Cry January

When are you going to start writing again? This is the question I’ve heard from no less than half a dozen people over the past couple of weeks. Okay, six people is not exactly a mandate (unless you’re Donald Trump) but be careful what you wish for. I’m writing again.

Writing is how I process the world and the first nine days of January have given all of us a lot to digest – and regurgitate. What the absolute fuck? I feel like we’re rats on the Titanic, only the sinking ship is our country. In nine interminable days, we awoke to learn that the U.S had invaded Venezuela, seen a bear eating former(?) heroin addict change the childhood vaccination schedule – and flip the food pyramid on its head. Make Meat Great Again!

And that all pales in comparison to what we saw – over and over and over again – on Wednesday, when Renee Nicole Good – say her name, say her name, say her name – was murdered in cold blood by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. Unless you live in a Fox News bunker, you know the stone-cold facts by now. I don’t need to recount them for you.

And I don’t need to recap the hideous demonization of Good from the right – who are deadly wrong on just about everything. I can rant and rave about them – and God knows, I do – but that doesn’t really make me feel better. This week, I have not recognized myself in my own rage and that is not a good feeling.

I have been comforted by the passionate but peaceful gatherings of heartbroken and bewildered Minnesotans who once again find themselves at ground zero of an unfathomable act of violence against an American citizen. How ironic that George Floyd’s name was recalled so many times on Wednesday, when so many of us felt like we couldn’t breathe as we saw a young woman be shot in the face at point blank range.

We should all be enraged – but living in rage is not sustainable. Trust me on this. We need to do something tangible – and that something is not the same for everyone. Here’s the thing – we all have a voice and there are many ways to use it. I can be bossy (understatement), but I would not begin to tell you what to do. I just know what I need to do today – so I’m writing. And quite selfishly, it makes me feel better to tell you about it.

Even in this black hole of a week, there have been glimpses of hope – the thousands of peaceful protests all over the country, some members of Congress finally growing a pair, and a faint but growing sense that there are more of us than maybe we thought.

These days are hard, my friends, but they are getting shorter.

Damn, I love a good metaphor.

Baby steps

It’s a good thing to have a nag in your life. Disclaimer: I am not referring to my dear wife. No, my nag of late is my friend Mitch. He recently retired after a lengthy and noble career in social work, and he apparently has more time on his hands, particularly for nagging. Lucky me.

I worked with Mitch for several years at an AIDS service organization. He was a case manager, and I was the executive director. So, in theory, I was his boss, but I’m fairly sure I took more orders, okay suggestions, from him than the other way around. That was probably a good thing because Mitch certainly had the harder job.

**Mitch has the kind of face you don’t want to disappoint.**

Case managers are the heart and soul of any social service agency. They are charged with assessing a client’s needs, developing a care plan, connecting them with available services and support systems, and monitoring progress.

One of Mitch’s greatest strengths as a case manager was his persistence. He was a relentless problem solver in the face of regular disappointments from clients. He was an encourager but never a hand holder and he was all about accountability. I always knew he was an excellent case manager, but lately, I feel like one of his clients.

Here’s the thing – I haven’t written anything for my blog since the inauguration in January. I’m fairly certain Mitch is the only one who has noticed that. He has emailed me no less than half a dozen times in the past seven weeks asking when I’m posting something. He started out gently by sending me things other folks had written about organizing and resisting under the new regime. Mitch is a radical left lunatic like me and has always made me feel good about my writing. He also knows that writing is how I process the world.

I wanted to write, and I needed to write, but I felt like a bag of wet laundry mildewing in the corner. I was so immobilized by disappointment and grief that I didn’t even look at my laptop for weeks. Then Mitch started emailing more often and less gently. I replied to one of his emails by thanking him for the needed nudge. He wrote back, “Remember, I was a case manager for a long time – and a big part of the job is to be a professional nag.” That made me smile and open my laptop.

So, here we are. This post is not going to win Blog of the Month, but it’s a start. And it’s a good reminder to check in with your people if you haven’t heard from them in a while. These days are long and chaotic with a pulsing undercurrent of anxiety for all of us alternately dismayed, worried, and terrified about what’s happening in our country.

