Wrapping Up Christmas 2018

Yesterday we wrapped up our fourth and last Christmas of 2018.

For seven Christmases it’s been just us 3 up in Seattle, and it’s been great. We always share Christmas Day together at home and make a lot of our traditional favorite foods. The day after, I often fly to Texas to spend the week between Christmas and my birthday with my family.

But this year, for the first time since we moved, we came home for the holidays. We planned extended travel time so that we could drive down and be here for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Birthdays, and beyond. It’s the first time we’ve been home for the holidays together since we moved, and the first time Benjamin and I have been home together at the same time in over five years.

After Thanksgiving (plus a couple of weeks) with my family, we traveled to spend Christmas with Benjamin’s family. We savored 3 Christmases with them, each with different (but overlapping) family groupings. Each gathering was all food and fellowship without the exchange of presents (except for the little ones) so it was super stress-free. We played games, ate delicious food, and enjoyed lengthy visits. It was *such a treat* to be with everyone.

Yesterday, as per my annual holiday routine, we came back to my parents for post-Christmas, New Year, and Birthdays (my sis-in-law (SIL) and I share birthdays one day apart!).We exchange small presents with my family, which range from handmade to practical to fun. This year more than one of us had the idea to give little LEGO sets, and I got us all a Nintendo Classic to share.

So we spent our day playing with Legos and watching each other play nostalgic Nintendo games. It was a Christmas straight out of Christmases past! When we were kids, a perfect Christmas consisted of Legos and Nintendo. Turns out that’s still what constitutes the perfect Christmas for these kids!

Things I want to be sure to remember:

• Us four kids, ages 32-37, all in the floor playing with Legos before lunch and again through the afternoon. My brother and I also dug out some of our old Legos of yore and using those random pieces he master-crafted custom stuff straight out of his imagination until about 1am.

• During the afternoon, we watched my brother own Megaman like he still plays it all the time when in reality it’s been more like 20 years since he’s played. My mom made popcorn and we sat and watched the impressive show as he steadily marched towards the final boss. Between me and my brother’s shared memories of the game, we remembered all the tricks to it, and he executed them impressively!

• My mom played Super Mario Brothers for the first time ever and was so animated about all her missteps. It was so fun and funny to watch!

Amidst watching each other play Nintendo (and each of us playing it ourselves in turns) and as my brother continued to play with Legos well into the night, we all visited, Benjamin and my SIL worked on a jigsaw puzzle, and I read vintage cookbooks and took notes on recipes I want to try while my mom read a vintage 5th grade songbook I found a couple of weeks ago. We also pulled out my and Benjamin’s wedding album and then my parents’ album, and showed them to my SIL to give her ideas for what she wants for hers.

It was the perfect Christmas Day. My favorite people to share gifts with. Gifts that kept on giving all day long and late into the night such that we didn’t even realize how late it had gotten. Gifts that created the background noise for visits and stories and photo-reminiscences. Legos and [grown] kids spread across the living room floor like old times all under the glow of the Christmas tree.

Christmas this year was richly abundant in fellowship, food, and memory-making. I’ll remember the 2018 Christmas season for many years to come.

Christmas 3 of 4

Benjamin and I exchanged tiny stockings this year. We used Christmas kid’s socks for stockings since smaller stockings mean there’s much less to fill. Our tree is made of discarded branch clippings from my parents’ tree with ribbon I braided and stars my mom crocheted for me. Brass bells too heavy for the tiny tree are hung on the milk bottle instead. We exchanged our stockings after we woke up this morning and then helped Pepper open his.

We spent Christmas Day with my in-laws’ in-laws. They’re a generous and hospitable bunch and it’s been years since we’ve celebrated with them. It was such a treat to be in their company. Besides delicious food and good company, there are a few things I will savor above the general joy of the day.

After lunch my little six-year-old niece came up to me, addressed me by my name, and asked me for a favor in the sweetest voice. It’s the first time I’ve heard her call me by name and I positively melted. She and I have a pen-pal relationship, but I haven’t seen her in person since she was about 6-months old. She’s a remarkable child and I’ve so enjoyed getting to know her during this trip.

I love Benjamin’s brother like he’s my own, and watching him parent our niece is truly wonderful. He’s so attentive, kind, proud, patient, firm, fun, and gentle. He’s all the wonderful things a parent should be. I’m so proud to see him be such a great dad.

We got hours of uninterrupted visiting time with Benjamin’s brother and sis-in-law both, which was a really special gift. I feel like I know both of them better now. I have a helluva lot of respect for them and the ways they’re raising our niece (she is such a lucky, lucky girl to have such thoughtful, compassionate, empowering parents). And we got to compare notes and understand how much we have in common and build bridges over shared concerns. All of that was a real gift.

On a lighter note, there was a Christmas popper at each place-setting which was just plain fun. I’ve never popped one before. Mine contained a plastic blue harmonica and I wore my orange paper crown all day long until it fell off and I accidentally stepped on it!

Not Quite Christmas Memories

A recent acquisition for my vintage Christmas photo collection.

Yesterday wasn’t one of our many Christmas gatherings, but it was filled with lovely memories that I want to record and cherish, so it gets an entry all the same!

Yesterday Benjamin and I shot our little sister’s senior photos. She’s the only child I’ve yet had the privilege of watching grow up from infancy to adulthood and it’s been a true gift to watch her grow. She’s a bright, funny, wonderful human and we had so many laughs yesterday during the shoot.

Later that day Benjamin cut his finger and when he asked his dad for a bandaid, his dad came back with one and told him to stick his finger out. He proceeded to put it on Benjamin’s cut finger. It was the cutest.

