later July, 2021

I have been meaning to write, but I have felt stuck and so I have used my busyness, which is not unreal, as an excuse not to sit here. Tonight, loaded with intention, I cleaned up after dinner, and opened a new “post.”

I am in West Virginia right now, which I will explain in a minute, but for now, let me tell you about my after-dinner chorus. It’s about three-quarters singing birds and insects, with a less-pronounced but definitely noteworthy 25% gunfire. #WestVirginia I love it.

I’m on a raised deck, looking out over mountains, and it is hot but not too hot. At least for me. My stemless glass has condensation mapping the wine level, and when the shooter stops to reload, I pause too, eyes contemplating the foggy (or simply hot, sleepy?) horizon, mind wishing it could translate the languages of the cacophonous trill, heart hoping…well, for many things.

Before I started writing, I reread my most recent post. Recent. It was in late May. Nearly two months ago. Since then, two more friends have been diagnosed with cancer, both ushered into fairly immediate surgeries, the boys finished school and left for camp, political discord has worsened, climate change is more pronounced than ever, and T and I finally got to move stuff to the serene weekend place we’ve long wanted and finally found.

Hence West Virginia.

Before February, I had never stepped foot in West Virginia. Wild and Wonderful has a colorful past -it seceded from, wait for it, the Confederacy- and is but 80 miles from our home in Maryland, but, to be honest, nothing drew me here, not least its substantially Red present-day persona. I swear, y’all, it might beg to rejoin the Confederacy now. 😬 Which is absurd. And yet. #FoxNews #FakeNews #AlternateRealities

If you think about it though, 80 miles is like a bad afternoon of carpool on the Beltway, it’s beautiful out here and land is plentiful, Oliver has, for years, beseeched us to “Get Land!,” and during Covid, that has really come to make a serious amount of sense to me.

To my immediate left, a woodpecker is going gangbusters on the new high-energy suet block I put in one of the feeders. Two other birds are chasing each other or are happily in love or soon to be and are flitting about like aerialists. Squirrels are squirreling, and the number of acorns dropping from high oak to way-below deck really makes me wonder if they’re punking me with a giant stash up there. I mean, how many acorns does that tree have?? If you sit out here and are still, these creatures do not give one crap that you’re near. Even if I go broke buying birdseed and suet and continually righting and filling my birdbath, I do.not.care. This is the best.

My fingernails are a gross, productive mishmash of unfiled and studded with Sherwin Williams’ Peppercorn, high-hiding primer, and semi-gloss Pure White. As a very devoted, skilled-yet-amateur painter, I want to tell you that Sherwin Williams paint sucks. Benjamin Moore is infinitely better in all iterations and color ways, and it is most definitely worth the increase in price those characteristics demand.

The Martinsburg Lowe’s is great. I love it, and I tell you that because and in spite of having spent 4 of 7 days per week there since June 18. BUT in paint, your options are Sherwin Williams or Valspar and, try as I might, I only have peevish things to say about them. The highest-level “Infinity” semi-gloss paint is the stuff of nightmares. I may rather pull my own dirty fingernails out than persist with this nonsense.

Last weekend, I cheated and brought from Maryland, Ben Moore primer and Aura paint. Both are like gifts from the heavens.

In any case, I have had terrible anxiety lately and, by virtue of having written this thus-far-fairly-random bit, feel immeasurably better already. #Lessons #AlwaysWrite
In college, I had a boyfriend with whom I was madly in love. I thought we would marry. If he’d asked me, I’d have said yes. Immediately. Elatedly. We broke up-for the best-but from him I took much of value, including an abiding love for The Cure and his sincere, plagued query: “What if our brains were simpler?”

Yes. Life would be easier.

Anyway, I am now realizing how much I have to tell y’all, and my god, if you join me to the end, you’re saints. Surely this all cannot be riveting, but to me, it is! I mean, do you know the transformative wonder of Ben Moore Balboa Mist in eggshell? What about adopting three teenage barn cats? What about parking your liberal-bumper-sticker-plastered car next to one with a Confederate flag and a rosary, going into Lowe’s yet again, seeing an older, leathery-tan dude wearing shorts, no shirt, suspenders that may have had Confederate flags embroidered on them, and nonetheless happily buying some Coneflowers, more (fucking) SW paint, and some new floor registers, and leaving content?

I fucking hate JD Vance and all that salt-of-the-earth rural-lands-and-peoples-are-of-the-gods shit. And yet, I am decidedly happier, and/or more relaxed, out in rural WV than I am ensconced in the rat race of DC. And I love politics. I love people. I love education and opportunity and cool folks and my friends. I do NOT love the tick I found sucking on my abdomen two weeks ago or the damn yellow jacket nest I inadvertently mowed over today (my ear is still swollen and hurts like a mofo; arm is fine), and I sure as hell don’t like most of the politics out here. But the pace is so slow. And, my god, people are nice. I am white, so that’s probably it, but…it’s still worth thinking about.

