July

Summer, time as a gift, and when doing nothing turns out to be everything

July was nine states that all tasted of summer. It was my son turning three and watermelon mouths and thanking time for all its gifts. It was lake water and sea water and big-sky-blue in every direction. It was tan lines from our sandals and notebooks full of nothing but wildflowers. It was saying goodbye to the fireflies and welcoming the grief over their passing. It was blue water, blue hour, blue everything. It was my dad and my son making up songs and trying to find a way to live in both of their laughs forever. It was sparklers for no other reason than the simple joy of being alive. It was bowling alleys and arcade games and vending machines that transported me back in time. It was swimming in the rain and wrapping him up in my yellow thrift store jacket, all sand and love. It was resting my head in my grandmother’s lap and feeling the weight of her once strong and now fragile hands in my hair. It was walking the land of my childhood and saying goodbye to the big maple tree, the garden, the ponds with the isthmus running between them, the finches, the apple orchard, the hundred-year-old barn, and the stone steps I watched my grandmother install with nothing but a shovel—and not being ready for any of it. It was my son watching fireworks from the beach for the first time and seeing his face light up with the sky. It was driving eight hours across three states with my brother in a cargo van and never running out of things to say to each other. It was the fog crawling across Michigan’s flatland, a house full of butterflies, and my father’s big laugh. It was coming home and home finally feeling how I always dreamed home would feel like. It was his tiny hands full of blackberries the moment we got out of the car and getting back to flouring the counters. It was the bright mountain sky at ten o’clock at night and always looking for the moon. It was packing the car again and driving to the coast where moss hangs from the trees. It was jumping in the pool in my dress and floating into another realm. It was kid drum circles and strawberry lemonade that made his lip pucker. It was the warm, quiet mornings, the blue herons in the marsh, and the deer pulling leaves from the trees. It was water parks and rock offerings and the scent of sunscreen. It was pockets full of sea glass and seashells and shaking the sand from our hair. It was leaning into the stillness and finding out that’s where the joy is—that’s where it’s been all along.

WHAT I’M READING

Fairytale by Stephen King

Not much to report here. I’m still reading Stephen King’s Fairytale. At six hundred pages, it’s not the sort of book you always want to live in—the world isn’t exactly inviting so I’m going kind of slow with it. I don’t usually read fantasy. I don’t think it’s my thing. I mean, I do want to know what’s going to happen in the story; I'm very much invested in the overall goal of the hero, and I need to know what’s going to happen with the damn dog. But I don’t love the writing. It feels very much like spoon-feeding, constantly telling me the thing without me having to think my way to the thing. Also, there's the constant reminding of all the little details. Shouldn't we trust our readers to remember this sort of stuff? It doesn’t read like King, but maybe this is modern-King. That’s not to say that Fairytale hasn’t moved me because I do find myself tearing up, but that’s what art does to me. There’s just no way around it.

Poetry

WHAT I’M WATCHING

Good Will Hunting

Earlier this month, I did a meditation that took me through various phases of my childhood, recalling the things I loved and would spend hours doing, without realizing the passing of time. One of those things was listening to music, which didn’t surprise me. But another thing that came up was watching movies. I’ve always loved film, but since my son was born, I haven't watched many. I don’t have as much free time as I used to, and the little time I do have is usually spent reading rather than watching films, but this remembering made me want to work more movies into our rhythm. I remember how, when I was a kid, we used to go to Rodeo Video where they offered $1 rentals. My dad, my brother, and I would rent a towering stack of movies on Friday that we’d finish before the weekend was over. I’d fall in love with an actor, director, or cinematographer and then rent every one of their movies until I had watched their entire filmography.

I lived off film. 

When my mom pulled me out of high school because the bullying wouldn't stop, I had many hours to fill during homeschooling, and I'd spend whole days watching movies. Once in college, I took class after class on film as an art form, the psychology of film, the philosophy, and so on. One semester, I spent months watching nothing but French films. I'd forgotten how much I loved it. I think somewhere along the way, I associated it with being unproductive. And maybe it’s not for my life as a whole, but creatively and emotionally, I feel like it’s a must.

