It snowed the first day of November. I woke to a world dusted in silver, the falling flakes peaceful to watch through my second floor window. I’m a summer gal who vibes to autumn; winter’s not my thing, which is funny since I’ve made New England my heart’s home, but I will always and forever be charmed by snow.
I remember watching the first fall during my inaugural year working in NYC. In the middle of a Wednesday, I climbed onto the radiator lining the window to press myself to the glass 17 stories above Times Square just to watch the snow soar between buildings. To my right was the New Year’s Eve ball, all panes of dark glass, perched and waiting, and straight ahead was the Chrysler building, quintessential and stoic, its spire piercing the oceanic sky. At any moment I felt the glass might give way and I would take flight with the hawks.
I had no idea that in the years to come I would move into the office next door, start a craft magazine, and in my last year in the City watch that dark ball light up and drop the NYE that Taylor welcomed us and shook it off. That was before I loved her, but it must have been destined as I recall being utterly mesmerized. We opened the windows - can you believe they actually opened? - and held up our hands as confetti streamed in on the icy air.
When magic happens, I say, Let yourself be spellbound.
Just before Halloween, my mother came for a visit. We spent much of the week speculating over her health, playing Scrabble, spending too much money in my favorite shops where she let me pick out my Christmas presents. A tiny ceramic ring dish with a mandala etched into its center. A vintage English wrap coat in houndstooth. A Squishmallow shaped like a smiling piece of avocado toast. An impossibly soft throw for the couch. Each gift has been tattooed with a memory, and I relish the delight of pain as I finger each one. She is here and not here, and this is how it is and I wonder, will it always be?
One afternoon as I was heating soup, she reminded me of the time Daddy let us draw on the walls. He regretted it later, she said, because the marker kept bleeding through.
I hadn’t thought of that delightful afternoon in years, the three of us running from room to room, drawing unicorns and monsters, writing funny words on every wall. I’ve always wanted to do this, he said. It was one of those aberrant days when he showed us who he really was. He said, Go wild! And so we did.
Later, I googled the street view of that house, flipped through photos of someone else’s life on Zillow, and strolled through those hallways, peeked into bedrooms. That is the arched window where I would sit and daydream. There is the dining room where I was punched in the mouth. Someone has built a deck in the backyard where we buried Pip.
Those were the days of indoor/outdoor-mostly-outdoor cats. He didn’t make it a year before having a sunstroke in the belly of a skunk cage. I found him with eyes full of ants and wept as Daddy cut him out of the rusted bars, dug his grave, and then took a sledgehammer to what was left of the trap. I wonder if this is when I learned to destroy the things that hurt me.
But this is also the house where I first fell in love with magic. Imaginary friends came to play every day, and when no one was looking, I could transform into a woodland animal with secret powers. This is where I rode my bike down shrub-lined walks, believing with my whole heart that at any moment a portal would open and whisk me away. This is where we were still little enough to take our last bubble baths together, where I accidentally saw my first horror movie and learned that stories could scare, could feel real enough to make you cry and that felt wondrous.
The door to my creativity was cracking open, a little hooked finger beckoning me, my own white rabbit tisk-tisking over a pocket watch. Gotta go now! I was bewitched, and indeed, did follow.
I get the hype, read the text, followed by a Friendship Bracelet playlist. I listened with a light heart, the volume up as I vacuumed to twenty stitches in the hospital room, when you started crying, baby, I did too. For weeks I wake with snatches of poetry slipping in and out of focus, the flipping of channels when there’s only one station, but it’s ok, because there’s a lyric for everything. Plus, I know now that I am not alone.
I’ve seen the Eras film twice, each time with someone I love who loves me, and it’s like healing the hurts of my 12-year-old self, feeling not just accepted but dare I say in community.
While reading this not-a-profile I found myself ugly crying. I wondered at my reaction until realized that I was responding to a communal gaping hole aching to be filled: Eras as proof of concept, a woman looking back on her youth to remember what she is made of, not with shame but with curiosity and even delight. It had never occurred to me to look back on even my most carefree and innocuous eras with anything but shame.
Shame. An emotion we often confuse with Guilt.
Guilt is ‘I did something bad.’ Shame is ‘I am bad.’
Thinking about the many interpretations of lyrics, from the inaccurate, mulish love-obsessed to the Easter egg theory rabbit holes of meaning more layered than French pastry, one idea rings true on both ends of the spectrum. We are so often made to believe we are unreliable narrators of our own story. This insidious message runs rampant throughout the cultural conversation of what it means to be woman, feminine, boss bitch, mother, wife, sister or daughter, sexual, saint or witch, siren or nun, an autonomous, complex human, neither good nor evil. All of it has been weaponized.
I once had a job where the word sensitive was sneered, and even my therapist, just last week, said I don’t want to use the word sensitive because of its negative connotation. But why must it be so? Maybe it is the world that is too hard as opposed to any of us being too soft. We do not get to choose the ways in which we are wired. I am so tired of apologizing for my existence, aren’t you for yours?
Perhaps I am in my self acceptance era.
Do you ever get the feeling that your whole life is about to change? I have that feeling now. It’s a sensation of being unmoored, of watching the tethers you so carefully tied to the dock begin to slip free from the diligent knot. How far will I drift before paddling ahead or back? Or will I choose to leap and swim?
It seems that everyone is struggling. So much darkness and violence, loss and grief, anxiety and inner turmoil. Everywhere you look a screen will tell you what to think and how to feel. Turn the screens off and it's as though someone is standing next to us, screaming in our ears. But I wonder, if one were to sit with the screaming silence, might something else be unearthed?
As children we sat beneath the weeping willow and waited on the cicadas. These tiny armored creatures seemed ancient to me, wise in their knowing just when and how to emerge from wonderland. We watched them climb a beanstalk, shed their shells, and sing to the wide blue sky. A vibrating emerald sat in the palm of my hand. There is no other word for it but magic.
A dear friend said, I just want someone to tell me it’s all going to be ok, and to mean it because they know it’s true. I said, No one can tell you that but you.
I have always hated the phrase everything will be ok because sometimes it’s not. But usually, most of the time, maybe not at first but eventually, it will be. Maybe learning to hold fast to your true self during the turbulence is what we’re here to do. Maybe we are here to get to know ourselves for who we truly are, and to celebrate that truth. In healing ourselves we may in turn help heal the world.
If no one has told you today, You are loved. And the world needs you.