Abby Rosmarin's Blog, page 2

Platform

I went outside to find Hecate sprawled in the run, motionless.

My rooster had been alive the day before — the crowing had been an audible announcement of that. There was no sign of trauma, of attack, of illness. In some ways, my rooster looked like they were taking a peculiar nap. It was the stillness and the dirt over their body that gave away reality.

Finding my rooster dead was one of those truths that hit like a belt against skin — a quick sting that I first thought would be the worst of it. I even went inside and quietly cleaned the kitchen, went about chores, wondering what the next step should be. It was only when I said the words out loud did the welt from the blow emerge.

I told my husband Hecate was dead and promptly started crying.

Like so many times before, he stepped in to save the day. He found a large shoebox, he went at the frozen, root-filled ground with a shovel and pick-axe, and helped me bury my former pet. Buried them right next to my guinea pig, with a marker with their name on it and everything.

I tended to the remaining flock — Athena, Calliope, Demeter, Tyche — and I said a few words to and about Hecate. I thought of the last time I picked up Hecate and I thought of how little Hecate was when I first got them — how I nicknamed them Phantom because their marking looked like the perfect Phantom of the Opera mask.

And my heart just hurt.

—

—

After Persephone died, I had made the firm decision to keep Hecate — to accept the inevitability of the hen that wasn’t a hen, and their place in my life. 

But that firmness was shaken up. The crowing was quickly becoming a problem, and I feared the other shoe dropping and a neighbor filing a complaint. I’d wake up to crowing sessions that would last for an hour and I’d try to tell myself that they were sounding the alarm against a predator.

(And after the fox attack, who was I to judge their hypervigilance.)

Hecate was sweeter than most roosters, but that’s a low bar to clear, with plenty of space left over for misfortune. They still literally got between me and the hens, and had taken to biting me hard if I dared let a hand linger in the run after feeding them or checking their water.

My resolve was weakening and I was starting to research sanctuary farms.

So the feeling I had on that couch next to my husband was a bittersweet one. I cried over the loss of something I had loved, but simultaneously felt the weight that the complications that accompanied such a love lift.

I’m nothing if not one to notice the metaphor, the parallel lines my life creates.

—

—

“I want to stop being the person that has to have things hit rock bottom before I do anything about it,” I tell my new therapist. She asks what I’m hoping to achieve and I tell her what I want changed.

I’m tired of this reoccurring theme, one that pops up in all areas of my life — waiting for things to get so bad that I say, “Even I don’t deserve this.”

And perhaps that’s the biggest problem, with me. Perhaps in that lies the answer to why I keep repeating the same patterns, over and over again. I am reserved with who gets access to the parts of me I don’t readily give out to the world — but once the threshold is met, the bar becomes a low one to clear, with plenty of space left over for misery.

I don’t seek out mistreatment, but dealbreakers become “I can deal with it.” Things that should set off alarms go undetected because it runs too closely with the messages my demons give me.

And that’s part of the reason why I’ve decided to devote 2021 to healing from the wounds 2020 gave me — as well as what echos it created with the past, and all the ways I want to be different for the future.

—

—

Hecate made life complicated, but I met that complication headfirst and headlong. I lead with my heart and I lead with love. I saw it through to as far as I had it within my control. I stuck with it until the bitter end. And I take solace in that. 

Perhaps that’s the other reason I let situations get so laughably bad before I do anything about it: so I can look back on the wreckage and say that I did what I could, for as long as I could, to hold the walls together.

But that’s the balance I’m hoping to create in 2021: to know how long to ride the train, when to devote myself to the journey and when to step off the train before it goes completely off the rails — and to understand I can’t will anything to stay on its tracks.

I can find solace on the station platform, too.

—

—

The energy is different with Hecate absent.

They had been a good leader of the coop — ruling the literal roost — and it had stopped being my pantheon of Greek goddesses and had become Hecate and Their Hens. But now, the remainder of my goddesses flock in a different way. And I approach them in a different way. I see them like they’re baby chicks again, and I’m back to being their mom. The energy is different. And I feel bad saying that the energy is better.

This is a new chapter, for all of us. We are both a little tender with these new changes. Things that filled spaces — no matter what energy it brought with it — are gone and we feel those holes. But I see Athena taking on the role of leader. I’m watching Calliope blossom when before she was content to the corners. Tyche continues to be my baby and Demeter has grown into herself. We are maturing, we are evolving. 

We are learning to close one chapter and start up another, on these new sets of train tracks.

Hindsight

When the woman who had been my grandmother for the last decade died, I went to the ocean.

It wasn’t planned. I just knew I needed a drive. And I drove. I wove through backroads like I have countless times before, when my soul would be stirring and the only remedy was making the scenery move. I had mindlessly headed east until I was just a few towns from the Atlantic — and I decided to keep going. I found a parking spot, I walked the beach, I took in the air and the waves and the rocks.

It was exactly what I did on the day my father died.

I didn’t mean for the parallel to happen, but it did. Which, in many ways, runs parallel with a lot of the events in my life. These constant overlaps occur, like the writers’ room had decided my show should be full of flashbacks and callbacks, that the richness of the show will come in similar scenarios with slightly different details.

If I detach my own feelings from the situation, I see the texture to it. It is a remarkable work of art, even if the brush strokes feel uneven.

—

—

“Hindsight is 2020!”

I remember people making that joke at the beginning of the year. But I remember it the same way someone remembers their high school days — with hazy distance, like it happened in another life.

The beginning of the year. Sometimes I have to map out 2020, really categorize and compartmentalize. It feels like a meeting of all the different versions of me — the optimistic teacher at the height of her career; the home improvement expert at the beginning of lockdown, who painted her basement and overhauled her lawn and started a vegetable garden and raised chickens; the adventuring hiker who devoted her summer to the toughest trails; the hysterical and yet hopeful damsel that the fall’s events created…

…and then present-day day me. The current sum of the other parts. Or perhaps sum is the wrong word. It’s not simple addition. Things have been subtracted and multiplied. She is the current function of X, subject to change in this wildly complicated math.

