Does This Make Me Look

When we moved into this Redlands apartment four+ years ago, one of the first things I fell in love with was the back patio—capacious and facing west for optimum sunset viewing. My dad was always amazed at how much we could fit back there. It seemed like every time he came over (once a week during the pandemic so we could take a Silver Sneakers class together on Facebook Live with his beloved teacher), there would be one more thing added. At the beginning we’d attempted a compost bin (disaster), then thought about a barbecue (not allowed per rental agreement), and finally, as the temperature creeped into the 100’s and the pandemic had settled in for real, we went with a wading pool, which D built a cool surround for. All this, along with a found sign and purchased plants, would turn up in the back and my dad would marvel “How do you fit all this in here?” But we did. I’d notice how quiet it was out there and realize folx didn’t really use their outside space (see: temp in 100s) but I did and loved it.

What I hadn’t fallen in love with were the vertical white plastic blinds that seem to be the standard-issue window treatment all around this (rental) area. I became weirdly obsessed with noticing all the windows where those blinds hung during my walks around the town. My extremely unscientific calculation put white plastic vertical blinds at 95% of the rental joints I’d stroll past, with the other 5% featuring the horizontal type. When I’d cross over into the house-owned area of town there would hang all manner of window treatments that reflected the owner’s style and taste. I would then come back and stare at our windows and crave actual curtains. But the taking down of said blinds and putting up of something different on all of the windows was daunting (&expensive) so we settled on just two windows—the ones facing west with the sunset—for something different. We took down the plastic and stored them in my dad’s shed.

Now, with the move, the blinds are back and (no surprise) have been affected by four+ years bent in half on a shelf in a shed. They are wavy, kinky, flowing not Marcia-Marcia-Marcia straight but Greg Brady–curly. I think they look cool and reflect the shadows in ways more interesting than the straight up&down slats but I realize this isn’t the point of them, or rather the point of a rental is to leave the place as you’ve found it. Naturally, my mind goes to things left as they’re found. It’s impossible to think as we gather our stuff for the move back east that anything would ever stay the same. I don’t mean that in any dark or foreboding way but rather just an as-is way. All the moments of our Southern California time have bent and shaped me in ways great and small. And I’m glad that many many times I’ve said “Remember this” whether it’s the way the three random-size Palm trees are clustered off in the distance that I stare at from my desk, sometimes with landscapers hanging off them trimming their beards, which, honestly, seems terrifying, or when I’d be having coffee with my dad outside chasing the sunshine and talking. A little voice would murmur “remember this” and I do.

All the wavy moments that have bent and shaped me over this last little while, over my life, really, they reflect the light differently than I thought they would and I’ve no doubt if I remember to remember to notice, that will continue.

It’s been said—and apparently, I’m going to say it here again in some way or another—that with age comes a kind of editing. I can obviously only speak on my own life at present but it occurs to me more than ever as I build boxes and roll tape off a contraption that took me way too long to figure out how to reload yesterday, that what I put in the box versus what I donate (or throw) away is happening with less gnashing of teeth/wringing of hands. I did make the mistake (not really, tis a brilliant show) of watching The New Look and now have an insatiable desire to go out and purchase a million-and-a-half pairs of wide-legged pants with perfect pockets while layering on all my chains and (fake) pearls (thanks, Coco!)…alright, I don’t have pearls of any sort and I have no need for any presently. So that’s my closet, but when it comes to just stuff, I’m happily culling along.

One thing that has featured prominently in most of my earlier moves was me sitting on the floor alternately laughing and weeping, photos spilling out of boxes, me studying every one as I remembered whatever moment was being had. Holding them close to my nose and studying details: “Whose apartment is that?” “Why did I give away that sweater?” “I wonder how she’s doing?” I had to really squint at these memories printed on little squares because that’s how photographs existed back before images were populated onto a cloud and zooming in can explode the details and the digital time stamp can tell you the when and the where of the moment. No more guessing at location but still a lot of speculation around what was actually happening in life right then.

