Ten.Eighty-Six
1. They keep coming into my room to ask me what's for breakfast. I sigh and say that I don't know. I've slept too late to make an apple crisp and so he offers to get bagels.
2. I stay in my pajamas a for a few more hours because it is Sunday and because, maybe, I'm still feeling thick-headed from that night time mucinex.
3. I can breathe through both nostrils.
4. I take my coffee and my journal out to the front stoop and sit in the chair that is still mostly in the shade. I hear the sounds of garage doors going up and down, the steady hum of cars on Wolf's Crossing. There are no clouds in the sky.
5. Out back I watch a tiny yellow butterfly dance from one end of the yard to the other and then back again.
6. "Your job isn’t to know the how, it’s to know the what and to be open to discovering, and receiving, the how."
7. I do a little writing about fear and then cook the bacon for BLTs.
8. I think about all the things I've wanted to do but have been too scared to do. I think about how I can take tiny punches at fear. I think about how much of his practicality and dogged determination I actually do need in order to keep closing the gap between reality and dream.
9. Gougenheim Pinot Noir and roasted chicken.
10. The way the sun is setting behind the clouds today is unreal. You can see the rays beaming out from behind them. There is purple and orange and pink and yellow. It's as if there's a ring of white fire behind the big cloud hanging above the treeline. When we set out to look for a home, not once did I ever think of my sky view. But these sunrises and these sunsets? Forever grateful.
Ten.Eighty-Five
1. Birthday breakfast in Geneva at Buttermilk. Farmhouse potatoes, bacon, scrambled eggs, english muffin, black coffee.
2. I can overhear him talking about his divorce. He's bitter. I can tell because he says he's asked to work less so that he doesn't have to pay his ex so much money. "If she can do it, I can too." This is one of the messy and complicated divorces that involves hearings and many meetings. I am saddened for the little girl. I try to just think about my coffee.
3. But we are happy and I am grateful.
4. I've had to take her to the restroom 2 times and I realize that I am the only black person in the entire building. This is not a new feeling. But today I am very aware of it. White peoples are very rarely the only white peoples in a building. I wonder what it might feel like to not be aware.
5. The weight of otherness.
6. It's hot.
7. So much laundry.
8. We settle on the 2006 Lynch-Bages to accompany his birthday dinner of steak with a blue cheese sauce. There is still quite a bit of dark fruit and leather on the nose, pencil lead and smooth tannins on the palate.
9. I write a newsletter. Tell them 10 things.
10. Water plus tea plus mucinex night time.
Ten.Eighty-Four
1. He's up before me to catch a flight. The baby is beside me. I notice the lengthening of his limbs and how much more surface area his body now requires.
2. I see her bedroom light on at 4:45 AM. No.
3. I start making the blueberry muffins in the dark, grabbing eggs and milk and flour and sugar and butter and blueberries.
4. The big one eats 4 muffins.
5. The radio in my car has been out for months now but I've come to like the silence.
6. I haven't gotten to my writing yet but I also feel the cold coming on. Even though what I want to do is write and make and check things off, I know that all I'll manage is the groceries, making the enchiladas for dinner, and laying down to read.
7. I remember how I said to her last night that every time I set my mind to step into new territories my body revolts. That I always worry that it's a sign that I am headed in the wrong direction. She says, "Or maybe you just need to know that this path you're on is not going to be easy."
8. The arms of the old oaks stretch across overhead like a canopy and as we drive, I watch the leaves float down, down, down. This is my favorite season.
9. It's hot.
10. I am going to the desert after all.
Ten.Eighty-Three
1. "It's really dark," he says.
2. The earth is tilting on its axis and so now the sun rises over the rooftops in southeast corner of the home. I stand on the front stoop with my hands on my waist and watch the colors come. Grays and hot pinks and unnatural shades of orange. I always feel like once I've settled on a point, my world shifts and then everything looks like it's burning.
