‘Dear old world’, she murmured, ‘you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.’ —L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
The sky all week blossomed with fluffy white clouds and the trees erupted with color. I took a lot of photos and I’m finding it harder and harder to choose what to share here. I hope you like my five selections below as part of my #100DayProject. As a reminder, I’m new to photography and I greatly appreciate your feedback and critique. I have a feeling, like my father, this will be a lifelong passion.
If you’re unfamiliar with the 100 Day Project, the concept is simple. You choose any creative project you like and do it every day for 100 days, sharing your process on social media using the hashtag #The100DayProject. This year the dates are Feb. 13-May 24.
“I could be blindfolded and dropped into the deepest ocean and I would know where to find you. I could be buried a hundred miles underground and I would know where you are.”
— Neil Gaiman, American Gods
Last week I spent a few days along the Northern California coast and had plenty of wonderful sights to photograph with my Olympus OM-D. I’ve selected my five favorite images below as part of my #100DayProject. I’m fairly new to photography and appreciate feedback and advice.
If you’re unfamiliar with the 100 Day Project, the concept is simple. You choose any creative project you like and do it every day for 100 days, sharing your process on social media using the hashtag #The100DayProject. This year the dates are Feb. 13-May 24.
Bright colored houses line the narrow street. I pass a red table covered in perfect white sand dollars, twisting trees, succulent gardens, a weathered wooden door set into a wide brick wall, and a mural of black-and-white faces curving toward the sky.
I’m drawn here time and time again.
Anytime I’m within an hour from San Francisco I must make the trip.
Each time it feels like a sort of pilgrimage.
Today is no exception.
The line snakes out the small door and I cue up behind several groups of people talking quietly to each other. It’s windy and blustery. Pulling my sweater tighter around my shoulders I wonder if everyone in line has come for the same reason.
Her.
The owner of Trouble Coffee, Giulietta Carrelli.
Since hearing her story on NPR in 2014, I haven’t stopped thinking about her.
She calls her shop Trouble in honor of all the people who helped her when she was in trouble. It’s more than a coffee shop—it’s a movement with a manifesto. Everything from the menu to the artwork has meaning and purpose; all designed to help her manage her schizoaffective disorder.
To oversimplify, there’s cinnamon toast for comfort, coffee for communication and speed, and coconuts for survival. Her cups say “Thrash or die” or “Live fast, die old” in her own handwriting. She’s cool, interesting and inspiring.
I feel a kindred spirit with her despite having nothing in common and not actually knowing her. I’m magnetically drawn to her and her space.
It makes no sense.
The shop has been remodeled since I’ve last visited and when it’s my turn to enter the small building my eyes sweep over the new black and white motif. There’s splashes of pink and yellow, artwork, books, photographs, and a collection of cassette tapes.
I love the new space.
Then, I see her.
She’s making coffee with cutoff jean shorts, a headscarf, and her quite recognizable tattooed freckles on her cheeks. It’s like seeing an apparition or a ghost and it temporarily stuns me.
It’s her.
For years I’ve traveled here and thought about her, but this is the first time I’m seeing her in person.
I’m unprepared.
I feel weird and transfixed.
I know her life story, yet I don’t know her at all.
It’s an uneasy feeling; a false intimacy of a creative muse I’ve never met.
Her shop has become synonymous with art for me and somehow tied to my own creativity. I’ve watched it from afar, following her and her dog on social media, and somehow feeling part of her movement.
I can’t explain any of it.
I watch her now, in person, with a mix of awe and self-consciousness. Part of me wants to bolt, and perhaps I would have a year ago, but I don’t. I step forward and order cinnamon toast and an oat milk latte from a young man I barely look at.
I can’t take my eyes off her, and for some reason, she locks eyes with me and smiles. I pull down my mask for a moment and smile back.
She switches the music to her favorite band, talking to me as she does. She rattles off the name and I nod as if I know it, but I’m too stunned to hear it fully.
She tells me she accidentally met her musician idol outside his concert years ago. She didn’t have tickets and when he arrived she did not recognize him and they began chatting. When she realized who he was she felt terrible embarrassed. She laid on the ground to try and hide from him. He laughed.
