I nominated my mother to share the news of my pregnancy with the rest of our family. I was confident my father and brother wouldn’t kill the messenger, but I knew for certain they would want to kill the message.
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“There are two parts of the mind. The outer mind that records facts and the inner mind that says ‘Yes’ and ‘no.” –Agnes Martin
1.
Once, years back, a woman, an acquaintance, asked me why I decided to become a speech-language pathologist, a person who works on helping children who can’t say their rs, who sits in quiet classrooms with the thud of the other, happier children outside, or who leans in, in the dead of winter, in a trailer because that’s the only extra space, a metallic trailer with stucco on the sides, and who rehearses the way sounds go.
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On Monday, August 20th, 2012 at 11:54 p.m., a piece of rail snapped beneath an eighty-car train carrying 9,837 tons of coal as it passed over a bridge above Main Street in Ellicott City, Maryland.
Just a moment before the accident, Elizabeth Nass and Rose Mayr, two nineteen-year-old friends spending one last night of summer together before heading back to college, sat on that same bridge, dangling their legs over the edge.
Just a moment after, the train cars tipped over on their bodies, crushing them beneath piles of coal.
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It was a perfect August day, and the Wolf River was clear and cool. The leaf canopy of spruce and cottonwood sparkled overhead, like shards of brilliant green glass backlit by intermittent bursts of sunlight.
Dave and I were trying out the twin red kayaks that his kids had given us the previous Christmas. Everyone agreed we had been working too hard, and the weight of a business we could no longer save was taking its toll.
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I stand at the church parking lot entrance and stop each car.
The surface lot is small and we’re saving it for those who NEED to park closer. Please park in the parking garage, yes, the one RIGHT there, and get your ticket validated inside for free parking.
I smile, nod, and point.
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I have a problem with many words in the English language, the most recent and personally applicable being “menopause.” Apparently, the term is a Greek mashup of “month” and “cease.” I’d have less of a problem if the English term were “menocease,” since “menopause” suggests that something about the female body—my body in this case—is “pausing” and will, ASAP, resume its regularly scheduled programming. But, that’s not the case. My body is going off the air.
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It’s our last night on Kauai together, yet not together. For the past seven days, we’ve been staying at different places due to the separation, Ian and I in a condo, and you at a hotel. We have a late morning flight back to the Bay Area tomorrow, and when we reach San Mateo, you’ll drop me off at my apartment, a tiny one bedroom I’m renting several blocks away from the house we raised Ian in–the house where you and Ian now live.
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She was doing Pilates when she saw the first sign. She should have noticed. It was like last summer when the cop stopped her, leaned into the window, and asked if she’d seen the “STOP” sign. Of course she hadn’t, she told him; if she had seen it she’d have stopped. But that, too, was no kind of explanation.
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There’s a ten year old girl, long unbrushed brown hair in a private school uniform running late for lunch from gym class. She’s alone. There are eight buttons on her white oxford shirt. This is her third month in a real school after being homeschooled for her entire life, her seventh move to her fifth state, Ohio this time. Her sister, Liz, just two grades below her in third was recently teased for not knowing the word fart.
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And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light,
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained;
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At the Y pool, 7:00 AM on a Wednesday morning, my lane stretches before me.
I’m in the chilly water, kept at what I’m told is “competition temperature,” a shock to me my first time here. Nothing to do but swim, swim, swim to try to stay as warm as possible. I’m the only swimmer who has pulled a long sleeved swim shirt over her suit, in addition to wearing swim pants reaching to my calves. After weeks of swimming, I am still not accustomed to the cold water.
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Some Girls
In 1966, a teenage girl walked into a fancy salon in London, England wanting a simple shampoo and set. Instead, persuaded by the owner, she had her long locks cut into a short crop. After the cut, a picture was taken, revealing an almost waif-ish yet intriguing schoolgirl: pretty, wide-eyed, and made up beyond her years. Barry Lategan, the photographer, said of the girl, “She was gawky, but she had a sort of elegance…I think it was the eyes…she had such a presence.”
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My brother props his long legs on the dashboard of Dad’s pristine Honda. He presses his feet in their sweaty black socks into the windshield hard enough to leave `a smudge, a crime our eighty-five year-old father swoops on like a hawk.
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It’s a known truth that shitty things tend to happen when life is on the upswing.
You just turned forty-two—at the height of the COVID19 pandemic, no less. After parting ways with your fiancé and pushing through a mammoth mental and physical breakdown, armed with hardheadedness and a sizzling double-dose of Moderna vaccine, you scratch and claw your way to a near-perfect existence. A slick dream job with stock photo coworkers on top of their game. Gamja hot dog and vegan donut picnics with your friends in Christie Park.
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The further I get into the safety of a long-term relationship, the foggier my examples become. Each year is like another gloss of paint, obscuring. I am grateful for this obfuscation, however, a part of me wants to hold on to the memories, coloring them with new perspective as I grow in age and wisdom. This part of me wants to lose itself in the comfort of reliving the incidents, but altering the endings. This is what I would do, if it happened again. By rewriting your rape stories, you regain a façade of control.
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At the age of thirteen, I attended a boarding school a continent away from my family, an experience that triggered a wrenching homesickness. As a teenager, I navigated international airports and transitioned between cultures with fluidity, yet a floodgate of tears would open at the echo of my parents’ voices over a long-distance call. They were a seven-hour flight away, too far to dash home for a weekend of hugs and home-cooked meals, distant enough for the cookies in care packages to grow stale before arrival.
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I study myself in the mirror. The same glass in the square wooden frame that has stared back at me ever since I was tall enough to see over the top of the dresser. I concentrate on the small round bumps barely rising from my chest. I call them “my breasts.” “Boobs” sounds like the noise my brother Kenny makes when he imitates drums. “Bust” sounds violent. “Titties” sound silly. I’m not sure about “chest,” the word could belong to a man or a woman. I choose to think of them as “my breasts.”
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The sisters were hungry. They’d already eaten the things from the food bank that nobody liked. The weird canned potatoes, the sauerkraut, the can of beets. They’d thrown out the expired items and fed the can of dog food to the dog. The sisters had nibbled on dog biscuits in the past and those weren’t so bad, but they drew the line at wet food.
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Putting myself back together was a boring, organized process. A 1,000-piece puzzle left on the coffee table for months, or in this case, years. Finally sitting down to frame myself in sky and earth. Painstakingly searching the jumble for all those matching hooks and crevices. After the chaos of him, simply paying the bills on time was a cathartic experience. Routine was my remedy. Work away the day Monday through Friday. Come home when it’s dark. Stop at Walgreens to purchase a bottle of wine and pizza rolls. Cigarettes if needed. Home to one-and-a-half glasses of wine and the allowance of one orgasmic cigarette. The order was important.
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If not for the pup and the ritual of our morning walk, I might not have banked so much joy, watching her endearing hobby-horse bounce as she runs across the field. I would never have seen that barred owl swish overhead in a silent, majestic flight. I'd have missed the quiet presence of the setting moon and an infinity of stars disappearing into the pale blue.
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