Manifesto: The Mad Preacher's Call for Community

In the summer of 2006 I was 21 years old and standing on the edge of a field where the Community Supported Agriculture program I worked for grew our organic vegetables. Our farm manager, an eager and earnest young woman not much older than I, read Manifesto: A Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front to us before we started our work for the day. She wanted us, summer workers who just wanted a decent job, to feel a deep connection to the food we were growing, the land around us, and the crusty old republican farmers we sold next to at the St. Joseph Farmers Market. I loved the poem, instantly, and because this was a time before I even had a computer, to say nothing of a smartphone, after work I bicycled to the library, copied it out, and hung it on the refrigerator in my apartment. 

It has hung on many refrigerators in many apartments since then. I have carried the phrase “So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute.” in my heart for nearly 20 years. 

The poem hits differently now at 40 than it did at 21. Quick profits, annual raises, and vacations with pay sometimes seem desperately out of reach for my working class husband and me. If there is a window in my head, people probably see my wishing for a vast inheritance from some long estranged family member I have never heard of. Working class folks  work very hard to simply maintain a standard of living that my parents–also working class people–endured for a few years in their early 20s.

For my fellow working class folks and Millennials, our lives and the cards in their heads are probably very similar. We’ve been offered a raw economic deal, social support systems that are, frankly, laughable, and wave after wave of seemingly unprecedented world events. Much of Berry’s advice: to invest in the millennium, praise the slow growth of things, and take time to breathe in the holiness of the world around us  are trampled under the day to day grind of student debt, stagnant wages, inflation, and a dying planet. 

So why do I continue to hang this poem on my refrigerator? Better yet, why do I continue to carry it in my heart? 

I have worked for almost twenty years in community nonprofits and I spend a lot of time listening to stories of women who have endured horrific violence, children in poverty, and folks struggling with addiction. I have, on occasion, hidden in an office supply closet to cry. The longer I have spent in nonprofit the less time I have spent crying in the supply closets because of the stories themselves. I spend more time crying over the cruelty of generals and politicos Berry talks about and wealthy tax dodgers who are unnamed and the middle class folks who simply do not care because they have achieved a comfortable job and a single family home. It is heartrending and exhausting. 

I get told often that my response to things is always overblown. My tears are the reaction of ADHD overwhelm or life as an empath or the kind of personality that leads one to become a chaplain, but I think that when we say those things to ourselves and one another  we are simply falling into the very thing that Berry is cautioning us against–we have become predictable, ready to die for profit, ready to accept suffering. We have forgotten to “do something that won’t compute.” When we fall into the trap of never having enough spoons, or being too busy running the kids to soccer practice, or needing to veg out in front of whatever bingable show we’re currently watching we are hiding behind things to keep from engaging with our emotions,  our friends,  and our families. 

What profits can we expect from that sort of a life? Are they worth prophesying? 

Beloveds, I am not asking us to run ourselves ragged or become burned out trying to fix this bloody and broken world. Our economic system is slowly grinding us all to dust and yes, occasionally we do need to just get the kids where they’re going and have a few quiet moments before bed. But this is not always the case.* 

In fact I think it rarely is. Sometimes we are simply stuck in our own inertia. And I am there too. I understand the lure of scrolling tiktok and half watching a tv show, but let us consider–could we not use that time to do something that won’t compute? 

You’ve heard me preach before on the corporal works of mercy, but today I am not even asking us to take on anything that big. I am asking you to ask a trusted friend to watch your kids for a few hours while you go on a date with a spouse. To say to a family member “I am really overwhelmed this week, could you bring by dinner and I’ll bring you something next week?” 

And for those of us whose lives are not currently on fire or even currently very hectic to say yes to those requests–or to do something that will not compute. Walk the picket line with the currently striking City Park Workers, take some mail to the post office for your elderly neighbor, do a very un-Minnesotan thing and invite someone from church you do not know very well to your house for coffee. Yes, to your house, not the neighborhood coffee shop. 

Perhaps I am pushing us a bit with that last one, but beloveds, I am asking you to do these things because what else can we do in this broken world? Some of us are activists and organizers and I applaud you for that work, but we are not all cut out for it. To borrow a concept from Christianity there are many gifts but the same spirit. There are many ways to live a life that will not compute. 

And when we find those ways and break free from bingable shows and snackable media, when we begin to live lives that do not compute, something powerful happens. We can be joy despite knowing  all the facts about our economy, our political system, and our world. Joy is a powerful thing–when was the last time you felt joyful? Really, think about it. I don’t know when the last time was for me. 

My husband has teasingly called me a bit of an egghead. I spend a lot of time thinking about joy and suffering and what they mean theologically and socially. I spend a lot of time thinking about the implications of joy–that it is transformative, leads to public action, and is a radical middle finger to a world that is trying to return us to dust. 

I spend a lot of time thinking about joy and living a life that will not compute, and less time actually doing those things. When I’m not watching The Sopranos for the fourth time and  mindlessly opening and closing apps on my phone, I spend a lot of time pushing joy away from me because there is still so much to do. There is always another grant to be written, another dish to be washed, another reminder of a world coming apart at its seams. I will be joyful later, when I have fully lived a life that invests in millennium and takes care of others and only eat organic produce raised within a hundred mile radius of where I live. 

Beloveds, I have been very inattentive. 

In an attempt to live a life in line with my ethics, to love people who do not deserve it, and serve a God  whose existence I am frankly very iffy about, I have forgotten to reap the fruits of such a life. I have forgotten that this is my one chance–to live in this world and love it and its people and the God who maybe created it all. I have forgotten the pleasure of standing on the edge of a field and listening to a poem, and feeling it overwhelm me with emotion. 

I do not know what awaits us when we leave this world. What I do know is that this is our one chance to experience joy as ourselves, in this beautiful and broken world and not in an eternity we cannot even begin to fathom. We must take this opportunity. Our lives depend on it. Our community depends on it. Perhaps, even the world depends on it. 

Beloveds, may we live lives that will not compute and may we experience the joy that those lives bring us. 

Let it be so, and amen.  

Share Your Love with Me

 The Queen of Soul is belting it out in the apartment tonight. 

I can't decide on a specific album so I cue up the first one I ever bought: Aretha Franklin's 30 Greatest Hits. It's been a rough day at the office, so I really wanted to hear "Respect," and I'll see how I feel as the album winds on. 

I go on cooking and tidying things up until a song comes on that brings back my first marriage so vividly that I have to stop and remind myself to breathe. 

Oh how lonesome (oh how lonesome)

You must be (you must be)

It's a shame (shame, shame)

If you don't share your love with me. 

I listened to this song on an endless loop while the ex and I were breaking up. I was so lonely and I kept thinking that he must be lonely, too. 