“I can see you,” her idol said.
He let her sell merchandise and gave her a ticket to the show. They became friends.
It was a funny story, told well and I wonder if there’s something in my eyes telling her the story was for me and for the moment I was experiencing with her.
It feels as if she’s saying “I see you.”
I say nothing.
I barely breathe.
She shares a few more stories with me in the effortless way she does and I can’t stop smiling. She’s so cool and wonderful—exactly as I knew she’d be.
So we jumped up on the table and shouted anarchy And someone played a Beach Boys song on the jukebox It it was California Dreamin’ So we started screamin’ On such a winter’s day
We end up singing part of Punk Rock Girl together for a brief magical moment before she hands me my coffee.
“I have to tell you I love you,” I say.
My face turns red. I didn’t mean to say it out loud. I don’t know what I wanted to say, but certainly not the weird and creepy thing I did say.
She laughs and looks at me in the way people who can see you fully do—a penetrating gaze which oddly doesn’t feel uncomfortable.
“You don’t know me,” she says. “Do you?”
It could have felt stinging or biting, but it felt more like “you don’t know me yet.” She smiled and her blue-eyed gaze felt approving and kind.
“Thanks,” I say.
“See you around,” she says.
Holding my coffee and cinnamon toast out in front of me, I walk into the biting wind and barely feel it. In a daze I pass the same landscape as before but I feel less removed from it now.
The last few months I’ve been making huge efforts to step fully into my creative self and to be vulnerable and seen.
It feels scary but right.
Seeing Carrelli was the message I needed.
I’m on the right track.
She saw me and I saw her.
I didn’t shrink and I didn’t run.
Two palm trees cast their feathered shadows across the sidewalk and my new blue converse.
“I feel confident imposing change on myself. It’s a lot more fun progressing than looking back. That’s why I need to throw curve balls.” —David Bowie
In an effort to keep growing and learning, I’m participating in the #100DayProject by taking photographs daily with my Olympus OM-D. I’ll edit and post my favorite photos from the week each Monday. I’m new to photography and would greatly appreciate any feedback or advice.
If you’re unfamiliar with the 100 Day Project, the concept is simple. You choose any creative project you like and do it every day for 100 days, sharing your process on social media using the hashtag #The100DayProject. This year the dates are Feb. 13-May 24.
If you are participating this year, let me know where I can follow you. I find these types of challenges (NaNoWriMo/Artist’s Way/52 Week Writing Challenge) help me balance my chaotic creative energy into a more disciplined practice.
Here’s my first batch of photos:
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I help my nephew slip off his dark blue crocs and hold his hand as he gets used to the shift of energy from hanging with me to playing with kids his age.
He will turn three in March and I’m lucky enough to spend time with him a few days a week while his parents work. I treasure the time we have and love taking him to some of the places I took my kids when they were little. Today, it’s the indoor playground at our local mall.
There are about a half dozen kids ranging from baby to age three. They stumble around, bumping into each other, and climb on the soft playground equipment designed to look like animals in a forest. There are glass butterflies hanging from the ceiling, rainbow-colored lights, and the delicious smell of fresh baking pretzels.
When my nephew feels ready to join the play, I take my place on the sidelines with the other adults. We exchange polite smiles and watch these little humans burst with energy and excitement. The kids follow each other in circles, take turns on the slide, climb on everything, fall down and get back up. My nephew beams at me, running occasionally into my arms for a big hug before returning to his play.
Although we are indoors, it’s a wide-open space and most of the young parents and their children aren’t wearing masks. I don’t think much about it until a set of grandparents arrive with their small granddaughter. Both adults walk slow, the grandfather with a shiny black cane. They are wearing high-quality masks—the kind you wear when you must be careful. They sit as far away from the others adults as possible but are nearest to me.
The child, probably close to 4-years-old, has light brown hair pulled into high pigtails, blue jeans, and a bright pink princess t-shirt. As she slips off her sparkly silver shoes I hear her talking in a low excited voice.
“I hope I make a friend!”
“I hope so too,” her grandmother says. “But it’s okay if you don’t.”
“I know.”