I feel so thin these days. No, not in an Ozempic way, but like an onion – my emotional reserves have been peeled away day by day. I’ve always cried easily – more often at happy things. I got that from my dad. His mantra was “Only cry in victory, never in defeat.” I thought I was going to need an IV after the Christmas episode of All Creatures Great and Small and I really needed a cuddle with Mrs. Hall. I want to feel safe, but I can’t ever remember feeling so uncertain about my country, and I’ve been trying to channel some of my dad’s eternal optimism that might still be floating around in the ether.

And there have been some small victories of late, well, maybe not political ones but moments to celebrate, nonetheless. My nephew and his wife texted me a video last week. My great-nephew Vann, who recently turned one, had taken his first steps. He was a bit wobbly and unsure as he made his way to a little table in his playroom. And when he turned around to the enthusiastic cheers of his parents, he was the picture of pure unbridled joy.

**Little feet, big steps – Vann celebrates with his daddy**

I’ve watched the video about thirty-seven times and I’m not ashamed to say that I have moisture in the eye area every time. I’ve been wobbling since the election, but I’m taking some unsteady steps to find my way back to joy. You know they say joy is a form of resistance and it certainly sounds a lot better than a bag of wet laundry.

So, I promise I’ll share a better blog soon, but for now, I’m following Vann’s lead and bravely moving forward. Besides, I really need to get my case manager off my back.

Coming home to writing

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Omega is still on my mind. The land, its quietude with its open fields and gravel roads and lukewarm waters will forever be a part of me. I breathe it all in. Its sunlight warming my face, its grass under my bare feet. Its August summer wind. Even though it’s been two weeks since I said goodbye, the feeling I had when I was there is still in me – a calmness, an inner peace – I’m still carrying it. I thought by now the sensation would fade, and maybe it will. Perhaps it will evaporate from me slowly, slip away gradually the way anesthesia wears off after surgery.

I am looking at the world differently now. I am noticing details. The shape of clouds, the chimes on my porch, the sound of my dog crunching on her kibble. Everything seems so rich, colorful, alive, sharp, in focus.

This feeling is familiar to me. But it’s been absent from my life for some time. It was with me in my 20s, when I really plunged into writing. I wrote everywhere. The downtown library, cafes, my bed, under trees. I never left the house without my notebook; I filled handfuls of them. I felt so driven then. The whole world felt alive. There’s that word again “alive.” Everything was a story. I’d narrate the rain, the autumn air on my skin during my morning runs. I lived to write and wrote to live.

During my last year of college, I arranged an independent study with one of my professors, Pamela Gay. We’d meet once a week at her house. She’d make me tea in her kitchen and fix me something to eat. She nicknamed me “Skinnie.” I jokingly, but affectionately, called her “Fattie,” though there wasn’t an ounce of fat on her. We’d sit on her couch or her front porch, and I’d read my work aloud to her. She was teaching me fast fiction, but every time I wrote, prose poems came out of me. I discovered Ginsberg one afternoon wandering through stacks and felt inspired by his work. I revolted against fast fiction. I wanted more story, more character. Every time I read a piece of fast faction it left me wanting more. But Pamela made me stick with it. And I learned their power was in the details and the exactness of words.

My writing was young then. Most of it was about love and broken hearts and relationships. I read it back now and I cringe. I still have my black binder full of my assignments and Pamela’s comments. “I expect to see your writing in print!” she scribbled in pencil on my last assignment. I wonder if she remembers me; I remember her. She had black straight hair, perfectly symmetrical and blunt, hitting the middle of her ear. Her bangs were cut straight across her forehead. The last time I saw her was in a coffee shop in Binghamton before I moved to Ohio. I had just graduated and she told me I wasn’t ready to go to grad school to get my MFA in creative writing. She told me to wait. Write more. Even though I didn’t want to hear it, I knew she was right. I still had some living to do, and my writing needed maturing.

I remember she really liked one of my stories I wrote titled “Toothpick.” It was part fiction/part nonfiction. It was a story about a girl who was skinny and insecure and people commented on her weight a lot. Pamela asked me to read it at her art installation opening, a collection of work about body image; it was called The Fat Project. It was my first time I ever read a piece of my work in front of an audience. My best friend Heather came to support me, eagerly smiling in the wings. I thought for sure I would throw up during my reading. (I didn’t.) Afterwards, a few people came up to me to talk about my piece. I couldn’t believe they listened or let alone waited to talk to me after. Me. Me?! It was the first time a stranger responded to my writing. And it felt damn good. Pamela gave me a platform to share my work. What a gift.