Our second home as newlyweds was the pool house in his dad’s backyard. We fixed it up and it was such a darling space. It remains one of my top 2 favorite places we’ve ever lived. After we moved out, a couple of tenants didn’t take such good care of it and it fell into disrepair. Recently it’s been refreshed and renovated and we saw the remodel yesterday.

The tree at Christmas 2 of 4. While the day itself didn’t get its own blog post, the lovely tree still needed to be featured!

I stood in the bedroom looking into its little backyard and cried big fat tears for all the good memories there. I thought of our rabbit Millie, who lived just outside that window. I thought of our sister when she was still a kid and would come over. Pepper was young and Benjamin and I were newlyweds. The light shone through the trees outside the bedroom window in just the same way that I carry with me in my memories. It was good to see new life in it, but the part of me that cherished my time there so much will never stop missing and savoring the sweet moments we shared there.

After the tour, we had lunch with Benjamin’s dad, step-mom and sister and we laughed and laughed together. Then we joined his dad to go visit his Grandma. Gosh she looked great. It was so good to see her! I had the great pleasure of watching Benjamin walk into the community room where she and other residents had gathered to listen to a Christmas string quartet. I watched as he surprised her and her face lit up. It was beautiful.

After the quartet and visiting, she invited us to dinner. We sat with her at her assigned table and enjoyed the company of her lovely tablemates, Sally and Dolly. Benjamin’s dad shared stories with her friends about Grandma. It was such a pleasant meal with truly lovely company.

These are the reasons we’re here and I’m so grateful for all of these opportunities to reconnect.

Christmas 1 of 4

We’re in Texas for the holiday season, so for the first time in seven years, we’re joining our families for all the festivities. Today was our first Christmas gathering and there are so many things I don’t want to forget about Christmas 1 of 4.

After everyone finished eating lunch, Pepper’s uncle asked if he could go get Pepper out of his room and hold him at the dinner table while we all visited. He held Pepper for a long time and gave him a good and proper massage. It made my heart happy to see Pepper so loved. They share the same middle name, which the internet once told me is the name meaning “happy friend.”

For 30-45 minutes I danced nonstop to the nutcracker soundtrack on cassette with my 6 year-old niece (whom I’d never met before) in the back bedroom. I also had the privilege of explaining to her who Benjamin and I were (she thought Benjamin was “daddy’s friend”). Then she told me: “Benjamin is a weird name. Cute but weird.” (That assessment just keeps making me laugh!) We looked at a map together and I showed her where we live compared to where she lives and all the states we drove through to come visit her. I also got to teach her how to work a cassette player, which was a privilege indeed.

Sometimes you don’t want to forget things because they’re so wonderful. Other times you don’t want to forget them so that you can make better choices in the future! Despite some efforts to practice smidges of dietary self-care today, everything was so tasty that I ate way too much and gave myself quite a stomach ache! Yesterday I baked lovely gluten-free sugar cookies and I ate way too many of those delicious bad boys today. All day long they were pure melt-in-your-mouth buttery goodness. Now they’re only regret!

Benjamin overdid it in his own way, so tonight I was on my phone searching for any kind of internet relief I could find. Even a placebo was acceptable. I just needed anything to help me feel like I was doing something to improve our situation! This led me to “yoga poses that undo overeating” on Cosmo.com, so I invited Benjamin to join me.

The poses did help some, but then we sat around afterwards and talked about Marvel Avengers stuff and speculated and laughed. Honestly I think that did more to improve my situation than anything simply because it took my mind off my misery.

So here’s to uncles who show love to their furry nephews, nieces to meet and dance endlessly with, and lovers to commiserate, cope and be miserable with. Christmas 1 of 4 was a wild success!

Apologies

I’m confessing that despite all of my resolve to stay out of trouble during the holidays that I’ve already stepped in it with my big mouth.

I want to be a person of love who asks questions instead of making assumptions. Who seeks to be open instead of quick to judge. Who listens more than speaks (sometimes that’s an especially hard one for me, especially when I have big feels, whether excited to upset).

Mostly it’s all gone well the last couple of days. A few moments felt sticky, but we got through them just fine. And then this evening I popped off a single, sassy, sarcastic remark. It was just a few words long and we moved past it without much further talk and everyone really enjoyed the evening. There was a lot of laughter and fun.

I didn’t think a at all about what I’d said until I fell into bed just now, exhausted from consecutive late nights of visiting. I began to feel the unease rising in me. I thought of all the times I felt uncomfortable today when we inched too close to some topic where there were opposing viewpoints and beliefs. Today I mostly listened and inwardly rejoiced when someone made a good point that helped restore some balance without wavering in conviction and I waited for each wave to pass. But then I replayed how I so ungraciously popped off and felt sick in my stomach.

So I rolled over and pulled out my phone to draft a sincere letter of apology on my notes app in the dark. Writing the letter allowed me to start thinking through what I’d like to say to this person tomorrow, so that I can do it genuinely and graciously without stumbling over my words. It gave me a chance to consider whether I need to apologize to the others who were present (ie: everyone) and why or why not. And it helped me understand why I popped off in the first place.

The truth is that I’ve spent my life feeling tender about my gender within my family and I’ve mostly felt completely unseen in these moments of frustration/anger/resentment/inner-struggle and also sometimes ganged up on. My experiences, and therefore my self, feel unseen because any protests from childhood (and beyond) seem to fall on deaf ears. I hate being treated differently because I’m a girl and I am *so* frustrated by those in my life who can’t see it and continue to perpetuate gender stereotypes.

So something was said that stirred all this up (I have no idea what it was by now, and it’s not important anyway) and I popped off with a truly unhelpful (and worse, divisive and attacking) comment. I’m super not proud of it, and was rather ill over it when it resurfaced in my mind. I may not always feel understood by this group of folks, but I love them dearly. And the thought of being party to inflicting harm on them because my mouth popped off while fueled by my feels... well, I hate that.