She hugs both her grandparents and walks toward the other children. Sitting close together and holding hands, her grandparents exchange a weighty look. They appear worried and protective. The small girl runs a lap around the playground and spots a girl her age climbing up the slide with messy blonde hair, a purple mermaid t-shirt, and striped socks. She stands at the bottom of the slide and calls up to her.
“Hi! Do you want to be my friend?”
Her grandparents beside me lean forward.
The blonde girl smiles wide as she slides to the bottom. She runs to where her mother sits nursing a younger sibling. Without saying a word, she rummages through her mother’s purse and pulls out a mask with tiny pink flowers.
She puts it on.
She runs back to the other girl and hugs her.
“Let’s play!” she says.
It was such a simple act I could have missed it if I’d not been watching so close.
Yet it felt enormous.
This young girl saw a friend with a mask and put on her own mask to join her.
Simple.
The innocent kindness of children never ceases to amaze me.
Her guardians and I exchange teary smiles.
I watch the two girls for several minutes. They laugh, climb on the giant brown bear, jump off the blue spider, and go down the slide. They hold hands forming a tight circle and sing “Ring-Around-the-Roses,” a song about the Great Plague. They fall down giggling, hugging, and rolling together on the cushiony ground.
As my nephew and I walk out of the mall, I can’t get the scene between these two girls out of my head. It’s probably not a rare thing to witness with children, but in our messy often polarized world it felt like a magical gem. It made me think about how kindness can really be so simple.
It really can be as easy as meeting someone where they are.
One moment, no more than 30 seconds, created a rippling impact I can still feel.
I strap my sweet nephew into his car seat and kiss him. This might be a messy time to be starting out little one, but I have so much hope for your generation.
Being a parent is like walking blindfolded into the wilderness. You have to use all your senses, listen to your natural instincts, surrender any idea you know what you’re doing, and you can’t call it quits.
Before the pandemic, my kids were involved in all kinds of activities and I felt the rushing movement like a giant truck I was simultaneously riding and driving. We would fight to get out the door and I’d yell. There were too many car meals, bathroom clothing changes, and exhausted tears. I felt overwhelmed and busy, but confident. I did my best, and at the end of the day, I felt good about the efforts I put in.
During the pandemic, all the things my kids claimed to hate but secretly loved, stopped. The life I’d helped them cultivate away from media and technology suddenly revolved around screens. I was here with them all the time, yet I felt like I didn’t really see what was happening. Our lives became a series of solitary moments in our rooms with our phones or computers, interspersed by nature walks and car drives to nowhere. It went on forever, yet it felt like a blip or a bump we’d get past. We expected it would return to normal, but it didn’t.
The pandemic has transformed me as a parent.
This is not what I expected my life to look like at this moment. I suspect some of you, perhaps all of you, can relate in some way.
For me, the fundamental shift is this; my belief my kids will be okay has been replaced with fear and anxiety.
I can trace how it happened.
Early in the pandemic, my son was in a skateboard accident. He got a road rash on his face and arms, knocked out his front teeth, and had a fairly serious concussion. Each first responder and hospital staff member took a moment to yell at him, and by extension me, for him not wearing a helmet. They rubbed it in thoroughly, and I felt their words chipping away the image I had of myself as a mother. I felt bruised and beaten as I nursed my son back to health in a dark room for several weeks, blaming myself for his accident.
A few months later my grandmother died of Covid. I tried to call her once at the hospital, but she was asleep. I didn’t try again. I was scared to talk to her. There’s was so much unsaid between us, and I wanted her to get better so I could say the things. The lost opportunity felt huge while bringing fears of Covid closer to home.
While I tried to convince myself my kids were strong and would fight Covid easily, I was terrified of unknowingly passing Covid onto my mom, who has bad asthma, or to my mother-in-law who is elderly and fighting cancer. Each time I had a tickle in my throat, I’d worry it would develop into something more, and I’d be one of those who weren’t so lucky to fight it off. It wasn’t a rabid fear, but rather a slow-simmering background of fear which chipped away at me bit by bit.
In addition to Covid, I began to fear how people were acting. The division of those who refused masks contrasted with those hoarding supplies and preparing for a sort of social war. All of these things made leaving my house feel risky and dangerous. I stockpiled dried beans, rice, and bottled water. My neighbor and I talked about his guns and how he could protect us; the conversation felt appropriate at the time.