Last year around this time, I went through this Kodachrome treasure trove process at my dad’s place as we packed up for his move. I found that he was a keeper (literally, I wanted to keep him always, but generally, he was, I discovered, the keeper of our family memories). Even though the dust was thick in the closet where all the albums were stored, they’d been moved from his bachelor pad in Pasadena where he’d landed after the divorce out to his place in Yucaipa. Last May, he went one way into a new apartment and the photos went another into my&D’s apartment where I sorted through them and felt many many many feelings and traveled to a lot, a lot, a lot of places, some of which I recognized, many where I’d never been. A passport into his young life all the way up and into middle age and beyond. I saw surrounded by a very close circle of pals: people from golf days, cocktail days, dating days. They show friendships—along with the Spencer ears, which jut out in a specific way.

Friendship. While I make lean my tangible belongings, attempting need / don’t need piles, I realize a similar culling has happened emotionally. With age comes an ache for simplicity. Not an impossibility to achieve, mind you, but more a recognition of what makes me tired and what brings me joy. Friendship does not make me tired and 100% brings me joy. I look around and realize that I’ve become really protective of the few rather than the many who occupy my heart. It’s an amazing circle of humans who, no matter the when&where of seeing each other, always hold space for me and me for them.

Currently a few of my heartbeatFriends are going through some very gnarly life-altering things. Big things. Challenging things. Bends in life wholly unexpected. I want to tell them I’ll take some of that load: Just make a pile over there of things that are really a lot to carry and I’ll pick them up and see what I can do. But I can’t. These aren’t those kinds of things. These are things that are theirs alone. As much as I want to lighten the load, the only way I can do that is to merely be present and hold them in my heart. To let them know that and also understand that they never have to acknowledge it by which I mean they can feel me always beside them. No words necessary.

Remembering the times I was life-challenged, felt total and absolute terror around my circumstances, and knew no one else could take up the situation although I was really aware that some would if they could. And that made the difference, that awareness. I felt the emotional hug and in my exhaustion was comforted even if I couldn’t quite say it or show it. I might have been frustrated, angry, confused—all those secondary emotions that step up to cover the main one: fear—making like a cat and pulling inside alone as I raged and wept in my singular tunnel until I could get into some kind of light but I did know the ground was seeded with my friendships and sometimes I did lie down on the grass of it to rest.

One dear friend recently pointed out that her perspective of life and challenges was directly impacted by the troubles she’d been through. The strength it brought on the other end even though at some point we may all look around and say, “Stop piling on weight,” as if life is some crazy trainer standing next to us on the gym floor. And in that moment, they might say, “I know you can handle it,” which is a phrase I don’t really care for. How do you know? I think. Can I handle it just because you say so? Are you an expert on me and what I can handle. Um, well, in the case of inner challenges, apparently yes, I am the expert. Even if I don’t necessarily want to pick up that weight, open that closet, pull down all the barbells to make me stronger.

And for my friends, I would gladly step up and offer to take up whatever particular weight doesn’t want shouldering … and yet that’s not possible. I can support from the sidelines, attempt not to use platitudes, have the water bottle (or wine glass) at the ready, and some kind of wicking towel to soak up the sweat of life. Just be there as they are for me.

I never used to cry during love songs. Maybe early on, young days, college, broken-hearted, alone in my room listening to Bryan Ferry’s cover of Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” I would break down and while the tears felt necessary, they were also indulgent. I don’t mean that in a judgmental or dismissive way but more in a young, raw emotional way that, as I remember it, overwhelmed and occasionally ashamed me. Around that time, I decided indulging in tender emotions took me places I didn’t want to go. The river running through my heart was one that I was 100% too frightened to enter. Where that current might take me seemed altogether too rough a ride. I was sure I had no life vest for going over those waterfalls so I chose a walk in the desert.

The place I planted myself in music was dry as dust and filled with rattlesnake riddles. Although P.Jam’s “Black” could make me choke up for a love lost, for the most part my emotional musical moments rode on the backs of songs filled with angst and anger. Cathartic for sure and looking back, I loved that landscape. Yet also I recognized that there was a fresh-flowing tributary running alongside that would have offered me a cool release of tears and a rest on the shore of my emotions. But I kept on truckin’ into a music industry where snarling served me better than sobs.