* * *

"I think that this is what people meant by "adulting.""

I'm on a videocall with one of my dearest friends. I've been telling her about how everyone I know really seems to be going through it lately. Divorce, unemployment, issues with their health, issues with their parents health, discipline problems with their kids, it's just everything all at once. And it's hard to know when someone has enough space to hear the minor tragedies that are going on in your life. 

Community has been a buzzword for so long now that I think it has lost all of its meaning. We say that we know it is life-affirming and life-changing, but I haven't been able to build an actual community since the first few years after college. We got wrapped up in our jobs and lives and went our separate ways. I understand that life is like that. We love people for a season or a lifetime and whichever it is, it was worth loving them.

But I long for real community. 

* * *

I was laid off in December. 

It was awful. I was called into the office one day and told that the organization was 3.1M dollars in debt and that there was no way out. We were being laid off because they weren't sure they would be able to meet payroll for another week. We were laid off because of incomprehensible financial mismanagement. The people responsible for that mismanagement still had their six figure salaries and probably had a very merry Christmas watching The Christmas Carol. 

I digress. 

Getting laid off is one of those things that you can't really conceptualize until it happens. I killed it at that job. I raised our entire fundraising goal for the year in six months. I loved my boss. I loved my work. I thought that I landed at the organization where I was going to stay until I at least finished school. Having that yanked out from me was so disorienting that I took three weeks just to process it. I could not fathom going from having a good job where things were going really well to having no job, and not because of anything I had done wrong. There were very few people I could talk to about it. David bore most of the burden then and now, because my emotions have become even more volatile than normal. When I do see people I love there so much pressure to be positive about my job search, because no one wants to hear you rant about how middle management creates jobs for themselves by making the job search worse for applicants. 

Or whatever tear I'm on that week. 

* * * 

My longing for community is wrapped up with a concept I fucking despise. 

"Having enough spoons." 

I understand that sometimes we're carrying so much in our private lives that we can't carry any more. But I am also in the process of becoming an interreligious chaplain who wants to do hospice work. I know firsthand that grief and stress shared are grief and stress lightened. My favorite minister once said that "Asking for help is self care and giving help is community care."

I have never forgotten that sermon. 

I don't know if this is a me thing. Do you all feel disconnected and vaguely unhappy? Am I just unlikable and can't form the community I want? Is the community that I long for just non-existent anymore?

That's not to say that we should all be willing to take on everyone's everything all the time. Of course not. Boundaries are important. But if we can't put a card in the mail, show up unannounced with a hotdish, or offer to take someone's kids for two hours so they can go on a date, what's the point? 

* * *

I've been relistening to a lot of music I haven't heard in awhile. 

It's been a lot of what Spotify has dubbed "Millennial Post Rock." I've listened to The Crane Wife album on repeat while writing papers. I play The Postal Service and make baked ziti for David's lunch. I just sit and listen to For Emma, Forever Ago. 

This is completely embarrassing, but the reason I am revisiting all these albums is because I feel like I did in my 20s. Everything is too uncertain, all of these life experiences are new and overwhelming, and IamjusthavingtoomanyfeelingsandIcannotdeal. 

Christ, I turn 40 next year. 

In the midst of this review of the tail end of my emo years, I let David have a turn at the radio. Somewhere in his mix a cover of "Share Your Love with Me" comes up. 

I'm drawn back to those months before my divorce, but only for a moment. I keep thinking about the line "Oh how lonesome you must be." Every time I have told someone "I don't have the spoons" or had someone cry when I drop off tater tot lentil hotdish or allthefuckingfeelings of worthless and despair I have felt during unemployment come over me. 

It's a lot. It's almost too much. 

But I realize again that a lot and almost too much are exactly what I want. I want to listen to you complain about your horrible Boomer boss or the price of houses or your dog chewing up your $3,000 dental guard. I want drawings from your kids and to bring you cookies when didn't get the job you wanted. I want to be in this horrible phase of "adulting" with you. I want to share our love and grief and joy with one another. 

Maybe we can all feel a little bit less lonesome. 

Ruth

 I've been thinking a lot about the Book of Ruth lately. 

Part of it is that we sing a version of Ruth's words to Naomi at church most weekends (and let me tell you, for a hymn it's an earworm). Part of it is that I remind myself of Ruth's words to Naomi when I think about David. There are probably a lot more "part of its" that I'm not ready to talk about.

But almost daily I find myself musing over Ruth's words. "Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God" 

* * *

I am spiritually exhausted, y'all. 

I don't know how else to talk about it. I am convinced that the world is going straight down the toilet. I expect the world to devolve into a Parable-of-the-Sower-dying-gasps-of-Capitalism hellscape in the next ten years. I know that aforementioned capitalism is grinding us all into pulp and that we cannot bring ourselves to imagine that there might be something else so there won't be. Inflation is making our already tight budget even tighter. I worry about climate change Every Single Day. I spend my life talking about how to provide healthcare to the homeless, jobs to the jobless, and basic human dignity to everyone and nothing has gotten any better and in many cases things have gotten worse. 

I was talking to my beloved last week about some of my more extreme end-times views a few weeks ago. How I'm teaching myself to identify medicinal and edible plants. My desire to learn to use a firearm. My almost fanatical obsession with water conservation that I can't impact (I'm looking at you, Western United States).

"I know, babe. I feel the same way."

"I am so tired," is all I can reply. 

* * *

I'm on the Amtrak back to Milwaukee. 

It's about a week before Christmas and I'm going to spend some time with my family. But I'm feeling a little . . . I'm not sure. I've left my beloved back at our apartment (he can't get the time off work) and the holidays don't feel like the holidays without him. 

So I've tuned into the livestream of the Unitarian Universalist church we've been attending for the last month. 

I love UU Church. 

I'm a little embarrassed by how much I love UU Church. I'm embarrassed by how quickly this community has found its way into my heart. I'm embarrassed by how much I look forward to services. I'm embarrassed by how much I need this place. 

This week, it's the sermon that gets me. My favorite minister is preaching and his words have managed to grab me more than once. Today he tells us "Everyone needs more than anyone has to give right now, but also, no one can fill those of your needs that you won't let show. I believe that asking each other for help is self love and answering honestly is self love and giving what we can is community love."

I embarrass myself by crying on the train. 

* * *

I want to have a heart like Ruth's. 

I don't want to feel like I have it alone.

Let me explain.

I am tired of being spiritually exhausted. All of the problems that exhaust me are too big for me to handle on my own. Truly, they are too big for even a dedicated community to have much of an impact on. But I don't have the money to run away from climate change and crime and desperation and even if I did I do not know that I would. Community love is the only way I can see out. 

