Essays on Human Life

[eohl-blog]

Making Room

This morning I sat in front of a cup of coffee, thinking.

It was a quiet morning in the house. The pot of coffee had stopped gurgling and bubbling, and the steam from my cup rose in the still air. It was springtime and the morning dew shone in the grass outside the window. The dog was still sleeping. It was barely 6:30.

My mind opened and I recalled the room I had been in before. I was standing in a modest foyer with a short bench and coat hooks. Two coats hung side-by-side, a man and a woman’s, with many other empty hooks beside them. The man who stood in the foyer with me was darkly colored with dark olive skin; there was a warmth to his face and, even though I didn’t recognize his face, I still felt as if I knew him. 

He embraced me as an old friend. “It’s so good to see you,” he said warmly. “Let’s go in.”

I followed him into the next room, which seemed vaguely familiar. It resembled the living room at my parents’ house. A maroon couch sat against one wall and a fireplace stood opposite. Hanging on the walls were framed portraits of generations of people. The TV was on, but no one was watching it. Looking closely at the portraits, I noticed familiar faces: my own parents! This was my parents’ living room!

“How did we get here?” I asked bewildered. 

“What do you remember about this place?” he asked me.

It took a moment to gather my bearings. "This is the living room at my parents’ house. This is where I grew up. But that foyer wasn’t their foyer. How did we get...?”

“You spent a lot of time here, didn’t you?” he affirmed.

A wave of memories flooded the forefront of my mind. In that corner we used to set up the Christmas tree. My parents would often argue for how it should be decorated. Mom and I used to watch television on Thursday nights in this room while I was in high school. I had sat on that couch and kissed my first boyfriend. I had also taken many naps on that couch, sometimes from the sorrow of losing that boyfriend. My brother and I used to sit and watch the fire in the fireplace when the power went out. 

Small memories, long since forgotten, returned to me. 

“Come with me,” he said as he took my hand and we continued into the next room.

We entered what should have been my parents’ kitchen, but it was something else; it was the kitchen in my old apartment. 

“Do you recognize this place?”

“Yes,” I said, bewildered. “This is where I lived before I was married.” The ceiling was twelve feet tall and the old, solid wood cabinets reached the ceiling. They’d been painted over so many times that some of them did not close all the way. A wooden butcherblock table served as most of the counterspace where it sat under the window. Underneath it sat a stack of cookbooks. 

“What do you remember about this kitchen?” he asked.

A smile immediately crossed my face. “This is where I fell in love with cooking,” I said. I recalled learning how to make beer in this kitchen. I prepared many cupcakes, many pizzas, many casseroles, and many pancakes. I made food for friends here. My family visited one holiday and Thanksgiving dinner was prepared here. I spent countless hours chopping vegetables at the butcherblock table, many nights standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes. I had a few dates in this kitchen, preparing a dinner together as a way to discern compatibility. Many friends stood in this kitchen with me, beer in hand, laughing with me, and sometimes laughing at me, and sometimes crying.

“This is where you fell in love with cooking,” he said. “All the things you love about food are here. Mostly its in sharing it with others.” 

It felt comfortable to be back in my old kitchen, but I noticed that he had started to walk towards the door the led into the backyard of that house. When I followed him, I stepped through the doorway and into-- 

“Where is this?” I asked.

It was a bedroom. The shades were pulled low, and it was dark. There was a dusty, old smell. The furniture was wooden, modern, but the room was overfull with art and furniture. “You don’t recognize this room?” he asked.

“Is this...? But how...?”

“There’s something of yours in here,” he said, pointing to a stack of papers on the corner of the dresser. I drew closer to look, and noticed they were greeting cards: some for Christmas, some for birthday, some just because: all addressed to my brother, Tom. This was his bedroom in his adult life. 

“Why is it so dark in here?” I asked.

“You didn’t come in here much, but your brother never married and he lived a lonely life. He saved all the things you ever sent to him. To you they were unimportant, but to him they were valuable.” 

I stood in the room and felt sorrow for how we had grown apart. We lived in different states and had different interests, and of course I loved him because he was my brother, but I never really knew how he had felt about me. 

“This room could have been bigger. It could have had more light. It could have had rooms branching off. But this is all the space you had for your brother.”

“Where are we?” I asked. We had been walking through a labyrinth of time in a house that shouldn’t make sense. How could three different rooms from three different houses all connect? 

“We’re in your brother’s room,” he said simply, “and it contains what you remember from it. But this isn’t what I wanted to show you.” He stepped around my brother’s oversized bed frame toward his closet door. “You’ll be really happy with this one,” he said, opening the door to the closet. 

Radiant light shone through as the door swing wide, and I had to set aside my disbelief to follow my curiosity with him into the next room. When I crossed the threshold, I was stunned. The room was fifteen feet tall and incredibly long. Floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves lined the walls, and they were lined with more books than I could count. A wide fireplace with an ornate hearth sat in the center of one wall. Plush leather chairs fanned around the fireplace, and a rich crimson carpet covered the floor. We were in a personal library!

“You wouldn’t recognize this room,” he said, “but I knew you’d love it.” He approached one of the shelves and pulled a book from it. He handed it to me. “Look,” he said with a smile.

The book was leather-bound and old-fashioned, but had a crisp newness to it. The title printed on the cover was embossed in gold.

“Look at the author,” he prodded.

I gasped in surprise. “That’s me!” I exclaimed. “That’s my name!”

“This is the first book you publish,” he said.

“I haven’t published a book,” I corrected him.

He gently took the book back from me. “You will. One day you’ll publish quite a few.” Turning back toward the room, he said, “These are all your stories: all the books you’ve ever read, and all the stories you will ever write. You haven’t written them yet, but this is your library.”

The words sunk deeply into me. My heart was light. “This is your library,” I repeated his words in a whisper. I was stunned at the sheer volume of books in the room. I’d always knew I had read a lot, but I never imagined that it could be reflected in such volume. “All of them?” I asked.

“Over the course of your entire life, yes,” he said. “Not everyone’s library is like this. Many are modest. Some are grand. Everyone is different.” 

My eyes scanned the room. Among all the books, I noticed several doorways across all of the walls. 

“We’re not in a real place, are we?” I asked.

“It is real,” he said. “All of these rooms are yours. Do you want to see more?”

I hesitated. There had been many rooms in my life, but not all of them were lovely. I knew that. Any person knows there are some rooms that are hidden, and some rooms that just shouldn’t be seen. As if he could see the caution on my face, he reassured me, “Don’t worry. As strange as it sounds, there’s nothing here that would surprise me.” 

Assured of his reserved judgment, I nodded. There was a door to my immediate left, and I motioned toward it. “What’s through there?” I asked.

“Let’s go see.”

I approached the door and reached for the handle. “Do you know what’s behind here?” I asked gingerly. 

He silently nodded and allowed me to take hold of the door knob. 