I’m not here to bemoan that choice. I was (am) not unaware that in choosing that stance—a Nirvana-style nihilism over Rodrigo-esque release—I was figuring a load of stuff out even while my cup runneth over with untapped tenderness. Now, thirty+ years later, I’m all too aware that going forward also means going back. Looking into those depths and seeing the treasures down deep. When I was swirling up the waters, they weren’t so visible and I didn’t really take enough time to be still and let the ripples settle. Now I can at least know that standing at the edge of that fresh-water pond and being still, even for a little bit, can give me some perspective. I can spot the tools. I can decide how to use them. When I remember, I feel lucky in that.

And love songs. New ones that I’ve never heard before. D mentioned he listened to Cowboy Carter on a long drive yesterday. I’m curious again about music and I cued it up this morning. Taking in little sips of the new. As I’ve been dancing in the woods to Måneskin (and for sure “Valentine” is a worthy lost-love song), no deep tears have been shed, more joyous movement, which I obviously love. Yet today, wandering the premises and rolling along Beyoncé’s highways and byways a couple of love songs have dropped me into feeling some things. Not sad at all. Tears don’t mean heartbreak, but there is an ache in it. One that is actually quite lovely. Celebrations of love that have made me cry. “II Hands II Heaven” and “Bodyguard” in particular. A maturity. A connection that has taken years and years and years to find. A late-in-life place that could have only happened, I think, after wandering in the desert avoiding the river running just over the ridge. Learning that emotion can cover the waterfront of feeling. Just. simply. feeling.

For the last four years, I’ve sat here at my desk staring out the ground-floor window onto the sidewalk of our apartment complex and gotten to know folx. Maybe “gotten to know” is a stretch. More seen and then made up story arcs about a bunch of people who walk by. Some of them I’ve actually met so the made-up parts are just peripheral, but a few are total strangers. There’s the thirty-something guy who cuts into our property to make the loop past my window each late morning (except weekends) moving quickly on his daily walk in his sturdy kicks, cargo shorts, T-shirt or hoodie depending on the weather, and baseball cap. He’s a fast mover. Two months ago a tiny human became strapped to his chest bouncing in time with his footfalls, little arms and legs waving around, seeing what he saw but completely different. I “congratulated “awwed” him (in my mind) and noticed he was moving slightly slower because obviously he was exhausted from lack of sleep. A couple of weeks ago, I was out for my stroll and a few blocks from home when I saw the two of them coming toward me and I thought how funny it was that he had no idea what a regular presence he was in my workday. As we passed, he said Hello. His voice was deeper than I expected. I said Hi back and kept moving while feeling warm&fuzzy and loving them both a little more. Then there’s the abuela who lives down the way and for the past years has rolled her shopping cart with her little dog perched on a bunch of bags stuffed inside. For the last month or so, the little dog had not been in the cart and that has made a chunk of my heart hurt a lot. I don’t actually know her enough to find out what’s up. It could be that the pooch is just more interested in staying home or some such but I’ve been sad about it nonetheless.

I also now know that I’m noticed around town given in the last week three people I don’t know have told me a variation on that topic. One woman whose shop I go into all the time on State Street (the main twee-yet-adorable stretch of stores in old-town Redlands) said, “I saw you walking down the street last week. I recognized you immediately.” I don’t know why that surprised me but it did. I know I’m not invisible. I’m aware my hair is a bluish-purple and cut in a particular way and that I really do have a certain style. I can own that. But I’m taken aback when people point these recognitions out. My response meter around this and compliments such as two instances of early-twentysomethings randomly telling me I have style, is a wonky work in progress. I find I don’t know what to do with my face or voice and have settled on either, “I do like to walk around here” and “thanks” depending on the category.

Having lived my formative adult years in Manhattan, becoming a flaneur became an entry point into my surroundings. Strolling the streets, noticing people and places, and all other peripatetic this&thats made me feel connected but also independent given it’s a well-known fact that New Yorkers don’t acknowledge each other. In fact, there are a whole bunch of quotes about that, none of which I can find presently (if you, excellent reader, have some floating at your fingertips, please do post them up here). Of course I’d take note of the regulars I saw on the streets of my neighborhood or in/on the subway. I mostly felt good about them and had stories made up about their lives. The Shopper (a woman I’d see on the A train on the regular with posh bags seemingly filled with new loot with her always vintage-fabulous); Edge-Cut (a woman of a certain age whose blunt-cut, two-toned hair I became obsessed with when I’d see her each weekend at the bookstore across from our apartment); Mr. Bow-Tie (self-explanatory); and so on. When one or more of the people I took notice of disappeared, I would worry. Think: Hope they’re OK, then look around for a familiar face to settle me down. Or maybe a new personality to begin stories about.