Everyone needs more than anyone has to give right now. 

I am trying to have a heart like Ruth's. 

Instead of telling people that I don't have the spoons or the time or the interest, I am going to start asking how I can help them carry what they have to carry. I am going to remind myself that time alone in the woods is a spiritual practice and so is running an errand for our elderly neighbor and so is speaking truth to friends (and power). I am going to try to draw our family circle so wide that no one feels left out. 

I am going to have a heart like Ruth's. 

In the words of that favorite pastor: let it be so, and amen. 

Soft

I lost someone close to me this week. 

Not lost in they've died but lost in the "well, that was an unforgivable betrayal of my trust" kind of way. 

I've been through so many relationship implosions over the years that it took a little while for this one to hit me. I did all the automatic stuff that I do--blocked them from my phone and social media, put away the things they've given me until I'm less emotional, activated my support group. I thought to myself "Well, that was unexpected" and went on with my day. 

We all know where this is going. 

That evening, after I held it together all day I tried to pickle myself in bourbon (it takes less now than it used to). I got into a horrible fight with David. I cried at a bus stop. I self-harmed in a more intentional way and screamed with grief and sobbed for hours. I've said it before, but going through life with big feelings is a constant fight.

Friday night I lost that fight.

* * *

My favorite Mary Oliver poem is only four lines long. 

"The Uses of Sorrow"

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness. 

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift. 

* * * 

I have fallen a little in love with most of the people I have met and liked over the years. 

What can I say? I have a lot of feelings, sloppy boundaries, and a soft heart. 

Each time someone lets me down in a big way I tell myself that this is it. This is the time that I'm going to put up taller walls, keep people at an arm's length, stop calling that one friend who never wants to hang out. 

Then the next time I meet someone with the same obscure interest, the same favorite book, hell, just someone who looks cute and smiles at me I lose myself all over again. 

I am grateful to have such a loving, supportive partner in David. Every time I get excited about some new friend (or, frankly, crush) he's patient and kind. He gently reminds me that not everyone in the world is worth my time. I laugh and say "Yeah, but this person is."

He throws up metaphorical hands and I let myself be disappointed all over again. 

* * *

I am a walking trope: 

The person who walks around with ohmygodsomuchlovetogive and who gives it to all the wrong people and ohgodsomeonejustloveme. 

Kind of. 

I'm also the person who left her divorce with the determination to keep a soft heart and I've worked really fucking hard to keep it that way. I'm also a person who believes that the more love you let into your life, the more your love grows and reflects in the world. More than that, I believe--no, I know that loving people, even the ones who do not deserve it, has made me a better person.  

So what the fuck am I supposed to do? 

* * *

It isn't until Monday morning that I can really even begin to contemplate my most recent box full of darkness. 

I spend much of the weekend in an emotional and actual hangover, tinged with just a delightful soupçon of self-recrimination and disgust. I manage to pull myself out of it long enough to spend some time with friends on Saturday and go to church on Sunday, but I make sure to make myself feel worse at every opportunity (saddest shoutout to people who use food as punishment, too).

There isn't anything special about Monday. I went outside and felt the ground under my feet and the sun on my face. I went to the park and walked the gravel paths. I observed the mallards, finally home for summer, as they fed and played. I saw a cardinal--a bird that always reminds me of David--and took a short video of its song with him later. 

The whole time I carried that box of darkness with me and thought about how fucking fragile we all are. How stupid and frustrating and maddening we can be when we're hurt and want to hurt someone else. And then I did what I always do, what I hope I will always continue to do. 

I reminded my heart to stay soft and went home.

Grief

 I have a print hanging in my bathroom that's held an outsized significance in my life for awhile. 

It's a quote from a Louise Erdrich book that I love. 

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will break you with its yearning. You have to love. you have to feel. It is the reason you are here on Earth. You are here to be swallowed up. 

Mostly it just sits there on the wall, placed inconveniently for anyone to really notice while they're peeing or washing their hands, but I know it's there. And occasionally I stop and read it and think of when I bought it and how my life has changed. Or I'll read it mindlessly while I brush my teeth. 

Sometimes, though, I read it and my heart breaks open. 

* * *

David and I have started going to church.

I can't remember how it happened. I know that we were both yearning for something. Community was a part of it. A lot of my friendships have changed dramatically during COVID and before COVID. But it was more than just looking for a beloved community for me. "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord" says Mary in one of my favorite bible passages. "My spirit rejoices in God, my savior."

God and I have not been on speaking terms since 2012, but my soul has been proclaiming something recently. 

So David and I have started going to church. We attend a Universalist Church not far from where we live. 

In graduate school, Unitarians were easy targets for derision because "They don't believe in anything." I made this argument as much as any of my peers, and what an arrogant, judgmental little shit I was. I didn't realize how badly people who didn't have my confidence in the One True Church still needed a place for spirituality, hope, and love. Now I find myself regularly attending Unitarian services. 

Who says the universe doesn't have a sense of humor?

Yesterday we had a Service of Remembrance. It was the first in-person one this community has had in over two years (everyone is asked to be vaccinated and masked for the entirety of the service, and we were in N95s, so don't get sassy). The service had some aspects that felt odd to a recovering Catholic (speaking your losses to a stone and dropping it in a bowl of water, profligately having conversations with your neighbors about loss mid-service) but weren't any odder than almost any Catholic ritual I could name. Near the end of the service there was a litany of the people we have lost in the past year, and the congregation lit a candle in remembrance of every person. 

I have never grieved communally. My beloved grandmother died in May of 2020 and I was stone faced throughout her entire service. When I came back to Minnesota I screamed with grief. I cried and retreated from David and held on to my grief like a weight. The worst of it passed. 

It always does. 

So when I found myself in the midst of a bunch of very earnest people speaking about loss so openly, I was terribly intimidated. Afterall, the only thing I'd lost was a beloved pet. Listening to people speak the names of their loved ones who had died made anything I've experienced in the past two year seem mild. 

At the end of the service, a little embarrassed, I went up the altar and lit a candle for my beloved kitty. And in the act of lighting and thinking her name, something odd happened. 

My heart broke open. 

* * *

We've lost so much in the past two years. 

Families and friendships. Pets. A civic society. Live theater and music. Jobs we loved. Time. Illusions. That teacher we really wanted our kid to experience. A sense of normalcy. Hugs and shared laughter and warmth. Maybe our conceptions of ourselves. 

I've lost a a grandmother I adored, a pet who got me through difficult times, getting to watch my adopted nieces and nephews grow, the choice about whether or not I'll be a parent, my sense of smell and taste, months to long COVID, a little bit of my sanity, the joy I used to take in my work, more things than I can name. 