I watched my kids implode in a way I didn’t understand, and still don’t. It wasn’t simply losing school and friends; it was a sort of reckoning of what kind of life they wanted to have. The trajectory of their accomplishments stopped, and they had nothing to be proud of. They had too much time to think about the world, to see all the ugliness of it, and it changed them.
Six months after his first accident, my son had a second one. This time he was hit by a car walking to the store to buy a soda. The police came to the door as I was doing the dinner dishes and I followed in a daze to the hospital. More scraps, another concussion, and a fresh batch of fears for me. The moments of that day play over and over in my head and it’s hard to let him out of my sight. I’m only truly comfortable when he’s home. I worry when he’s at school or with his friends. I obsessively track his phone throughout the day in an attempt to ease the anxiety. If his phone dies or I can’t get in touch with him, I panic.
My daughter, through the isolation from her peers and anxiety of the world, has developed some mental health struggles. I won’t share the specifics to maintain her privacy, but I missed the signs for too long. I felt another blow to my parenting ego, but worse; I felt a terrible sense I’d let her down in all the ways that matter. I had missed the big stuff. I felt selfish and scared.
All of this has changed me as a parent.
I find it hard to return to the way we were before because much of my mental energy has transformed into anxiety and fear.
My kids miss a lot of school and I don’t care about homework. I let them hang with their friends as much as they want, drive them to therapy and support groups. I’ve put thousands of miles on my car listening to their music and hoping they will feel better.
I want them to feel better.
I am also not requiring enough of them so that they can grow in the ways I know they need to. I’m scared to push and to hold them to the standard I did before. They are not falling short; I’ve simply grown fearful of requirements because I don’t want to lose them. I don’t push.
I’m not exaggerating when I tell you I’ve been more worried about my kids dying in the last two years than I did the entire time they were little. I was all about letting them climb a tree, or take a risk. I thought it was good if they got hurt because it showed them a boundary and allowed them to grow.
I’ve lost that.
Now, I fear pushing them will result in dire consequences.
It’s a tightrope of wanting to require more so they feel proud of themselves and grow, but also holding back because I see them as fragile. I know they aren’t as fragile as I’ve made them out to be, but I am.
It feels perilous.
And scary.
How do I become the right kind of hard while still protecting them and myself?
I don’t know.
There’s another component, a sort of social reckoning. What they have experienced has shifted the momentum of their lives. They see their life path, their goals, as something far different than I did at their age. It’s no longer as an individual, but rather how they will be in the world.
They are examining complex things: gender constructs, systematic racism, global warming. There’s a sort of punk rock attitude forming; a kind of new version of the “fuck the man” mentality. Instead of music and drugs, they want marches and social justice reform. They want the world to do better, to be better.
They aren’t going to sleepwalk through their lives, moving from one checked box to the next like I did; high school, college, career, house, kids.
I moved through each thing as if I had no say in the matter; as if all the decisions of my life were preordained and I was simply saying the lines written for me. After all the boxes were checked, I felt cheated and empty. I missed so much because I did what I thought was expected of me. I didn’t slow or pause to examine if the path was what I wanted or if the roles I’d cast myself in fit me anymore.
My kids aren’t doing that.
They think about the kind of lives they want, and although the images are still so unclear, I don’t think they will settle. They don’t believe the story my generation did, and they don’t want the same outcome. I see them looking at me and their father and shaking their heads at how much we don’t question things or fight for a better world. They check us on the language we use and talk about things it’s taken me over 40 years to recognize.
They are facing forward and not shrinking from it. While I see them as fragile, the evidence doesn’t support me. If they can look at the problems in the world with a sort of determined energy of change, how can I see them as weak?
I have hope that all this social awareness is leading to something amazing for their entire generation and, not to be too grandiose, the planet. This outward focus and the ability to accept and empathize with all kinds of people has to be leading to a better world for all of us.
None of this, however, makes it easy to be a mother right now. There are days, more than I care to admit, I wish I could hop into a time machine and do a better job of protecting and shielding my kids. I’d put them in a bubble and not let anything in.