So my resolutions for tomorrow include the following:

• Apologize privately and individually at an early opportunity. - I decided that private, individual apologies were the way to go because then I can tailor each apology to the individual and seek to create more connection that way.

• Go for a long walk at some time during the day to get out, clear my head, diffuse my fuse, stretch my body, and create space for mental and physical self-care.

And that’s about it. It’s a short list and neither thing is difficult. Although apologies can sometimes feel uncomfortable, I need not overthink it. I need only 60-90 seconds of uninterrupted time with each person to say that I see them and that I also see how my words were harsh and how sorry I am for that. It’s a simple list, but it will make all the difference in both the energy within this space that we share and in my ability to keep myself appropriately on track with my own well-being and subsequent behavior.

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This squirrel is smiling and enjoying his Thanksgiving dinner because he doesn’t have to navigate controversial topics when they accidentally come up or deal with the ramifications of running his mouth. - Photo by Benjamin.

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A Traveling Sick Day

Photo courtesy of Benjamin.

In March through October, as we were planning for our travels, I knew that the time would come when one of us would be sick while traveling. At the very least, autumn and winter usually bring at least one seasonal cold to our home. I’m glad I knew to expect it so that I could file it in my mind as part of the natural rhythms of living life instead of seeing it as an inconvenience, disappointment, or interruption to our travels.

On the tail-end of Day 12 I felt the foreboding feeling of the pre-symptoms of a cold. Sure enough, Day 13 rolled in with a sore, scratchy, swollen throat and drainage.

Of course I’d prefer if it hadn’t happened during the one week I’d been anticipating more than any other week during Phase 1 of our travels. But, in truth, as I write this I’m still in bed where I’m warm and cozy, it’s rainy and windy outside (so I’d be indoors today anyway), and if I sit up I can see the ocean from my bed, which is heaven.

The ocean. It was my first request as we started planning our itinerary: one week on the Washington coast. It’s been too long since I’ve been here, and even then those visits have only been stop-offs as we drove through. This is my first time to sit and soak it up over a period of days.

I love the ocean. We arrived just before nightfall last night and I headed straight out onto the beach with Pepper. I stood and watched the water and cried. It felt like such a relief to finally be back with it. Pepper chased billowy balls of golden foam as it blew across the wet sand and he sniffed at piles of bullwhip kelp. The fog hung low over the foothills lining the shore and the sea stacks in the water. Everything felt gray except for the luminous foam pushed ashore by the rolling waves. Pepper and I ran along the beach and for one brief glorious moment, I released him from the confines of his leash and he flew across the landscape with the youthful exuberance of a pup.

The Pacific Ocean is my favorite. It’s raw and wild and powerful and it frightens me in a way that fuels my love and respect for it all the more. It stretches from Hawaii and my treasured memories there to the Pacific Northwest that I call home, tying the two together.

So here I lay, hot tea beside me, blankets piled high. I’m taking a resting day to give my cold the best chance I can to move through without too much fuss. I’m grateful for the cooperation of the weather so that I don’t feel like I should be up and out and ‘doing something.’ A rainy, cloudy, wet and windy day is the perfect day to curl up with a book or take a nap, so I’ll take advantage of the serendipitous alignment of my body’s request for rest and the hibernation-conducive weather we’re having.

As I lay here I can hear the roar of the ocean not far behind me, and the rain on the roof above. If I’m going to be sick, it’s not a bad way to wait it out.

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Postscript:

As I finished writing this, I received notice that it was time for my morning constitutional. This meant digging out pants, coat, and damp sand-covered shoes and walking a short distance in the cold rain and wind (20-30mph) to a porta-potty where I proceeded to have an experience that had the germaphobe in me low-key-asking, “Am I going to die?” Then walking back in the aforementioned weather to declothe, hand-sanitize and get back in bed.

So, in an effort to keep it real... yes, being in a warm bed just a stones throw from the ocean is a dream come true. But being sick is never fun no matter how you slice it and especially on a sick-day it sure would be nice to stay pantsless and in my houseshoes and savor the comfort of a clean, private bathroom instead of dressing to brave the elements and the germs. So I’m counting my blessings and savoring the heck out of them. But I’m not only going to paint a rosy-picture for y’all, because that would be so inauthentic to our lived experience. :)

A Missive From the Road

This past week we shared our salt-watered, forested neighborhood with a pair of nesting bald eagles, a barred owl, an American mink, a gray squirrel, a Douglas squirrel, large red slugs, garden slugs, a chatty frog and a wide array of birds (for the sake of my own personal record-keeping they were: pacific wren, brown creeper, dark-eyed junco, gulls, Brandt’s and double-breasted cormorants, and possibly a great blue heron which was scared off by an incoming dog).

We’ve heard the squirrels chatter, the eagles chirp, the frog croak, and the owl hoot and we watched the birds flit about, the squirrels fuss and the slugs munch. We’ve enjoyed the company of our neighbors.

We’ve stayed warmer this week than last since we’re close to the water and away from the mountains. But it’s been cloudy and rainy much of the time. Although it’s been no trouble and is just what we expected, we are longing to head south and savor the sunshine we know is coming!

In addition to all this loveliness, just to keep it real and paint a full picture, here’s the other side.

Based on some inquiries we’ve received, I think some expect that this whole ‘getting back to nature thing’ is one big vacation. But the truth is that it was a tremendous amount of work to prepare for (both practically and emotionally) and it takes work to maintain daily (where will we sleep each night? Where will we buy our next round of groceries or find a bathroom?) because basic activities of daily living are always changing with the weather and as we move from one place to the next.