3. This first week home has been about ease. Everything they've eaten in the mornings has come from a box. I don't feel bad about this.
4. I run to target and buy a package paper—750 sheets—and a white three-ring binder.
5. We meet at my local coffee shop. Iced decaf and a Rice Krispie treat for me, hot cappuccino and apple crumb pie for her. We walk down to the river's edge and sit on the bench underneath the shade.
6. We spill our struggles, spread our encouragement to one another, talk about making a gathering space for women like us who are trying to do work like us. Webtalk about changing the words we use to change our truth.
7. I have to keep refilling the printer with paper. 474 pages.
8. I figure out a way to make her and the desert happen. It's just that the blessing doesn't feel like it's been fully given.
9. We talk for two hours. Usually we can go on for 4, but it's late and I feel a cold coming on. We talk about safe spaces. Where are they, exactly?
10. There is no blessing. There is no her. There is no desert.
Ten.Eighty-Two
1. I am not getting used to this darkness.
2. He coughed all night and so all of us are tired.
3. Warm water with lemon while I make the lunches. 3 lunches and 3 snacks. I try to remember that is my way of loving.
4. I think back to newsletter I wrote last night and how I said that it's all the ways in which we do our living and loving is our art. Making lunches is my art.
5. I yell at them while we're trying to get out the door for school. I had been so proud of myself for having maintained my cool since returning from Squam. Maybe my zen has worn off. But really, why is he rollerblading in the driveway when it's time to go?
6. We talk for two hours about life and our work together. I'm so energized by her. She casts one more line about France before we sign off.
7. Lunch at Turf Room. We drink a glass of Pinot Blanc and sip lobster bisque on the hottest day of September. I commit to dessert—gooey root beer cookies with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream—and coffee because life is short.
8. The heat.
9. Chianti with dinner.
10. In the shower I think of Fever Dreams Collective and orange trees; the lake and the garden and the fountain; the succulents and labyrinth; the women who have already stepped in and the ones we're calling forward. The water isn't hot enough. The three of them took showers tonight, one right after the other.
Ten.Eighty-One
1. I sleep in again, just a little bit. It's so dark.
2. I go downstairs to find the table littered with glasses. I must have forgotten to pick them up.
2. A full pot of coffee today even though I know I won't drink very much of it. It's Tuesday and that means I meet with my mom's group, make the drive right after I take the kids to school.
3. Yellow leaves, red leaves, brown leaves. There is still a coolness in the air at this time of morning that hints to fall. I think of the small velvet pumpkins still sitting in a plastic bag in my bedroom.
4. We talk a little about patriarchy and the way it quietly seeps into sacred places.
5. I offer each of them a brass cross. When I dump them into my hand, I feel the weight and temperature of the metal, flash back to the screened in porches.
6. I make a salad of cucumber, yellow pepper, tomatoes, feta, and dill and eat it outside on the front stoop. The people next door are putting on a patio and the sounds of the wet saw and bobcat fill the air. Not so peaceful.
7. I love how badly he wants me to succeed. Everyone should have someone who believes in them. I'd like to believe in myself a little bit more.
8. There's a fundraiser for the school at Culver's which means I don't have to make dinner. I eat a cheeseburger with a knife and fork while staring at the backs of the heads of some neighbors. I think they might think I'm rude, disinterested. But I am in this season of sheltering. Of holding a lot in, keeping things close, needing the quiet and the warmth of my own presence. This isn't a bad thing, I don't think.
9. So many things I want to make.
10. I eat the last bit of Reese's ice cream and think about how tired I am. It's always at this time of night that I want to name the sources of my fatigue. The list feels long.
Ten.Eighty
1. I sleep in late. He's cuddled up close. I missed this too.
2. Cereal and milk for them. I drink a very watered down cappuccino, make their lunches very slowly.
3. Someone is already up and has forgotten to do his math sheet. I did not miss this.
4. I've decided that today is a day for doing all the things that require very little thinking. Wash the car. Get the groceries. Fold the laundry. Write my morning pages.