I opened the door and immediately a thunderstorm and pouring rain hit my face. I jumped back in surprise, letting go of the door knob. Some of the rain started dripping into the library. Quickly I jumped up and slammed the door shut. “What was that?!” I shouted at him. “Why didn’t you tell me there was a thunderstorm outside?”

“Inside,” he corrected.

“What?” I shouted.

“The thunderstorm is inside. That’s your boyfriend’s room.”

My mouth hung open and it took a moment to recover from the surprise. “My who?”

“Well, your ex boyfriend. Before you were married. What do you remember about him?”

My mind drew a blank. I hadn’t thought about him for many years. It had been long ago. “I, um,” I started, “I remember the relationship was good. It was long and it was good. We’d talked about eventually getting married, but it didn’t work out.”

“How did the relationship end?”

I struggled for the memory. It had been a very long time ago. The reason and the story felt just beyond my grasp, somewhere right around the corner. Why couldn’t I remember? 

“How did you feel when it was over?” he asked.

“I felt... It felt...” and suddenly waves of sorrow crashed over me. Things had been going well, and we had been talking about staying together, and then there was a conversation. It wasn’t planned or expected. The conversation turned. I’d said some hurtful things. He’d said some hurtful things back. We never spoke again. The relationship had ended so abruptly. A tear came to my eye remembering being so young and being so dismissive of something that had been really good and could have had the potential to be great. 

He put a hand on my shoulder. “You pushed this memory aside and never revisited it. Most of it has washed away, but what remains is sorrow.”

“How could I have been so... so... awful to him?” I asked in disbelief.

“We all say and do things that we regret,” he assured me. “This is only one room in the many rooms of your heart.” 

“Show me the rest,” I said.

“You know them better than anyone,” he said. “But there is something you should see.”

As we crossed the library, we passed by many doors. I peeked into some: some were gloomy and dark. One was filled with plants. One opened into a painting, and one was filled with cobwebs. By the time we reached the opposite end of the library, I had seen so many vignettes of memories and experiences--some of which I knew and some of which had yet to happen. 

At the opposite end of the library was an unusual door. All of the other doors were framed and had handles. This door was a piece of plywood. It didn’t have a handle. It wasn’t framed or in any way part of the room. It looked like an accident, and at first I hadn’t quite noticed it. 

“What is this?” I asked.

“This is something that not everyone gets to see,” he said. He reached forward and gently pushed the door inward. He stood in the threshold of the door (or what would have been a threshold if it had been properly finished) and stood beside me as we remained in the library and looked through.

We stared into a hallway. The hallway was about twenty feet long. The walls were white and undecorated, and the doors were unfinished. I started to step through, but his hand caught me before I could enter the hallway.

“You can’t,” he said. 

“Why not?” I asked. “You said these were my rooms.”

“These,” he said, “are doors you will never open in your life. This wing is what could have been.” 

“How can these be here and still be closed?” I asked.

“Because you made plans for them, or perhaps at some point had hoped for them, but they never got built,” he explained. “When you and your boyfriend planned to marry, you would have built a life together, and in these rooms would have been your vacations, your arguments, and your joy. When you decided to leave your job to write full time, it closed the possibility of your promotion and the world travel you would have been asked to do. When your husband told you he didn’t want kids...” he paused solemnly, “children would have opened many new doors in your heart, but those rooms were never built.” 

I stared down the hallway, in awe at the possibility of a life I could have had, but didn’t.

“It’s time to go back,” he said, closing the door to the hallway.

Together we walked back through the library, through my brother’s room, through the many rooms of my heart to the modest foyer at the front of the house. The two coats, side by side on hooks, were the only people who lived in my heart. A pang of loneliness hit me, realizing that though I wanted to share my life with many friends and many people, there were only two whom I let live there. 

“Do you feel regret?” he asked me, helping me put my jacket on.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I thought I had lived a good life. I tried to be a good person. Tried to help others and be faithful. But when I look in to all the things I built, and said, and did, it really doesn’t seem like much. I could have done so much more. I could have built such a beautiful house.”

He pulled me in close and wrapped his arms around me. “Your house is your own,” he said. “This is where you’ve made your home, and you filled it with love. I have been well-loved here. You’ve done well.” 

“Who are you?” I asked.

I was staring into my cup of coffee, in my kitchen, watching the last of the steam dance up into the still spring morning air. If God was watching, he watched me walk from room to room in my memory, tidying what I could, and planning for whatever the future may bring.

[eohl-blog]

The Furnace

One morning in January, I woke up feeling unusually cold. 

Usually in winter things get a little chilly. We live in an older house and the insulation isn’t great, but the steam radiators keep the house comfortable even on cold nights. From under the covers, I could feel the icy atmosphere when I inhaled. As I turned over in bed, I was surprised to discover the dog had climbed on top of my feet during the night, something he distinctly knows he isn’t allowed to do.

“Paul,” I asked my husband, “does it feel cold in here to you?”

The question pulled him out of sleep and it took him a few moments to answer, “It does.” 

“And the dog is in bed with us,” I said.

“I’ll go downstairs and check,” said Paul. As he got out of bed, I could feel his warmth leave with him. “It is chilly,” he said as he put on a sweatshirt. 

I listened to Paul moving around downstairs, softly walking around from room to room, opening doors and clicking lights on. I nestled deeper into the covers, hoping to insulate myself against this very unusual iciness. 

When Paul returned, he reported that the furnace was off and that it was 46 degrees in the house.

I am looking at a photo of Paul and me at our wedding. The photo is in black and white, and a little grainy from the low-light of the venue. We’re each holding on to the handle of a knife, sliding it into the top of a layered cake, both looking at the camera instead of at each other. I look at the photo, focusing on Paul, looking into his eyes, wondering what was behind them.

Paul started to explain, “The furnace is just off. There isn’t anything coming through the pipes. I don’t know what’s wrong with it. I think it went out during the night.” 

I got out of bed, found my slippers, and moved downstairs. The thermostat is in the dining room, and it is old--like our house. Though it is set to operate at 67 degrees, it was clearly reading the house at 46, just as Paul had said. It seemed to still be on, so the problem must be with the furnace downstairs.

I descended the stairs to our cement slab basement, exposed pipes and wires lining the unfinished ceiling. Even though I’m not a mechanic, I remembered having the furnace serviced earlier in the wintertime, and recalled what the plumber had said. He spent about an hour flushing and cleaning the furnace, replacing steam valves on the radiators, brushing the pilot lights. “Your furnace has seen a lot of abuse,” he explained to me. “It’s old, but it wasn’t taken care of right. I got it to a place where it will safely run for you this winter, but you should really consider replacing this when you’re able to.” He carefully pointed out to me what he was doing, how the water feed worked, how to monitor water levels in the steam furnace, how to backfill when the water was low, how to care for my furnace until a new one could be installed. Not everyone takes the time to explain how to show care, and I wanted to take care of my house as long as I could.