I know that’s not actually true and it’s the fear and the pain talking.
It’s my desire for growth to not hurt, but that’s not how it works.
It hurts.
The story my kids are living, well…it’s their story. All the things they have been through are shaping and molding them. And they are incredible kids.
My challenge has become to support them, to love them, and to go slower. To continue to sit with them in the discomfort, to listen as they question things, and, most importantly, to see my fear as separate from their experience.
The last one has been the hardest for me.
I have to work on healing my own fears around losing them, and not let my decisions be based on either guilt for what they’ve lost or fear I’ll lose them permanently.
I’m trying my best.
Maybe the pushing will come when it feels right, but for now, I observe and I listen. I try and see the ways I can nudge and build on those. These kids have been through so much, and it’s made them strong.
They are freaking rock stars.
My daughter has started having friends over again and they laugh so much. She pours herself into her artwork. It’s for her, not for show or attention. She does art to express her feelings and she holds people accountable for their actions. She sets boundaries, even with me.
My son began working out at the gym and he plays basketball with his friends. He plays guitar in his room for the pure love of it, not caring to impress anyone or show off. He makes everyone laugh, can size up his teachers, and isn’t afraid to call them out when they are being unfair. He forgives me when I hold too tight or freak out, but doesn’t let me off without a fight.
My kids talk to each other all the time. It’s not fake. It’s not superficial. They talk about real stuff and lean on each other.
All of these things are beautiful and real.
My kids aren’t fragile.
I am.
I’m facing forward and I’m doing the best I can, and for that, I need to give myself grace.
No comparing.
No looking back.
I’ve come to realize, parenting doesn’t get easier, and maybe that’s part of the complexity of my own feelings. A bit of sadness my kisses and hugs aren’t magical anymore. A bit of the rose-colored glasses slipping as my kids enter the imperfect world-not the careful world of fairies and magic I crafted when they were little.
While this part of my life feels unsteady and hard, all I can do is keep loving them and trying to do better. As the Everly Brothers sang:
Love hurts, love scars Love wounds and mars Any heart, not tough Nor strong enough To take a lot of pain Take a lot of pain Love is like a cloud Holds a lot of rain
Sometimes my teenage daughter’s anxiety gets too big, and I pick her up early from school.
I know her education is important, but living through a pandemic has changed my priorities and perspective. When she calls me, I don’t hesitate and I don’t make her feel bad. I get her.
Last week I picked her up after a flurry of upsetting texts. She told me her mental health was bad again. It scared me. It scared her. She’d kept it from me for weeks because she didn’t want to make me sad. My heart broke she’d tried to protect me, and I felt I had to say the right thing.
“We face what is,” I said.
These four words felt important.
I repeated them.
“We face what is.”
This opened the door for her to share, and for me to listen. We made plans for her to get new kinds of help, and to pursue roads to healing we hadn’t considered before. I reminded her she isn’t alone, and I’m more interested in her truth than in feeling comfortable and happy.
The next day, I was sitting alone and spiraling out about my eyes.
My eye to be specific.
I’ve got one good eye and one lazy one. It’s been this way my entire life, and normally it’s not on my mind. But lately, I’ve had trouble seeing when I read, or when I’m on the phone. Things were blurry and I couldn’t read the instructions on a medicine bottle. I bought a pair of reading glasses, and it helped. This should have been the end of it.
However, my anxiety over the experience grew and grew. It became unruly, demanding more and more of my attention and emotional energy.
I’d convinced myself I must have some horrible disease, most likely brought on by my weight gain and laziness. I began to tally all the ways I’m failing at caring for myself. I don’t wear my sunglasses all the time. I spend too much time on screens. I don’t blink enough. I got bacon grease in my eye on Christmas morning, which was irresponsible and preventable if I’d paid better attention. I haven’t done enough research to see how to protect my eyesight. I don’t eat enough green leafy vegetables or omega-3 fatty acids. I’m going to lose my ability to see, and it will be my own fault.
As I sat still, berating myself, those four words I told my daughter came to me.
“We face what is.”
I looked up the number of an optometrist near me and made an appointment.