In some parts of the Eastern Panhandle, there are more PRIDE flags and Black Lives Matter signs than Trump paraphernalia. There are really, really lovely humans who love their families and work so hard. I spoke with a young Black man who told me that “yes, there is racism here like everywhere, but it’s affordable, and people are nice” and a Chinese-American woman who moved to the US twenty years ago and ended up in Hedgesville, WV, and is happy and says people are really nice and here she can afford a home, and a woman who, honestly, seemed to be every white suburban older-middle-aged-Mom-jeans lady I’d ever seen but is actually half Puerto Rican and said that “because you’re from the city, you know that my Black foreman and Latino crew are the best you can ask for,” as if I was the rare exception for whom she didn’t have to preface and disclaim and prepare. And maybe I am. I hope not.

A butterfly just landed on my chair, and neighbor shooter has reloaded and is firing to beat sixty. Tom is on his way back to Maryland, Nutmeg looks both exhausted and aghast at the fact that he is still here, and Ruthie is gallivanting around as she does. When I brought the boys to Dulles for their flight to camp, I rode the train back to parking with a guy who, even masked, looked SO MUCH like that college boyfriend that I froze and started sweating a little bit in all my remembering, and the years gone by.

The boys were beyond thrilled to return to Pine Island this summer, and yet, per life, their expectations and actual experiences seem, via letter, dissonant. Covid has really fucked so much up, and camp is no exception: there are fewer boys, distancing, parameters. My heart hurts for the kids knowing that the build up of two years’ absence could almost certainly never match the reality on the we-are-still-in-a-pandemic ground. #GetVaccinated

As always I think there is a lesson in there, irritating or shitty as it may be. A letter received from Jack today contained a stunning amount of ALL CAPS for a fifteen-year-old boy. I’m thankful he can emote. #Blessed

The birds and squirrels are quieting now; the shooter seems to be out or between rounds. Did you know that male House Finches turn bright red during breeding season? They are magnificent little beings. The sun is setting, half-used strips of painters tape are blowing lazily from their newest way-station. SW Peppercorn is actually a very nice color, as are Pure White and Tricorn Black. It’s just the paint itself, damnit; not nearly the quality of Ben Moore. And since this entire place was the color of Calamine Lotion or Terracotta or TURQUOISE, you really need some coverage, FFS.

But seriously, tomorrow I will attempt to avoid the yellow jackets, write the boys, keep painting trim (I shake my fist to the sky against all-wood-very-dirty/dusty trim from the 80s!), meet with students, brush burrs from the barn cats, return my milk bottle to the general store, check on my friends, remember to eat well, try to both work and rest, and continue negotiating the profound fortune of two lived experiences.

How do I give and serve, but not deplete? How do I make peace with Sherwin Williams? How do I welcome and listen, but not suffer fools or respect lies? How do I listen to myself and also to others?

Earth Day

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
― Wendell Berry

Despite my enormous fortune, I would be lying if I said this past year was anything but enormously difficult. From cancelations that led to disappointments and distance to my parents’ loss in Hurricane Laura, from the staggering death toll of Covid 19 to the unconscionable and incessant toll of racist and Republican brutality, from the hundreds of days of “school” in distance learning to the relentless constancy of cook/clean/feed/console/decide/guide/repeat, I am running on fumes. Everyone I know is.

One friend who I’ve not seen for at least a year pulled up alongside me in traffic today. We rolled down our windows at a red light, delighted to see each other and yet stunned by our mutual exhaustion. Therapy, severe eczema, glistening eyes, warm smiles! Who knew so much could be shared in seconds at a stop light?

Back home, I began baking pies, one for a dear friend my age who just endured her first round of chemo. Her children are the same ages as Jack and Ol. My friend is effusive and vibrant. She is lustrous. She said pie sounded good, and so I got busy.

Meanwhile, after two days of school, Jack was home once more. He and I helped Mom and Dad move a few heavy items, and I kept my fingers crossed that Tom could break from Zoom long enough to get the pie out of the oven while we were out.

Home again, I found that one of my beloved trio of housekeepers got good news yesterday: she and her family were granted asylum here after being terrorized out of life in El Salvador. They had received videos, multiple videos, with pictures of each member of the family, identified, graphically threatened. I hugged her and saw more glistening eyes, these of gratitude for her family’s safety, yes, but also of profound exhaustion born of months and months of fear and uncertainty. I tucked a note and some money in her pocket, hoping it might cover a bit of celebration tonight.

On the way to pick Oliver up, I delivered my friend’s pie. She is beautiful as ever, but I have never seen her look so deeply fatigued, surely a fatigue also born of months of uncertainty and fear and that cautious hope that feels both essential and risky. We hugged so tightly, twice, and it almost felt criminal in this time of distance. But it also felt right, and I only hope the pie tastes good to her.