I am thinking of the photo of Paul and me and our wedding cake. Paul’s eyes are completely black in the picture, even though in real life they are blue. In the photo, my eyes are hiding behind darker circles--perhaps the gradual smearing of makeup, but more likely the fatigue of everything that led up to that moment. Paul’s hand is holding the knife confidently, but at an unusual angle. My hand is lightly holding on to his. I am wondering if even from this beginning we could have accomplished anything together.

Standing in front of the furnace, I remembered the plumber’s directions and checked the water level of the furnace. There is a narrow glass tube on the front of the furnace that indicates the water level inside. “You don’t want it too full,” the plumber explained, “because then it’ll flood. But you don’t want it too low because then it’ll burn out. If it goes to either extreme, the furnace will shut itself off to protect itself from malfunctioning.” At first it looked like the glass tube was completely full because I couldn’t distinguish the water line, but as I looked closer it was actually extremely low--almost to the very bottom of the tube.

“Poor furnace,” I thought. It burned itself out. I reached for the handle to the water line to feed more water into the furnace, and then pressed the manual fill button to bring water back into the system.

The furnace needed water to boil into steam. During the night, it had gotten so cold that the furnace had burned through all its water and then had nothing left to give. It did the only thing it could have done in that situation: turned itself off to prevent anything from catching on fire. It wasn’t broken: it did exactly what it was supposed to do.

As I listened to the slow backfilling of water through the pipes, I thought about the furnace alone in the night. I could feel the water getting low, low, lower. I could feel the hot metal grinding on itself and burning out. I could understand how the furnace, bereft of options and no longer able to serve its purpose, began shutting down in the quiet resignation of unfulfilled need.

As I’m waiting for the water level to rise, I’m remembering the wedding photo. I’m thinking about those words, “husband, wife,” and that today they mean something else than what they did before. I am thinking about being filled with love, overflowing. I’m thinking about the water line to the furnace of my love. I’m struggling to remember what a working furnace feels like in the iciness of the basement of my home, when I hear Paul open the door to the top of the basement stairs. 

“Do we need to call someone?” he called to me.

“No, it just needed some water. Do you remember when the plumber explained it to us?” I asked.

“No,” Paul said. “I don’t remember. I don’t know how this works.”

As the furnace in the basement rumbled back to life and steam began flooding the radiators throughout the house, the furnace of my love burned out: hot metal grinding on itself and, with nothing left to give, shutting down to protect itself from catching on fire, resigned to the now icy home where someone else is living, not remembering how to take care of it. 

[eohl-blog]

What You Haven’t Heard

There are so many things I take for granted, but I shouldn’t.

The list is long: running water in my house (100 years ago that would have been less common), something to eat in the refrigerator (even though five times I day I am opening my fridge to announce to no one that milk, applesauce, cheese slices, and salsa is “nothing to eat”), that I am healthy (and, truth be told, the older I get the closer this is to edging off the list). A modern life affords many comforts, even when life is busy, anxious, or frustrated. A modern life has electricity. A modern life has communication. A modern life has music.

And music is the thing that I really take for granted.

When I was a kid, like most, I listened to what my parents listened to. My mother spent many long road trips discipling me in the school of Queen and the Proclaimers (and David Allan Coe, for some reason). For Christmas in 1997, I received my first boom box, and on Christmas Day in 1997 I listened to the Village People’s Macho Man EP in it. A small CD collection started to grow on my shelf that started mostly with what I was borrowing from my parents’ existing CD collection, but which--in 2002 when I started high school--grew exponentially with slightly more updated flavors. 

One evening in 2002, I called in to a local radio station, which is a very old-fashioned sentence these days. The deejay on the line asked what I wanted to hear, and I requested the then-overplayed R&B hit “It Wasn’t Me,” by Shaggy (a song definitively about being caught cheating on a relationship and lying about it, which completely unfazed every other 13-year-old I knew at the time). There wasn’t, it seemed to me, any other way to hear a song I really wanted to hear unless I bought the full album or happened to catch it on the radio.

I soon learned I could borrow CD’s from the public library, and my computer’s hard drives quickly began to fill with ripped copies of borrowed albums. (Unless you are the FCC, in which case that is definitively not what happened.) Borrowing CDs from friends had the same result. The slow method of finding, ripping, and storing full albums was the long way to get around the expeditious method to really get to a song you wanted to hear: the pirated download.

I challenge you to find a teenager from 1999-2005 who did not once pirate a single song. Go on, I’ll wait.

Through the depths of the internet, I truly began my music education. It was a new era. Gone were the days of hearing only what my parents owned or only what radio deejays put on (and only when you tuned in). Gone were the days of seeking out the friend who owned a Linkin Park album to copy. Gone were the days of swapping mixed CDs (and their legendary predecessor: mixed tapes) to have individual copies of special songs. Those days were over. The sun now rose in the dawn of BitTorrent.

In 2007, I climbed into a car with friends to drive four hours across the state to visit another college. I brought with us what would be the last mixed CD I would ever burn.

In 2008, I tenderly accepted a burned copy of a Weepies album with “For Laura” written in sharpie on the front--the last burned album copy I would receive.

In 2009, I made a long playlist on my computer to celebrate my 21st birthday, but never actually transferred it off my computer, and instead allowed the melodic favorites to play out through my laptop in my apartment.

In 2010, while driving, I heard the radio deejay announce that, through the iHeartRadio network, you could text in song requests to the station directly, and I thought, “Who would request songs from a radio station? Don’t you know you can hear any song you want online?”

After I graduated college, but before I moved to New York, my nana came to visit us. I was living at home in a temporary few months, ambiently working a mindless temporary desk job, thoughtlessly daydreaming about men. My father was my nana’s youngest child, and she always bore this special affinity for my brother and me. Her cheerful warmth inspired my creativity as a kid, encouraged me to explore, and always had a hug ready. She was a wonder. I was so happy to have her visit.

One afternoon, she sat in my bedroom while I sat at my desk. She noticed my CD collection and asked, “Do you have any Frank Sinatra in there?”

Between the origins of Queen, the growth of Linkin Park, and the recent discovery of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, I was a little embarrassed to confess to her that I didn’t have a lot of jazz singers.

“’Ol Blue Eyes’ they called him,” nana explained. “But he was such a womanizer. So popular, but so selfish.”

I’d never heard Frank Sinatra described this way. “Really? Do you like Frank Sinatra’s music?” I asked.

“No,” she said simply, as if it was obvious.

“Whose music do you like?” I asked, surprised I had never thought to ask before.

“You know who I love?” she smiled mischievously. “Bobby Darin.”

“I’ve never heard of Bobby Darin,” I admitted.

“Oh he is wonderful!” she exclaimed. “He has one song, ‘Mack the Knife.’ It is a wonderful song.”

“You know, nana,” I said, turning toward my computer, “we could listen to that song right now.” I quickly started to type ‘Mack the Knife’ on my computer.