And so, this is a long-winded way to say my goal is to watch at least one movie a month to start. I think one movie a week would be too ambitious for my current rhythm, but I’d love to get to the place where I can make space for it. My pick this month was Good Will Hunting. I kept seeing scenes from the film in reels on Instagram and they’d choke me up. I took it as a sign. Perry had only seen bits and pieces of the film and didn’t remember it, so it made it even more special to watch. It’s a certain kind of magic to show someone you love a movie, show, or song for the first time. It feels like watching it for the first time yourself.

We put our son to bed and sobbed for two hours on our vintage couch that looks pretty but is uncomfortable as hell. I knew what I was in for with the movie and tried to warn Perry about its emotional intensity, but even so, we cried—really cried. The whole thing hit so much harder now that I’m older, have a son, and have spent the last three years reparenting myself. The grief that colors every single scene felt visceral as if a piece of me had lived it myself. Through therapy, I’ve become much more connected to my emotions and my overall ability to feel, so now, I feel everything. And I not only feel it but also understand the root of why I’m feeling it. It’s all so connected, and let's just say, I was exhausted by the end of the movie.

When I think about Ben Affleck and Matt Damon writing the script when they were twenty, it blows my mind. How does a twenty-year-old write something so honest and emotionally attuned? I mean, yes, I’ve always been a deep thinker, even in my twenties, but I didn’t have the language to explain, especially not in a way that could be not only understood but truly felt. And the dialogue itself is so damn good, saying so much with only a few lines. Plus, the themes are so expansive—the friendship and brotherhood of Will's friend group, his deep inherent loneliness and the longing to be loved while not knowing how to love himself, the grief, ego, and resentment of the professor, the grief and loneliness and hope of Sean, the pure love of Chuckie for Will and Chuckie's complacency with his own life—it's so layered. It truly enamors me. The pure art of it.

I’m sure I sound out of touch (I probably am), but I feel like they don’t make movies like this anymore. Movies that linger and allow you to dwell in the in-between moments that make up a life. I love the slow pacing, the space, and the attention to the humanness of it all. It’s not about flashy shots, but about what this image, this scene, this dialogue—or lack thereof—makes you feel. I’m sure there are new movies that accomplish this sort of tone, space, and emotional depth, but I just haven’t found many. One I can think of is Call Me By Your Name. I watch that film every summer and love living inside the slowness and the richness of the space of that film.

If anything new(ish) comes to mind that you think I would like, please feel free to drop it in the comments and I’ll add it to my list. Otherwise, I may keep watching old movies again and again.

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO

We drove from Michigan back home, covering about seven hundred miles. Usually, I spend the trip reading, tending to my son, and talking with my husband. But on this trip, something called me to just look out the window and dream, like we used to when we lived out of our car and traveled across the country multiple times a year. We drove with no destination or goal, stopping at little roadside motels when we needed a real rest. I used to stare out the window at the ever-changing landscape and dream about what life could look like, what it already was, what we were building together. The sad romanticism of Gregory Alan Isakov’s songs brought all those dreams to the surface.

And so, across six states, I allowed myself to dream, wonder, and live in a state of possibility and gratitude. I still tended to my son, of course, but he’s older now, and it’s astounding how little he needs me in moments like these. I listened to Greg’s discography from newest to oldest, and by the time we arrived home, I was floating—no longer on Earth. This journey took me back not only to our days of traveling pre-baby but also to my adolescence, when I would lie on the floor in my room and do nothing but listen to music. I'm realizing that so much of my inner child's joy comes from doing nothing, just allowing myself to surrender to the moment—to be present with the art and myself.

Do you have an artist or album that does this for you? That takes you somewhere else or opens up the space for you to dream. 