And in the act of lighting that small taper candle for a cat who died in November, my heart breaks. 

It breaks and it breaks and it breaks. 

And then it's all there. All the complicated, overwhelming, messy feelings that I've been carrying with me for two long years now. 

Probably for longer than that, if I'm being honest.

Somehow, it's easier in this place. Perhaps it's the message of the day. That the kindness we hold for one another is the only thing that is left after grief. It might be that quote from my bathroom, rattling around in my head and reminding me that these complicated feelings are the reason I'm here. It could just be that it was a cathartic experience and my brain is hit with a wave of feel-good chemicals. 

What I think it is--no, what I believe it is--is that doing this together has somehow made things easier. That speaking our losses, whether to a stone or a neighbor, and lighting our candles for a person or a pet has made this act of grieving lighter. Grieving communally has created a place of compassion, empathy, and love that is so necessary and so lacking right now. 

As we leave I take David's hand and smile. "I'm glad we did that."

"Yeah, me too."

And my heart begins to mend. 

Magic

David wakes me up.

It's not an unusual thing. He's usually up by 5AM and comes in to kiss me goodbye before he leaves. Usually I'll wake up just enough to have a conversation with him I'll forget by the time my alarm goes off. Sometimes I'll say something insane and make him laugh before he leaves ("Why are you putting catheters in the cats?" was one of his favorites).

This morning somewhere between telling me about taking out the garbage and doing the laundry, my eyes drift open and I grab his hand.

"I was dreaming about magic," I tell him.

* * *

"I thought you always wanted, like, a billion kids."

An old acquaintance from college likes to throw this in my face whenever she sees me reacting to a baby crying in public or a toddler having a meltdown on public transit.

I'm never reacting for the reason she thinks. 

I've tried everything I can to get her to stop talking about it, to stop making the joke. There were lots of things I wanted in my early 20s and there were lots of things I thought I wanted in my early 20s.  This is a small hurt, but an old one, and I've learned how to deal with it.

Sometimes it's easier to bear someone's unthinking cruelty than explain why it's cruel.

* * *

When I was a kid I used to fall asleep pretending that I could do magic. 

I would imagine that I was living a giant treehouse and that I was a princess of the woods. On nights when I couldn't sleep I would imagine riding on my oversized wolf, followed by my size-shifting cat. We were adventuring out to find and destroy the Tomes of Black Magic, which were scattered throughout the mundane and magical worlds. I fought every kind of monster I could think of, but those confrontations were always physical or besting the monster using my intellect. Magic was always only used when I returned to the treehouse. 

Magic was about creating.

* * *

"What are you thinking about?" 

We're waiting for the number twenty-three on our way to a movie. I've been watching a little girl walking through the twilight with her father, puttering along next to him and singing to herself. 

"I just feel a little wistful." 

He sees where I'm looking. "Yeah?" 

I nod. "It's hard, knowing that it's an experience I'm never going to have. I was once watching some friends, the ones you met last week? I remember watching them playing with their daughter and realizing that I'd never feel what they were feeling." I pause. "And I know, I know that I'm making the right decision, but sometimes I want it so badly it feels physical." 

I stop, expecting some platitude about how sometimes correct decisions aren't easy, or that there's always time to change my mind, or any of a hundred other things a dozen different people have told me. 

He just squeezes my hand. "I know."

* * *

"Here, take this," David whispers, handing me his handkerchief. 

We're seeing a play by one of my favorite theatre companies in the area. Their stuff always destroys me. It's beautiful and moving and always makes me cry. This particular show is about magic and authenticity and love and has me sobbing, loudly, during the final five minutes. 

It's also, I think, about illusions. The lies we tell ourselves to keep ourselves safe from reality. 

That's really what's making me cry.

* * *

David and I can't have kids. 

I suppose the more correct thing to say is that we can't have kids without a lot of expensive and invasive medical intervention that neither of us would want. 

I got a little weepy just writing that. 

Here's the thing. I don't know if I've ever seriously wanted a child. I agonized about it a lot in my late 20s. The logical decision, given my mental health history and income and a feelings about actually raising a child, is to not have one. It's a decision that I'm comfortable with about 90% of the time. 

I'm sure I don't have to explain the difference between making a decision and having it made for you. 

It's oddly devastating to know that we can't have something I was pretty sure I never wanted in the first place. David is the first person I would have ever considered having a baby with and it's a choice we'll never really be able to make. 

Which makes things complicated.

* * *

So here's the part where I'll be comparing motherhood and pregnancy to my feelings on magic and creation. Or having one of those uplifting moments in memoir writing where I realize that I can channel my creative impulses to writing or my work or volunteering or something. 

Yeah, no. 

Because the thing is that if suddenly ohmygodmagicisreallyreal I wouldn't magic myself a baby (I've read folklore, I know how that one ends). I also wouldn't magic myself into complete serenity about my choices and become a renowned writer. 

Well, maybe that last part. 

Now, at thirty-five instead of five I realize that magic isn't about creation. It isn't even about choice. It's about the illusion, the ability to convince yourself that you ever had any fucking option.

It's another in a series of grim but true revelations I've had in my mid-30s. But even that realization doesn't really change things. 

I still wake up dreaming of magic. 

Daddy

"Are you still writing?"

It's a question from my father, at the end of a long weekend. 

I'm startled. I never knew that he read my writing, much less cared if I was still doing it. He's always been a fairly practical man, so I tell him about how much money I'm making, what's in my IRA, and how I'm hoping to buy a house in the next year. 

"Um, no. I don't really have time for it with the new-ish job and the commute, you know?"

He nods, and goes back to watching television. 

* * *

I barely cry at my grandmother's funeral. 

It was last weekend, right in the midst of of COVID-19 insanity, and for good or ill I go back to Wisconsin for her funeral. 

I guess I won't know if it was the right decision until fourteen days from now, when I find out if any of us contracted COVID. I'm not going to justify going aside from saying that she was a towering figure in my life, a surrogate parent when mine couldn't be there, and that I was as responsible as I could be. 

Anyway, I barely cry. As the designated Emotional One in the family, I'm a little shocked by my own stoniness. My cousins cry. My brothers cry. Even my father cries. 

I get the church giggles. 

* * *

"My psychologist thinks I have PTSD."

I'm out for dinner with my then-boyfriend. Things have been bad for awhile now, but I'm about to make them a lot worse. 

"Oh really?"

"Yeah."

When I try to change the topic by saying something I don't know, neutral, he ignores it and stares pensively into his sushi. 

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Well, she thinks I have PTSD."

It takes me a minute to process this. I've spent years working in domestic and sexual violence, lived through a sexual assault, and have sat with people dear to me while they relive their own trauma. I don't want to be insensitive, but his life has been deeply, profoundly normal. I hold my breath, tense and worried about what he's going to tell me.  