The look on my nana’s face cannot be explained. Her naturally cheerful and warm disposition held back the longing of her love for Bobby Darin, but even her controlled demeanor could not contain the curiosity and possible disappointment at the prospect. “But,” she said, “you don’t have any Bobby Darin records.”

‘Mack the Knife’ had returned some results. “Just you wait,” I said, and hit “play.”

A big band and a swing tap of the drum preceded the velvet voice of Bobby Darin in my computer speakers. I watched my nana close her eyes, smile coyly, and tap her toe. She was in her mid-eighties. Her thin, white hair piled on top of her head. She was filled with joy. Listening to Bobby Darin, she was no older than thirty. The song filled her and her smile made her young again.

For three minutes, nana had absorbed a piece of her past that had long been embedded in memory. She had listened attentively the entire time; there was no chatting over the music. The music wasn’t background. The music was the main event. It had held her full attention. After a grand brass ending, the song was over. She opened her eyes.

“I haven’t heard that song in forty years,” she said softly.

It had not occurred to me that a person could go so long without something they truly loved.

“Nana,” I said, “I’ve never heard that song before.” 

When I heard it with her, it wasn’t passively on the radio; it wasn’t in the background at someone’s house party; it wasn’t track #6 in a mixed CD from someone, sandwiched between other songs that were also clamoring for meaning and significance; it was an experience of hearing and truly listening. For all my investment in music, I had taken it for granted, and had taken for granted that I could access it at any time. Until that moment, I had just heard music, but from that moment on I was really listening. 

[eohl-blog]

Are you okay?

Late one Friday night, I sent a text message. 

That is an innocuous way to begin a story. The fact is inherently ubiquitous; many texts are sent on a Friday night. This text was to my best friend, and she returned with a phone call. That response is inherently uncommon, especially on Fridays.

She sounded a little out of breath, very scattered, and highly disoriented. “I’m driving home to mom,” she explained.

“Is she okay?” I asked. 

“My dad died.”

Those words lingered in the air. 

The stillness of the moment reverberated to my bones.

“What?” was all I could manage to muster in the midst of our shared silence.

“My dad died. Mom found him in the lawn. He was doing yard work.”

“Oh my god,” was all I could say. 

In my mind, I kept impulsively wanting to ask, “Are you okay?” but everyone knows the answer to that question. It is a common, ridiculous, oversaturated question. When someone isn’t well, but we care for their wellbeing, it is in our nature to want to make sure they are okay. So we ask if they are okay. Things were clearly not okay, though. It doesn’t make sense to ask if someone is okay when they clearly are not, but sometimes it is the only question that ever seems to come to mind.

“Yeah,” was all she could say. The tone of her voice fought back all the waves of new, unexpected emotion.

Don’t ask, ‘Are you okay,’ was the thought that kept reeling through my mind. “When did you find out?” I asked.

“About half an hour ago. Mom called me after the paramedics pronounced him dead. So I packed up and left.”

Don’t ask, ‘Are you okay.’ “What... happened?” I asked, tenuously.

“I don’t know.” With this, the emotional wave overtook her self-restraint and invaded the conversation like the Nazis entering Paris. 

Do not ask, ‘Are you okay.’ “Do you want to talk while you drive?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “but can you come next weekend? To mom’s house.”

“Of course,” I promised.

Suddenly my mind filled with thoughts of Gerry, her father. Gerry had been a tall man, even in his retirement when age diminishes the body. He had been active, healthy, involved in the community, regularly going to the beach. Decades of summer sun had tanned and hardened his skin, but the warmth and kindness of his disposition was irresistible. Once he had baked an apple pie for me, and I remembered him bringing a slice on a plate to me while I reclined at his house. He had helped us decorate a car for a holiday parade, proudly posing for a photo with our prize creation. He had held his grandchildren close, been kind to animals, and taken his wife of thirty years dancing on Friday nights. He was retired, but wasn’t old. What had happened to Gerry?

On this Friday night, I thought of Christy home alone, without Gerry, not dancing.

I announced to Paul without explanation that I would be driving to Virginia Beach to visit Jess and her mom. 

“Where’s her dad?” Paul asked.

“He died. That’s why I’m going to Virginia.”

The following Friday, I packed my car with frozen meals and books on loss and board games, and I drove eight hours to arrive in the late afternoon to Jess’ mother’s house in Virginia Beach. Virginia’s afternoon sun is golden. New York’s autumn weather is unparalleled, but Virginia any time of year is warm.

Jess met me at the front door. Immediately I wrapped her in my arms. We stood in the open doorway in silence. The soft autumn wind met us in the doorway and comforted us. Softly, she whispered, “Hi.”

Don’t ask ‘Are you okay,’ I thought. “Where’s mom?” I asked.

Jess led me inside to the kitchen that was overflowing with casseroles: buckets of chicken, platters of deli sandwiches, boxes of fruit and chocolate, glass pans of pre-made meals, all covering the long island in the kitchen and stacked on top of each other. Mom was at the kitchen sink, doing dishes. “Laura,” she exclaimed, “how was the drive?”

Her tone and her demeanor felt like every time I had visited before. She seemed, for lack of a better word, okay. Don’t ask, ‘Are you okay.’ Where did all this food come from?” I asked instead.

“All the neighbors,” Christy explained, “and the bible study, and the women from church. Everyone just kept bringing food. How am I going to eat all this food?”

Offering a measure of humor, I said, “Well I’d be happy to help you with these,” while fingering open the cardboard lid to the chocolate. 

“Did you hit any traffic?” Christy asked.

It felt as if everything was normal (apart from the counter overflowing with more food than one woman could hope to eat in a reasonable time frame). It felt disorienting. Gerry’s absence was tangible in the house. “Christy, do you want me to do dishes?” I asked.

“No,” said Jess and Christy in unison.

“You just got in,” said Christy. “Have some food.” Southern warmth and hospitality really is something else: there I sat ready to offer a distraction, a comfort, and an assist, but I was the one being attended to. “And I need to putz,” finished Christy.

Finally I saw, with clarity, the process of grief. Sometimes we fool ourselves into distraction or disillusionment from the problem of pain, but sometimes it is just the practice of movement instead of the gravity of stillness that keeps us going forward. Sometimes going forward is all we have. Sometimes staying still is the inevitable end and there’s nowhere left to go. Christy was moving forward in the method left most methodical and familiar: the method of doing dishes and tidying up. As long as she had something to do and someone else to care for, she had a purpose.

As I settled in, I opened the chocolate. I handed one to Jess and relayed the tale of my travels. We joked around as if it were just another visit. I shattered the illusion of normalcy when I asked, “So what happened?”

Jess was first to explain in a rehearsed, matter-of-fact tone. “They think it was a heart attack.” Seeing the look on my face, she detailed, “The doctors and coroner have ruled it as a heart attack, but they aren’t entirely sure. His family history and no other health issues indicate that it was probably a heart attack, so that’s what’s on his death certificate. There was no evidence of foul play. He was doing yard work, and just had a heart attack in the middle of yard work.”

