One Month Later

One month ago, about this time, Laura and I rolled into Omaha. We unloaded the contents of our Men in Black SUV rental and my moving cube into two rooms. The basement got the overflow. We cleared enough space that I could throw my mattress on the floor and close the door. That night, exhausted, I stayed up too late drinking wine, watching Netflix, and putting my clothes away. There’s something in me that loves moments of necessity — when it’s quite clear what needs doing. Grief is like that. Moving, too. That night, I needed to sleep hard. I also needed to keep myself up and dull the shock of what I’d just done with some wine and a good ol’ organization binge. Place empty bags inside each other. Create a clean spot. Turn to the next thing.

One month in, I’m pretty much set up. I have a bedroom and an office. I know where to find my slow cooker and cutting boards. My bed’s up on a frame now. All my books are arranged on shelves.

Which makes things more complicated. We’re moving out of the initial landing phase, where you’re too afraid to move in case The Move notices you and steps over to squash you, whispering in your ear that you’re right, you never should have come back here there’s nothing here for you anymore, you know.

Now it’s, I’m here. I live here now. Less a sense of having been stuck on the wrong side of a door between parallel universes and more a sense of having decided that this is the one we’re in, let’s do some exploring. Still walking, still doing the knowledge. Trying. This week, it was hard to track. This week, it was hard. Grief is like that.

September 7:

Took a walk at the end of a hard, loud head day and I kept taking bad turns to make me afraid: came across too many people in big groups. Then this song came on, you know how it is, when you lose most of the shame that prevents you from outright shimmying down the street (not enough to really get you doing it, but most of the way). I mean, the joy was fierce, the kind of thing where you imagine the folks in the houses have to really feel it in their day, the small sonic boom of fierce, frantic, terrified joy you’re giving off.

Walking home, I reached my brother’s porch, and it was covered in children I knew. And then we hit two minutes and thirty seconds into the song — and it’s like that with some songs, isn’t it, it’s like if someone really wanted to know you, they should listen here, wait for this moment in that song. And there I was, with these young bobbins, and what is one to do?

Reader, I danced with them. One of the older kids tossed their younger sibling, squealing with delight, into the air. Niece 2 bopped along on a scooter. Neighbor Girl joined me, in a distanced way, to do the twist.

I was going to hide away all night, but they all invited me to a potluck in a backyard. I talked to Oldest Niece about the books she loves right now. I told a ghost story. Of course I kept my distance, and of course that was hard. The loneliness is a dagger no matter what, but geez, you don’t have to plunge the knife in your own heart every night, you know? It’s just so dramatic. It’s there. You feel its edges. Sometimes it takes a gouge. But it’s easier to avoid when it’s not the only thing you carry.

September 9:

I don’t want to write about this walk I took today — a lovely little rain walk with my brother and nieces and their dog. We walked to The Eyebrow House (an artistic fence out front is placed just so that it looks like the house has wonderful, bushy, wizard’s brows) that has a post with a mailbox that accepts poetry submissions. If you’re chosen, your poem will be featured in a laminated envelope above the mailbox.

Niece 2 found a leaf like an open palm that I carried for her. Niece 1 slowed her scooter roll (they were both on scooters, natch, because who wants to walk?) so we could walk/roll together. I told Niece 2 I think she’s so cool and she said, “Thank you, kind Agent R.” They went home to cocoa.

I have a cat warming my feet while swatting me with a (mock?) angry tail. A Labradoodle curled into a comma lies close by. I just had tea and wine and almonds and frozen raspberries.

But these details that often seem so rich, so like everything there is — what do they add up to? They seem utterly inadequate today, when Oregon is coated in smoke and my friends are watching ash raining from the sky. What do I say about that from here? Where do I locate that?

I want to be able to say something true about this walk I took. I want to be able to say something about my friends, afraid. About me, afraid. All I can find is insulation. Willow might wet down her roof. Sarah writes a beautiful piece about how they’re all part of the fire. She does yoga inside her house while breathing poems in and out. I join my nieces for a chilly, grey walk and feel my embarrassment of riches, my powerlessness to share any of it. The rain runs through my hands.

So many tell me I was lucky to leave when I did. But I think the hardest knowledge to do right now, the hardest to face, isn’t just my fear for my friends or my grief for what the West is facing and losing. It’s also here-and-not-here-but-always-here. It’s that my lovely walk today is borrowed. Some day (soon?) it’ll be our turn again here. This game we play — I always hated hot potato or musical chairs. I have zero hand eye coordination and I hate the anxiety of knowing you’ll have to fight for a place. There’s not a seat for everyone.

These weather systems we hand on to the next person — and when they come around again — it’s not embarrassment you risk. It’s not that you couldn’t pass something on fast enough. So maybe the metaphor doesn’t really work at all. Except for this: just imagine, really, being stuck in a circle playing one of those stupid, cruel games, and no one’s in charge and all you know is that one by one you’ll fall, over and over, and there’s no way it’ll ever stop.

I didn’t really want to write this — it feels small, somehow, to focus on my experience here. But the reality is that “here” felt bigger this week, and I think a lot of us were thinking about what it is to be here. What it means to really locate ourselves here, on this planet, right now.

So in addition to the walks, I’ve been traveling in all the ways I can to my friends. I’ve been texting and calling. This has actually been the source of much joy this week, in addition to the gratitude of confirming that those I love are safe, if afraid. I’ve been passing recorded poems and diddies back and forth with Lola over the phone. Sharing songs and poems and stories with Kate. Celebrating new beginnings with Sallie. I locate myself, even if only momentarily, in those moments. We work together to do the knowledge of what this whole deal is: what it always meant to get to be here, and what that means in horrible, fiery detail right now. We locate ourselves geographically in our grief right now, but also our fierce, fierce love and willingness to fight. Because we love this place, and each other, so much. Still.

“Yes,” by William Stafford

It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That’s why we wake
and look out — no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.