I like this version of her. I like that I can continue to like the present version of me, even if I am constantly looking back on who I was — even who I was just a few months ago — and shaking my head like a parent watching their toddler (my sweet summer child. At some point you’ll grow up).

—

—

Hindsight is 2020.

If nothing else, 2020 felt like the season finale on the last five years. The kind where closure is met with character write-offs and plot twists are expected. The kind of year where you look back and stare down the past and see who blinks first.

It has been the kind of finale where, if you hadn’t been paying close attention to the main character, you would think that all of her climactic moments came from left field.

But they didn’t. The main character had it in her the entire time to speak her truth — no, not speak, yell — over FaceTime to someone who should’ve known better. She had it in her to draw lines in the sand and decide what she will and will not put up with. She always had it in her to step forward into new opportunities. And she had it in her to change unhealthy patterns, disrupt them — however late in the game — before they could completely repeat themselves.

Hindsight is 2020. I can’t regret a single thing that the last five years have brought because the last five years have brought me here. What butterfly effect would unravel if one thing had been done differently, even the things that make me look back and shake my head like a parent looking at their rebellious teenager (oh my sweet summer child; you think you’re acting in your best interests)?

There has been vivid and surreal and eerie parallels throughout the year — throughout the last five years. Intricate brush strokes that make me believe something bigger is at play. And even if not: what a rare gem I found — that random chance and paint splatters have made something so layered and exquisite.

—

—

A few old songs play as I drive through the night, getting from my house to my best friend’s house, one of the few faces I see during this pandemic.

Because of course. Sometimes the parallels are in reruns of songs when your headspace seems to mimic the same. But these parallels and reruns are not a bad thing, in the end. They are a chance to read over the notes one more time, correct the grammatical errors and see what wording you want to change. It’s a chance to go over trodden ground and become more prepared for it. It’s the map to territories that I both have and haven’t been to yet. There’s a saying that lessons will keep popping up in your life until you learn them. Whether that is divine fate or human folly, I can’t be the deciding vote. But I do know there’s something to be said about returning to the woods until you know how to navigate them, until you can find your way without tripping over roots and backing into brambles.

In some ways, this time of year always seems to run parallel with each other. The holidays have had a bittersweet ring to them for the last six years, and there always seems to be new reason to feel the sharp edges of the Christmas lights.

But these old songs are hitting the ears in new ways. They don’t strike at me the way they used to. Which, in many ways, validates the existence of all these parallels. It is in the similar landscapes that you can see how different the important things are. It is a chance to look back and have hindsight and then see what the present moment is for you with sharp, clear vision.

Indian Summer

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It’s an Indian Summer, as the saying goes. Or used to go. It’s another term that strikes sour with time and understanding. It ages itself out and is left to its own devices alone.

But, just days after there was snow on the ground, when the chill wove its way through the weavings of my thickest jeans, the weather shot up. Nothing can be predicted in 2020, aside from the fact that nothing is predictable.

It is in this warm weather that I pick up another bag of chicken feed. Fifty pounds, the bag is, and I can’t help but notice how easy it is for me to grab it from the back of my hatchback, to heft it up and over my shoulder. 

I can’t help but think of the person I was a decade ago, who struggled with a bag of cat food that was half the weight. Back in the day, where I’ll look at pictures from that time and wonder how my arms didn’t just snap in half.

I’m considerably stronger than I was back then, and it presents itself in small and big ways. There’s a metaphor there. I know it.

—

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— 

I don’t like this time of year. Sunlight is replaced with weight.

Perhaps it’s the holiday season, which is ubiquitously a bittersweet feeling. Perhaps it’s because I still hear the echoes and feel the ripples of the past seasons: when my father’s health really started spiraling out. When I felt set adrift. When heartbreak painted the night sky more than the Chicago skyline itself. This seems to be the perfect time of year for bad news.

I had tried leaning into the holiday cheer. I had tried shunning it. And really all I’ve found that works is that nothing works. 

And that in it itself is a solution. There is no solution, so the only next step is to stand where you are and stay present.

—-

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—

There has to be another name for the phenomenon of the warm weather in autumn, or the summer air after first frost.

Old Wives Summer is an old, problematic phrase from Europe. And there’s St Martin’s Summer, from the same area of the globe. There’s a slew of words from Slavic languages that translate poorly into English.

Nothing that has really stuck in America. The closest shift I’ve seen is the shrug of shoulders as it’s said. The acknowledgement that it’s an outdated term. 

“It used to be called Indian Summer, but that doesn’t seem right to use anymore.” 

The gap between old and new terminology is the term itself, for now. Because sometimes there’s just nothing to replace it, and an uncomfortable emptiness remains instead.

—

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—

“Meanwhile you could bench press a truck…” my friend jokes as we FaceTime. Yet another friend who had checked in, offered a listening ear. Knew my face had been sodden and soaked recently and offered a digital drink in return. But the conversation is on a slew of other different things, and somehow the topic of my strength has come up.

I remind myself of all these incredible people I have in my life. The friends that check in. The community I have found. Communities. Recalling one of the last times I hung out in a group, before the pandemic hit, when the friend who had arranged the get-together put their hand on my shoulder and told me that the energy shifts when I come in, that the group asks where I am when I’m not there. Sometimes I have a hard time believing that my presence is registered in such a way, is actually cherished that much. That my company is something to be consistently sought after.

“Believe it or not, I can barely do a pull up from a dead hang,” I admit on FaceTime. “And my pushups absolutely suck.”

“I don’t believe that one bit. I don’t.”

“Don’t make me prop up my phone and show you.”

I am stronger. Considerably stronger. I’ve donated clothing that no longer fits, clothing where my muscles strained against the seams like a lion desperate for a bigger cage. But it’s deceptive. I can flip upside down and do tricks, but so many of the things people assume I can do, I can’t. 