I looked at Christy. She had paused in her work.

“So dad was out during the day: he went on a walk, he’d chatted with the neighbors, he went to the store--”

“--and he bought $40 worth of plants,” interrupted Christy. “$40 in October. Can you believe it? I was so mad at him.” Her controlled visage began to fall. “I was so mad at him when he came home with those plants. And then he went out in the yard to plant them, and I didn’t want anything to do with it. And he was out there for hours, and I didn’t...” 

The humid silence filled the air.

“And when I found him, he wasn’t moving,” explained Christy.

Into my soul seeped the longing of love, the sorrow of loss, the depth of absence. I missed Gerry. I missed his apple pies, his enthusiasm, his warmth. I saw his love written all over Jess and her mother. I saw an absence in the shape of him. This life and their love would never be the same. 

Jess later explained, “I’m glad you came after the waves of everything. All the people and the arrangements and the chaos. It was easy to forget dad was gone when we were busy with people and making plans. I know you would have come to his funeral, but that’s when everyone was in town. Now that everyone is gone and the dust has settled, it’s... really hitting that he is gone.”

“When was the last time you talked to him?” I asked.

Jess’ eyes glinted. She explained that she was in the process of mustering the courage to reconcile with her father. The weight of loss pressed heavily into the room. There will never be an opportunity to reconcile a relationship that abruptly comes to an end when the closing chapter is death. Her father lay warmly in the Earth under the golden Virginia sun while Jess unjustly sat on the cold floor unable to hold him again. I saw in her face that she wasn’t okay. With friends in these moments, silence holds us up until we can begin moving again. And we all know the answer to the inevitable question, Are you okay? The answer is either “No,” (true) or “I’m fine,” (untrue), even though both are incorrect answers. 

Are you okay with the notion that you’ll never be able to reconcile this relationship? Are you okay with the fact that you were filled with anger when you learned he was dead? Are you okay with the idea that you can never be of any help or comfort in this moment of loss? Are you okay suddenly slipping into the everlasting arms and leave behind a family completely undone without you? Are you okay when you return home from a long weekend away in Virginia, and when your beloved first sees your tired, hardened face he sounds surprised when he asks, “Are you okay?”

[eohl-blog]

An Ideal Date

In my late twenties, I made a vow to myself that I would keep social obligations. 

It is hard to tell if it is an eventual progression that happens when all your friends are in their twenties, or if it is a generational progression and a sign of changing times, but I cannot even count the number of friends who have bailed on social plans at the last minute (or, for that matter, how many times I have bailed on somebody else). But I was tired of this pattern, and--assuming some semblance of adult responsibility--made a solemn vow to myself that if I made a commitment then I would be the kind of person who would show up.

I mean, maybe I’d go home after 30 minutes, but at least I’d honor my arrangements. That’s fair, right?

This little plan was going along splendidly. I was a reliable friend. I was someone to be counted on. I patted myself on the back for being such a responsible person.

The creeping feeling of wanting to bail on social plans didn’t go away. It is in my my introverted nature to prefer being at home, wearing sweatpants, and drinking wine on the porch. I’d welcome someone who’d want to join me at home, but going all the way out to a bar or a restaurant wearing pants with a defined waistband? How draining. 

One day in early spring, I’d made commitments to see a live band play at a small venue. I had committed to this because I was invited to attend by a tall, handsome, single fellow whom I hadn’t known very long. The entire package was very appealing. I was really looking forward to this. (Maybe I was really looking forward to him.) I imagined a scenario in which we’d be standing side by side at the venue and “accidentally” bump into each other while swaying to the music, caught up in a sudden romantic haze. It would be enough for one of us to find the other’s hand and hold on. We’d stand there, mostly touching, dancing to the music together. At the end of the evening, one of us might muster enough courage to kiss the other, and a night that included kissing tall, handsome, single fellows was a good night in my book.

Anticipation is a feeling I come by honestly, and I was honestly looking forward to this.

The day of the concert, I carefully selected my work clothes. They needed to be office appropriate, but just edgy enough to be acceptable at a live concert with a vibe of “I just got off work, but I still come to shows. See how relatable and cool I am for a responsible corporate adult.” 

The afternoon at work dragged by horribly. As the hours ticked forward, something strangely familiar began happening. I found myself looking forward to going home.

“No,” I immediately told myself. “You committed to this plan. You’re going to the concert.”

A second voice answered it from the very depths of myself. “But wouldn’t it be nicer to just go home?”

“Home is nice. But you promised to meet him at the concert.”

The second voice had an answer to that, too. “You’ll have to drive 40 minutes to get there. That’s a long way to drive. But home is only five minutes, and there’s wine there.”

“No. I made a vow to keep my promises.”

But as the clock crept closer and closer to 5:00, I started to resent the plans I had made. That possibility of kissing a tall, handsome, single fellow was way too unrealistic for this casual invitation. That hypothetical situation where we’d be dancing side by side was unlikely; I mean, the venue will probably have chairs or something. And these work clothes are ridiculous. (All black? How original.) Sweatpants would be way more comfortable. As would the couch in the living room, instead of driving all the way out to Rochester for a guy you don’t know very well.

I was actively talking myself out of the plan and started considering how I might bail on the commitment before I stopped myself. “You made a commitment,” I told myself, “and you’re going to keep it. You’re going to get off work, and you’re going to get into your car, and you’re going to drive straight to Rochester. You’re not even going to stop at home. If you go home, you know exactly what will happen: you’re going to take off your shoes. And if you take off your shoes, you’re going to get into sweatpants. And if you get into sweatpants, you’re not going to leave the house and then the whole night is canceled.”

These are the pep talks we give ourselves when we’re trying to become better people.

When the work day ended, I went straight into my car. I opened the text message from him that had the venue’s address, and pulled up a map. I drove to Rochester.

The entire 40 minute drive to the venue, the inner parts of me cloyed at going home. It is difficult to fight with your internal wiring, especially when it will be impossible to meet a partner and fall in love if every night is spent sitting on the porch drinking wine but that is exactly the thing your inner wiring wants to do. I was about 5 minutes from the destination when I pulled over to the side of the road and called my best friend.

“Jess, I need help,” I said.

I was so grateful she answered. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t want to go on this date.”

She laughed at me. “What, you have a date? Girl, with who?”

“With this tall, handsome, single fellow. I don’t know him very well. We met for coffee last weekend, and he invited me up to see this band play tonight.”

“Why don’t you want to go?”

“I don’t know,” I moaned pathetically. “I’d just rather be at home instead.”

“You’re not at home right now?” she asked.

“No, I promised myself that I would keep social obligations.” It sounded pathetic coming out of my own mouth. “But I knew that if I left work and went home that I’d never get back out again, so I got in my car and I drove to Rochester.”

“Well that was your first mistake,” she said. 

“What do I do?”