He sighs.

"The trauma of never living up to my father's expectations of me."

"PTSD because you don't live up to your father's expectations of you?"

"Yeah."

"Isn't that just the human condition?"

"Well, I also told her I wanted access to medical grade marijuana for recreation." 

We break up a few weeks later. 

* * *

I have a complicated relationship with my father. 

I mean, everyone does, and many of us in the same way, right? Daddy (and you could do a whole psychoanalysis on my calling him "Daddy" at 35, but I don't fucking care or have the energy for it).

Sorry, let me recalibrate. 

Daddy taught me a lot. How to hit a baseball and dribble a basketball (neither well, but not because of him). He taught me how to fish and the importance of a good work ethic. He taught me to give back to my community and a lot about generosity. 

I love him so much it hurts. 

My father has also hurt me deeply over the years. I can't (won't?) come out to my immediate family because he's said awful things about gay people during my life. He believes that financial success is a matter of work ethic and can be deeply dismissive about my personal experiences. 

I still love him so much it hurts.

* * *

I have never lived up to my father's expectations of me. 

I think about it a lot. When I'm flirting with a pretty girl. When I'm voting for a Socialist. When I take the attitude of "I'd rather pay someone to repair it." 

It's what I think about when I make it through my grandmother's funeral dry-eyed.  

It's only later, after a small breakdown in the car on the way to Minnesota that I start to see thing a little differently. My dry eyes during the funeral weren't a shortcoming, but a bit of his Stoicism that I managed to hold on to. His tears were, perhaps, the tiniest expression of a same emotions that I often feel every fucking day. 

I think a lot about that, and a lot about the question he asked me about writing. And perhaps this whole post is just one more attempt to have him be proud of me, even though he'll never read it. I honestly don't know. 

But I hope he is. 

Men are From . . .

"Oh my goodness, what a cute puppy! Is she yours?"

"If I say yes, will you pull my pants down?"

"Um, I just found out that I have to wait until April for the new Game of Thrones season, so that feels like enough disappointment for one day."

* * *

"This is the song Magic Cock Cake from our new album Smush 25:8."

I'm laughing so hard I'm almost peeing my pants. 

I'm grateful for a lot of things about my divorce. It was reasonably amicable, I got the cats, I lost twenty pounds, and I don't live in a house with anime scrolls and swords on the wall anymore. 

What I am most grateful for is that I seem to have won custody of my ex-husband's ex-girlfriend. 

He introduced us early on and we got on like a house on fire. She's well-read, likes to yell about feminism, loves to drink gin while yelling about feminism, and is a real weirdo. 

Oh, she also makes me laugh so hard I nearly pee my pants. 

I'm hanging out with her while she's on a lunch break and have been talking waaaaaay too loudly about my sex life. She decides to turn a recent story of my misadventures into a death metal album and launches into a rendition of the song on the spot.  

When I can finally stand up again she gets quietly serious. 

"Kel, you seem really happy. Like, really happy." She pauses. "I'm glad." 

Me too. 

* * *

"hey luv the black lipstick like my fav color cuz noone uses it"

"Thanks. It's actually a dark purple. I like my gothiness to be within the bell curve of work appropriate."

"u into latex?"

"I'm sorry?" 

"rubber?"

". . ."

"u goin 2 rubberball 2019? come suck my cock its so gooooood"

"Dude, if I wanted a mediocre dining experience, I'd just go to West End."

* * *

"You don't sound like yourself."

"I agree."

"Me too. "

Over the months, my makeup group chat has evolved into a lot more than makeup. 

It's become a place to talk about work and sex and relationships. I mean, it's also a lot of photos of me trying (and mostly failing, hilariously) to get the perfect cut crease, but it's more than that. 

"You sound mopey."

"^This."

"And most of the time you walk around like 'GIRLS I AM A BADASS AVENGING GODDESS WHO'S GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD."

"She's right. So stop being so fucking hard on yourself."

"Yeah, mope if you need to, but tomorrow get up and be your BADASS SELF."

"And stop being so fucking had on yourself."

* * *

"hey girl. you look so sexxxxxy."

". . ."

"i'm looking for a virgin so we can para-bond without any drama."

"Well, unless you have a time machine, I'm afraid I'm not your girl." 

"well, your sexual partners shouldn't exceed three people."

". . ."

"you look like you'd be good at fucking."

"Know how I got that way?"

"yessssssssssss." 

"By fucking more than three people." 

* * *

There are six different women in four different timezones howling with laughter. 

I've just sent a screenshot of a text that a guy has sent me after ghosting on me two months ago, apologizing for ghosting on me and (we're pretty sure) trying to make a booty call. 

"Honestly," I say, "I'd have more respect if he just came out and said "Hey, I didn't want to date you, but wanna fuck?""

There's a lot more laughter and I am not the only one who decides to pour myself a gin and tonic. 

It's a pretty stereotypical divorcee thing to say, but for the most part I am so over men right now. 

There's a lot about life that is going really well. This is the happiest I've been in probably two years. My life feels like my own again, and almost none of that has to do with men. 

It does have a lot to do with women.

I've always known that female friendships are powerful as fuck. Women in my life have served as mentors and friends and unpaid therapists (sorry for the extra emotional labor).  I thought I knew how special they were and that I valued them enough. 

Yeah, right. 

The past year has been all of the best and all of the worst of my life. I have sobbed over tea and snuggled my goddaughters and vowed that I was never going to date again. I've screamed with laughter over terrible pickup lines and toasted to XX chromosomes and made another woman a cake as a thank you for getting me laid. 

The women in my life have gotten me through the hardest moments of my life. If I could I would bake every one of them a cake.

These dudes, though. 

Grim, Effective

I depart for Family Court fortified for battle.

I’m on track to be forty minutes early, enough time to watch previous proceedings and feel comfortable with the judge. I’m neatly dressed and having a great hair day. I put on the boots that make me feel like a futuristic crime fighter and give me a Beyonce level confidence. I got out of bed an hour early to apply a full face of waterproof makeup. I have tissues and panic attack medicine in my purse.

As I’m stepping onto the bus I double-check the letter I received, curse, and get back off.

Our divorce hearing is the following week.

* * *

I never expected email would provide such an emotional gut-punch.

I was searching for an confirmation that I cancelled our honeymoon bookings (we would have departed yesterday, a point I remembered today when I’m reminded that I didn’t cancel our Tokyo hotel) when I stumble across something my ex-husband wrote and sent to me.

Thanks, Google.

It’s a post from a blog he wrote for a little while as a way (I think) of helping him process his autism diagnosis. He wrote privately, but would send me things from time to time that he thought I would like.