Here in the Redlands, my invisibility cloak is wholly imaginary. I mean, it always was but now I’m just made more aware of the fact. There I am with my headphones strapped on listening to a podcast (just finished Death of an Artist about the life, art&probable murder of trailblazer, feminist Ana Mendieta), book (The Freaks Came Out to Write, an oral history of NYC’s Village Voice), or some combination of Maneskin, Bowie, Roxy Music and strolling up into the park or down the shopping lane, stopping by the Sprouts or wandering through a thrift store. I’m noticing but not necessarily looking too hard. When someone tells me they’ve seen me, it occurs that in a couple of months I will not be here to be seen anymore. And I wonder, should I tell some people I’m moving? That lovely lady in the store I always go into that’s slightly too expensive for me but where I treat myself to their cool collection of cards and she always makes a note to say Hi, and I saw you walking, and I pull off my headphones to respond because it would just be rude not to. Or my favorite thrift store The Blues whose proprietor brings the energy of her Hawaiian roots completely into her surroundings and who, after the devastation in Lahaina, was a human connection to that heartache. I feel like these are people I know in a certain way. They remind me I’m not invisible. They may wonder what happened if I never turned up in their spaces after May 1.

So as much as I pretend that I just like to watch, not get too involved, I’ve put the lie to that by moving myself into the space, putting one foot in front of the other rotating inside the world. And as long as I continue to step out into new and old spaces, being seen and seeing will obviously continue to happen. A continuing investigation of how much space I want to take up in the world, how loud I want to be about it, how it can be up to me the level of involvement.

Maybe in future writing about the issue of how women feel moving around an observable space, the sense of being exposed in ways not always comfortable. A partial reason as to how I came to always wear headphones starting in New York so I wouldn’t hear the stuff tossed my way on the street. How that barrier of sound became something of an additional soundtrack I now really enjoy. All that has been a scratch at my brain idea for some time.

In the meantime, it’s raining, but still awesome people roam in the vicinity and so will I.

When I started this every-weekend writing in January 2020, it was for a couple of reasons: as a view into how the transition from East to West coast was going, how adventures with my dad were unfolding, how I was changing inside it all. Also, it became a way for me to get my writerly self expressed when the rest of the week didn’t hold any of that. I didn’t have any real arc in mind except to probably record what was happening in the moment. Except that I also enjoyed going back in time to music mayhem moments, then, especially during the latter part of 2020, I got my righteous self agitating through words, yet ultimately the words swirled back around days with my dad: all the ups, downs, sideways, tears, laughter, creativity. Sometimes it would take me a whole day to write one post. Lately, though, my scribe muscle has been quicker to respond and I feel leaner in just going with what comes (altho for sure I give it a read to avoid any completely confused meanderings and mistakes). Then I post it up and feel better for the doing.

What I think of as a newsletter has carried on, will still carry on as D&I and our furry sidekicks plan for our return to the East Coast in May, that this period of time in SoCal has felt quick-like-bunny, yet full-like-…, er, a field of bunnies? is beyond true. Rich and satisfying with the intention of what I wanted it to be. Notwithstanding a global pandemic, the ability to know my dad in all his amazingness and be here as he exited, was always the plan. And this chapter is such a great one. I think of my life as containing chapters—some more blurred than others but with a running cast of characters from the way back to the newly introduced. Actually, there really aren’t so many newly introduced save for the amazing people I met through my dad who touched my heart (&still do even tho I don’t see them on the regular). Yet those longtime friends, cemented during early years of college and journalism days, those who moved out here from NYC or who’ve always called Cali home even with some roaming in between, those are the people I’ll now be adjusting time zones for calls and visits with, while I’ll be face-to-face with my East Coast people again.

Knowing how fast time flies (do I need another bunny metaphor here?), I’m for sure sensing that there are friends I feel I could have spent more time with (yes, keeping in mind that pandemic moment interruption) but I also know that with close friends that’s always the case. There’s never some kind of ceiling that’s hit where suddenly it’s like “Great, that was a perfect amount of time. Bye.” Yet also there’s a sense of flurry that has me checking my calendar for spaces to get together even as I walk out of certain locales (I’m looking at you, doc offices) aware it’s the last time I’ll cross that threshold. There’s culling going on of physical stuff, letting go of old, anticipation for new and that’s churning my insides as well.