In a twist of irony, I can do all the complicated things that require such strength. But I falter in the most basic of actions.

(There’s a metaphor there; I know it.)

—

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—

The leaves blowing off the trees are dancing above the highway, creating a confetti gateway for the cars to drive through. It is a majestic sight, even though it’s a harbinger for the impending winter. There’s a metaphor there; I know it.

The frost is returning. The temperature’s dropped. I can feel something start to freeze up where it was once lush with warmth.

Everything has a heaviness to it, right now. There’s a weight on the days, the hours — a weight on my soul, and I can’t exactly put my finger on how or why it is, or if I could remove it, or if I even knew how. I feel like those leaves, caught in the wind’s dance, wondering how long until I find ground again.

There’s a heaviness to it all. But it’s okay. I’m a lot stronger than I used to be.

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Heartbeat

“Notice your heartbeat,” I tell my students. “Without trying to predict anything, can you notice what happens when you breathe in… and breathe out?”

It’s one of the tricks I use in my yoga therapy groups — the only classes I currently teach. Ironically, a hospital setting is the potentially the safest place for me to be during this pandemic.

Notice something in the body. Notice if it changes when you take a breath. But don’t try to predict the outcome. Just breathe. Breathe, and notice.

I invite my students to place their hands on their heart — not with palms together, like in a standard yoga class — but with palms directly over their heart. Another trick I picked up along the way — one I gleaned in the middle of a class with a trusted teacher, years and years ago, when my life was falling apart. And I remember placing my hands on my heart like I was keeping it from bursting out of my chest.

—

2020 has found little and big ways to take away more than it gives.

“Yes, there is no more joy anymore,” my husband says, when I mumble into his chest that I feel like all the joy has been stripped. “There are no more mozzarella sticks in the world.”

“None. They’re all gone,” I mumble.

“And hot showers don’t exist anymore.”

“Nope. Only cold showers from here on out.”

“And there are no more cats.”

“None. All the cats are gone.”

I remember learning a trick from a content creator, about how to combat catastrophizing. You play poker with your anxiety, you see whatever it is offering and you raise it. Feel like you have no friends? Well you’ve never met a real human in real life! They’re all lizard people! You just up the stakes until it is so ridiculous, so silly, that you have no choice but to laugh. And it is in that laughter where you know there’s hope. Hope that you’re going to be okay.

So you pet the cats (who have all, coincidentally, congregated into the room), you order the mozzarella sticks. You turn on your shower and crank it to the highest setting. You step in and feel the sweet heat against your skin and you cry your eyes out.

—

“Feel your heartbeat. It doesn’t matter if it’s fast or slow right now, quiet or loud. Just notice. This is your heart trying to do its best to help out your mind and body.”

I’m not that verbose with my students in the in-patient and out-patient programs. I keep it simple with them. Keep the waxing yogic to a minimum. Because that’s not what they need. They need the basics: notice your heartbeat. Take a breathe. Try to notice without predicting the outcome.

I save the longer prose for classes in a less medical setting. And I’ve taught a few in the aftermath of the pandemic lockdown: a longtime corporate client wanted to do a handful of classes online. I was happy to oblige.

Your heart, your breath, your systems’ responses. They’re all just trying their best to help you out with the current set of circumstances. It’s nothing more than a miraculously complex set of programs trying to keep things going.

“Can you just notice, without putting a value judgement on it?”

—

Hot showers remedy a lot. For a week, we didn’t even have the option of one. Our well pump died for the third time and the journey to get it repaired or replaced was Kafkaesque in its absurdity. And when the well pump was replaced, the showerhead in the main bathroom rusted off.

Because it’s 2020, and 2020 takes more than it gives.

But, at least, this has been fixed. Water runs freely in the house again. Pipes aren’t rattling in protest anymore. Water is potable again, after being too chlorinated to even wash clothing with. Sediment that build up in faucets thanks to the broken pump have been cleared out.

I plunge my face into the water. I run my hands through my hair. I remind myself that I’d rather live vulnerably than play it safe. That I’d rather have skin that is sensitive to the heat than calloused over. That it’s important to have faith in the timing of all things, even when the timing feels absolutely rotten.

I place one hand on my heart. It feels like it’s about to burst out.

—

“Without trying to predict what will happen, can you notice what happens when you breathe in… and breathe out.”

One of the things I’m trying to do when I teach is to get people to notice — notice without trying to assume they know what they will be experiencing. Notice without anticipation. In some ways, it is practicing neutral observation. Noticing, without putting a value judgment on it.

It’s also practicing being in the present moment. Noticing, genuinely noticing, for that one breath — that’s one breath where you didn’t try to predict the future, worry, anticipate, focus on the past. And if it comes rushing back immediately after that one breath, then at least we got that one-breath reprieve.

Another thing I try to tell my students. If we can give ourselves just that one moment, then that’s infinitely more moments than we would’ve had otherwise.

(And while I don’t say it to them, the second part is: sometimes one moment is all we are going to get.)

—

The world is dark earlier today than it was yesterday. The chickens are already roosting by the time I come out with food. My foolhardy hope that Persephone would make a triumphant return has proven fruitless.

I have shifted towards making my peace with that, but I don’t regret the hope. Dashed hope is its own personal hell, but hope in the meanwhile at least promises heaven. And in 2020, perhaps that’s the best you can do, and the best you will get.

My hair is still wet from the shower. My face won’t stop being damp for a while. I remind myself it’s just my body trying its best to help out. My miraculously complex programs trying to sort out something more complicated than themselves.

I’ll make my peace with it… eventually. Much like I’ll continue to remember to have faith in the timing in all things, to have faith in whatever trolley tracks I’m on. To trust when all I want to do is assume it’s random chance and chaos.

My skin is still radiating heat from my shower. Even with the set sun, the world doesn’t feel that cold right now. I take that moment, linger outside a little longer.

I place one hand on my heart. I feel it. I notice its beat.