As I sat in the waiting room, all the anxiety and blame thick about me, I kept countering it with those four words. Whatever the eye doctor tells me, I will face. I have family and friends who will love and support me. I can’t face what I don’t know.
As I went through the exam, I made lots of self-deprecating jokes. I knew I had to keep the mood as light as possible, and I had to keep talking.
“Which is better? One or two? Three or four?”
Each question was scary. The letters I couldn’t see felt ominous, surely indicators of something serious. I kept trying to hear it in her voice, waiting for the bad news to drop.
It didn’t.
My eye’s fine. I’m getting older. It’s normal.
Normal.
She prescribed reading glasses, the same kind I’m already using. She told me I’m okay.
We face what is.
I have some other health things I have to face. I’ve put on too much weight. I have pains in my hips and back. I’m concerned I might be pre-diabetic, it runs in my family, or I could be putting too much strain on my heart. I’m taking steps to correct my health, which means facing things like the scale, a check-up at the doctor, and returning to the gym. All of these things feel hard, and damn, there’s a lot of judgment and guilt around them.
However, I can’t do anything without turning toward what is. I have to stop ignoring the truth for some pretend comfort. I have people who count on me, and I have a lot more I want to do with my life. There’s no reason to run from perceived scary things or to let myself build them up until they are monstrous. It’s far better to shine a light on them.
We face what is.
My reading glasses and the chair I inherited from my grandmother.
I’ve struggled to find words to process the last few years.
We’ve collectively lived through something hard.
Impossibly hard.
I can’t write about the enormity of the experience, so I’ll take it to the personal micro-level.
I lost my grandmother to Covid. I didn’t get to say goodbye and we didn’t have a funeral for her.
My son had two terrible accidents. They were scary. I relive them daily and I hold him too close.
My daughter didn’t react well to social distancing. Her light dimmed so much I felt I might lose her.
Our family was together all the time, but somehow things got messy and convoluted. The undercurrent of fear kept us on edge, too internal, and we became strange to each other.
I want to move forward and say 2022 is the year it all changes, but it feels like rebuilding a puzzle without knowing the picture, and some of the pieces could be missing. It’s an uneasy feeling.
Yet, I’m going to try anyway.
Trying for me looks like refocusing on daily journaling, the short story challenge, and recommitting to posting to this blog. I’m moving my body and cooking dinner. I’m taking vitamins and sticking to a budget. I cleaned my closets. I’m making plans with friends.
These are important steps forward, creating new focus and new habits.
But if I learned anything from watching the Muppet Christmas Carol on repeat all December, we have to live in the past, present, and the future.
Not everything during the last two years was awful.
The dark night sky had some glittery stars, and they were incredibly beautiful.
Can I show you?
There was time to watch the sunrise and the sunset.
We drew this chalk mural for our neighbors to see as they walked by our house. We also hung hearts and paper cranes in our front window. It gave us a purpose and made us feel more connected to the outside world.
There was more time to spend outdoors, and we hiked a lot.
My sweet nephew got in on the hiking, too. Silly faces were a requirement.
We did an online challenge of trying to copy famous paintings. I think we nailed it.
We snuck away to a beach house during the lockdown, and took a walk on the empty beach. It began to rain, and we saw starfish everywhere. We lost count at 100.
I grew my first ever pumpkin, and then…
I became queen of the pumpkins.
I did some of my daughter’s school work with her and drew this beauty.
We did numerous photo shoots with Puff the Magic Hamster, who was a wonderful sport about it.
We had our own May Day, and it’s my favorite picture of us.
My son got his first car,
and my daughter grew wings.
I got to take my nephew to his first rock concert and see him light up.
I got my first tattoo, a matching wave with my best friend.
I captured this moment at the aquarium.
When I could hug my mother again, it was everything.
And when it was safe, this group got together and my heart was full.
My kids tease me because I take a lot of pictures, but I’m grateful. Looking through these memories, and there were a lot more, it helps me remember the last two years have been hard, yes, but also filled with tiny moments of beauty and joy.
It doesn’t look like my childhood home anymore. It hasn’t looked like it in a long time.