I started off writing today with nothing but a vague idea around how to put into words what it feels like to be aware of both endings and beginnings around tangible and emotional space. Predictably it feels both adrenalized in that my heart shifts from poignant to excited depending on where my eyes fall or my thoughts settle. I’ll try and track that in this space upcoming or perhaps I’ll merely find new metaphors for bunnies and the like.

Hello. Happy Sunday (if that’s the day you’re reading this).
Boy-o-boy-o, what a view from where I sit. Yesterday held a few intimations of endings, all swirled up inside the kind of heart-beat-adrenaline pace I’ve been operating on for the last three weeks. This project that has been the main source of that pulse-panic is pretty close to being done. Things I learned: Even with partitioning off time so I could commit my focus to only one job in the moment, still I made mistakes. Mistakes, sure, they happen but they still affect my ego with a lemon-juice-in-a-wound sting. The idea (unattainable) of always doing everything right is a strong motivator inside me. Objectively I know—and even constantly tell people I love—don’t be so hard on yourself but I don’t actually think about myself. I do move on from the self-flagellation faster than I used to. Fifteen minutes of strong, harsh, inner finger-pointing, followed by a sticky residue. The initial mistake=failure feeling is a combo plate of being exposed as inept and wanting to prove that I’m beyond-the-valley of capable (again, hello, my old friend ego), which is both absurd and boring. The other thing these last two weeks have shown: It’s important to brush your teeth and get dressed before 4 p.m.; to understand that this is not life or death; to ask for what I need, fer fux sake.

And also, visited the home we just sold where my dad lived some of his happiest days. I hadn’t been there in some months and the new people have moved in. I didn’t meet them but saw how they’d set up the porch, the one facing the mountains where Dad and I (then Dennis, once he stepped into my picture) would sit regularly to watch sunsets, sip libations, nibble crackers, and talk while Scrubby Jay would scream and hop a bit too close to the martinis. I wonder if he’ll make the same ruckus for the newbies? I don’t imagine I’ll be going back into that manufactured home park again and as we drove out, a whole scroll of emotional memories unfurled: The many moments of joy with my dad in the passenger seat beside me as we’d head out to do errands or shop or some-such; spikes of worry having just left him, knowing he wasn’t going to eat the food prepared and put out for him; swirly stress that I wasn’t doing enough to keep him safe; extreme happiness when I remembered I was doing a lot and he was so glad we were here. Then there was just standard-issue confusion back then about planning what the next steps were going to be. Of course, as it happened, no amount of planning prepared for the emotions. They just are. So they arrive in waves on all days. Not waves that bury me, but mostly lap at my soul’s feet, splash into my heart. Yet sometimes, of course, I can’t quite get on top of the bigger ones and then I tumble. Fine. All fine. All part of the process.

I’m now going to go for some kind of walk because hells-a-poppin’, I haven’t done that kind of activity in ages. I hear tell of birds and humans out there. Gonna go check them out!

Last week I wrote about spoons, or rather used them as a metaphor for a kind of single-use tool to dig out of an overwhelming situation. A reader-friend whose comments I always enjoy posted that we all need more tools, knives, forks, and the like.

It got me thinking about what it means to have a full set of life’s utensils in order to do the best work. As I hurtled forward (again) last week with a sort of crazy abandon that put most regular daily moments like, for instance, the brushing of teeth and eating of lunch, on a back burner until well past three, the question occurred: What in my life would I be happy to put aside in order to not look up and notice a gazillion hours has passed? Which activity am I more than OK with having my heart beat with this urgency around getting something done? The answer: my own writing.

I have not visited the land of my own stories or even just the regular pages I write every morning in the last month. And that means I haven’t used the knife and fork in my collection. The utensils that fill out the daily meal of my existence. So while, yes, on Saturdays I spool out a something that empties my wordsmithery self in some fundamental way, the actual whimsical world-building is a place that makes for a balanced meal in my life. Having that lacking from my dayz is for sure kicking me into a certain malnutrition in my soul. A thing to remember the next time I’m tempted to fill up my calendar with yes’s because the money and what-have-you. I mean, the money, it’s a thing not to be ignored, basically the stuff that goes on the plate, but also the other utensils that fill out the experience.