And without trying to predict the outcome, without trying to figure out what comes next, I breathe in… and breathe out.

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Inevitable

A fox came into our yard last week.

Last week, while the chickens were ranging freely, while I was blissfully indoors and pretending like that was adequate supervision.

I didn’t even know anything was wrong until I came out to a pile of scattered feathers and not a chicken in sight.

Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.

Three of the six are corralled. Athena, Calliope, and Hecate the rooster. I call out for the rest. The high pitched call that used to give me a welcome wagon is met with silence. The dread is creeping in. I’m doing everything I can to not succumb to the panic bubbling beneath my skin.

Neighbors see our search. One comes out to tell us about the fox, the chase it was giving my girls. My husband and I spread out into the woods. Another neighbor finds a fourth — Demeter — and herds her to our property.

We keeping searching for the last two — Tyche and Persephone — but to no avail. We decide to lock up the coop but keep the run open with food. Later that night, my goddess of fortune finds her way back and I break down with relief.

But Persephone is no where to be found. My pantheon stays a bit emptier than before.

I try to lean on the poetic irony. Of all the chickens and their namesakes, it’s Persephone who might’ve been kidnapped and dragged to the underworld. It does nothing to alleviate things. I’m my own version of Demeter, just wanting her daughter back.

—

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—

I knew the risks. Our last chickens were attacked and eaten, right in the coop. I knew letting my Greek goddesses out to range increased those risks.

I knew the inevitability of it all, the likelihood of loss — but I thought I had more time.

I have to smirk to myself when I think that. Didn’t I say something along those lines just a month ago?

For a life with so many twists and turns, the lines are shockingly parallel sometimes.

—

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—

We do what we can. We search the woods the next morning. We both do our own little acts of superstition. I pray to St. Christopher even though I’m not Catholic. I pray to the Lady of Light. We leave the porch light on at night. Every rustle in the leaves is met with my high-pitched call (and every time the rustle does not result in return, I’m reminded that dashed hope is its own personal hell).

I go out that night and open the coop door and stroke the feathers of the remaining flock, telling them that Persephone is still missing but we are still looking.

My husband catches me doing that, asks if I was letting them know why their sister isn’t around. The weight of it all catches up with me and I collapse under it.

—

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—

I knew when I signed on how inevitable certain things would be. But witnessing them come to fruition creates a moment of doubt. Was it smart, placing so much emotional investment in something so delicate? I stopped having mice and other small mammals for pets because I couldn’t take how short their lifespans were.

(But — oh — to this day I’ll talk about Fievel’s bravery, the snuggly nature of Dezzy, how Annabelle would shake her cage for attention and fearlessly approach the cats.)

Maybe. Maybe it’s not smart, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful. I find I keep coming back to a lyric in a song — I’m a lucky man to count on both hands the ones I love — and all the parallel lines in my life are making a staff for the song’s notes to land on.

How lucky was I, to have that little ball of floof, to fret over the temperature of her cage, if she was too hot or too cold. To cry big, pendulous tears when I realized they’d all lose their beautiful face markings, when it was their last morning in the house and snuggled in my lap one more time — to feel that gentle heartbreak when they got older and needed to rest less and the lap snuggles in the run became shortlived.

How lucky was I to be able to give out that kind of love — to love like the world isn’t tenuous and perilous, like it isn’t filled with metaphorical and literal foxes waiting in the woods.

Grief is the price we pay for love. It’s a saying that borders on the cliched, but it’s cliched only because it’s true. Some use it to focus on the negative, the warning that sorrow is an inevitability. To be vulnerable is to leave yourself vulnerable. For some it’s akin to, “abandon all hope, yee who enter.”

But I see it a different way. To love — and to love with abandon, to sink your soul into the wellbeing of another creature on this planet — is to tap into what life is about. To love others is to love life and life is a full spectrum of experiences. The sheer fact that all things, including and especially life, are temporary, means that grief is, in fact, an inevitability. The cost of admission into life — to really live it, not simply sleepwalk through it — is to accept that. To love is to embrace life and all the beauty it can temporarily contain.

Even through my tears I know I’m one of the lucky ones.

—

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—

The one upshot is I’m no longer on the fence about whether or not I’m keeping Hecate.

Hecate — the goddess who witnessed Persephone’s kidnapping and went in search of her. The goddess of ghosts and necromancy. The hen who turned out to be a rooster, whose crowing has had me up at the witching hour, repeating to myself that I can’t keep this up much longer.

But in the wake of losing Persephone, it’s a no brainer. I adore this little rooster, with its sweet disposition, with its easy access to my heart. A rooster I once nicknamed Phantom because their face markings covered one side of their face like a mask.

I lost one. I refuse to give up another.

Keeping Hecate will make things complicated. I will have to keep worrying about the crowing, the neighbors complaining. Fertilized eggs. Waking up to the noise and knowing I won’t get back to sleep anytime soon.

But it’s the cost of admission. If there is one thing my soul will always be adamant about, it is that I will never — ever — try to simplify my life at the cost of cutting out love. If anything, my soul will always tug me — and tug me harder than my heart ever could — in the direction of love, come hell or high water.

It’s inevitable.

Ephemeral

I’m greeting the fall with insomnia.

This is a common occurrence. The seasons change, and I mark it with pock-marked sleep. It’s a ritual between nature and my nervous system, my circadian rhythm a secret Druid.

I don’t worry about it too much. Sleep and I have always had a tenuous relationship. It is the outdoor cat that I’ve learned to let wander away when it must — and I’ve learned that chasing after it only sends it further into the woods and causes my legs to get scratched up by the thicket.

It comes in different flavors. The bedtimes that require their own rituals of trickery, because a switch is somehow not being flipped. Or the witching hours that require my company, spending 3 or 4 a.m. outside of the dream world.

Maybe the ritual is more like a sacrifice. Appease the pagan gods with something other than goats or virgins.