I didn’t realize until now, 15 years later, how influential Pamela was in my writing process. She exposed me to John Updike, Ursula Heigi, Margaret Atwood and one of my favorite books, “Einstein’s Dreams.” I underlined my favorite passages in my reading assignments, and then we’d talk about it together. Why it works, why it’s moving. She taught me about setting, creating an arc in a story, the need for brevity. She made me seek out writing I loved, photo copy it and bring it to her for discussion. She’s the reason why I started carrying a notebook with me to capture overheard dialogue, details, lightning bolt moments of inspiration. “Ideas develop in ways that don’t occur when we keep our ideas silently to ourselves,” she said. I look back on that binder full of my first writings, my thoughts and her thoughts intertwined on the page, and I feel my excitement of self-discovery, like I was unlocking something magical within me.

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Before Omega, I wasn’t writing much. Not like I used to, and definitely not like I was in my 20s. Sometimes there are moments where life is too painful to write. I didn’t have the desire to pick up the pen because I feared I’d write about the thing that was causing me the most pain. But after Omega, I’ve realized that writing is too important to me to let it drift away. Omega left me full – my heart, my mind, my soul. My writing feels different now. Freer. Deeper. I carry my notebook everywhere with me now. Any 10 minutes I can grab at the doctor’s office, waiting to meet a friend, waiting for water to boil, I fill in the spaces between with writing.

Now, when I write, I write furiously, like my pen is on fire. Never lifting off the page. Each time I feel like I’m writing for my life, to save myself, as if my life depended on it. It does depend on it. Writing has come home to me. Or maybe, I’ve come home to writing. We have a new relationship now, cemented by my experience at Omega. I will never write the same again.

Sometimes, my hand cannot keep up with my thoughts; they fill my notebook. I run out of ink. I am all over the page, writing outside the lines, making marks on the paper that I may not be able to decipher weeks from now when I reread my work. And this voice inside my head keeps urging me, “Don’t stop now. Keep going.”

Searching for my true home

A ranch on a gravel road in Clinton, N.Y.

I dreamed of New York last night. I was in Ithaca, where I first went to college, and the first place I lived on my own. In my dream, Andrew and I were living there. I was in grad school. Andrew found a great job. It was summer. The sun was shining, but the air was cool. All I can remember from the dream was the downtown square with its cobblestone streets and lots of sunlight. I woke up at 7:40 a.m., surprised to find myself in our apartment. The dream felt so real. I should have been in Ithaca.

What is home? Is it a place or a state of mind? I’ve been in North Carolina for almost 11 years now, and it still doesn’t feel like home. But this is where my community is, my friends who have become family. This is where friends have laid flowers at my doorstep or brought me homemade chicken soup when I was sick.

The day after I found out I miscarried, two of my dearest friends came by just to be with me. I was on the couch wrapped in a blanket and wearing black stretch pants and a hooded sweatshirt. It was February. I hadn’t showered all day. My eyes were still puffy from crying; they felt scratchy. It was a no contacts kind of day.

Miriam brought me Chinese, pork lo mein. My favorite. She always tries to feed me when I’m depressed. She knows how I reject food when I’m grieving. She sat on the couch next to me and just listened. I don’t remember what she said, but I know that she made me feel better. She knows me in a way that not many do. She sees me straight down to my core. That’s home.

My best friend Addy arrived at my door with a tiny square box tied with a bow and containing truffles. She also brought Kleenex, the rectangular size, with blue and white splatters like an abstract painting. It reminded me of my grandma’s house; she always had the larger, rectangular Kleenex boxes. Addison sat with me for hours. She let me cry. She held my hand. Somehow, she managed to make me laugh.We binged on “Barefoot Contessa” episodes and talked about how Ina needs to be friends with us and invite us over for dinner every night. We took a selfie and sent it to my mom in California to show her I was OK. I was in good hands. That’s home right?

The best of friends will sit with you and your grief and see you through your darkest moments.

Maybe home isn’t a place. Maybe home is people, your village, the ones who lift you up in your darkest moments.

But in New York , when I was there last week, it felt like home to me. I miss it. I miss the feeling I had when I was there. It felt familiar. Being with my sister. Sipping white wine from stemless glasses. Giggling together, crying together. Gina is home.