The post is everything I loved about him . . . It’s thoughtful and smart, nerdy and a little self-deprecating.

It’s also completely shattering.

* * *

Divorce is the most interminable process imaginable.

I was so optimistic at the beginning of our process. Devastated, yes, but I believed that we could get it done quickly. We didn’t have joint assets aside from a savings account and didn’t have any actual kids. Since we didn’t have anything to fight over we could get it wrapped by my birthday! I could start 34 with a new name and a clean slate.

That optimism was a little misplaced.

* * *

The ex-husband left me five months ago.

It feels like 500 years. Things have slowly gotten better, the way everyone said they would. I’ve lost 10+ pounds and kept it off. I sleep better and am more active. I drink less and eat healthier. My tri time was two minutes faster. I’m not longer sushed or told that my feelings are too much or too intense. My life is better in measurable ways.

In the back of my daily journal, I keep a list of things I hated about my ex. Not “oh, that was annoying” but the big, talk-these-out-in-couples-therapy kind of things. It’s part of how I’ve coped over the past five months.

It’s been grim, but effective.

Which is why the piece of writing he sent me affects me so badly.

Right above that list of things I hated was a list I made early in our marriage, when I was still trying to figure out what living together as a married couple meant. I could pull it out and read it and think about how lucky I was to have him in my life.


The piece of writing I unearth in my email is like that list of positives about the ex. It’s a relic of the person my ex could be and the person (I think) he wanted to be. It was him when he was ready for adventure and love and commitment, before those ideas became . . . whatever they became to him right before he left.


Coming across that person unexpectedly, especially days before our divorce will be finalized, provokes such a deep sense of loss that it nearly knocks the breath out of me. It’s a startling, and half-unwelcome reminder that despite all the fortifications and grim, effective lists and desire to dear god, just get this over with already there’s a part of me that is still mourning our relationship and the man he used to be.

Love and Logic

“Do you want my jacket?”

I’m dazed, sitting in too-big hospital scrubs on a gurney. I have been in the ER for about twenty minutes, after a scary few weeks and a frustrating, unhelpful conversation with our local “Mental Health Urgent Care” that ended in them telling me there was nothing they could do for me.

There are a lot of dehumanizing parts of being in the ER for a mental health intervention. My room has a CCTV camera mounted behind glass in the corner. My door is always open, even when the doctor seeing me is talking to me about extremely personal questions. But the worst part, by far, is that they’ve taken my clothes and other personal items away from me. I’m in a pair of hospital scrubs, a clear signal to anyone walking past my open door that I’m here for a mental health intervention.

I don’t know if the room is cold or I’m having a stress response, but I can’t stop shaking.

The husband gives me his jacket and wraps his arms around me.

***

The husband has recently been diagnosed with autism.

 It’s not the kind of thing you’d really notice about him unless you’ve played a board game and suggested house rules or had an argument with him about time management. I’ve done both (the worst fights we’ve ever had have been over board game rules), and wasn’t terribly surprised by his diagnosis.

He doesn’t know it, but I often see his autism as a kind of super-power.

Before that will make a ton of sense, you have to understand some things about my husband beyond the fact that he has autism. He has a warm and generous heart, often reacting to hard times in someone else’s life by asking “What can we do to help them?” He adores his family and loves telling stories about their oddities or speaking with tremendous pride in his younger sister. And, of course, he is thoughtful and kind to me.

Here’s why he’s my super-hero.

The husband is extremely logical. I nicknamed him my Vulcan years ago. Living with anxiety means that I’m always looking for what people mean beyond their words and actions. I read texts with the highest possible amount of brusqueness intended, even when it's not. I analyze all of my interactions to death and attribute emotions or motives that are usually not there. He’s also honest, sometimes brutally so. But I am learning that he never means harm, and that I can always trust him to help me assess a situation. He can focus intently on things for hours when I am frequently restless and jumping between eighteen projects at a time.

This isn’t to say that he’s perfect, or that his autism doesn’t have negative effects on our lives. He isn’t and it does, but I am grateful he is the person he is.

***

I pull on the husband’s jacket. It’s a warm, and a bright color in the dinginess of the building. I’ve told him a few times that I don’t want to be admitted here as an inpatient, but I also recognize that I’m not making great decisions right now and will listen to what he and the doctors recommend.

But when the mental health staff comes in to separate us and talk to us individually about what should happen to me, I start shaking all over again. Sitting in a hospital room with strange clothes and unknown outcomes and having him taken away from me is the worst moment of my life.

His jacket smells like him, though, and it helps.

When the mental health staff leaves to interview him, I wonder what he’ll say. I’ve been a mess for weeks, and I imagine that it might be nice to be rid of me for a week, if only to get his own sense of equilibrium back. Just a few hours earlier I had told him, in detail, what my suicide plan was. I wouldn’t hold it against him if he told me he wanted me to be admitted to the inpatient program.

The mental health staff drops him back off about half an hour later on their way to talk to the admitting doctor.

“What did you tell them?”

He reaches for my hand and my heart drops.

“That I thought inpatient would make you . . .” he stops, laughs. “Go crazy.”

And despite the hospital scrubs and the open door and the people watching us through the camera I start to laugh. And then to cry. And then to do both at once.

He turns me to look at him.

“Hey, you’re going to be okay. We’re going to get through this together.”

I hear all of the logic and love behind his words. Right now, I don't believe in myself. But I believe in him.

Die Young

"Babe?"

"Yeah, what's up?"

I've wandered out into the living room, still mostly asleep. 

"Is your skin peeling off?"

Even mostly asleep, I can hear the slight laugh in his voice. 

"No, I'm okay."

"Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure."

"I just don't want you to die."

"I think I'm okay for tonight."

"Okay, I love you."

"Love you, too."

***

"Do you feel like you were unprepared for marriage?"

The husband has joined me in therapy. Again, I am discomfited by my therapist's questions about our lives together. 

"I don't know." 

She doesn't push. I don't share. The husband only listens. 

Of course I was unprepared for marriage, I think.

"Did it ever occur to you that you wouldn't get married?"

"Of course."

"What was that like?"

I shrug. "It wasn't bad. I would be in my apartment until I decided I wanted to adopt a dog. I'd keep bees. I'd have friends and help them raise their children. I'd have hobbies and work."

"Anything else?"

"No."

"Would it be a lonely life?"

"I never thought it was."

***

I miss being single.

Whenever I bring this up in front of my friends, they are quick to point out "You hated dating" and "Remember that time you didn't sleep because you were afraid your overnight guest was going to kill you?"

Yes, of course I remember. 