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—

Fall always feels like a fever breaking. The mania of the summer subsides. The drive to wake up at 3 a.m. for a hike is — in a fit of ironic timing — gone. My solar-powered batteries are a little less charged.

The world has shifted. It simultaneously feels like it is and isn’t in a state of superposition anymore — and I laugh at that bit of irony, too. I completed a hiking challenge when I thought my entire hiking season was on pause due to the pandemic. I’ve even returned back to (some) work — getting my wish to completely transition to trauma-informed yoga in monkey’s paw fashion. The lockdown-driven hysteria to learn all the recipes and do all the home improvement projects has subsided. The cooldown collides with my lost motivation to scan the transformed garden beds for weeds.

I’ve been feeling the space that a year of clearing out has created. It’s been a bit of a monkey’s paw wish there, too, at least in the beginning — what is the worst possible way to sort out what is good for your soul and what has been chipping away at it, and experience that on multiple occasions with multiple situations. But a violent sweep is still a sweep, and the broom still picks up what was on the floor. And I’m reassured knowing that the space I feel isn’t an empty room in the slightest; that I was simply making the needed accommodations for the things that were meant to come into my life.

(But it’s okay — perfectly, perfectly okay — to stand outside the room and sigh wearily into the wind and remind yourself, “you can love someone — you can love multiple people — deeply, and still recognize there is no place for them in your life anymore.”)

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The irony is not lost on me that the only days I am not hearing 3 a.m.’s Siren call is when I want to wake up early for a hike.

I’m leaving later, no longer trying to beat out the raging heat, the swarm of tourists. Perhaps no longer trying to drain out batteries that always seem at risk of overcharging.

Hiking is a fascinating endeavor. For a hobby so beloved, it creates such discomfort and frustration and curse words mumbled under your breath. I find myself sometimes wondering why I’m doing it in the first place — a question asked the loudest during the most difficult sections of a hike.

Why am I doing these hikes when so often I’m in discomfort? What is the part that makes me feel it’s all worth it?

The summit? The views? The feeling of accomplishment? The forced focus on the present moment? The catharsis? The feeling like the woods are taking in what I’m radiating out?

That’s there, but there’s a different moment, a moment that carries more weight these days: it’s the moment I check the map, my GPS, when I read the topography and realize the worst is behind me. That I might still have a way to go until I hit the summit, but the hardest parts have already been accomplished.

And, perhaps in this stage in my life, that holds something in my soul way more than the rolling hills and majestic ranges in the distance: to be reminded through the trail that difficulties are temporary.

It’s all so temporary. So tragically, beautifully, delicately fleeting. The summit, the breeze, the ache. The good, the bad. The cherished and the disdained. The things that you sweep out of your life and the things that come into it in its place. The seasons and the shifts and the things you hold to the point of clinging to them.

Perhaps that’s why my body greets the new season with insomnia. As if my body knows just how ephemeral it all is and refuses to experience any of it with its eyes closed.

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Hope & Time

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Time is not a constant entity. This much, even a lay person knows (a child can recite E = MC2, even if they don’t exactly know what it means). It’s affected by gravity — time at sea level moves a little slower than time in the stratosphere.

I’ve been feeling how relative time is — what amorphous shape it takes without the daily routines to anchor it.

Without the gravitational forces of appointments, meetings, place to be, classes to teach, people to see — without these things to orbit around, it becomes something that can’t be pinned down by labels. Yes, it is a Thursday. Yes, it is three o’clock. But only in theory. Only on paper.

It is only in the subtle shifts in my internal clock, my circadian rhythm suddenly out of sync with when stores close — how can it already be 8 pm? The sun is still out! — that I realize I had slid away from the short, cold days of winter.

Just like that, I stumble into the longest days of the year: days I longed for like a deserted lover during the depths of January. I stumble into it, the same way a monogamous lover stumbles upon a cheating partner: with a dawning realization the world has been different for way longer than you’ve been aware of it.

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I stumbled in month 3 of lockdown. I still remember the hysterical to-do lists I would make in March, desperate to keep my mind on something other than the death knoll of my career, the aching dread, the fear, the tears, the loneliness — crossing off items with glee, writing in items just to cross them off, as if to prove my productivity even when I’m out of work. I anchored myself with house projects, orbiting them like a sun into a black hole, getting faster with each rotation. And — like that — every project I had once sighed over, waxing sentimental about how I’d someday do it, was completed. Gardens weeded. Overgrown areas outright leveled. Walls primed and painted. Items organized.

And — like that — it’s month 3. The baseline has been raised accordingly. Going to the grocery store isn’t an emotional ordeal anymore. I’m even swinging by for “just a few things” again — with my mask on, walking past the barricade set up in case the store is at capacity and I have to wait in line. In this tiny town, I thankfully never do. And the cheerful voice actor lady reminding people over the intercom to follow CDC guidelines the same way she used to remind people about a sale on sodas has stopped feeling so gut-wrenchingly apocalyptic.

It’s month 3. Just like that. I have found my own routine. I tend to my garden. Tend to my baby chickens. I release a short story collection and dive into its preparation. I’m even back at hiking. Back in the mountains, a place that provides unrelenting catharsis and solace. I’m planning out hikes — harder, intricate hikes — that maybe, just maybe, I can do later in the summer, if a second wave doesn’t hit, if officials continue to give hikers the cautious green light forward.

I’m doing my best not to lose my own shape in this new concept of time. In a span of mere weeks, I had received confirmation that I might be out of work until 2021. Maybe forever. Four clients are canceling all wellness activities for the rest of the year. One client — the last one to continue classes in an online setting — has dropped the number of classes to one.

In some ways, it is a relief. What made March and April so tough was not the paralyzing uncertainty, but the hope. Hope is the ultimate double-edged sword. The nuclear power that can both provide electricity to the city and level it to the ground. It’s why I see Dante’s sign above Hell — abandon all hope, ye who enter — not as a threat, but as advice. The same way the pit in The Dark Knight Rises gives the illusion of escape. Dashed hope is its own personal hell: holding out, believing that there will be redemption, that things will come around, all the while fearful that you will be disappointed, you get will hurt.