On top of that, there’s the baggage. My beloved pieces of furniture, books and mementos? I put those in storage for some hoped-for future time. But my brain? I can’t put that in storage. It comes with me and it brings all its baggage.

I’ve been losing sleep due to worry and stress about a matter yet to be resolved back in the city that keeps me preoccupied. I’ve also had vivid and strange dreams every single night since we left. Nothing in my life is actually calamitous, these are just things my brain does when something is worrying it.

So rather than a vacation, it’s better described as a lifestyle change. We’ve traded human neighbors for animal ones, and just like our old neighbors, our new ones are sometimes funny, sometimes stressed, and sometimes shocking (I’m looking at you, slugs!). We’ve traded one kind of survival for another. In the city we earned money to have food and shelter. Now we conserve money and find shelter (or rather a new place to set up camp) and cook as the weather permits.

We still don’t find as much time as we’d like for creative pursuits (although we do find more than we did before) and we still putter around doing chores as a means of procrastinating and avoiding the difficulty of sitting down and beginning creative work. We still struggle with motivation and mental blocks and mental stress.

So, we’re working hard to maintain our routines from before and adapt them to our new life. We’re establishing new routines and holding each other accountable to taking care of ourselves and each other. There’s still plenty of additional self-care routines that I could be doing that I haven’t made space for yet. So it’s all a work in progress.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that a move is a move, whether you move to a new apartment or move into your vehicle. Sure, there’s less stuff that needs to be sorted or arranged, but it still must all be stored and organized and it takes a while to figure out what systems work and which ones don’t, just like in any new home.

So there it is in a nutshell. Overall, I can say that I am less stressed. Just being closer to trees and water has helped with that. It’s also helped to be distracted with the daily survival routine. Things that I might let slide at home (hello dishes!) are essential now. Dishes must be washed after each meal. Food must be made before it spoils in the cooler. I’m eating more regularly and healthfully and snacking less and doing chores regularly because there’s no other option. This infusion of discipline is so good for me because it keeps my mental chatter at bay. But the chatter is still there and I’m working on it. You can put your stuff in storage, but you can’t leave your brain behind. All of that stuff comes with you. 💛

The Third F

I spent most of the day in bed yesterday, and I didn’t really understand why. I just knew I had a billion things to do and I felt weighted down and glued to my bed. I sensed that if I stayed still and warm and cozy enough that I would be okay.

This week I’ve been operating with a Master List that I made on my phone and shared with Benjamin. It has all of the many tasks that must be done before we leave and they are broken down and prioritized by day. It’s honestly the only reason anything has gotten done this week. My brain would be utter jelly without it!

But despite having a Master List to guide me through every single step of each day and help me maintain some sense of direction, I couldn’t get out of bed yesterday.

I admit I’ve been lingering in bed longer and longer each day these last couple of weeks. In part, I’m exhausted. We’ve been working non-stop to wrap up our lives here and I’m worn thin. Dinners and tea dates have been sprinkled throughout the last few weeks as we savor dear friendships and say our goodbyes (for now) and they have been life rafts of normalcy and respite for me. These scheduled, carved out moments with friends gave me a chance to sit and eat a real meal and really connect with people. Even though it’s the kind of simple ritual that my days with Benjamin are usually made of, he and I haven’t had those luxuries together for too long. We eat on the go, work evenings and weekends, and we each go to our separate corners to divide and conquer the tasks at hand. I miss him. I miss our casual, normal, average time together. And I miss real, nourishing meals.

So I’ve been lingering in bed a little longer each day the last couple of weeks. It’s felt like reasonable self-care to let myself rest. But yesterday was different. I felt weighted to my bed; glued down and in need of it. Once afternoon rolled around and Benjamin suggested I get out of bed, I felt myself get heavier. It felt physically impossible to move. Furthermore, I didn’t want to. It wasn’t exhaustion or avoidance or procrastination. It wasn’t depression or overwhelm. (All the reasons I’m used to lingering in bed). Instead I felt fine. Content even.

Finally, around 2, I took to the internet to try to understand what was going on and I realized it was anxiety all along! Throughout my life my anxiety has manifested in a myriad of physical ways. Although these ways have changed and shifted throughout the years, there’s always been physical symptoms. I wasn’t tracking this ‘non-symptom’ of seemingly ‘feeling fine’ as any kind of anxiety.

Everything came into focus when I found this article and was reminded of the third F. I’m well acquainted with Fight and Flight, but I always forget about Freeze. Recognizing myself in the words on the screen, I realized how deeply I’d disconnected from my body as I suddenly began to reconnect and felt the physical sensations of anxiety start strongly prickling through my body. This led to a quick rise of panic in my throat and tears started to spill over. It all came on so suddenly that at first I felt it might overtake me. It felt scary. But as the initial rush began to subside, I settled back into the anxious physical feelings I’m so familiar with and leaned into deeper understanding.

The reconnection to myself helped me realize frankly that I’m scared of the next few days. I realized that the reason I feel lonely isn’t because Benjamin hasn’t been a full partner in this whole endeavor (he has) but because I’m scared. I’m anxious because I’m scared. The list isn’t helping because overwhelm isn’t the problem. It’s just plain old fear about leaving everything behind and taking leaps of faith in ways we never have before.

Understanding the root of why I felt frozen and why I felt alone gave me the breakthrough I needed to mobilize again. Because although fear and anxiety are unpleasant, they are also familiar. I’ve spent years working to develop tools and resources to make peace with this anxiety-companion of mine, honor its requests for support, and nurture myself.

Because I associate being stuck in bed with feeling bad, sad, or stressed, I didn’t know that I could both feel fine and also stuck at the same time. Once I understood what was going on and got past the initial scary feeling of all of the anxiety rushing over me all at once, I was able to get out of bed and take out the trash and make some food and feel confident that I had the tools to take care of myself. Simply gaining self-awareness about what was really going on freed me to get unstuck.