I, too, am tired. My heartbreak over this country, my worry for my friends and family, my sense of profound dislocation from self. It’s been a lot. It continues to be a lot.

One thing that holds me straight and strong though remains nature. My yard and the many tiny ecosystems it nurtures. The birds and squirrels who sing and chase and eat in picky fashion through the buffet of options I leave for them once or twice daily. The decomposing leaves, the perennials budding anew, the stubborn hope that is a garden shrugging off winter and throwing its shoulders back proudly in the advent of spring.

My Nanny always said that you could bury your troubles in the soil. Yes, you can do that. But I have found the process of burying to be even more profoundly healing and helpful than the entombing. And perhaps, probably, that’s what Nanny meant all along. I suspect that’s why my parents have always found gardening so fulfilling; you focus and give and plow and sow and then after a long while, or seemingly suddenly, you are rewarded with a clearer mind and a bounty that only nature can generate.

I struggle to relax. I always have. I am an anxious soul for whom action is often liberating, at least momentarily. Productivity, accomplishment, giving, growing. These things heal me and yet these are the very things I have found so horribly elusive since Covid struck. When you’re never alone, the opportunities to sink into flow, the way one does when hoeing and spading and weeding and amending, become the rarest of birds. For me, the lack of flow has been the more painful struggle this year.

And so, spring is such a balm. New growth takes time, and you must patiently, carefully watch. You must listen for the quiet tune. Each day I visit my gardens. I thank the worms, I exclaim over every new bud, leaf, shoot, speck of green promise. I send whispers on the wind to the monarchs and pollinators that the milkweed and Joe Pye and bee balm are all growing as quickly and mightily as they can. The penstemon and anemones and forget-me-nots are waiting. The Columbines are taking over again, the raspberries are betting the blackberries that this year they’ll claim more square footage. The irises have gone insane, as have the hellebores. It’s flora-fauna mayhem out there, and I delight in it.

Our county has banned Weed-and-Feed, much to Tom’s chagrin and much to be absolute satisfaction. RoundUp and Sevin should go the way of napalm, in my opinion. Let’s let nature do its thing; she’s only trying to keep us all healthy and well.

Tomorrow, on Earth Day, I beseech you to say thanks to the green spaces you see. Plant something or perhaps pick up some litter or pull some weeds. Listen to the birds and the insects, leave a little extra seed for the damn squirrels who really are so dear if you get past their voracious, crafty ways. Breathe deeply where you can, when you can. If we’ve not learned this past year that life is short and precious, well, force be with you. It is both, and we need to live well but also live for future generations.

Tomorrow, on Earth Day, Tom and I are making official our ownership of 72 acres in West Virginia. I am beside myself with joy and gratitude. With thrill over a truly magnificent parcel of land that I can tend and love, that my children can run across with unbridled freedom, that my family and friends can use as a respite of the sort only big nature can provide. It will be an honor to love and protect this land and to let it hold and heal us as we make our way back to ourselves and each other after such a hard time.

”Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.” -Rachel Carson

Black Lives Matter.
No Justice, No Peace.
Know Justice, Know Peace.

A year

Since I last wrote on Mardi Gras, we passed the mark of a year at home, Jack has still not returned to any in-person school, Ol turned 12, my parents are fully vaccinated, my in-laws have each had one shot, spring is emerging in fits and starts, I took on a volunteer leadership position at a wonderful political organization that I admire, and the cats still disdain each other. Or rather, Nutmeg is still irritated about Ruthie coming to live with us. WHY do cats let their tongues hang when they’re resting?!

We have explored more of Virginia and West Virginia and been simultaneously awed by their beauty and much of the friendliness we’ve encountered and appalled by their racism, mad conservatism, and overt Confederate loyalty (more pronounced in the parts of western VA we spent time in).

I have gut-laughed so hard —see this link for a recent delight—”punches and scratches to the face…” I have cried, too.

I have learned fascinating things, from tidbits like this evolution of the UK flag:

to information about long-haul Covid.

I maintain that Freddie Mercury and Roger Federer are two of the greatest artists to ever walk this Earth. Witness remains an excellent film. Weekend at Bernie’s is an appalling blot on film history; my bright memories were justly extinguished one evening when I convinced Tom to subscribe to Cinemax and the boys to settle in for a treat. Any new or old faves for you?

I rarely enjoy cooking anymore and have lost interest in most meals. It all seems to taste the same; several of my friends feel this, too. I hope this disappears when Covid recedes into memory. Have you experienced this?

Have you watched The Last Kingdom or The Queen’s Gambit? I love the word gambit, and both series are utterly engaging. Plus, Alexander Dreymon? Meow!