The destruction of hope is a type of redemption. Confirmation of your fears means they don’t exist in the ether anymore. They are forced into this three-dimensional reality, where their powers are finite. Now you know there is not going to be an 11th-hour redemption, that things will not get better, that people will not change. Now you know, and now it’s just a matter of what you are going to do with that information.

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The beauty, though, is the loss of hope is not as paralyzing as uncertainty. I have no hope for my country, but I still fight viciously for end of systemic racism, for the accountability of police officers and the complete dismantling of the law enforcement system as we currently have it (I have already learned that you can’t tip-toe around the flowers, hoping to weed out only the bad things. Sometimes reclamation is violent).

I have no hope for my career, and yet I devote myself to my animals, to the land, to the sources of love in my life. A wonderful and supportive husband. Soul sisters to unload with. The mountains, with their absorbent quality, always taking in what I’m radiating out, even if what I’m radiating is exhaustion and disdain for the trail.

I joke I’m on sabbatical to write my next novel. And maybe I will. I’m slowly refocusing my efforts back to my first love: writing. I’m willing to try for the agency search again — even sending out a few queries, which feel not unlike sending a love letter to a black hole. I’m willing to edit the two manuscripts waiting in the wings — maybe even publish one of my them, myself, even though I keep swearing I’m done with indie publishing. The response to my short story collection has been overwhelmingly positive and it gives me — oh, dare I say it? — hope.

Maybe hope is the wrong word. Hope can be dashed. Energy. Energy is a better word. Hope can be taken away from you. But energy can be used. Utilized. Energy has its equivalency in mass. And in these longer, summer days, maybe it’s time for me to move at the speed of light.

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Impermanence

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“This will make a good blog post, at least,” my husband offers.

“I can’t think like that. That’s a great way to guarantee I don’t write anything,” I say.

It’s a dumb thing to be upset over. But I am. We both are. Upset and frustrated and disheartened. The server we had been playing a video game on — building a world on — had crashed, and multiple days worth of work was erased in an instant. The paintings my character found while exploring a dungeon were gone. The tunnel we built connecting one side of the pyramid to the other — erased. The big baddie we had just defeated, unlocking a new level to the game — it was like it never happened.

“I swear to God if I start crying over a video game…” I say, choking back tears over my coffee as my husband tries what he can to find a backup, somewhere, anywhere. There’s none to be found, and all that can be done is to put a system in place so such a crash can’t happen a second time.

I had returned to video games just a few weeks before — precisely, the day after the storm, when my heart hurt too much to do anything else. To cheer me up, my husband installed the game on my computer and we started adventuring through the world, and the meditative clink clink clink as our characters pick-axed the raw materials was exactly what I needed.

(“I swear to God if I start crying over this yet again…” I say, the tears violently coming forth in the days, the weeks, following the storm. My husband listens, dries my tears.)

But this isn’t like the storm. This is just some digital world we created in a video game. It’s pixels on a screen. And it feels silly to feel this way. And, because of the silliness, the feelings only backlog.

Thirty minutes later, I’m asking for a prayer request during digital church service for my grandmother-in-law, for her situation and for my mother-in-law and aunts-in-law for their emotional undertaking in caring for her, for the dire prognosis, the hospice care. For the first time since we got the call about her fall, her situation, I start crying about it.

There’s a world of difference between acknowledging an inevitable outcome and actually processing it.

Later that morning, I try to get ready for a bike ride. Instead, I come back to the living room and start typing away.

“I guess I am writing a blog post about it,” I say, wryly.

“You are? What a shock!” my husband jibes, and starts rubbing my back. I start crying again.

—

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—

“This is a practice in embracing impermanence,” I had said, about the video game. But life in general has been a practice in that. My career was at its peak when the lockdown hit. All that hard work over the last nearly-7 years was gone in an instant. My day-to-day life vanished. Simple pleasures — making dinner and watching TV with close friend, going out for drinks with like-minded pals — all disappeared. And just as I felt I had my footing with this new normal, the storm pulled the rug out from under me, and I was left wondering what could’ve been done differently, if I had said all that I needed to say — and wondering if tying up all my loose ends had ended up creating a noose instead.

And before I could recover from that, we got the call about the woman I have considered my grandmother for the last 14 years.

This is a practice in embracing impermanence. Pain is inevitable, suffering is an option. Suffering is attaching yourself to impermanent things, demanding that they’d always be there. Rudimentary buddhism, boiled down to insultingly simplified bits.

I still teach, as this lockdown extends. Two classes, taught digitally. They’re different classes. By their very nature, they’re going to be different. I can’t read the room and adjust the class accordingly. My #1 skill as a teacher is rendered moot and mute. But the tone itself is different. My classes were always taught in a trauma-sensitive manner, but now they’re outright trauma-informed. I’m teaching to people stuck at home in the midst of a pandemic. We are all traumatized. My biggest focus is to get my students to find some level of surrender, even if it’s just for one breath, one moment where they can be present, without trying to grab the reins of the future.

Surrender. If there is one thing needed to navigate this life in relatively one piece, it’s the surrender to the impermanence of it all. Surrender, but know that you’ll feel the phantom limb pains — of all shapes and sizes and levels of severity — for a while. The more something was in your life, the bigger the limb and the more you’ll feel it when it’s gone.

Surrender, but know that sometimes surrender occurs in the space of one breath. One singular moment where you haven’t attached yourself to the things that you had wished were more permanent. You haven’t attached yourself to specific outcomes to situations.

As they say in Al-Anon, forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.

—

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—

I finally get my bike ride in. My little beach comber. I’m slowly getting used to navigating the hills of my neighborhood on it. A few days after the storm, I had installed the bell on the handlebars. A simple bicycle bell, given to me as a Christmas present from the eye of that storm. An inside joke. Our collective, shared experience, shared connection. The irony of installing it now. But what else would I do? Throw it out? Deny all the positive memories simply because the person betrayed me in the end?