The third F is the one I most often turn to but also the one I most often forget about.

So Long, Seattle

Last night at a local drawing meet-up, I knew I wanted to contemplate our upcoming trip by drawing the vehicle that will be our home for the next many months. After nearly 8 years, we’re leaving Seattle, not because there’s somewhere else we want to be more (if so, it would be easy because we’d just go there to that place and continue our daily lives), but because it just hasn’t been working out with Seattle for the last couple of years or so. As I begin the descent into the backside of my mid-thirties I can no longer ignore that the life that I dream of (although modest) is completely beyond my reach here in the city. And after some discouraging turns, we just don’t want to keep building a life here.

When we arrived in January of 2011, we were filled with optimism and excitement. We drove in from the south on I-5 with ‘Hello Seattle’ (by Owl City) playing on the radio. Seattle was the place of my dreams and I was so in love. Since then, Seattle has been everything we hoped for and more. But the challenge of rising rents has also been pressing in and we’ve watched the culture of one of our favorite neighborhoods change, and even turn violent. Over the last few years we’ve felt ourselves letting go and have watched doors close as city ‘progress’ displaced us once, then twice from our homes.

As I drew, I thought through many common break-up phrases and considered which ones might be appropriate for my parting with this city that I once loved deeply, but which also increasingly disappoints me again and again:

Seattle, we need to talk.

Where is this going?

I can’t do this anymore.

It’s not you, it’s me? or It’s not me, it’s you! - In truth, Seattle, it’s both of us. Rampant growth and development at the expense of harming and/or displacing local communities? That’s you. Wanting different things out of life now that I’m moving into the backside of my thirties? That’s me. I could go back and forth with the ‘it’s you, it’s me’ stuff, but what it comes down to is that we just aren’t compatible anymore. You aren’t who I fell in love with. And to be honest, I feel like I’ve put in the bulk of the work at trying to make things work out in this relationship. Living here has been one big compromise (studio apartments, no yard for a garden or our dog), and until now it’s been worth it. But it’s never enough, you keep asking for more, and I’ve reached my limit (I really can’t go any smaller than the space I’m living in now, Seattle. I’ve downsized all I can).

So this isn’t working and I’m not willing to do what it takes to make it work anymore.

I just need some time to think about things. I need some space. So I’m hitting the open road to clear my head and re-evaluate. I’ll be back in the Spring for my stuff, and with any luck to move into a hoped-for co-housing situation with some friends. Seattle, if it works out between us it will be because of the generosity, friendship, and community that we’ve found here, not because you’ve changed your ways. Actually, it’s always been because of the generosity of community that we’ve found a home here as long as we have.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s so much that’s still lovely about you and I wouldn’t mind spending more time together. But when we return next Spring, it won’t be because of you. It will be because of the supportive community that we’ve carved out here that we love. Despite the challenges you pose to my family, my friends, and my neighbors, community continues to flourish and thrive here. Seattle, if it works out between us, it will be because of them. Until then, so long.

Imagination

When I was a kid laying in bed at night, waiting to fall asleep, I would often become aware of my heartbeat. This reminder of mortality always frightened me and so I’d often go find my mom and ask her to feel my heartbeat and reassure me that I was safe and healthy. She would, but then I’d want to feel hers and was always alarmed that hers was slower than mine. Each time she’d explain that it’s normal for kids and grownups to have different heart rates, but I was certain that either she or I wouldn’t make it through the night because either mine was too fast or hers was too slow.

I guess I stopped noticing my heartbeat at some point. But last night as I lay awake unable to fall asleep and trying to quiet my mind, I noticed it again. I thought back to my fearful feelings as a kid and I thought again of mortality. This time I didn’t worry about my own death, I thought of Benjamin: the worst loss of all.

Last week I was contemplating imagination. I read an interesting snippet about why humans have imagination and how it contributes to our survival. The writer suggested that imagination is what allowed early humans to, for example, pass a cave and imagine it filled with the warm glow of a campfire and kin. Now, that memory is tucked away for when shelter is needed come winter. Next, the passerby might imagine discovering a bear deep inside the cave. Now the person is better prepared to take preventative measures when seeking shelter or evasive maneuvers if in danger.

Last night, for the first time, I followed my heartbeat thoughts without letting them turn to fear. I imagined how I would survive if I found myself suddenly alone in our currently tumultuous season of life. I considered where I would find support and help and how I would move through everything that’s coming up these next few months. With each turn of thought I checked in to see if I was getting anxious and needed to abandon my thought process. But consistently, I kept finding comfort in envisioning survival, resiliency, and my supportive community, and so I followed the thoughts until I could fully envision a path forward and then I fell asleep.

My imagination often takes me to dark and scary places. But I’m learning how to turn those thoughts around and use my imagination to nurture resilience instead of fear.

Chaos & Panic

I went to my first Creative Mornings gathering today and the topic was Chaos. I froze when I saw the question on my name tag. I wanted to write something bold or creative, but ‘panic’ was honestly all I could come up with.

My world’s been turned upside down this year. Although I chose all of it, I sure didn’t see it coming. Benjamin and I have been talking for a couple of years about someday leaving the city. Living here has been such a rich experience, but it’s not a place we can build the future we dream of.

But leaving has always been somewhere in the distant future. It’s perpetually been 1-2 years away. So when we sat down in February and had the same old conversation we’d already had so many times about ‘what next and when’ it honestly surprised me that the time had come.