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When waiting turns to stillness

I’m writing this month’s wrap-up poolside from Charleston. Beyond the pool, there's a marsh lined with oaks laced with Spanish moss. It’s so quiet here. You can hear every bird, cicada, and splash from the animals that live within the marsh. I could do nothing but sit and listen to it all. In the mornings, before my son and husband wake, I come out here and watch the sun slide down the trees and listen. Just now, as I’m writing this, I heard the crunching of leaves and, when I looked up, two deer were pulling leaves from the trees. This may not sound like a big deal, but one thing you probably don’t know about me is that I’m obsessed with deer. They take my breath away; seeing them feels like a gift. You might say I’m not getting a whole lot done, but I’d say I’m doing more with my life than I ever have, even if it just looks like sitting still.

I resisted stillness for most of my life. Most of the time, stillness felt like waiting. And waiting felt like a curse. I had been stuck in a loop of eternal waiting since I was born—waiting for the sound of the buzzer at the prison's visiting ward, waiting for the cops to release my mother so I could hug her, waiting for her to get out of prison, waiting for my dad to come in from the meth lab he built in our garage so I could feel safe enough to fall asleep, waiting for things to get better, waiting to grow up so I could escape the Mojave where I grew up, waiting until I could finally make my own goddamn life.

I replaced the waiting with doing, and honestly, I don't think I stopped the endless doing until this year. If it wasn't work, it was writing; if it wasn't either of those, it was traveling. The traveling itself was rarely an act of presence but more doing, more running. Running from what? I could tell you that I don't know, and it would be true because I don’t fully understand, but I know it has something to do with whatever was on the other side of all that waiting that never really came through in the way that I needed it.

It’s rare that I set out to change something and it actually changes. What usually happens is that the change is almost forced upon me. Something happens that makes me see things differently. Then the change happens in all the tiny moments I don’t even realize are asking me to change. There are choices to be made and then one day, I realize I’m choosing to sit and watch the heron and the deer instead of filling every second of every moment with the never-ending list of shoulds. I get that most of those shoulds still need to happen, and they will, but the thing that shifted is that I give myself to the morning first. To the stillness. To the nothing, which has turned out to be everything.

My son was the catalyst for the shift, but it took a million tiny changes and choices—likely most of them not the right ones—over three years for me to truly feel the shift, for it to take root and transform my life. It took three years for me to feel it. Believe it. Three years for me to choose myself and all the things I never knew I needed, but needed all along. 

My son shined the light on the path, but it took me trusting myself enough to follow it. And that’s where I am now, learning to trust my own steps.

Time, the giver

My son turned three this month, and I feel like I should have more to say about it. When he turned two, I was riddled with both fear and gratitude, and I couldn't help but write about it. But now, I feel in flow with his growth instead of trying to move against the natural current. I can’t stop his growing up, and it’s not even that I want to. I think what scared me was the fear of losing our connection as he grew older, but I’ve spent three years prioritizing it above all else, and it’s brought me to this place. This place where time is less of a threat and more of a gift. A thing that I feel so in step with that I hardly notice its passing.

There’s a beautiful lyric in “Terlingua” by Gregory Alan Isakov where he says, “I’ll love you like the passing time.” The song was released last summer, right after my son turned two, and I remember crying in the Michigan dark when I listened to it for the first time, thinking of the passing as a loss. But now, when I hear it, I smile and revel in the passing as the bounty of all the moments we’ve had together—moments that will forever live inside of us, the connection we’ve nurtured, and the life we’ve built.

And maybe that's where the stillness came in, how it arrived. Somewhere along the way, I stopped rushing, grasping, trying to race against time, to stop it from marching on without me. I realized it wasn’t trying to take something from me, as it had felt for most of my childhood with my mother in and out of prison. I was forever counting the days until I could see her again, until she could come home and just be Mom and not Inmate. When I was a child, time was a thief—robbing me of her presence and connection. And so, it made sense that I felt the same threat with my son, even though I spent every day with him. It never felt like enough.

I think the thing is that I'm healing the wounds of childhood that have been informing how I move through the world, and so there is space to move differently, or not move at all. To allow the stillness. To allow time to be a giver. To hold out my hands and say thank you.