The effects of depression hang in the air, tangibly thick, like the layers of neglect and random things. Peeling back each one we find plenty that’s broken, unusable, forgotten or discarded. There are cords, cigarette butts, bottles, worn-out blankets, unmatched shoes and boxes of stuff bought for a purpose or plan long since abandoned. As we shovel it all away, pile it to be taken to the dump, my heart is breaking for what is at the very bottom of it all, the thing left when you peel everything away.
My childhood home.
My childhood.
Skating in the garage. Homework at the dinner table. Christmas mornings. Biking around the court. Neighborhood friends. Mudpies. A summer wedding in the front yard. Nursing a possum back to health. Hiding in my closet. Buried pets. Ewok battles. Midnight Jane Fonda workouts. My dad at his computer. Microwave popcorn. Goodnight kisses. My purple room. First day of school pictures. Our pig running through the back and front screen door. Slumber parties. Dancing on my bed. Rosanne on the TV. Mom sewing at the kitchen table. Sandbags. Doves. Playing shipwreck. Daycare kids. Charles Chips tins. Yellow flowered wallpaper. Spacecat peeing in the entryway. Piles of leaves. Brown carpet.
None of these memories will be erased by this move. I get to keep them. They are mine.
Yet there is something profoundly sad about the way this place I grew up, this place I learned about myself and the world, became. It didn’t just get sold. There isn’t just a new family moving in.
The house was broken.
Then taken (foreclosure).
It’s violating. It’s as if a part of my childhood was left to rot and spoil in the sun, a dead fish in a pile of debris. It’s ugly and raw.
I don’t blame my parents. There is no blame to place anywhere. Sometimes families fall apart and ours did so at an excruciatingly slow pace. It’s been decades and there are still casualties. Piles of them.
Although it would be easiest to only look forward, to face away from what was, I find myself drawn back by the little pieces of history unearthed. I want to remember, to honor these feelings, to touch all the creases and cracks of the walls before they are no longer mine to feel.
This weekend we must say our final goodbye. We will take the last things off the walls. I’ll open the hallway cupboards and run my hands over the place the board games used to live. I’ll walk into my closet and shut the door and sit in the dark one last time. I’ll stare at the door to my parent’s bedroom, the one I couldn’t enter without knocking. I’ll look out my bedroom window.
I was lucky to have grown up in this middle-class suburban neighborhood. I know that. My brother and I had friends to play with, we swam in the gutters, got into fights, babysat, borrowed sugar, trick-or-treated, sold candy bars door-to-door, walked the dogs and slowly changed into the people we are today.
The home of those memories, however, has been gone for a long time. It was fractured by divorce, mental illness and time. Things broke and didn’t get fixed. Weeds became impossible to combat. Cracks too big to mend.
The park we played at has been fenced off, permanently closed due to gangs and violence. My car was stolen when I was visiting and pregnant with my first child. Most of the neighbors have moved and the new ones are not friendly. It isn’t the neighborhood of my youth, it’s as crumbling as the roof and as ugly as the butchered tree in the front yard.
Things don’t stay frozen in time. Erosion. Evolution. Transformation.
Leaving this home behind will be a new start for my mother and brother, a chance to wipe clean the wounds of the past that lay bare and bleeding. They can shed the guilt, the pain and the reality of a space no longer serving the purpose it once did. They can outrun the ghosts and the echoes of a life lived.
This is an opportunity to make things better.
It’s for the best.
I know all this, yet it doesn’t make it any easier.
I’ve never liked the end of a book or the goodbyes when someone leaves. I wish I could skip ahead to the time when the pain is a memory, but that isn’t how things work.
The pain is here right now, whether I acknowledge it or not. This is the hard part.
Once we pull away with the last load of things on Sunday, maybe looking back for one last glance of myself riding my big wheel around the court, the real healing can begin.
It’s midnight and I’m hooked up to the breast pump. I turn on the TV to keep me awake, too exhausted to load up Netflix. Three commercials in a row target my body.
Lose weight fast. Look good in a bathing suit. Feel good about yourself.
I look down at my stomach rolls, the extra heft of my thighs, the way my calves bulge with fat and I’m instantly disgusted and angry.
I should not have gained so much weight during this pregnancy.
I should not have banked on pumping to take off the weight.