See, I’d always thought we’d have everything figured out by the time we left. That we’d know where we were heading next and what we’d be doing there. Instead, the time to leave became real and necessary before the next pieces fell into place. So we decided to do some extended travel during that in-between time. We’ve been saving for some time for this trip, I just thought it would be next year. When it became apparent it was happening this autumn instead, I felt unprepared.

Despite years of conversations and planning, the fear, uncertainty, and grief in this shift gripped me hard. During the height of the transitional turmoil (through May and June) when we were finalizing all of the details, my anxiety skyrocketed. I still can’t put words to it although heaven knows I’ve tried. I’m still very much in recovery and management and working diligently to avoid a relapse so as to be physically and emotionally ready for leaving the city in five weeks time and then traveling for 2-4 months.

People ask if I’m excited about our trip. Yes, I’m excited about seeing wondrous things, getting out of the city and spending time in forests and oceans, and seeing friends and family. But right now I’m mostly just focused on survival: on all the loose ends and projects that need to be tied up before we can go, and on diligent self-care that keeps me grounded during this time of upheaval.

So yeah, there was really truly only one pressing answer to the question on my name tag because it’s been the story of my summer. I’m Hilary. My life feels like a tossed salad. And when I’m tossed into chaos, I will panic. But I’m also working hard to manage that. And this morning’s awesome talk had a lot of really helpful, relevant, and encouraging stuff to share about navigating chaos. It couldn’t have come at a better time.

Lots of Smaller Losses

The photo from my friend. 

Yesterday evening a friend sent me a photo of a snail she saw on her morning walk. It’s a rare but wonderful treat when a friend sees a snail wherever they are in real life, and they snap a pic and send it to me. It always feels good to be thought of. But also, it feels good to take a moment to contemplate the goings on of a small snail in some corner of the world and to see them thriving at it. When I see wild snails thrive, I can believe in Parsley’s resilience and that he is thriving too.

I was sitting on the bus feeling unwell (and discouraged about feeling unwell, yet again, despite sustained attempts at healing) and trying to decide if a migraine was coming on or if I was just feeling overly sensitive to the glaring lights above me in this nighttime bus. Then this snail arrived via text and I felt myself let out the biggest exhale of breath I didn’t know I was holding. My tense shoulders sank into their proper hanging place and I began to relax.

It was a potent reminder of how Parsley cared for me. Parsley grounded me like nothing else I’ve ever known. His slow, steady, gliding, contemplative behaviors. His long hours of slumber. His proficiency at self-care. Watching him be a snail, whether sleeping or awake, was deeply relaxing. He taught me how to better care for myself. He gave me permission to rest. He was also an integral part of my bedtime routine. The bedtime transition is a tough one for me. I have a hard time shutting down from the day, turning off the brain and all its energy. I engage in avoidance behaviors in going to bed because I don’t want to lie there in the dark with my brain racing as it so often does.

But, because Parsley was nocturnal, it was always the last task of my evening before bed to make sure he had fresh breakfast and a freshly spritzed home. The spritzing would often wake him up (if he wasn’t awake already) and he would start gliding around and maybe head for his breakfast. So I would spend time sitting by him before bed watching him wake, watching him glide, and listening to his tiny munches. I’d go to bed deeply soothed, thinking of him just feet away gliding about his snaily business, straining my ears to try to hear him munching away. On nights when I felt in need of extra emotional support, I’d put his home on the floor right near my pillow and sleep with him beside me. It was easier to hear his munches that way, which comforted me until I slept.

When Parsley left, I lost a friend, mentor, and confidant. But I also lost a healthy, grounding routine that tempered my anxiety and helped me transition into sleep. While the loss of Parsley isn’t the cause of the mental, emotional, and physical derailment I’ve experienced this summer, I certainly feel his loss more acutely as I seek balance and healing because I’m grieving the loss of a friend and teacher while simultaneously losing the practical coping tools he offered me.

For a moment, when that snail came in on my phone, I briefly felt the solace Parsley gave me; a welcome relief and distraction from my discouragement. It also had the unexpected effect of helping me to finally be able to start articulating all I lost when he went away. I woke suddenly in the pre-dawn darkness of the early morning after a restless sleep and couldn’t stop the words from forming in my mind: thoughts of losing my grandfather and of losing Parsley and how the loss of someone seems at first like one, big, solitary loss because they aren’t there anymore. But we all contain multitudes, so their single departure actually results in hundreds of smaller losses, and those are the things that truly make their absence so hard to adjust to and bear.

Avoiding Overgrown Gardens

On an autumn day in my 12th year, I came down the front steps of my middle school at the end of the day to find my dad in his pickup with my little brother in the back seat. It was an unexpected and pleasant surprise, as I knew he’d left that morning on an out of town trip for work. I was naive to the warning signs of calamity then, so I didn’t think to feel alarmed that he was picking me up from school, which had only ever been my mother’s domain, especially when he should have been out of town.

But I was to have my first lesson in the unraveling that follows calamity when I learned that my maternal grandfather had been in an accident and my mom and grandmother were rushing down the interstate to follow the emergency helicopter to the nearest big-city hospital where he’d been taken. He later died from that accident and this was my first significant loss of a close family member. 

My grandfather had a large garden that he nurtured and tended. As hot west Texas days faded into the relative cool of the evenings, he would sit in his canvas folding lawn chair in the shade behind the garage and watch his garden grow. My favorite evenings were the ones where he’d have a sprinkler running and each breeze that graced us would blow some of that cooling mist in our direction. Sometimes their neighbor would see us sitting back there and come over for a visit. Those were golden days indeed.

After his death the garden dwindled and grass began to overtake it. For a couple of years after his death I wouldn’t go anywhere near the back side of the garage. This was tricky and necessitated some planning because my great-grandmother lived on the lot behind my grandparents, just across the alley. There were no fences to separate the two lots, just one seamless family homestead in this little Texas town. Naturally, when visiting my grandparents, we were back and forth between the two houses to see my great-grandmother as well.