And that is all I’ve got today because there are still some spoon-carvings that need doing before I can step away from this table. Before I go, though, the spices that have made these last weeks bearable: Dennis, Lucy&Desi, Mäneskin, all of them taking care and taking me out of my head in ways that kept me from throwing plates against walls, metaphorically speaking.

So last week I felt itchy with anticipation about things I knew were going to erupt workwise on a project that I had no control over, at least in terms of timing. Lo&behold, things did follow that prediction and I spent the majority of last week goggle-eyed and stunned as the alerts on my computer dinged and my nervous system reacted to the point that I was actually lifting off my chair, jaw tensing, every time one-two-twelve went off simultaneously (I have now turned off the alert-sounds). Yet this writing isn’t about venting on that subject (tho I could go on. and on.). It’s more about the places I go in my psyche to try and be a hero. But before I go there, I also need to put out into the ether my appreciation for the people who are helping to hold this project together with some semblance of sanity and acknowledge my deep-felt good feelings for the people I work with (&have worked with) on the regular in the rest of my life who very much get what it means to be a team, to listen, to acknowledge the humanity in the person and the work. Obviously, that should be a given and I have to say there was one bright spot last week in another project I was doing (jeez, what is wrong with my say-yes function?) where there was sanity and I could turn fully and give my attention when needed.

Anywho, that say-yes function. That’s what I came to talk about. A bit of an I’ll-be-a-hero/I’m-the-one-to-take-care-of-this/Leave-it-to-me pathology. I recognize it. It’s been a part of me ever since the kidlet in me responded to my parents’ divorce with a decisive I’ll-be-no-bother stance. I mean, at that point, this seemed the only option so they’d keep me around. As I grew up, all that I-can-handle-it energy transferred to work and love. For the latter: What do you need me to be? to take care of for you? I’m the one for the job. For the former: What do you need me to be? to take care of it for you? I’m the one for the job. Yes, I realize they’re both actually exactly the same. I’ve gotten good at it. Too good really, except that lately I’ve also gotten wise to a little something called respect. The kind I hold for myself and the model that other folx who are responsible for others should have.

I’m currently a work in progress for acknowledging both versions. What I see when it comes to others is a character I recognize from past career moments. It’s a gaslight model and one I first experienced during my SPIN days. The person who holds the power is standing in front of you. Behind them is a bubbling volcano. They are shrugging and saying, What, you can’t handle this? I thought you were more capable. Then they hand you a spoon and a sandwich, get into their private jet, and fly away. The volcano erupts. What happens next? Some people charter their own flying machines and get the hell out. Some are buried. The next bit varies: Maybe I use my spoon to dig myself out furiously, look around to figure out how I can solve the crisis. I may see some people playing a little tune with their spoons for distraction. I have no time for that. I eat the sandwich to keep my strength up and aim for some dry land not covered in hot, burning stuff, then use all my strength to do … whatever I need to. I consider this a success and want to congratulate myself until I realize there’s a part of me that also feels like a chump. Like maybe I didn’t need to go through all that. Perhaps there was another way. I look over at the spoon players who have now built a fire out of the lava rocks and are dancing around ignoring the mess. That looks like fun. I won’t be going there and for sure have some judgment around the whole dancing thing, such as, Really, people, can’t you see what needs doing here? Am I the only one? Erm, that’s what you’ve secretly thrived on. At that point, I’ve officially stepped into the land of martyr, bypassing the turnoff to self-respect. That would have been the place where I said what I needed and asked for help.

The territory of self-respect wasn’t visited in my SPIN days—of course it wasn’t—when I was convinced beyond a shadow that it was me who needed to keep up, put up, shut up, just do it. I did that quite well. I got things done for sure, but I also squashed a lot inside of me. The ghost of this past visited me a few weeks ago as I was listening to a podcast about Michael Jackson and an MTV exec was interviewed who had crossed the line with me physically backstage at some performance or other. I hadn’t thought about the incident at all until I heard his voice. Even during the height of #metoo as I acknowledged the psychological and physical criminality of what I’d seen and felt back in those days. But hearing this person speak, I suddenly was right back there and bolted upright thinking Wait, what did I do after that unwanted kiss&grope? Nothing. I did nothing but carry on and as has been discussed among so many of us so often, that is what we did. How we proceeded in a world that always told us What’s the big deal? This is how it is. How did you not know that? We did know that. I knew that, and in the process of knowing, redefined self-respect—and not in a healthy way.