The desire to sometimes be single is one of the most surprising things about being married. There are days when I miss my old Saint Paul apartment with its high ceilings and wood floors. I miss having brussels sprouts or kale salad for dinner. I miss having music on every hour I was awake. I miss being forty pounds lighter. I miss being able to pee with the door open. 

I miss being single. 

***

"Hey."

"Hey."

"This is going to sound really high school, but can I play a song and have you listen to it?"

"Sure, what song is it?"

"Die Young, by Sylvan Esso."

He stops puttering on his laptop at the chorus. 

I was gonna die young.

Now I gotta wait for you, hon.

I had it all planned out before you met me. 

I had a plan, you ruined it completely. 

After listening he asks "Kel, what was your plan for your life if you hadn't met me? Nothing quite so morose as this?"

I shake my head."No, not quite."

***

I was unprepared for a lot of things about marriage. 

I don't know how to share space with another person, or how to disagree on how the cats are being raised. I had no idea how to say, kindly, "Don't be such an ass." I don't know how to not play music whenever I'm at home, or how not to judge someone because they hate vegetables. 

But those are small things, rough edges that I expect to be polished off after a few more years together. The thing that eluded me the most during our courtship, and the thing that continues to elude me now, is that I don't know how to tell another person how much I love them. 

At least, I don't know how to tell this other person. 

My husband and I are at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. He's the black hole to my supernova, the Spock to my Bones. Many of our biggest fights have been over our inability to speak the same emotional language. As someone who revels in emotions and conversations about them, this has been jarring. 

But more than "Ohh, we're on opposite sides of the emotional spectrum" what's flummoxed me has been my own inability to communicate how much he means to me. He folds me origami rabbits on Valentine's Day, but I can't find a way to tell him everything I want him to know.  

My plan, you see, was never exactly to die young, but it wasn't exactly to make it to the bitter end either. I would have been fine living a full, happy life into my 50s and then slipping away, if not into the ether than out of the lives of my friends and their families. 

And then the husband came into my life.

I was unprepared for how much better life could be with him. How loving him would open my heart and help me to love other people more fully. How I would have the courage to do new things that would fill up the empty parts of my life. How I would get out of bed after nightmares to make sure he was okay sitting up alone. 

So when my therapist asks "Do you think you were unprepared for marriage" the only answer I can think is "Of course I was unprepared for marriage. How do you prepare for this?"

I never knew. 

Newlyweds

My therapist has started to cry.

I'm taken aback. It's something she's never done in front of me before. Not when I was describing being sexually assaulted, not when I talked about suicide and the plan I had a few years ago, not when I spent most of a session crying because I was so lonely and sad I didn't know how to get out of bed in the morning.

The husband has been coming in for a few sessions to understand some of what goes on in therapy, why I feel so shitty afterward, and ways he can help. It's been an odd experience, I think for both of us. The husband has been asked to weigh in on everything from how I handle anger (not well) to how I communicate.

Out of the blue one evening, my therapist asks us why we got married.

Hearing that question from your therapist, in a session, is unsettling at best. It feels like she has some super-secret therapy knowledge and is about to tell you that she doesn't think you should be married, or that one partner is holding something back from the other, or that she thinks you might be related.

At least, it feels that way to me.

We tell her. He tells her about how he suddenly discovered that daily life can be fun and weird with another person. I tell her that he is the most kind and generous person I've ever met. Eventually we're talking to one another and honestly forget that she is there. He tells me how much he loves my friends and I tell him that he pushes me to be a kinder, less judgmental person. I finally tell him:

"You feel like home."

That's when my therapist blows her nose, loudly, and we realize we're still in a session.

"I'm sorry," she tells us. "I do a lot of work in couples' therapy, and I tend to see people at the end of their marriages. It's nice to see a couple who's still so in love with one another."

***

Our first five months of marriage have been, well, a lot like the last two and a half years of being together. 

I'm not sure what I was expecting. Our arguments to be, if not magically solved, at least put on the shelf for a couple months? A musical to break out every morning when we wake up? A refusal to leave the house unless we were together? Sunshine and rainbows to magically shoot out of our asses all the time?  

The truth is our lives are very much what they've always been. 

We hold hands in the back of cabs. We fight, infrequently, but it's hard when we do. I still go to bed early while he stays up late watching B-horror movies. We text one another "Do you need anything from Target while I'm here?" instead of "I love you and am thinking about you." We Skype with out-of-state friends, plan and host day-long board game days, dance in the living room to Motown, snuggle the cats, crack one another up. The rhythm of our lives hasn't changed much. 

I find it comforting.

***

We're in a cab on the way home from a double date with some of our friends. 

We're saving for a house and recovering from a wedding, so we haven't been out much in the past few months. An occasional game night, a dinner at a friend's house, but few nights like this one. The ride home itself isn't anything special. Me, enthusing over the drinks we had, the couple we saw, my hopes about our future house. Him, holding my hand, talking about the dinner we're hosting next week, the couple he hopes to see soon, and his hopes for our future house. 

It's just an ordinary cab ride.

Or, at least, it is until we arrive home and the cab driver turns off the the meter and turns around to talk to us. 

"You two seem very happy together," he says. "You disagree about something and can just let it go. My wife and I argue a lot. How do you do it?"

We're stunned for a moment and don't know what to say. Before I can make a crack about us being newlyweds, he stops me to tell us that he has been astounded by our kindness and agreeableness, particularly the husband's. He remarks that we are obviously extremely happy together, and thanks us for being wonderful passengers to eavesdrop on. Eventually, as we thank him and get out of the cab. He stops the husband and says: "I am going to take some of what I learned from you tonight home to my wife. It's nice to see a couple so in love with one another."

***

Our first five months of marriage have been nothing like the last two and a half years together. 

We do many of the same things, but something fundamental in our relationship has shifted. Our arguments no longer leave me wondering "Is this going to be the one that splits us up?" We smile when "our" song from the Thrilling Adventure Hour Musical Episode comes on at home. I begin to work out again, and come home to a smiling husband, happy for his alone time, too.

There is an unanticipated weight to saying "This is my husband" and hearing him say "This is my wife." When I am angry or lonely, I look down at my wedding band and remember that there is someone who will carry some of that anger or loneliness if I ask for help. The rhythm of our life hasn't changed, but I'm surprised to find a harmony introduced. 

And while therapists sobbing and cab drivers telling us how wonderful we are are rare occurrences, I find them reassuring. Perhaps all the sunshine and rainbows I've been seeing lately aren't only coming out of our asses.  

Flat

For most of my adult life, there was something about being sad that felt homey.

You know, the kind of sadness that involves old time country music, a desire for rainy days, and a bottle of bourbon. The kind of sadness you can curl up with.