5. I also eat a small bowl of Reese's peanut butter ice cream while watching Wolf Hall.
6. There is a book somewhere in there.
7. He keeps asking me what's wrong. There is so much that is...not wrong, just unclear. And it's the lack of clarity that's pressing upon me.
8. Leftover chili for dinner. I make cornbread muffins.
9. Navy blue nail polish.
10. I think of the tiny brass crosses sitting in my drawer and I am pulled back to the screened in porch of Brae Cove, digging through Ann's box of beads and shells and pins; thumbing through torn pages and papers and spent postcards; talking about king cake with the woman from Metairie who works jazz fest every year before heading north for the summer. I think of the tiny brass crosses and so much more.
Ten.Seventy-Nine
1. 2:30 AM.
2. She's making me coffee in the french press for my ride into Boston. Plus a side of coffee cake. Grateful for friends who rise with you and feed you and caffeinate you.
3. The fog is thick and it's dark and the "low tire pressure" signal is on. It's the sum of all my driving fears—minus the bridge. I stuff the coffee cake into my mouth.
4. I am only driving 45 miles per hour.
5. I sleep on the plane. When I wake up I see the colors of the sunrise coming through the window: fluorescent orange and yellow.
6. I am not sure what I am feeling.
7. I clean and clean and clean then eat some leftovers and fall asleep.
8. Dinner is chili. I am sleep-eating.
9. I did miss this though. The way the clouds look at sunset. The way the trees wave to me.
10. I think back to the dock and the loons. The hands I saw doing all the making. The warmth of the wood and the wooden closures on the windows. All the mushrooms and the white birches.
Ten.Seventy-Eight
1. Boarding group A-50
2. I lay in bed just a little while longer. The fog is so thick and milky this morning.
3. I get dressed and take my journal out to the dock and sit in the fog. The water is so still and flat, reflecting the trees that line the water's edge.
4. I'm not ready to go.
5. Back in my room I watch another episode of Bleak House.
6. Camille, Giavanni, and Michelle sit at my breakfast table and we talk big dreams and nurturing children's creativity and inspiration.
7. I'm not ready to go back home yet.
8. How will I carry all of this with me?
9. We sit and eat a salad with peas and prosciutto and chicken and a homemade Dijon dressing. I love that I get to end my trip here, in her home, drinking tea on her sofa and catching up on life.
10. I should really go to sleep.
Ten.Seventy-Seven
1. I'm rather in love with the turquoise color of this weathered table. I will miss writing with this view.
2. I get it. I get why people come here again and again and again.
3. I woke up to rain again and it is the most soothing sound.
4. I didn't realize how much I would be moved by the ripples in the water, watching it run against the rocks and bubble up under the docks. It's medicine.
5. So many faces and so many names. This morning my headache keeps me from being able to hold very much.
6. She drives me to the cabin where Em is, and though Em is not there, she finds some peppermint oil and tenderly rubs it into the nape of my neck, my temples, over my eyebrows.
7. I am always afraid that I am not doing this right.
8. All day people I don't know come up to me and tell me all the beautiful things they've heard about my workshop. You would think that would have soothed my worries.
9. She lets me dig through her box of beads and bits to take home to my daughter. I grab almost all of the brass crosses—not for my daughter but for myself. I am not much into iconography or crosses but today I am drawn to them and I so pluck them out, one by one.
10. Giavanni. I need to keep in touch with her. She is truth and she radiates so much power and wisdom. Tonight she leads us into some music and movement and I am doing things I've never done before. What a weekend of firsts.
Ten.Seventy-Six
1. I wake up several times throughout the night because I can't differentiate the noises.
2. This time I wake up to the sound of rain.
3. The light in the screened in porch is...I can't describe it. But I sit here at the table and write. The sun is coming up but the clouds are too thick for me to appreciate a proper sunrise and instead I look for strips of pale yellow on water.