“It looks like you have to keep your social obligations,” she said matter-of-factly. “Or, just turn around and go back home.”

“I’m five minutes away from the venue. Will you stay on the phone with me to make sure I get there?”

She laughed at me again. “Okay, sure.”

I pulled back out into traffic, chatting with her, filled with gratitude that there was someone in my life to help me on my own quest to try and become a better person, even when the methods for doing so were transparently flimsy. As I got closer to the venue, I started to grow suspicious.

“This is really weird, Jess,” I said. “The concert venue is a minute away, but I’m still in a very residential area.”

“How residential?”

“White picket fence residential,” I said. And then suddenly, the GPS updated to inform me that I had passed the venue.

“Hang on, I missed it somehow,” I said. “Can I call you back?”

“Sure,” she said, and hung up.

At the next opportunity to turn around, I checked the map. I checked the text message to make sure I copied the address correctly. Everything seemed to be in order, but as I made a second approach from the opposite direction I was perplexed to discover there was no venue. The address entered into the GPS wasn’t actually there. 

“This is ridiculous,” I thought to myself, and took the next chance I could to pull over. I opened my phone to our text thread and stared at the address he sent me: an address that didn’t exist. I wrote, “I went to the address you sent me, but it doesn’t look like there’s a venue here.” 

While waiting for the reply, I called Jess back.

“Did you find it?” she asked.

“It’s not actually here,” I explained. “He sent me an address that doesn’t exist.”

“That’s weird.”

“I’m just going to drive around until I hear back from him.” 

By this time, the sun was low on the horizon. The sky was mostly dark blue and the street lights were turning on. I drove without direction, making aimless turns onto roads that looked promising or interesting, and found myself in a downtown district. Rochester had white Christmas lights in its trees that were just beginning to bud with the spring. Fountains were illuminated. Jess regaled me with stories from work, about how so-and-so was doing such-and-such but was definitely being unprofessional, and so on. 

The sky was completely dark by the time I noticed I had a new text. It said, “Hey, sorry! I got that address from their website, but I’m not there either.” 

That was it. There were no other questions, no other messages, no other information. That was enough for me to recognize that, whatever was going on in his mind, he probably wanted to bail on this social obligation, too. 

“Hey Jess,” I said. “I’m going to start heading home.”

“You mean you were waiting all this time to hear back from him? He’s definitely not worth your time.”

I merged onto the interstate to begin the drive home. “This was a beautiful night. Thank you for talking to me. I got to see all the beautiful lights of Rochester, and I really enjoyed spending this time with you.”

“I’m glad to be your ideal date,” she said. “Drive safe.”

[eohl-blog]

Daniel Craig’s Hairy Chest

It is absolutely a mistake to plan a wedding at 4:00 in the afternoon.

Paul and I had set the time at 4:00 to allow for the out-of-town guests to fly in with enough time to get dressed and attend our wedding. We thought this was considerate and practical. But we also planned our wedding two weekends before Thanksgiving--which is when most people were trying to take time off from work--which was incredibly imposing to everybody. New York in November: it is amazing anyone came to the wedding at all.

4:00 was the one courtesy we hoped to extend. 

By 9:00 in the morning, I was ready to be married.

I was wide awake and pacing in my hotel room. My best friend, the very spirit of patience, had packed for every contingency. 

“Let’s watch ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding,’” Jess suggested.

“I need wine,” I said.

“You need breakfast,” she corrected. 

We both went downstairs for breakfast. My grandfather had already finished his meal, and had started approaching strangers, asking, “Are you here for the wedding?” assuming that any new face must belong to Paul’s side of the family. My grandmother was drinking her coffee, happily watching him.

My mother was bursting with energy. “How are you feeling?” she asked, gushing.

“I need a drink,” I said. She laughed. Jess prepared a waffle.

It took no time to shower and get dressed. I had hoped that getting ready for a wedding might take most of the morning and afternoon, but by 1:00 I was completely ready and still had three hours to kill.

I started pacing in my hotel room, again.

“What do you need?” asked Jess.

“I need wine,” I said.

“You need lunch,” she corrected. She started texting lunch arrangements.

There was a knock at the door. It was my mom and my aunt. “Can we come in?” they asked.

“Yes!” I said, a little frenzied.

“Are you okay?” asked my aunt.

“I need wine,” I said.

“She needs lunch,” said Jess.

“Laura, are you nervous?” asked my mom.

“No. Maybe. Not about getting married. I know getting married to Paul is the right thing to do. I just want to do it right now, and I don’t like being the center of attention. Can we just start the wedding right now?”

“You’re going to have your whole life to be married,” said my aunt. “My husband is my best friend. We’ve been married twenty years. I used to think his hairy chest was so sexy. I used to rub my fingers through it. And now I look at him and I think, ‘Wow, that is a hairy chest.’ So about the middle of the afternoon I start thinking about that actor that plays James Bond. What’s his name? Oh, Daniel Craig. I start thinking about Daniel Craig’s chest. And then by dinnertime, I’m ready.”

At that moment, Holly entered the room with a bottle of Chardonnay.

“Let’s all do a little meditation,” suggested Jess. Holly started pouring glasses of wine for everyone in the room. 

We sat in a circle in the hotel room, white wine readily at hand. My glass was half empty by the time Jess began.

“Everyone take a deep breath in.” Suddenly all the air was sucked from the room. “And as you exhale, breath out ‘Fuck that.’“ 

My aunt started giggling.

“Breathe out the three-ring shitshow circus of your day. Breathe in. Breathe out: ‘fuck that.’“ 

My glass of wine was now empty.

“Breathe in. Don’t let those cocksuckers bring you down. Breathe out--”

We chanted in unison, “Fuck that.”

“Breathe in. Let the horseshit of the world fade from your awareness. Breathe out--”

“FUCK THAT!”

And at 4:30 that afternoon, I was married.

[eohl-blog]

Out Of Time

Arthur was the salt of the Earth, and probably also the pepper. My father would describe Arthur as frugal, honest, hardworking, and my mother would remind me that Arthur had a hard upbringing and was like the black sheep of his family. Since Arthur was her father, I trusted that she knew him better.

My father likes to tell the stories of when he was dating my mother and had to win the approval of his future father-in-law. Arthur was very protective of his daughters. He was a well-driller, a machinist, and a farmer. There were never stronger hands or harder days than Arthur’s. One time, when my father was in his twenties, he accompanied Arthur to drill a well in the thick of Virginia’s countryside. 

“The first twenty feet of drilling were easy,” my father recalls, “until you hit the sedimentary rock under all the topsoil. It was like concrete. And there’s Arthur, manually working the machine, getting through it all. ‘Chris, get up here and give me a hand,’ he’d say. And then I was up there, manually working it, while he went on to the truck. We worked hard that day, and I mean hard. And we worked all day.”