So in this crossroads of my life, what does self-respect look like? There’s one really dramatic model that is more reactive and less self-respective where I set fire to the thing upsetting me, then like those classic movie moments, walk away as the thing burns. (My brain is working cinematic today.) What’s arresting about that image is that the person isn’t running away from the fiery mess, they’re not scared, they’re strolling, often with some smug satisfaction on their face. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t thought of that image this past week when I really just wanted to get up from my chair and walk out into the sunshine. But in reality, I want to see this thing through yet do it in some way that upholds my self-respect. Where I’m not just saying Sure, I can handle that, then breaking into stress tears. So I did find a way to use my voice and say what I needed. Mostly that worked although there are still plenty, plenty, plenty of issues given the human at the top is mostly out of earshot but still … I feel better in having said it. And some people have listened and offered help and solutions.

There are a few more days of it to come, today being one of them as I pick up my spoon and fashion some results from the hot lava explosion. The sandwich helps too.

This past week, plus a little, my insides have been squirmy. And by insides, I mean the emotional place that inhabits mostly the whole of me. There’s the vehicle I roll around in, which currently is fine. The bits that are agitating have to do with my struggle around patience. Especially when it comes to money and shelter, two areas that are the sink holes of my inner landscape. When just one of those emotional shacks has a door flung open with wind whistling through, I can walk over to my other safe place and settle in. Or at least I think that’s how I do my avoidance dance. Another look is me shaking the shack in question attempting to make something happen. This rarely works.

Today, both those inner spots are sitting empty and no amount of circling or shaking is going to change that. Yes, it’s temporary (probably) but as I sit with the fact that I don’t have any actual control over these things, I’m left with a familiar feeling of wanting to walk away from the discomfort. But, as the saying goes, “wherever you go, there you are” or some-such like that. When I could physically step away this week, I did take some good wandering walks. A funny thing happened during them: My dad appeared in traces. Because grief is not linear; because waiting is not my forte; because this patience is a pu pu platter of stuff that features a lot of my greatest fears, the morsels of dad moments were tucked right into the mound of mashed memories.

Looking at it, I saw how the approach and then end of my dad’s life was a series of situations asking me to just be present. No matter how much I did—and boy-o, to look at my Amazon order list from 2022-23, there’s a long list of try-this products that felt like doing something—what was really required was just being there. I did try that. I also always circled around what more I could do and while in the end, the real definitive end, I understood that my presence was all that was needed, it wasn’t all peaceful. It was sometimes loud, occasionally very quiet, and once terrifyingly agitated. And then it was no more. Now, a little over six months later, I can hold the two tensions of relief for him to have stepped off before things got really unbearable and my own deep-heart missing. And it’s this latter thing that’s bubbled up as I settle into this period of waiting.

It occurs to me that when things are moving clip-clop forward, when I’m involved in doing, then naturally the light I’m filtering things through is pretty bright, possibly so direct that I’m a bit blinded to anything but this doing. When I’m forced to be still, that light’s still steady but now I can see all the particles floating around inside the beam. Ooh, dust, I think. Man, I really have to clean this place, I worry. Then I squirm around. There are times I can see how the light is refracted and looks kind of cool, how then, of course, the light&shadow shift because they always do. I’ve stayed in the same spot, the perspective has changed.

But yet, this last week, when I could get away from my waiting seat, I wandered (literally). I wandered by places I’ve been hundreds of times since moving here four years ago. All of them had something to say: the gallery where my dad showed his collages, the coffee shop we went to that day it was raining, the restaurant where we had dinner for his birthday, the place we went on Father’s Day, and on and on and on like that. The whispers were poignant and also joyful. In the doing part of my brain, they were memories I’d like to repeat, which then brought tears. In the still part of my soul, they were really special moments I feel lucky to have had. I know those things can go together. Salty and sweet, tang and bubble. Sigh. Still waiting.