4. I walk to breakfast with another cabin mate. She's Scottish and delightful and she's been so helpful.
5. We complain about having to wait until 7 for coffee.
6. I'm so nervous when we start. I'm pretty sure they can hear the shaking in my voice. But this is a kind crowd.
7. I make them listen to The Gate and then write the 10 things. We do the 10 things twice which means that by the end of today I will have written 30 things. I could write so many more.
8. The day is long and I am drained, but in a way that feels good. This is the right kind of tired. The kind of tired you feel from doing the work that feeds your soul.
9. I really wanted to make a spoon today.
10. The loons.
Ten.Seventy-Five
1. 2:30 in the morning. This is dark night.
2. My Uber driver is Miguel and he drives a newer Altima but cigarette lingers. He's nice enough; originally from Colombia, now in Chicago by way of California. He's looking forward to seeing snow.
3. Apparently lots of people take 6 AM flights.
4. I sometimes have to go through those machines at security that scan your body. My groin is always highlighted. They always ask me if I'm wearing a belt. I never am. She pats me down. It occurs to me this morning that maybe there is some bit of copper left in me from my IUD.
5. I get my rental and head to Wellesley to see her. Finally. It's taken so many years. It's like we do this every week. We make plans and talk strategy and life and kids forgetting homework. We talk life.
6. I manage to keep my anxiety in check as I make my way from Wellesey to Holderness. My husband asks me if I'm enjoying the scenery. I haven't noticed—I'm too focused on making sure I don't miss the exit that's 45 miles away. But every now and then there's a break in the trees and I suddenly realize that I'm in these mini mountains.
7. I stop at the corner store and find the last flashlight, a bottle of bug spray, a bag of gummy worms, chips, a can of smoked almonds, bananas, and grapes.
8. I get weirded out when people in real life tell me that they follow me on Instagram.
9. The beauty of this place. The sound of the lake breaking against the rocky shore. The dirt paths, metal canoes stacked on top of one another.
10. I need this. I hope I don't disappoint tomorrow.
Ten.Seventy-Four
1. Up early. Earlier than usual because he's flying north today.
2. The way another 30 minutes makes the morning feel wide.
3. The sky is pastel shades of blue and pink. It's harder to capture the sunrise as the seasons change. So much shifting.
4. Tuesdays with them are what get me through the week.
5. I stop and get a few last minute essentials: travel-sized toiletries, post-it notes, a few fresh t-shirts.
6. I trust that whatever needs to get done today will get done.
7. I'm nervous about getting to the airport on time. My flight is so early and I'm doing this alone and it's interesting to me how this feeling—fear—of being alone is so clearly different from the feeling of solitude I desire.
8. All of this makes me feel childish.
9. I make one-pot beef stroganoff for dinner and make them take showers, give her two french braids, and continue to rewrite my notes. I keep rewriting my notes. I realize that I forgot to buy a flashlight and bug spray.
10. I will get less than 3 hours of sleep tonight.
Ten.Seventy-Three
1. This shade of pale pink rose in the sky.
2. The tomatoes. I don't know what to do with this last bunch. I may need to move the pot to another spot in the yard where the sun will hit it sooner in the day. I forgot about the shift in the light.
3. I have to untangle the hoses and attach spray nozzle before I can wash it off. But first I take a picture, realize that the "y" in You is written backward. Yes. This must have been a child. No, it doesn't really make me feel any better.
4. I am grateful and surprised by the support and shock and anger. I wonder if maybe I made too big a deal about it. But then remember that my writing is about my truth. And the truth was/is that it still bothers me that someone, even a child who is incapable of writing their "y" the correct way, would write something like that on my driveway. I just hope I never have to see something like that again.