But that’s just the middle of my father’s story about drilling a well with my grandfather. “So as we’re driving away from the site, Arthur turns to me and says, ‘You know Chris, I’m going to charge that man $5,000 for drilling that well today, and he’s going to be grateful for it.’ And I’m sitting there thinking, ‘$5,000 wow! I know I’m not in charge, just a day’s helper, but I deserve to have a cut of that for working with him all day!’ So I’m daydreaming about what twenty-two year old me would do with some of that money when we pull into a gas station, and Arthur turns to me and says, ‘Why don’t you go on in and get yourself a hot dog, on me.’ And that was it! An entire day’s work for a gas station hot dog! I mean, can you believe that?”

“That and the honor of marrying mom,” I add. 

“Well, yeah, but that came later,” says my dad.

I suppose “gas station hot dog” is not a bad way to remember my grandfather’s work ethic, but he was strong and silent in the ways that generations of men have ceased to be. He had dark hair until it turned grey, but it never thinned. His fingernails were permanently stained with oil, and he would only speak up at dinnertime to tell everyone else to quiet down so he could hear the TV. 

Arthur and Mary Ann, my grandmother, lived in a white house in the country for as long as I’ve been alive. It is the house where they raised their children and where all their grandchildren have come to visit. Four years ago, when they repainted their kitchen, they finally painted over the pencil marks of everyone’s heights dating back to the 80′s. That was the year that Arthur's cancer treatment failed and his health gradually began to deteriorate in a way that could never be cured but could only thereafter be managed.

In October, my mother called. “We’d love to spend Thanksgiving with you. Would you host?”

“Of course. I’d love to have you guys. I’ll check with Paul.” 

By Halloween, my father called. “Arthur’s cancer is getting worse. Have you called them lately?”

“I haven’t,” I confessed. “Should we go to them for Thanksgiving?”

“Yes. Your mother thinks it might be his last one.” 

That moment always seems so far away until it is knocking at your door. A modern life can easily keep you from the complications of ageing and death, and when it happens in your family it happens so far away. And when it happens to strong, silent men like Arthur, you secretly believe it can’t be happening at all. 

The Thanksgiving arrangements were made: Paul and I would go to work on Tuesday morning, leave by lunchtime, and arrive at my parents’ house Tuesday night. On Wednesday we would drive together to my grandparents’ white house in the country, and spend Thanksgiving Thursday with them. 

Tuesday, at 6:15 in the morning, my mother called. I was still getting dressed for work. She wasn’t crying, but sounded like she wanted to be. “He passed away this morning,” she said.

“I’m sorry mom,” I said. “I’ll see you tonight.” 

Paul looked at me from across our bedroom in the dim dark-morning lamplight. “What is it?” he asked.

“He died,” I said. “A few hours ago.”

Silence held us still in that room, and held us all the way to work. It was surprisingly effortless to say nothing to my colleagues. Saying it aloud to Paul was simple, but it was difficult to say it aloud to anyone else, as if saying it would make it true. 

Earlier that summer I had visited my grandparents by myself. My grandmother had insisted on going into town together, and Arthur silently complied as I drove them around. She wandered around an antique store while Arthur and I sat in the car outside, waiting, mostly in silence.

“What did you teach?” I asked him, reaching for a connection.

“Eighth grade Earth Science,” he said. His voice was gruff, not from the cancer treatments but from a lifetime of providing through hard work.

“For how long?”

“Twenty-five years,” he said after a pause.

“And the well drilling?”

“On weekends and summers.”

“Did you like teaching?”

He was quiet for a moment. “It was alright.” 

After twenty-five years in any profession, I suppose the best I could hope for is that, at the end of that relationship, I could eventually conclude that it was ‘alright.’ There are so many worse alternatives to a relationship that long. 

The silence endured. 

“Do you want an ice cream?” I asked, reaching again.

His face changed: not much, just in the subtle way that, in a manner that was uniquely his, indicated approval. “I guess that’d be pretty good,” he said.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I passed by the same antique store and ice cream stand. The ice cream was closed for the season, and the gray November sky cast everything with a feeling of gloom. After winding through the country roads we came to the long gravel driveway of my grandparents’ house, and at the end of the driveway were cars with license plates from everywhere.

The small white house was a flurry of activity. My aunts Margaret and Marjorie were by the only computer in the house making funeral arrangements. Arthur’s brother Laurence sat on the sofa in the living room giving directions to his daughter, Molly, who was setting the table. Alyssa, my cousin, was at the sink doing dishes, keeping up with my brother who was serving as a sous chef to my mother, who was at the stove. The TV was on. Uncle Patrick was outside with aunt Marjorie’s boyfriend, trying to set up a canopy tent in the front yard. My family became an ant colony: all chaotically moving in different directions at once but each playing a vital part in the big picture.

My grandma inserted two leaves in the dining room table to fit all fifteen family members who had descended upon her the day before Thanksgiving, and after dinner when the table was cleared, the stories began.

“I remember,” said my brother, “when grandpa called me on my 17th birthday. He called and said, ‘Hello Tom. There was something I wanted to tell you.’ And after a pause he said, ‘Mary, what did I want to tell Thomas? Oh yeah, Tom, I remember the day you were born.’ And I asked, Do you really? and he said, ‘No.’” 

“That’s not as bad as when I had to go well-drilling with him,” chimes my father who seizes the opportunity to remind everyone of his gas station hot dog.

“At least you got a hot dog!” said my aunt. “I was fifteen and helping him drill wells, and mom didn’t let us have long hair because it was too much to take care of. So one morning I’m with him picking up some equipment from the hardware store and the store manager says to daddy, ‘Do you need a hand loading that in the truck or can you and your son handle it?’ And daddy just looks at me, pauses a moment, and says, ‘Nah, me and my son can handle it.’ Can you believe it! He wasn’t going to embarrass me by saying I was actually a girl, but you could tell he knew I looked rough.”

The more stories flowed, the more retrospectively humorous my grandfather became. He was frugal in his stories, and hard working, and strong, and through his work he loved his family well.

It didn’t take long for Arthur’s brother Laurence to find room for stories of his own. Laurence was the youngest in his family, but still belonged to a generation that is racist out of time. His stories immediately silenced the entire rest of the family, peppering the room with racial slurs that no one outside of Mississippi after 1940 would ever say. But behind closed doors, we all become different people.

I got up to address my family that Paul and I were going to the hotel in town. My grandmother stood up, her height reaching only to my shoulders, and hugged me close. “Arthur said,” she recalled to everyone with her arm around me, “’I love everyone in this room.’ He said that Monday night before he went to bed. He said it right here in this room. And he did. He loved everybody here.” She took her time to make eye contact with all of us. “And that night he died in his bed. He died full of love, surrounded by people who loved him. And that’s all anybody can ask.” 

I ran out of time to tell him I loved him, too. 

[eohl-blog]

Three Magic Words

There is a moment that many of my friends have experienced that I have yet to come to. 