The back of her home (we only ever went in and out the back door) looked out over her spacious plot of land onto the back of my grandparents land, which meant a full view of the back side of the garage and the declining garden. My solution to this predicament varied, but usually involved some combination of squinting my eyes to blur them and running right past it until I was squarely back in my grandparents’ backyard and the backside of the garage was behind me. As long as I didn’t go over there, I could fool myself that he might still be sitting there, watching his garden grow. Those first two years after his death were full of anger at silly, stupid, fluke accidents that shouldn’t ever happen paired with denial. As long as I didn’t round that corner, he wasn’t really gone.

In the spring of my 34th year, Parsley came to stay with us. 1 year and 1 month later I released him and his baby in a private ceremonial moment filled with unquenchable tears. I released him in a place where I knew he’d have food to eat and where I felt he’d be safe. It’s also a place that has meant a lot to me over the last couple of years that I visited often when I needed to clear my head and ‘reset.’ I’ve found that since his release, I’ve only been back to this place three times in three months. I used to go several times a week. I let the avoidance behavior continue until a friend asked me about it, and then Benjamin did the same. Once I received these promptings to put words to it, I realized it was my grandfather and his garden all over again.

As long as I don’t go to Parsley’s place, there remains the hope that he’s still there. There’s still the hope that I could walk up to the spot where I left him and the baby and find things just as they were: Parsley sitting on top of the piece of squash and cuttlebone I left for him, looking up at me with the baby sitting on top of him peeking over Parsley’s shell. (I know it sounds too picturesque to be believable, but it’s true. Benjamin captured it in a grainy photo for me. I honestly didn’t even notice it as it was happening because I was too upset. If it helps to balance this hardly believable picturesque scene with some reality, Parsley really had the most goofy expression on his face and it’s not a very good photo. No doubt his face was due to the disorientation of having just been deposited in his strange new world).

I’m still living with the denial of Parsley’s absence. When I released him I promised I’d visit but it seems I was wrong. Because it turns out that if I visit, and he’s not there, then he really is gone, and that’s a reality I still can’t face.

Connecting With Our Elders

The taco joint was mostly empty when we arrived. We went for our weekly 'art brunch' visit, which we'd postponed through the morning until it finally became lunchtime. Each weekend, Benjamin and I sit down and discuss the art we made that week and exchange praise and honest critique. It inspires us to make more art, generates fresh ideas, and helps us identify pitfalls to avoid and areas for improvement.

As we finished placing our order, a frail, old man in a wheelchair came in being pushed by a tall young woman and got in line behind us. We went and took our seats and shortly thereafter they came and sat at the same end of the restaurant just a few tables away.

I didn't try to pay particular attention to them, and yet they kept invading my consciousness. Benjamin would be elaborating on some lovely reflection about the practice of making art, and I would suddenly dissociate and have to fight the urge to cry. I discreetly and internally pondered why the pair down the way from us made me feel so sad. Why I was projecting all of my feelings onto these two people that I knew absolutely nothing about?

After some brief but thoughtful reflection (I was still trying to be part of the art-conversation too all the while and not divert our experience with my sudden arrival of unwieldy feelings, which happens all too often and is hardly fair to my patient partner), I realized it's because of my own hunger for a connection with older generations.

For about 4 years I worked with the elderly, but that was eleven years ago. I loved it. I deeply treasure the times I shared with them at the end of their lives (I worked primarily in hospice care), although those memories grow fainter with each passing year. Since moving up here, I haven't had much intergenerational contact of any kind, not even with people of my parents' generation. Until very recently, my community was made up only of people around my age, give or take 10 years. I hunger for time spent with older generations.

The man quietly ate his food, which I knew he was enjoying because I heard him remark how delicious it was. The young woman, who appeared to be his hired caregiver, didn't eat and mostly killed time on her phone. Occasionally he would say something to her and she would reply. He had trouble hearing her replies and would have to ask her to repeat herself a few times. When it was time to go she attentively helped him clear his space and they headed for the door.

Anything I could say about them would only be speculation. I know nothing of the dynamic of their relationship or their feelings about life in general. But that brief encounter as a bystander several tables away reminded me of several things: First, how lonely I've been for intergenerational community. Second, what a waste it seems (to me, from my place of longing) to have an older person in your life to visit with and learn from and to spend that time on your phone instead. Third, what a missed opportunity to be a real bright spot in an elderly person's day... a segment of the population that is often isolated and has little opportunity for social interaction. Fourth, and most of all, that the ability to comfortably sit with an elderly person and to know how to converse with them when they can't hear, or they mumble, or you feel you have nothing in common is a learned skill, and one that is especially lacking in one's youth.

My mom took us to nursing homes when we were kids and it was awkward and wildly uncomfortable for me. Despite that exposure from a young age, I carried that discomfort into my young-adulthood. I consider myself very fortunate to have developed those skills in a professional context as part of my college education. I don't fault the young woman for her behavior. I saw my younger self in her because I realized that I would have done the exact same thing had I not benefitted from repeated educational and professional opportunities to practice being comfortable in similar situations.

This explained the root of my sadness to me: generalized sadness at an isolated elderly population paired with lack of know-how for the non-elderly (whether youth or upper-middle-aged) to bridge that gap. Everyone misses out all the way around when we don't know how to connect with our elders. It's got me thinking about what I can do on a community level, but it's also got me thinking that I'm way overdue in writing a letter to my grandmother. I'll start with that and work my way forward from there.