5. Once, in middle school we got off the bus to see portions of the sidewalks and windows covered in brown kraft paper. Overnight, someone had vandalized the school. It had been covered in swastikas and racial slurs. This would have been in 1997 or 1998 in the small, but growing, tobacco town of Kernersville, North Carolina.
6. Which makes me think of the young boy in New Hampshire with rope burns around his neck.
7. Which makes me think of the fact that I'll be driving through New Hampshire alone. Which makes me also think about the other articles I've seen lately about racism in the northeast.
8. Which makes me wonder how one is supposed to feel safe.
9. He keeps asking me what's wrong. I say nothing.
10. I play soccer with him as the sun goes down. Try to look at his face instead of the glowing orange sun as it sets behind the berm. Try to focus on this smile and the roundness of his cheeks.
Ten.Seventy-Two
1. I wish I had a better plan for breakfast this morning.
2. Not cranes, but herons. I think.
3. The sun at this time of morning is low and this strange pink-orange.
4. Coffee cake from a box. He tells me that the morning before he saw the deer, both of them. I haven't seen them since before we left for California.
5. California. I think back to the morning the girl with the dark curly hair at Mini Model assumed that we were locals. And it was the way it made me feel—like anything and everything was possible, even my wildest dreams.
6. I need to hold on to this.
7. Peach pie two Sundays in a row. This time I make the lattice with thick ribbons that turn golden brown.
8. I manage to take a 2-hour nap, so deep that I dream nonsensical dreams of football and children and cakes and faces I want to kiss.
9. Twice in two days someone has written "I will kill you" on my driveway. It is most likely some child's prank. She confirms that yesterday someone admitted to doing it. But no one knows who wrote it today. It's hard not to take it personal. If it happens again...
10. Three more mornings until Squam.
Ten.Seventy-One
1. The coolness of the morning still catches me off guard. Every day feels new again. And I guess that's a good thing.
2. I make a batch of plain granola and top it with pecans and dried cranberries and fresh blueberries. Settle on making a large pot of coffee. There are two birthday parties today.
3. The strangeness of familiar faces.
4. I head to the consignment shop and try on 5 pairs of jeans and only one manages to slide comfortably over my thighs. I go back and get 5 more, this time in the next size up. I buy 3 pairs in total.
5. She asks me if everyone where I live now is more normal. I don't really know what she means by this.
6. I gather a few more poetry and writing books. Find a selection in Women Who Run With the Wolves that illustrates one of my points perfectly. There are so many things this book illustrates perfectly.
7. The second party is more tame. I eat some mac and cheese and watch the reporters on MSNBC talk about Irma. Her husband is down there to work on the power lines. I think of Mr. Claude.
8. I'm too full from life today to eat my dinner and just clean and take a long shower instead.
9. Back to 7:30 bed time for the kids.
10. "...the body is a living record of life given, life taken, life hoped for, life healed."
Ten.Seventy
1. I wake up before the alarm and then stay in bed after it goes off. The sickness has traveled from the nose into the throat and chest.
2. This morning is layers and light foam and staring out the window over the kitchen sink waiting for the sun to turn the grass gold-green.
3. I complain a lot but really I do prefer the spaciousness of our mornings.
4. I wonder why I care so much about certain things and yet not enough about others. Is it really true that how you do one thing is how you do everything? I don't think it is.
5. I find a spot underneath the tent where I can see all three kids. I am sweating and my nose is still running and occasionally I get up to give a few kids a high five. I'm glad I get to do these kinds of things. I don't want to give up this freedom.
6. I prepare the pot roast for dinner. Her recipe never fails. Brown the onions and the the carrots. Sear the meat on all sides and then deglaze the pan with red wine. (Tonight it's a bottle of Primitivo.) Put everything back into the pan with beef stock and fresh herbs. (I cut generous amounts of rosemary and oregano from the bushes out back.) Stick it in the oven.