Tossing out the good memories because the ending was sad is not unlike devaluing an object, an experience, a person, a place, simply because it ended up having an expiration date. Surrendering to impermanence doesn’t mean discounting or discrediting them. It means staying present, being honest with the situation. I once heard a quote that went, “Hold everything with an open palm to God, so when it’s time for it to be given back, God doesn’t have to take it from you.”

I ring the bell a few times on my ride, just because. It fits this Orwellian/Rockwellian tableau. The sound is sweet and sad and makes my heart ache profoundly. I still feel the phantom limb pain, the weight where that object was once in my hand, the uncomfortable lightness of my palms now.

Things will be lost. I will be sad. But I will surrender to what is. I will embrace impermanence.

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The Secret to a Happy Marriage

This is a story from the short story collection The Secret to a Happy Marriage, which I am releasing today first as a free ebook, leading up to its paperback release. If you enjoy the short story, I only ask that you help me get my little ebook to the #1 spot on Amazon’s unpaid Kindle list by downloading the ebook.

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The view from the top almost made it worthwhile.

Both Rachel and Fred were exhausted. The humidity had hit oppressive levels and there had been no breeze going through the forest on the way up. The bug spray hadn’t worked and Rachel could already feel two mosquito bites forming on her arms. And even when Fred was quiet, Rachel swore she could still hear him grumbling — hear him complaining about having to do something like a hike, even though this was how they had met five years earlier — and this is what they did together until it stopped, until a lot of things stopped.

But the view from the top was spectacular. Rachel felt like she was in a storybook, as the trail transformed from dense woods into the rock summit, as it all cleared out and the entire mountain range opened up before them.

Rachel turned to Fred, exclaiming, “See? Remember how this felt?” In return, Fred motioned towards something further down the slab — his way of telling her that there were people around, that it wasn’t time to divulge in such things.

Rachel turned back around and followed Fred’s gaze over to an elderly couple, sitting by one of the ledges, their backpacks and walking sticks behind them.

“Come on down, the water is fine!” the man yelled over his shoulder. The woman looked back and smiled broadly.

Rachel walked closer and stared out at the vista before her. To the right was the edge of a mountain range as it sloped into the valley, the road cutting through it just a little white line at this height. She glanced over to see the old man still looking her way. The old woman looked at her husband, stood up, and stepped closer to Rachel.

“So, where are you guys from!” asked the woman, wiping her hands briskly against her pants.

“Oh, from here, actually,” said Rachel.

“Actually, we’re an hour out,” Fred piped in. “We live in Tacoma.”

Rachel bit her lower lip and kept her eyes on the mountains.

“Oh, well I’d consider that from around here!” said the woman. “My husband and I, we’re from California, but our daughter lives in Seattle. And so we try to make use of the mountains every chance we get! It’s important to do things like hike. Gotta stay active. That’s one thing you’ll learn as you get older: you only have your health. That, and, of course, each other.”

The woman beamed a large smile at her husband, who nodded his head to one side in response. He eventually stood up, but continued facing the view in front of him.

“My husband and I, we love doing things like this,” the lady continued. “You gotta get out, as they say. Last year we were in Yosemite. Have you ever been?”

“Oh, no, not yet,” Rachel replied. “But I’m hoping to, someday.” She glanced over at Fred and took in a deep breath. He had taken off his pack and was kneeling down to open it.

“Oh, you must! It’s beautiful. The falls? Oh goodness…” the woman said. “But, that’s our thing – we go on adventures together. Just my husband and me – especially now that our daughter is all grown up. All we have is each other. Right?”

The man made a noncommittal grunt in response.

The woman took a step towards her husband and rubbed his arm vigorously. He gave a half smile and a brief glance over before looking back at the mountains.

“We actually just celebrated our 42nd wedding anniversary,” said the woman, still next to her husband, hugging his arm close to her.

“Wow. Well, congratulations,” said Rachel.

“And how long have you two been together?”

Rachel pressed her lips together.

“About five years,” she said.

“Oh, you guys are just starting out!” the woman proclaimed. “Married?”

Rachel bit her lip.

“No.”

“Oh! Well, there’s plenty of time for that!” said the woman. “You want to know the secret to a happy marriage? You gotta get out and do stuff together. Be careful not to work yourself to death! Make sure you do things like these hikes together. And date nights, of course!”

“Definitely. Definitely,” said Rachel, careful with her tone.

“Ah, don’t you think it’s time to head back?” the man asked. “I think you’ve talked this lovely lady’s ear off enough.”

“Oh, you stinker,” said the woman, followed by a hysterical laugh. “Well, we really should get going. It was so lovely meeting you!”

“And you, too,” said Rachel.

The woman turned, picked up her pack, and rubbed her husband’s arm again — a vigorous back-and-forth motion that looked more like she was trying to clean something from his shoulder. The man eyed Rachel and flashed her a smile.

“Well, hopefully we’ll see you on the trails again!” the woman practically shouted.

“Hopefully,” said Rachel, as she watched the couple take the trail back down.

 

—

 

Rachel crouched down where the old couple had been, her forearms on her knees.

“They’ve been together for over 40 years,” she said to Fred, who was seated a stone’s throw from her, eating a candy bar. “And you heard her — the secret is doing stuff together.”

“We do stuff,” Fred muttered.

“No, we don’t,” Rachel replied.

Fred rolled his eyes.

“Whatever,” he said.

Rachel let out a sharp breath. She opened her mouth to say something, but stopped. What use would it be now? She was no longer talking to the man who had captured her heart when she first moved to Washington. The man who made her feel like she could have a fresh start, in love and in life. Who knew who this person was in front of her, in Fred’s clothing, with Fred’s backpack.