Every day, I drove from my sister’s house in Albany to the Omega Institute outside of Rhinebeck, N.Y. where I was participating in a week-long writing retreat. I never minded the hour and 15 minute drive. It was peaceful. It gave me time to ease into the morning and space to decompress and digest the day on the way home. It gave me time to ponder and time to observe this beautiful land around me. Every day I crossed the Hudson River twice; it was my favorite part of the ride. The Hudson is breathtaking. It’s wider than most rivers I’ve seen and, damn, the light it’s just magical there. Most of my drive consisted of two-lane rural roads that careened through the countryside of fields and ice cream stands and rivers and golden sunlight and wildflowers and mountains and open roads.

On those drives, I felt a longing that I could not explain. It felt like home to me, even though I didn’t live there. Often during that week, I would catch my throat tightening or my eyes welling up with tears as I drove, taking in the landscape and all its beauty. At first I thought it was a side effect from all the intensive, personal writing I did during the day at my retreat. But this was more like a deep sadness, and I realize now, looking back, that what I was feeling was homesick.

One evening, I got to watch the sun set on my drive home. As I turned off the Taconic Parkway and headed north, the sky revealed a beautiful sunset of orange and pink dotted with clouds in various shades of blue. The Catskills looked like giant blue shadows along the horizon. Their presence was a permanent fixture, grounded and unmovable. Now I understand why so many painters have fallen in love with the Hudson Valley. Its beauty made me weep. Why do I feel such a deep connection to this place?

Somewhere along Route 9 in New York. (Photo by Carla Kucinski)

I’ve been sad since I’ve been back from New York. Tuesday night at the dinner table, I burst into tears. “I miss my sister,” I told Andrew. I choked on each word as it tried to leave my throat. We had just come from looking at a house to buy. We’ve been unsuccessfully house-hunting since July. That night we toured a split-level with green shutters, tan vinyl siding, white columns holding up the front porch. It’s in a great neighborhood — actually, one of the neighborhoods we want to live in. It’s woodsy, quiet.

As I walked to the front door of the house, I saw a dad teaching his son to ride a bike. Images like that still have the power to break me. Inside, the house was beautiful. But way too much house for just the two of us and our dog. It hit me that night as I cried over my ratatouille that we don’t know what the future holds. Even looking for a house makes me sad. As we walk through each new home, I count bedrooms, I imagine where the nursery will be, if the yard is big enough for a child, if it’s in a good school district. And then I think: “What if there’s no baby in the picture?”

Sometimes I feel like I’ll never be pregnant again. The concept feels so out of reach. It feels impossible, deep down in my gut. This feeling has replaced the hope I’ve been carrying all these months. I don’t know where it went. It just slipped away.

“Your true home is in the here and now,” says Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddist teacher. “Your true home is not an abstract idea; it is something you can touch and live in every moment.” He says home is in your body, in your mind, in your present moment. But what if in the present moment all you’re feeling is anxiety and fear and questioning everything? Then what?

Greensboro was supposed to be a temporary stop. I thought I’d be here for three or five years. But then I bought a house, got married and got divorced all in that order. This was 2010. I wanted to leave North Carolina and go anywhere, live anywhere but here. I wanted to run from the present and start a new life. I could have left then, but my heart already endured so much heartbreak and change that the idea of picking up my life and starting over scared me. I didn’t want to say goodbye to my friends; that would have been another loss too difficult to bear. They had become family. Without them, I wouldn’t have survived my divorce.

And then, Andrew came into my life. I fell in love. He reopened my closed heart and showed me how to trust again. He gave me hope. That was 2011. And now it’s almost 2017, and I still feel like I’m straddling a line – one foot in North Carolina and one foot out.

“Don’t think about leaving,” I told myself the morning I was flying back to Greensboro. I usually start crying much sooner before I get to the airport, like in the shower or while putting on my mascara, my lashes damp with tears. Saying goodbye to any of my sisters is never easy. Last time I left, I cried so much that the TSA agent came up to me in line to make sure I was OK.

Gina and I are partners in crime. The magpies, my dad called us. We’re two years apart. She’s the middle child; I’m the baby. As kids she gave me piggy back rides around the house. I was afraid of jumping onto her back for fear she wouldn’t catch me. (I have control issues.) She’d sit on the edge of the bed and let me crawl onto her back, and at the end of the ride, she’d return me to my bed as promised and let me roll off her back like I was falling backwards into a lake. She’s always looking out for me, even though we’re both adults now. I still need looking after.