In the rooms of my memory house, as I imagine it, there are certainly a few that have been blocked off even though I still for sure hear sounds coming from them on the regular. You know that line, “The call is coming from inside the house”? Well, yeah, that’s exactly right. Where else would it be coming from? And sure, I could frame that as a kind of horror moment—as the origin story of that phrase suggests—but for the purposes of this, that thought is more provoking than terrifying. Sometimes I’m ready to enter a particular room, sometimes not. Sometimes I’ve even forgotten the room exists. I often do go flop around in the mental space that holds my teenagehood, where there are loads of music magazines all over the floor and an old-school turntable with vinyl stacked one upon the other. Also, the spot where the writing/music dream began.

Wandering not too far down the hallway is a game room with a closet in the corner that’s been tightly shut for a good while. That place (closet and all) is New York City music biz banana-pants madness. When I stepped into this fun house fantasia back in the day, I’d packed a lot of expectations into the valise I was pulling along behind. Stuffed into one compartment was the thought that I could change things in this testosterone world I’d read so much about. What those particular change-agent things were remained vague, kind of draped Stevie Nicks–style over&around myself. A to-be-revealed situation I figured would unfurl as I did the important work of wedging myself into the music-journo pantheon. A place I really really so very much wanted to be because, and I was beyond convinced of this, it held all the magic. Yet what was also tucked into that life valise was a somewhat solid sense that I wasn’t really going to be able to change the game. I knew how things were played and had a slippery idea of what I’d need to do to be a contender.

I did a good job in that contending situation. And anytime something came up where I felt dismissed or uncomfortable, I’d just take that moment and stuff it into the handy emotional game room closet. When the space became too small, dark, weird, I stepped out so fast I didn’t even grab much to take with me. I shut the door and walked down the stairs and clear to the other side of the house determined to put it all behind me. Maybe I wouldn’t even go up to that level of the house anymore, I thought. Perhaps I’ll have that floor removed altogether. For a long time, I did wall off the stairway. Ignored whatever sounds I heard from up there. I got married. Put a great distance between myself and anyone I’d known in the music biz. Made my money teaching writing workshops in the public schools. I purposefully lost touch. It seemed the sanest thing to do at the time. Mostly because I’d lost sight of—perhaps never even knew where—my inner toolbox was located so that any self-repair on my leeky inner bits would just have to go untended.

Occasionally a piece of the ceiling would crumble and bonk me on the head with a memory. Not fatal but startling. My rememberings from the pure magic-making brushes with musicians and being-there experiences were thrilling so I wasn’t sad about that. Lately, though, I’ve become more curious about exploring shut-off rooms, dark corners, and even scraping the gunk off skylights that could reveal some strong rays. I’ve found a toolbox of sorts that’s inspired me to give that game room a crack at exploration. The first threshold to cross has been this big pile of self-directed disappointment sitting right outside the door.

In all the intervening years since distancing myself, I carried a sense of failure that my fleeing was because I couldn’t handle it. I’d known the rules going in. Had read every piece of music mayhem moments with glee when I’d been a young’un. In large part, that’s what drew me there. So in exiting the space, what filled up my memory cracks were thoughts of what-if? What if, instead of leaving, I’d been courageous enough to stay and fight. Put my head down (or up?) and do what needed to be done to be heard, and taken seriously. Raised my voice. All that.

Now, though, with an emotional level in hand, I see how I’ve hung the memory a bit askew. The image inside is focused closely on my deficiencies rather than sharing the frame with how others, the ones right over my shoulder, shared weight in the situation. To acknowledge how my skin, the stuff protecting my sense of self, was growing thin and that leaving what felt like a riot of wrongness was the right (perhaps only) choice comes into a sharpness. Background becomes foreground.

So running the coulda-shoulda reel in my head is helpful only inasmuch as it can give me another view if I’m willing to look. When I sit with it, kick back in some Naugahyde lazy-boy (with drink holders), and have a stare, I can see someone who came in with certain expectations. A good many were met on both the up and down side. I wouldn’t change the trajectory of who I met and where I got to go one iota. I would shift the view to reflect more self-worth. And yet, naturally, hindsight is … and all that. The call is coming from the house and I’m going upstairs to investigate.