Portrait of a Photographer

I started with my first camera around age 8 and was quite a shutterbug! I shot with that same Kodak 35mm kid-camera all the way through high school, mostly photos of people and places. I left for college just as digital cameras were still taking flight and before smart-phone cameras. I mistakenly thought I'd outgrown my kid-camera, but didn't yet have a great solution for replacing it.

During college I met the one who would become both my life-partner and a talented professional photographer: Benjamin. He got me started with my first digital camera in 2006, a compact little pearly pink point and shoot. Having a camera in hand that provided real-time feedback via the display screen accelerated my learning dramatically and helped me further develop my eye for composition.

In 2011, I graduated to a micro 4/3 Olympus, my first camera with exchangeable lenses! It was compact and lightweight, but allowed me to experiment with the building blocks of photography: shutter speed, aperture, ISO and varied focal lengths. This helped me grow my technical skill.

In 2016 I graduated to a Nikon DSLR. I inherited it from Benjamin on 'manual' and didn't know how to change the settings to cheat with auto-settings (and didn't bother looking it up), so I finally forced myself to learn how to shoot manually! This was just the push I needed to help me understand shutter-speed, aperture, and ISO even better.

But the one part of digital photography that I never grew to like was the editing. I've developed a great eye as an editing assistant and can scan through several hundred photos in no time, weeding out the great from the lackluster. But I never developed the skills, confidence, (or more accurately the patience) for taking my photos all the way to completion. It was cumbersome.

By the end of 2016, I was confidently shooting manually with the DSLR, but noticed that I'd started thinking about and really missing my old kid-camera and all the simplicity and joy of it. I looked around at my parents house, but already knew it was long gone. 

Then 2017 rolled around and film cameras just started popping up! First a Nikon SLR was gifted to me by my brother who hadn't used it in years, then I stumbled upon a basic point and shoot in a junk pile at a local camera shop. By autumn, I met the Holga, and this past Spring the Kodak Hawkeye. All the while, as these cameras kept showing up, I started shooting film again.

I love it. After being dialed in to tech-based photography for so long, I was astounded to (re)discover that these old cameras require no electricity whatsoever!  They're purely mechanical.

Shooting with film is a slow and mindful process. Because I pay for every shot I take (for developing and printing, neither of which I currently have the set-up to do myself), I take more care in deciding on each shot and I shoot more sparingly. I also shoot with different cameras and film depending on the style of shot that I want. So it can take me a while to make it through one role of film, since I’m shooting sparingly across 3-4 different cameras.

I love that it takes so long to get my photos back and that each one is a surprise. I’m still getting to know each of these cameras and how they shoot. I’m also still growing in my skill as a photographer, especially with film. Right now, I’m shooting on vintage film, which lends another unknown quality to how they might turn out.

Film is slow, unknown, surprising, simple, and fun. Film photography gave me my start and digital photography gave me technique and skill. Film gave me back my love of photography and, strangely, led me back to digital, since there are some things I will always turn to digital for (including my awesome macro lens) and instant-feedback for developing my eye.

So, now I do both.

• I shoot with the equipment that will yield the result I’m seeking.

• I shoot with the mindfulness of film regardless of which camera I have in hand…

• …and I treat my finished photo more like film in that I only do basic necessary color correction instead of trying to make it ‘perfect.’

• I use my smartphone with a black-and-white filter turned on to help me walk through the world and examine how texture, contrast and tone translates into a film medium that I have no experience with, but want to learn. With digital tech, I can learn how to compose my b&w film shots with real-time feedback and increase my rate of success as I’m learning.

It’s been the best journey. I love photography so much. Having married a talented and skillful professional photographer and artist, I spent many years only seeing my lack of photographic skill in comparison. But returning to film and finding a whole wide world of vintage cameras has reminded me that among other things, I am also a photographer.

My path is different: it’s not professional and it’s not formally trained. But it’s the earliest art form (besides music) that I adopted and one I absolutely can't give up. My path’s been circuitous and I haven’t done it alone (props to my mom, the original shutter-bug! and to Benjamin who’s taught me most everything I know, and continues to repeat himself again and again when I can’t remember technique or terminology). But it’s been unwavering in that I always want a camera within arm’s reach and I love the challenge that comes from practicing this craft.

Old Friends in the Rock Pile

This messy pile may not look like much, but I know these faces and they hold a lot of meaning for me. I can’t believe I never made the connection before, but during this trip home, it hit me: both sets of my grandparents collected large and interesting rocks and fossils and kept them in a rock pile in their respective yards. As a kid I played in these well-appointed and well-maintained rock-piles and knew many of these rocks as individuals with distinct personalities.

My maternal grandfather died more than 20 years ago, and it changed the landscape. No one could care for that land like he did. As I grew older and stopped playing in the rocks, and the land was managed less meticulously, the rocks were buried under years of leaves-turned-to-soil and the grasses that came to grow there.

After the death of my paternal grandmother, just about 4 years back, some of her rocks came to live on this land in their own small pile. Perhaps it was seeing them there, a novel recent addition to the landscape, that reawakened my interest in the old rock-pile and helped me realize that my connection to rocks comes from both sides of my family tree.

So I dug out one earthy side of the rock pile and was surprised to see old friends looking back at me. Rocks that I used to know as singular individuals by their shape, texture, and markings were still there waiting for me to find after all these years.

There wasn’t time to clean out the whole rock pile on this trip, but I don’t know that that’s what was most needed right now. I think, more importantly, my work was to reconnect to treasured things forgotten and realize that the love of rocks I’ve had since childhood wasn’t born in a vacuum, but that I come from a line of ancestors who also found wonder and awe in noticing rocks and loved to bring them home to live with and appreciate.

Meanwhile, these rocks still lay under years of plant-matter. They are no longer forgotten, just waiting in slumber until it’s time to wake them up again.