Last night I came across an old journal entry from 2006. As I read my own words, I could feel my sadness and desperation. I was lost. “What’s my purpose? What am I supposed to be doing? Why am I here?” I laughed as I read the questions aloud. Ten years later, the questions haven’t changed. Will I always be searching? What is this void that I continue to carry and can’t seem to fill? Has this feeling always been there? Maybe the answers are waiting for me in New York.

Gina and me toasting to my last night in New York. The picture is blurry because we were having so much fun.

Rendezvous with grace

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Last night I met a rock star. Well, not in the traditional sense of the term but in my world, a supernova.

I met the author Anne Lamott. She was speaking at Lenoir-Rhyne University as part of their Visiting Writers Series and before the program began, she simply walked out into the audience – no introduction, just started strolling down one of the aisles, shaking hands, signing books and posing for photos.

Anne Lamott. I love this face. Illustration by Jillian Yamaki, The New York Times.

She was in the section reserved for VIP’s but my friend, Lyz, and I broke ranks and slipped in for our close encounter with grace. There I was standing right in front of one of my very favorite authors and I, the clever one with all of the witty retorts, just froze.

Actually, I melted – into a puddle of salt.

Before you write me off as a post-menopausal ninny or worse, a literary stalker, let me give you some context for my emotional tsunami.

I’ve known about Anne Lamott since 1994 when I read her book, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. It’s an amazingly personal book about, well, writing, of course, but so much more. She shares her approach to writing but she also writes about her life – warts and all – in a remarkably honest and often wickedly funny way.

My well-worn copy.

She says, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

I do hope a few of you are squirming nervously now.

No, really, I don’t hold grudges. (Insert Muttley laugh.)

Be kind to your writer friends.

I dreamed about being a writer back then and I was mesmerized with her words. Mesmerized but not motivated to really write. I was in my late 30’s in a long-term relationship and had a loving and supportive family, premium cable and a good job that I liked a lot. I was leading a happy but seriously unexamined life.

In short, I didn’t have much to write about.

Be careful what you wish for.

A decade or so later, after losing my parents and my partner and perhaps a bit of my mind, I returned to Anne Lamott. And there she was – just like a trusted bestie you would share your heart with over coffee at the kitchen table.

Oprah loves Anne, too.

I picked up her book, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, and it was a balm to my scabby soul. I kept that book by my bedside and read it and reread it as I navigated my way back to myself – and to God.

I clung to her nuggets of wisdom like a seagull to a Cheeto. Pearls like this, “Sometimes grace is a ribbon of mountain air that gets in through the cracks.”

And this, “I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kind of things. Also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace’s arrival. But no, it’s clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in the silence, in the dark.”

Yes. I remember reading that passage and thinking that that’s exactly how I was feeling. “Me, too.”

And last night, this was Lamott’s advice to writers – to write what you would like to come upon. Write what is the best medicine for you and maybe through a little grace, someone reads your words and says, “Me, too.”

This was certainly the case for me and her book, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. This book taught me how to pray. Maybe taught is not the right word. This book gave me permission to pray in my own way – my own messy unorthodox way.

Disclaimer: I’m an Episcopalian and we don’t really talk much about praying. That’s why we have the Book of Common Prayer chocked full of liturgy to follow. We don’t go rogue.

This became my book of uncommon prayer.

Lamott writes, “You might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, ‘I hate you, God,’ That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you have had in months.”

I read these words and thought, “Me, too.” And my aching loneliness seemed bearable in that moment.

Her words made me feel heard and there is no possible way to teach that in a writing class.

So when I found myself standing before this dear friend who I had never met but who had been with me through some of my darkest ugly cry hours, I crumbled. It was like having a reiki session in front of 1500 people, only Anne Lamott and I were the only ones in the room.

I really did panic for a moment when I couldn’t get my mouth to form words. She took my hand and I think I managed to gurgle out, “Thank you.” She looked into my eyes and smiled sweetly and held my hand for what felt like a long time. And then I felt my other hand raise and gently touch her cheek.

To her credit, she did not scream for security, she just softly nodded like she knew exactly what I was thinking in that moment.

It was as if she were saying, “Me, too.”

When Addy met Anne.

Bookends

Two writers. One blog.

writing