I always secretly loved that kind of sadness, and it often found me after a breakup when I wasn’t particularly interested in the other person. There was something pleasant about having license to keep to myself and not need to expend any emotional energy beyond, “Wow, I’m pretty bummed right now” and then drinking like my life was a Patsy Cline song.

To be clear, I wasn't seeking the kind of emotional emptiness that finds you during a depressive episode. It was the kind of sadness that could eventually be lifted by a sunny day or a long run or an A on a paper I had written.

The self-indulgent sadness was an emotional state that I pursued and reveled in when I could get it just right. And “just right” usually meant “going through a breakup with a person I don't actually call back” or “regretting that one-night-stand with the ex who just broke my heart.”

It was the kind of sadness that was addictive.

***

The fiancé and I were in a fight that felt like the Second Labor of Hercules.

He and I fight infrequently. So infrequently, in fact, that when we were dating I wondered if our relationship wasn’t passionate enough (hey, we all have our own shit). And usually when we do fight it ends in us going to bed and waking up to have a rational conversation the next day.

This was not one of those fights.

It was the sort of fight that went on for days, and when we finally cut off one of its heads and thought we were all right, the next day would find me sobbing on the couch over something different.

There were a lot of tedious reasons it was so hard (ineffective communication, a desire to be the Right and Reasonable One in the relationship, new medications that were causing mood swings, blah blah blah). But it was hard. Harder than anything we’ve done together in the past two years.

The hardest part was I was unprepared for the intensity of my anger. There were days when I would be talking to my best friend and shaking with rage. Whether it was a function of new meds or wedding stress, or finally having feelings again after a year of depression I can’t say. And, truthfully, I didn’t examine what was going on too closely. All I knew was I was angry and one night found me angry enough  that I started packing a bag to sleep on my best friend’s couch. As I stuffed pajamas into my bag and looked for my earrings for the next day, I heard the front door open and the fiancé talking to the cats. I deflated and asked myself:

“What the hell am I doing?”

He found me sitting on our bed, crying.

***

Prior to the fiancé, all of my relationships imploded between three and five months.

Some were my fault, others weren’t. Ultimately they didn’t work out because we would fight and I would give them the finger and go sit in my home wishing for rain and listening to Hank Williams. They ended because I didn’t care enough for them to continue.

And there was something comforting about those endings. The emotions were one-dimensional and soothing in their flatness.

Now, with the fiancé, it’s never just one emotion. It’s joy with aggravation, love with happiness, anger with sadness and frustration and fourteen other feelings I can’t identify. They are confusing and crazy-making and what had me packing my bag to sleep on the best friend’s couch. I’d lived so many years with flat, straightforward emotions that I was utterly unprepared for emotional complexity, especially the kind that combines love and anger and frustration.

Unprepared actually doesn’t even scratch the surface.

The night I was packing my bag, I was angry beyond any anger I’d ever experienced. Of course I was.  I’d spent five days distilling sadness, distress, and frustration into something flat and easier to deal with. Rage is so much more comfortable than sadness. When I heard the fiancé’s voice at the door, I realized that I didn’t want to be flat anymore. When he came in and sat down next to me, I told him everything. He listened—he listened for a long time while I told him every emotion I was having and all of the ones I couldn't identify and how complicated everything was for me at the moment. We talked, and all of those stupid, complex emotions found a voice.

The funny thing is that even when I was sad and leaning waaaaaaay into it, it wasn't as satisfying as it used to be. No amount of Johnny Cash or Sam Houston whiskey brought back that feeling of pleasant self-indulgence or even the comfort that it used to bring. Rather than being a flat, understandable emotion, sadness was huge and complicated and made me feel so awful that it was hard to make it through the day without crying at my desk.

Instead, the rush of relief I was seeking came after talking and listening and apologies from both of us, when I went to bed with a glass of water, some music, and, well, him. He put his arms around me and kissed my hair and told me he loved me. One of the cats jumped into bed and headbutted me. Still a little sniffly, I closed my eyes and said out loud "Yes, this is home."

Some Conversations, with Family

"C'mon, Kels. I want to drink wine and make doughnuts."

"Oh. That sounds like fun!"

I should know better than to trust my mother. Halfway through an incredibly finicky recipe, I push my flour-filled hair out of my face, spin around, and see her contentedly drinking a glass of wine at the kitchen table.

"Hey! I thought we were supposed to be making doughnuts together!"

She laughs. "By "making doughnuts together" I really meant "I'm going to read the recipe out loud to you and drink wine while you do all the work.""

I take off my apron, grumbling, and remove my scarf. "It's too damn hot in this kitchen." I observe, twisting my hair up out of my eyes. These days I'm wearing it past my shoulders and it gets in the way of almost everything. As I'm fussing with the last pin, I look up and see my mother snickering.

"What's so funny?"

"Well, Kel." Her eyes are sparkling. "Bite marks are just so retro, don't you think?"

I remember why I've been wearing my hair down all day and blush. She cackles.

***

"What are you doing with that?!"

"What?" I've picked up a power drill from the workbench and am carrying it out to my car. 

"What are you doing with the drill?"

"I got new plates for my car because Minnesota makes no sense. I'm going to go put them on."

"Put it down!"

I've never been very good with power tools, but for goodness sake, this is the limit.

"Daddy, I am perfectly capable of . . ."

"I know. But the tools here are all pretty greasy and you're in good clothes." He snatches the drill from my hands and gives me a half hug. "I don't want you to get gunked up. I'll do them for you."

"Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine." 

On the way out of the shop I take a deep breath and think about how the smell of Lava Soap, engine oil, and diesel will always remind me of my father.

"Kel!"

I turn around. "Yeah, Daddy?"

"I mean, I also don't trust you to use it. You do call it an electric screwdriver."

"That was, like, six years ago."

He raises his eyebrows to indicate that it doesn't matter. I roll my eyes to indicate he's out of his mind.

***

"You look like hell."

"Well, you know." He gestures to the infant, snuggled up in my lap. "Newborn and all. We're not sleeping much."

"Yeah. Mom says he's fussy between eight and midnight?"

"Yup."

"What does "fussy" mean?"

"It means he screams his head off from eight until midnight."

"What?"

"He cries. Just cries."

"For four hours?"

"He's a baby, Kel."

"How have you not, you know, left him at a local police station?"

He just stares at me. "You're never baby-sitting. You can take him for a weekend after his 21st birthday."

"I mean, I was joking, but I think we both know that until he's capable of verbalizing, it's probably not a great idea." 

"Yeah, it's almost like I suffered through years of having you as a baby-sitter."

I snort derisively. "It wasn't that bad." 

My snort wakes up the baby, who immediately starts bawling. I pass him back to his father who gives me a "see what I mean" look of exasperation and retires to the rocking chair.