She felt like she had been fighting the inevitable for months now. Perhaps they really were doomed. Perhaps it didn’t matter if they went on hikes like they did in the beginning, if she made him repeat all the things they used to do. They could go to all the old restaurants and watch all the old movies… it wasn’t going to reclaim something that had been lost. They weren’t going to relive their magic. They weren’t going to be the couple celebrating their 42nd anniversary and climbing mountains and traveling together. They’ll never be the happy pair telling the younger generation the secrets to a good marriage. And it seemed like Fred was perfectly fine with letting the relationship die. Perhaps she should be, too.

She sighed and opened her pack and pulled out a granola bar. She ate it without tasting anything, watching the expansive world below her.

 

—

 

There was no cell service on the trails, and for that the woman was grateful. It meant she wouldn’t have to hear her husband’s phone go off — the constant dings from his text message alerts, the ones he swore were work-related, but no one at his firm communicated by text.

She had told herself the same thing she did when this happened last year, and the year before that. It’s temporary. It’s a fling. He’ll lose interest. In all the years they’ve been together, he never once left her for a mistress. Not even after their daughter grew up and moved out. Something keeps him in the marriage, and she needs to focus on that.

And he humors her with the hikes and the trips and the dinners out. He could easily be negligent, easily ignore her as he goes about his life. And he does have a busy life. She should focus on that instead of the text messages, the late nights, the sudden business trips…

The woman looked down the trail, at her husband’s back. His clip on the descent was always fast – too fast. She could never keep up, but he refused to slow down. He’d meet her at the trailhead, he would say. She used to hurry to match speeds, but after twisting her ankle a few years back, she stopped trying.

(But, when she twisted her ankle and fell and cried out for him to help, he did stop and turn around and pick her up. He did carry her to the trailhead, even though they still had another mile to go. He looked out for her. And isn’t that what love is — those little moments of devotion, those times when they’ve proved that they weren’t going to leave you stranded alone and in pain?)

(Right?)

—

Author’s note: if you would like to download the ebook for this collection, simply click this link. The ebook will be free for the next few days, but $2.99 after that. It’s truly as simple as click on this link, scrolling PAST the “Read for Free” button (that’s for Amazon’s subscription service) and clicking on the “Buy Now with One Click”, which should be under a lovely $0.00 price tag for the next few days.

Thank you again for helping an indie author out. The cards are kind of stacked against us, so every bit helps.

Transplant

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It’s the day after constant rainfall, and the feeling in the air is damp and morose. It lets you know exactly what the weather had been, and threatens to continue raining at any moment.

“At least the transplants are getting lots of water,” says my husband. I think about all the bushes that had been moved — all the major yard work that had been done, both before and during the pandemic lockdown.

Four major bushes had been transplanted, as were five medium-sized plants. A few wild strawberry and chive plants had been saved in the upheaval. In the raised garden bed, the rain had hit the dirt directly for the first time in almost a decade.

My soul — and the events in my life — are mimicking the weather. I had cried myself raw the day before — and now, the day after, things were damp and morose. My face is blotchy and puffy, my skin covered in hives, my eyes perpetually glistening, letting you know exactly how things had been, with threats to continue at any moment.

And it doesn’t take much to create another downpour. A deep hug from my husband is like low barometric pressure and the sobs come like thunder.

—

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—

The gardens, the front yard, it never felt like my own. They were relics of the previous owners, the happy, overzealous gardeners. The land called for meticulous hands, hands that would spend hours tilling and pruning, knowing which plants flowered and which plants needed to be removed. And because of that, the delicate balance between a controlled garden and chaotic flora was disrupted. The invasive plants took over. The woods that abut our house began encroaching, reaching out with poison ivy like tentacles encircling the ship before pulling it into the sea.

Every year, I’d look out into the mess, the vines wrapping around the porch posts, and want to sort it out. And I’d try: rake out the leaves, pull the poison ivy patches, save the pretty flowers as they bloomed something delicate and bright.

But it was no use. Year after year, this intricate dance only resulted in something that didn’t feel like mine. I felt powerless on my own back porch, my own front yard.

Last summer, I made the switch. I started clearing out the land. Digging up a few flowers, placing them in cleared out flower beds. Transplanting bigger plants into dug up areas that had once been covered with an inch of sod. Ripping up vines until my hands ached and my back was sore. With my husband’s help, we moved some of the bigger bushes to spots in the front garden, the complicated expanse now replaced with simple, patterned plants.

I know some things were lost in the mix. Some flowers didn’t survive the transition. Others were simply dug up because I didn’t have it in me to predict if they’d bloom into beauty or explode into more weeds. A tree that bloomed like lily pads had been cut down. But it had to be done. In the effort to preserve what was beautiful, my world had been taken over and it stopped feeling like my own.

Sometimes you have to mourn what had been and what could’ve been as you destroy what was never good for you.

—

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—

It has to get easier from here. It has to, it has to, it has to.

The world feels surreal, the day after such a storm. There’s a part of me — the part that always wants to keep the peace — that feels guilty for speaking my mind, for pulling no punches after taking it on the chin for so long. It’s the same part of me that tends to drop her arms by her side, drop her guard, right as her opponent is rearing for a knockout. The part that apologizes for daring to have a defense. The part that only feels empty after finally getting it all out.

But another part of me that knows there was no other option. Sometimes you have to dig up the entire ground. Try to preserve what you think is worth preserving and the weeds will overcome you. Sometimes reclaiming what is yours looks like violent upheaval. Sometimes good-bye has to be sharp enough to draw blood.

—

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Lockdown has been extended another month. Even when stay at home orders are lifted, I don’t expect to be back at work until at least September, for some of my jobs. Maybe never for others. This will give me plenty of time to make use of these transplanted changes. To plant sweet vegetables where once I waded through thorns. To pull out weeds before they can take everything over again. To place rocks around the transplanted bushes, appreciating the minimalist look over the complicated garden. To do everything on my terms, and my terms alone.

To piece together what feels ripped apart. To savor what is truly mine. To step forward as myself, once again.

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