7. I play with him in the backyard, a badminton type of game. He keeps asking me to play. I keep saying yes. I keep enjoying it more than I think I will.
8. I want to rest my eyes before dinner but I just keep rehearsing phrases for the workshop.
9. Honey to coat the throat.
10. Who am I?
Ten.Sixty-Nine
1. Sometime around 3:30 am my sinuses open up and I get 2 good hours of sleep.
2. I look for the moon through the bathroom curtains but the sky is too overcast to see it.
3. I squeeze into this one pair of jeans, the most comfortable pair of jeans I have, and it's hard to quiet the disappointment. I tell myself that my body is just changing and that this kind of changing is okay.
4. I roll the oil blend under my nose and around my chest and throat and remember the old days of vapo-rub. How it was the cure of so many things. Which makes me think of my grandmother who would make us go to sleep with plastic bags on our feet to sweat out the sickness.
5. I love seeing her face on my phone. The return of the school year means the return of our almost weekly chats. I miss my best friend.
6. More mucinex and nose spray and wishing I had a mother close by to take care of me.
7. Soup for lunch.
8. There's a big pile of dirt in the middle of the cul-de-sac.
9. I read her email aloud to him and tell him that Teri told me to always accept the gifts. And don't feel guilty about it. Just be grateful. I said this year I wanted to go to the desert.
10. "What needs to be counted on to have a voice? Courage. Anger. Love. Something to say; someone to speak to; someone to listen."
Ten.Sixty-Eight
1. When the moon is full it illuminates the bathroom and this morning it is so dark and the moon is so brighf.
2. Maybe it's because it's sitting so close to the hill that it looks so big. But from the kitchen, the moon looks close enough for me to pluck it out of the sky with my fingertips. I look east and see the coming of dawn. I spend twenty minutes watching the moon sink and the sun rise.
3. Bacon and frozen waffles and a small pot of coffee. I feel a cold coming on.
4. I'm rereading The Memoir Project by Marion Roach and she reminds me that my morning pages are not the real work. That the real work comes from dedicated time with my words, telling the stories.
5. Seven days until I leave for Boston and then make my way to New Hampshire. I am trying to envision myself making this journey with more peace and less anxiety.
6. I take off the jeans that feel too tight and put on my pajama pants, bring a mason jar of warm water with lemon and honey to ease my throat, and curl up under the covers.
7. I can't be sick.
8. I look out to the clouds and notice how the bottoms are gray and the tops are bright from the light of the sun. My arms are pressed against the glass and my eyes begin to swell with tears and I know that feeling this is what makes life worth living.
9. I can't be sick.
10. This is the first bath I've ever taken in this house. The tub is deep and the warmth of the water is making me sweat. I watch my arms float in the water and the dirt of the day rise up from my body and cling to the sides of the tub.
Ten.Sixty-Seven
1. I can tell the seasons are changing. The low light and the coolness outside of the sheets. I let myself lay for just a little longer while I run through the refrigerator contents in my head.
2. I step out onto the back stoop and the cool air blows against my bare leg and even though I really just came down to preheat the oven I am transfixed by the shifting location of the sunrise.
3. Cinnamon and sugar croissants.
4. The gladiolas are drying out and I don't want to replace them just yet. Sometimes I'm not good at letting things go.
5. I've listened to this episode with Marie Howe six or seven times now and it never loses its enchantment. I love the tone of her voice and the way she speaks of family. And that poem about Mary Magdalene makes me hold my breath every time.
6. These morning with them. How they reconstitute my spirit. I've missed these women and their hearts and am so grateful for our reunification this season.
7. All of the laundry. I make myself some tea and turn on Bleak House. This sometime doesn't feel like enough.
8. Taco Tuesday. Beef. Homemade tortilla chips.
9. I'm getting back into the habit of lighting candles at dinner again. I like the little flickers of light and the way it makes this very ordinary day a little more beautiful.
10. Tomorrow makes 7 days until New Hampshire.