Ten.Ninety-Three
1. I sleep in until the daylight breaks. Pancakes and bacon and coffee.
2. Dark matter.
3. These streets. These streets. I've been trying to mentally prepare myself to do this.
4. There are so many more leaves on the ground here. Red and brown and crunchy.
5. The leaf looks like it's floating in front of me.
6. Half here and half not.
7. Ginger beef noodle soup in bed, in the blue bowl because a little beauty goes a long way.
8. Going through the photos from our trip to California and remembering the morning fog, boots on pea gravel, brass clips, drinking a milkshake at the beach.
9. Loss.
10. The realization that nothing lasts forever.
Ten.Ninety-Two
1. Inky skies.
2. I don't want to make breakfast today so I hop in the car for a donut run. I can see the golden light of sunrise in my rear view mirror.
3. There's an old farm house on Wolf's Crossing, just outside the neighborhood, where they have cows and a big white barn, and this morning I watched as the fog rose up off the little pond.
4. Apple Spice donut with a big cup of coffee.
5. Love yourself.
6. If I sit in the sun I'm not as cold. While I'm on the front stoop I fill up three pages. I write out all the stories that came up for me, decide what is true, what is false, what is the new story I want to tell.
7. Aromatics. Ginger, onion, garlic, star anise.
8. Today has been so slow and so quiet.
9. We pile into the bed and watch the 1967 version of Dr. Doolittle. I'm surprised by how much the kids like it. I keep falling asleep. The warmth of their bodies and their laughter and just all of this.
10. Love yourself.
Ten.Ninety-One
1. I left some of the windows open last night and wake up to the thin and cool air. I like this kind of air best.
2. It's Friday and my spirit feels renewed. I wish I could bottle it up.
3. I sit on the front stoop and write my morning pages. There is the faint sound of a saw, the low rumble of trucks, and I think I hear a few golf ball pings.
4. Meal plan. This has become my least favorite task and I'm working hard to infuse it with excitement again. New and old things that will bring me joy: broccoli gratin, ginger beef and noodle soup, chicken pot pie.
5. We head out for a lunch date and return home disappointed. I'm spoiled.
6. Love Yourself.
7. Love Yourself.
8. I think of all the times I doubt my own abilities.
9. I was chosen. I am happy. Full. He apologizes for being a buzzkill. For not letting me enjoy the bliss of that moment. I know I'll figure out how to get there. I can figure things out. This is the new story I'm choosing to tell.
10. The late evening sky is cloudless. The colors are rich: indigo on top of orange-gold on top of red-orange. It
Ten.Ninety
1. I wake up on time today.
2. The sky this morning—I'm running out of words to describe it.
3. I realize that I am sore from last night's dancing. I miss this kind of soreness. It makes me think back to the evening she and I walked back home from the Target and she commented on how nice of a walk it was and I said that I hadn't walked since we moved. That it had been hard for me to find the beauty. That I missed the gigantic oaks and the stately homes and the crooked brick. But my mind and my body could use those walks again.
4. I am grateful for the soreness.
5. I drink tea and read and watch a bad horror movie today. It feels like a whole day wasted. A luxury. A luxury and also my preferred method of procrastinating.
6. A half-moon chalked into the clear blue sky.
7. So much paper work that I keep forgetting to do.
8. The goldeness of this late afternoon light and how it mesmerizes me each and every time. I hope this kind of simple wonderment never goes away.
9. This headache will not go away.
10. Windows open. Noise from the cars on 34 and Wolf's Crossing. Wolf's Crossing. Bluegrass Parkway. Fox Bend. I exist here, pieced together with the land and its animals, the waters and the sky.
Ten.Eighty-Nine
1. I wake up again thinking that I've woken up on time but it's 6:14 and this is not on time.
2. But maybe this is my body telling me that 5:30 is too early and 6:15 is okay and doable and good for me.
3. I wear the "go against the grain" tee today. Because sometimes we need wearable reminders of who we are and what we need and if I'm gonna survive this life then I gotta stand in my own power.
4. I was supposed to have a coffee date today but it got cancelled and so I stay home and sip slowly on a pot while I try to brainstorm a project for the day. I decide on sprucing up the alcove.
5. $2.50 pumpkins at Aldi. I'm trying not to fall into the giant cardboard box as I lean over to find the ones with the longest stems and roundest bodies, wedge booties hovering over the ground.
6. Love Yourself.
7. Love Yourself.
8. I search for the Paramore song I heard earlier in the day. I sometimes forget that music is a pathway back to myself. I play it over and over and over again and jump around the kitchen, breezes blowing through the open windows, heart racing.
9. Dinner is a little late but that's what happens when you dance a little too much and sing a little too loud.
10. I dance and sing alone in the kitchen while they watch tv upstairs. I think back to that night at Squam when Camille kept beat on the drum and Giavanni taught us the West African dance and how at the end we freestyled and how in their body everyone was. And how I felt myself loosening up and letting myself really feel the way I could move. And here I am in my kitchen, full of gratitude for the way my hips can spin and my feet can move and my shoulders can roll and I am almost in tears apologizing to myself for all the ways I forget to honor it.
10.1 Reminder to self: don't underestimate the power of an off-the-shoulder tee to make you feel sexy and aware.
Ten.Eighty-Eight
1. I wake up thinking I've woken before my alarm only to see that all of the children are awake and it is 6:18 and not 5:45 like I think it is. I should have known by the light.
2. Warm lemon water.
3. I can't stop thinking about her response to my message. How it saddens and baffles and angers me. Disappoints me more than anything.
4. I post the post and my stomach churns. But there are times when you need to draw your lines in the sand. And there is no space right now for the ones unwilling to examine their beliefs.
5. Tuesdays I make the drive. Today I begin the On Being episode with Albert Eisen and see myself in his description of "mystic," and know that I need to read Abraham Joshua Herschel's work.
6. Before I step outside the door all of these words fall out of my mouth, without breath. They feel short and hot and I can hear myself talking and I want to stop but I can't.
7. But sometimes you need to just let it go.
8. I buy eucalyptus and gladiolus and a bottle of kombucha.
9. This feeling. I order pizza and clean the house and vow to make this home my home and a safe home.
10. I should be sleeping.
Ten.Eighty-Seven
1. Still a little foggy.
2. He's up early and makes the coffee. I always underestimate how loved I feel when someone else makes the coffee.
3. The tomatoes are continuing to ripen and grow. I will need to harvest the herbs before the temperatures dip.
4. The house feels like a blank slate. Too blank. And all the whiteness feels overwhelming.
5. I choose a little bistro table that overlooks the river, write my morning pages, and drink pressed juice, and this surprisingly tasty bacon jam on while grain toast.
6. We talk about feminist business structures, married life, new visions for gathering and growing.
7. I forget how much inspiration I get from these kinds of connections.
8. I write the words on failure and have him read them and hope that she likes them too.
9. Symposio. A red blend from Sicily.
10. I get a peek at the moon before I close the blinds, a thick white crescent in the blue-black sky.
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.