I should have done better.
I grab my phone and google the Keto diet, price the latest Weight Watchers program and research what Sono Bello does to resculpt your body. I download two new food tracking apps, open a note file and make myself a workout schedule.
Time to get serious again.
No more eating carbs or sugar.
No more fruit.
Stop being fat and lazy.
You are gross.
Maybe you need weight loss surgery so you can’t enjoy food anymore. That will teach you.
You should punish yourself for being weak.
You’re disgusting.
You don’t deserve anything good until you get the weight off.
I say all this to myself as I’m pumping milk for my sweet nephew who, as a surrogate, I successfully grew and birthed only a few short months ago.
I say all this to myself as I tell my daughter to love her body and to stop comparing herself to others.
I say all this to myself…and I believe it.
All of it.
For a moment, the hate for my body is so intense I wish I could rip the fleshy fat off with my bare hands. It would be worth it to not look and feel like this.
I go to sleep with all the plans and all the hate.
When I wake up the anger has faded, but the disgust lingers around me like a sunburn. I shower and step on the scale. I know the number, but it hits me like a bullet between my eyes and I stagger away from it. The towel, the one that doesn’t quite fit around me anymore, falls to the floor.
This is the heaviest I’ve been in my life.
The anger prickles, goosebumps down my arms and legs, focusing daggers at my swollen middle.
My core.
The center of my being.
The place I grew three babies.
The place of my deepest breath.
I hate it.
My daughter walks in and I focus all my energy on taking air deep inside and holding it. I stand, naked, shaking slightly, and take slow, gut-filling breaths in as she talks to me about the dream she had. She’s in her underwear and I’m keenly aware of the curves of her body and my emotions are complicated and ugly.
A vile snake built of guilt and shame slithers around me and stings my skin all over.
My daughter keeps talking. I can’t hear her, but I see the light in her eyes and the way she lounges on my bed. Her beauty is an undeniable force. I continue to stare at her until she is in focus and I can hear the words she is saying. I get lost in her dreams and her voice until everything else fades away.
It’s been several weeks and the sting of that hate still remains. To fight back, I found several body-positive Instagram accounts to follow. I look at their images daily; bikini-clad on a bicycle, doing yard work in cute shorts, eating food and kissing their spouses. I read their words and I want to believe.
Is it possible to love me at this weight? Do they believe what they are writing? Are they happy?
In two days, I leave for a trip with my husband to Paris. Instead of joy, this is what I’m thinking: “I’m the stereotypical fat American,” “what can I wear to not stand out” and “I wish I had more time to lose weight.”
I want to be excited, but this fat on my body feels like it’s holding me back.
It’s all I can see.
It’s all I can focus on.
Weight issues are complicated. It’s not simply a matter of calories in and calories out. I put on this weight because I was pregnant, yes, but also because I had anxiety about being a surrogate. I was scared because my sister and brother-in-law, the beautiful people I grew the baby for, had lost my sweet niece and we were all still grieving. I gained the weight because I had a bleed the first time I went to the gym after the embryo transfer and I convinced myself I’d lost the baby because I was vain and didn’t want to gain weight. I tried water aerobics but had a panic attack because I feared the water would suddenly be filled with blood and it would all be my fault. I ate because I wanted the baby to grow big and healthy and I was terrified all the time I’d do something wrong.
I gained this weight by eating calories, yes, but it’s more than that.
It’s all mixed up with emotions and the history of my body. It’s so much more than food.
Yes, I’m overweight. Yes, it’s not healthy.
But this is also the truth: This 42-year-old fat body grew a baby and birthed it. This 42-year-old fat body produced nearly 5,000 ounces of milk. This 42-year-old fat body cleaned up a very messy garage, took several loads to the dump, cleaned out every closet in the house, cleared a year worth of weeds away, chopped down a tree and daily drives her kids to all their activities.
Even with the extra weight, this body is doing all the things I love.
Isn’t that worth something?
Yes, I want to lose weight and be stronger. I want to feel better in my clothes and not be as winded when I run up the stairs. I want to chase after my little nephew when he starts running around. I want to do everything I can to reduce my risk of heart disease and injury.
Bridgette Tales 