hit the ground.

When I took back, I’m expecting nothing and everything at once.  I both prepare and don’t prepare for a damaged roof.  Collapsed porch.  Collapsed chicken co-op.  Broken swingset.

What I see is a sea of green.

There is a very tiny alley of space between the chicken coop & the swingset and our house.  Not including the untamed garden by our porch, the space is 10, 15 feet on the outside.

And that is exactly where the tree fell.

None of the structures are even scratched.  The baby peach tree — a delicate little creation that has been propped up just to survive strong winds and bad winters — is completely untouched.  The felled tree missed it by inches.

“If the tree cutting was going to go wrong, that was exactly where the tree should’ve fallen,” remarks my husband.

The trunk of the tree hit out ladder — and crushed it like it had been made of cardboard.  Our little reminder of what this tree would have been capable of doing.  But the tree fell in a way that even the little wooden border around the swingset is unscathed.

Five feet one way or the other, it would’ve been a different story.

It was miracle.  I even note how much of a miracle it is — in my jolted, terse voice, the one that apparently gives away my actual emotional state.  It was a perfect failed fall.

It was the perfect type of failing.

I do yet another exhaustive and exhausting personal inquiry. I analyze my reluctance to say anything.  I analyze that terrible, negative voice that — just like when Trump finds his way onto my TV screen — I hit mute on, knowing that this bag of empty hate and hot air will eventually fade.  I recognize that both come from the same place that I’m trying to chop down as well.  The one I want to uproot and replace with something a little more assertive, a little more sure, a little less passive — grow something that gives me a fricken break from time to time (cue counselor: “You have infinite understanding for everyone around you, and yet you’re not allowed to mess up.”)

The tree was supposed to fall along the path into the woods.  Instead it veered 90 degrees — way farther over my direction than the notch ever was.  Despite being chained and tethered, despite careful cutting, the tree cutting went wildly against plans.

But when it failed, it failed in a miraculous way.

It failed in a way that made me perversely grateful for the way it went down.  It failed in a way that made the dust settle fast — that, after the adrenaline rush and the fight to keep negative self-talk at bay, we were able to focus more on what we could do different next time (as opposed to scrambling to clean up the mess).  It failed in a way that reminded me how bad it could’ve been and how weirdly lucky I am that everything fell into place the way that it did.  It failed in a way we could only hope to fail, ourselves.

Because, if you’re going to fail, fail miraculously.

If you’re going to fail — and you’re going to fail, eventually, inevitably — fail in a way that shows how weirdly beautiful, if not predestined, that failure seems to be.  A failure that exposes what needs to be exposed without bringing the whole house down.  Fail in a way that, as the dust settles, you can see what you can do differently going forward.

Fail in ways that get your adrenaline surging, that make you want to break down over it, that make you wonder why you can’t just get into your readily-available time machine and change things.  Fail and then marvel at how — now that the major moment has passed and you’re not scrambling the way you just did — there was no other way to fail than this.

Fail in a way that makes you perversely grateful for the way it all went down.  Grateful that everything fell into place the way that it did.

Let it be the perfect type of failing.

If things are not going to go to plan, make sure it collapses in a way that makes you think it was the plan all along.

Let Me Tell You About My Monkey

Let me tell you a tale about my monkey.

Well, technically it first starts off as a tale about a teddy bear keychain.

(Bear with me. Ba dum ching.)

Sometime in 2008, when visiting Florida for the very first time, I got this little teddy bear keychain.  He was metallic, with movable limbs and a little sun with the words “Florida” printed on his belly.  I named him Teddy Bayer, and I spent the rest of the trip positioning him in various ways and taking pictures of him wherever we went.  This spawned into taking Teddy Bayer with me on every trip, getting his picture taken at tourist destinations and restaurants — and this would eventually spawn a souvenir collection of nearly 30 teddy bears from different states and provinces (and countries) — but that’s a story for another day.

Because this is a tale about my monkey.

My monkey came into my life at the Colorado Zoo, hanging (ba dum ching) with his fellow monkey buddies in the gift shop.  Since I am a sucker for the soft and cuddly, he was purchased and given the name Wesley — in honor of Wes Welker, who had just been traded from the Pats.

He was brought back with us from the zoo and placed on our hotel bed, where I promptly took a picture of him.  And when we checked out, I took a picture of him in the car.

Soon enough, I was taking pictures of him and Teddy Bayer during my travels.  And — because such is the way of things — there was only room for one traveling toy in my life.  So Teddy Bayer became the protector of my yoga studio keys, staying home while I went off on my adventures.

And thus Wes the Traveling Monkey flourished.

Wes attracts a bit of attention.  When a grown woman — a 5’11” grown woman, mind you — is taking pictures with a stuffed monkey, people kind of pay attention.  Little kids especially love him, and hikers get a kick when they see him peaking out of my backpack.  Eventually he got his own hashtag and a corner of my instagram account, which only garnered more attention.  And, through that attention, he’d built a weird following — to the point that, when friends would hear that I was going off on whatever trip, I am told to, “Take lots of pics…of Wes!”

This past weekend was no different.  As I brought my bags in to a yoga retreat in Vermont, one of my friends asked, “Did you bring Wes?”

“Of course I brought Wes!” I replied, pulling the stuffed monkey out of my purse as evidence.

It wasn’t long until Wes started taking on a life of his own that weekend.  It was first a fun suggestion — as we were gearing up the stand up paddleboards, one friend said, “Put Wes on one of the boards and take a picture!”  And — to the enthusiasm of the rest of the group — I did.  Pretty soon, he was being posed on towels and over the baby bump of one of the teachers… and back on the paddleboard.

Soon enough, Wes became the unofficial 15th member of the yoga retreat.  Every event involved some impromptu photoshoot with Wes in some way.  Everyone had suggestions for Wes — posing him this way and that, over this item, with these items in hand.  He became as much of a staple of the trip as yoga every morning and night, healthy meals, and hearty belly laughs.

It’s not surprising that something like Wes the Traveling Monkey would be as popular as it is.  And it has nothing to do with my one liners on instagram or social media saturation.  It is just pure, simple, child-like joy.  It is a chance to be a little imaginative and a little silly.  And life is far too short, and far too hard, and far too tragic to not constantly and consistently allow the silly and the child-like to enter in.  It’s gonna be a long uphill walk if you have no place in your heart for a little imagination and simplistic wonder.

I originally justified taking pictures of Teddy Bayer and Wes the Traveling Monkey by saying pictures of these inanimate objects were more interesting than yet another shot of a tourist spot that had been photographed a thousand times over in the exact same way.  That the little guys made a fairly generic travel photo album become a cohesive story.  But the reality is that I never did it to make my posts more interesting (I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t post so much online if I were worried about keeping it interesting).  I did it because posing Teddy Bayer next to a restaurant menu or buckling Wes into our back seat tapped into a vital and beautiful joy.

For now, Wes is resting.  There’s a family reunion and a wedding happening over the next 3 or so months that’ll take me out of state once again, but, for now, I’m back at home base.  My nomadic heart (and love of posting Wes pictures online) will have to make due with the occasional (and local) hiking trip.

But enough about my monkey.