We’ve seen it play out on television and, especially after reaching a certain age, we’ve heard many of our friends retell the narrative. There is a magic, secret moment in a passage to womanhood. It isn’t fantasized in the ways that weddings are, but it is just as tremendous.

My roommate was twenty-one when she told me, “I’m pregnant.” 

We had just begun our senior year in college. Her parents had purchased a house a few miles from campus with the hopes of flipping the house in a few years. A few college students made perfect residents for a small, pick-your-project house. We had been painting the living room when she told me, through her dust mask, the news she had been holding on to for a few weeks.

“What?” I asked. 

“I found out on fourth of July.” 

I asked her to tell me the story.

She stopped rolling paint to look at me as she revisited the memory. “Scott’s parents have a house at the beach, and they invited me and him to join the family for the weekend. I wasn’t feeling great and was worried I might be pregnant.”

“You were having sex?”

“Yeah,” she said, “he had been pressuring me to do it. He said we didn’t need to use a condom because he would pull out. We only did it a couple of times.”

“And then what?” I asked. I didn’t know how to be a good friend in this moment, but I had stopped painting to fully hear her.

“I took a pregnancy test at his parents’ house just to rule out the possibility that I might have gotten pregnant. But it was positive. I wrapped it up and buried it in the trashcan, but his sister found it and told the whole family. So they all know.”

I thought about those dramatic moments on TV where a woman, alone, sits in a bathroom and sees a pregnancy test turn positive. Some of those are tearfully joyful moments, and some of them are perfectly the opposite. My roommate told her story completely devoid of emotion, and I wondered if she was still internally processing her own feelings and hadn’t yet landed anywhere.

A life-changing moment could happen to anyone. 

It was several years later when a life-changing moment happened to me. 

I had visited a long-time friend in another state and we enjoyed the evening drinking wine he had bottled with his father. He had promised me his bed while he slept on the couch, which eventually progressed to sharing the bed together. The wine kept me from remembering many of the small moments, but I profoundly remember his concern when he lost the condom and my subsequent concern that I’d actually arrived at this moment.

I wasn’t concerned when I drove away from his house the next morning. I wasn’t concerned when I went back to work on Monday. I wasn’t even too concerned when, the next month, my period got later and later. 

But I remembered that profoundly concerning moment three months after it had passed, when my body felt tremendously uncomfortable and I hadn’t had a period since. I tried to swallow that moment as I pulled a sweatshirt over my shaking body in the middle of the summer. I stuffed that moment as I walked into my grocery store at night and the horrible fluorescent lights illuminated the pregnancy test as the only item I handed the cashier on my way out.

The cashier looked at me with enormous doe-eyed empathy. “It’ll be okay,” she said.

Am I living in a movie? “Fuck you,” I said.

I rushed home in the dark. I ran up the back stairs into my apartment and sat in my yellow bathroom. I was profoundly alone. 

The dramatic scenes of women unveiling their pregnancy raced before my eyes. It is as they say: waiting for the strip takes an eternity. There is nothing to do but wait. In the midst of my waiting, I remembered my twenty-one year old roommate. In my mind I was transported back to our small house, back to the unpainted living room, back to her tenderness concealed behind a dust mask admitting that she had been coerced into unprotected sex, confessing that she had never even climaxed, and eventually gave birth just in time for college graduation. I remembered her. 

My time had come. I beheld my strip. Breathlessly I confessed those three magic words: I’m not pregnant.

[eohl-blog]

Perhaps Love

When it comes right down to it, I prefer staying home.

There have been many Friday afternoons around 4:00 when suddenly a piercing question scratches at me: “What are you going to do tonight?” generally followed immediately by, “Why don’t you have plans tonight?” This feeling started in college, a season where time is an unlimited resource but money is so finite. It was easy to imagine my real-life friends having imaginary plans and that everyone was having fun without me.

What do normal people do between 4:30 and 7:30 on Friday evenings? In framing this question, I realize it inherently negates my normal experience. It is the extrovert’s public life that is normal; the introvert’s private life is enshrouded. 

One late afternoon on a Friday, I was driving home from work. The misery of my question laid heavily on me. “Why don’t you have plans tonight?” I lived, at the time, in a one-story ranch that had been a foreclosure before my roommate’s parents purchased it as a property to flip. As they say, the bones were good, but many areas of the house were under construction at any given time. In college, this is still a step up from living in campus dorms. 

As I pulled into the (mostly grass) driveway beside the house, the golden afternoon sun blinded me through the windshield. The beauty of the late afternoon, even still, makes me think, “behold the glory of God.” Nothing so hazy, saturated, and warm as a golden afternoon can be anything short of glorious. 

I looked at my phone. It blankly looked back at me. There was nothing to say.

Somewhat mournfully, I entered my empty house and set down my bag. There were absolutely no plans clamoring for my attention. Classes had homework; the internship had assignments; the house had projects; I was laid completely bare before a clean slate of an evening. It was easy to imagine a house filled with friends of mine currently buzzing with activity as women raided their roommates’ closets and applied eyeliner. It was easy to imagine an apartment filled with friends in my circle connecting an Xbox to a wall projector and filling the living room like a movie theater. Friends who recently crossed into 21 were delighted to discover they could now use their real ID to congregate at bars. Friends I knew teamed up with strangers I’d never met to pile into a car and drive to the neighboring campus 30 minutes down the road.

And I--despondent at what should be an action-filled, lively, exciting evening--made a sandwich in a kitchen with exposed drywall.

If I were being honest with myself, I had (and have still) wonderful friends. It took many years of having plans (and not having them) to arrive at a place where I no longer imagine the hypothetical fun things all my friends are doing without me on a Friday afternoon. 

When I come home from work, I lavish in the golden afternoon sun. Why raid someone else’s closet and put on eyeliner when I can behold the glory of God through my windshield? Why sit on the couch and watch another iteration of the same game when the flowers are unfolding in the spring and the leaves are changing in the fall? Why drink at a bar when I can drink on my porch (in sweatpants and without driving anywhere)? 

The beauty of a Friday between 4:30 and 7:30 pm is in its sacred singularity. An ordinary day is transformed by its freedom of opportunity. As jobs and relationships have come and gone, Friday evening remains an open window. I have come to rely on this corridor of my life to fully unwind and cherish a moment to breathe.

I imagine my real friends having imaginary fun getting dressed, going out, getting together, as I uncork a bottle of wine and unhook my belt. I imagine my real friends staying out and replicating their adventures online as I behold a golden evening from the sanctuary of my porch. It took too long to recognize I had created a perfect and delightful pattern. I am not missing out. I am in love with this.

As 4:00 on Friday afternoon approaches, relief and joy rush to meet me. The question “Why don’t you have plans tonight?” has been replaced with the thought, “Thank goodness you don’t have plans tonight!” as if my entire adulthood has been building toward the possibility of freedom and being unencumbered by obligations. This makes perfect sense to me. Freedom to enjoy being alone is always what I had secretly been looking for.

Perhaps love is this perfect acceptance of oneself.