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The wind is changing. Fall will be here soon. And winter. A shift of seasons is in the air, always foreboding. It is the time for Night. Even the days, heavy and crisp, imbued with gray, darken and take on the aspects of eternal evening. The sun is somewhere though.
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What are you doing here? The fifth floor of a parking garage, caged in with the filth of pigeons and the butts of cigarettes, is no place for you. Get. Go on.
It’s a silly thing. Sluggish. Get out of here.
Someone will run over it. A small bump in the pavement, a tiny crushed skull. Get now. Find your friends.
While the previous post went back twenty years, this one skirts a little closer and looks back to where this blog was at ten years ago. A lot can happen in a decade, but seeing where November began then puts it closer to where we are now than might be apparent. Still, we have profoundly changed, even if it doesn’t look like it.
Back then, it sounded like I was losing my mind. Same today. Check.
Back then I needed bifocals. Same today. Check.
Back then I enjoyed an avocado. Same today. Check.
Back then I was already looking back ten years. Same today. Check.
Back then Ben Cohen was an ally. Same today. Check.
Back then I was enamored of ‘Evita’. Same today. Check.
Back then Cafe Madeleine had just opened. Not the same today – it closed a while ago.
Back then ‘Like A Virgin’ was thirty years old. Not the same today – it’s forty.
Back then I was in love with words. Same today. Check.
Back then I didn’t have a clue about keeping score for a basketball game. Same today. Check.
Back then I had a party in my pants. Same today. Check.
Back then I simply didn’t give a fuck. Same today. Check.
Who knew that 2004 would feel like such a quaint time? I don’t think we’ll look back at 2024 with quite the same fondness. While we continue along the corridors of my ‘shades of gray’ project, I am pausing to recall a party we had to celebrate its release – a photo from that night fronts this previous blog post – the featured photo for this post is simply from around that time.
It was a fall night in October, and though we usually saved our big gathering for the holidays, that year we were ambitious and had a party in the fall as well. I don’t remember much from it – other than a good time was had by all, and I had made sausage cheddar meatballs for an appetizer. It was designed to be a cozy night – and I wore an old three-piece gray suit that once belonged to Andy. (Today neither of us could fit into that thing.)
Outside, fall raged and darkened, but inside there was warmth and light, music and laughter, friends and bonhomie. We created our own coziness, we made our own merriment. The outside world may have seen itself as black and white, but our inner world was all these beautiful shades of gray…
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Though she died a few years ago, the wound is still fresh. In happy moments he forgets, but then the happiness serves as a reminder, and he seems to hunt for why he has to be unhappy. His grief is like a severed limb – invisible, phantom thing of pain – there but not there, and, somehow, always with him.
Sometimes he is happy to remember her – a smile at the scent of her favorite rose, a laugh at a salty memory, a spunky phrase she once uttered – and then he is lost again.
He finds solace in baking her old recipes. A calm settles around him in the kitchen. Bending over a simmering sauce of tomatoes and fresh basil, or rolling out the dough for an apple pie, he is best when he is busy. He thinks she is with him then, or maybe that he is cooking for her again, like he used to do.
He sleeps late when the pain and the night inspire to keep him up. Waking, alone, he plods to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. The scene outside the window changes with the seasons – the light slowly shifting, shadows lengthening or shortening, but it’s difficult to detect day to day. Only the occasional burst of a storm or the gray water vapor of a January thaw make any discernible difference. He draws the shades and looks out the window. The world is quiet from inside.
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Most of my childhood memories involve my brother Paul. He had a rather serious case of pneumonia when he was very young and spent a few days in the hospital. I was left alone with the cleaning lady, Deppy, a woman who rarely spoke, and when she did it was in a thick accent, or so my parents told me years later. I was only about four or five myself. I remember lying on the floor of my bedroom and holding a blanket or stuffed animal out of loneliness.
Did I miss my brother, or my Mommy? I didn’t know. I do remember being on the verge of crying at that moment, and then holding it in when I thought Deppy was coming into the room. Or did I let it go and did she hold me?
When my brother finally came home he had to stay in a plastic tent for a couple of days. I wanted to join him there, and once or twice my parents let me climb in through the flap and peer out of the blurry plastic. It wasn’t fun to watch TV from there though – the images were hazy, and if you stared too long they blurred into oblivion – the plastic tent coming into focus and evicting all outside visions – a vague shadow of our faces, dim and nondescript. But we were together in that fuzzy world, me and my brother, in sickness and in health, bound by blood and joined in familial history.
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Jeff Johnson is chasing me off the stage at McNulty Elementary School. It is the end of a rehearsal for a class play. We are about eleven or twelve years old and just beginning to think we know it all. Jeff is taller and bigger than me; I am a small child.
Barreling into the hallway, thinking Jeff was right behind me, I run into Mr. McKnight, slamming into his torso and laughing out of embarrassment. He is not pleased. Later in the day I get in trouble with my homeroom teacher who backs up her case proclaiming, “Mr. McKnight said you had been acting squirrelly lately.” So there it was, and here I am.
Squirrelly. Is that even a proper word? At the time I didn’t quite grasp what it meant. Mischievous, troublesome, playful, excitable, energetic… I chatter, I chew, I run, I leap. I make far too much noise on some days and no sound at all on others. I’m just a kid.
There are worse things than being considered squirrelly.
(It turns out that it is indeed a proper word. I looked it up.)
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A rustling in the trees signals they are near. One small gray ghost lands on the fence, padding stealthily from post to post and then leaping into a pine tree. From limb to limb, sharp claws tenaciously hold the creature high in its aerial pursuit.
Another drops to the ground, this little gray ghost not much more than a puff of smoke and gone just as quickly. A bouncing tail retreats Ito the leaves and an acorn falls from the sky.
Silence.
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Buying chocolates. A whim purchase Annoying child ahead of me, and two smiling parents. I do not like children. The kid is clearly not in need of another chocolate, but the cashier behind the counter knows the family and gives one away for free. What about me? Insult to injury, they strike up a conversation as I thrust my bag of chocolates onto the counter with an agitated sigh. Is this a store or a social hour?
“How is your summer going?” the mother asks the cashier. She is blond, with dark streaks showing through. Her husband wears glasses and smiles kindly, occupied slightly by the child and her free chocolate truffle.
“It’s going all right now,” the dark-haired cashier answers with a broad retail smile. “I had a rough couple of months,” she continues, and then in a half-whisper, “I had a miscarriage.”
Two feet from me, and not trying to hide it, she blurts this out.
“But I am over it. now.” She forces out another smile. “So what brings you to the mall tonight?”
The blonde mother pauses. “The maternity store.” It seems an odd moment to reveal a new pregnancy, but she does anyway.
The cashier’s smile doesn’t waver. I watch closely to see if it does. It still looks forced, but it doesn’t break. She hands me my change and I start walking toward the door. Out of the corner of my eye I see her walk around and give the blonde woman a hug.
In the mall I wonder which is more obscene – the cashiers rudimentary confession – so casual, so flippant (but who is anyone to say?) or the blonde woman’s maternity admission – should she have waited until a more appropriate moment? Of course none of it was any of my business, and even if it was I probably wouldn’t have known what to say.
Giving credit where it is due, Andy has been especially helpful for the past couple of years when things have gotten difficult with family and life – and it’s in keeping with how he has mostly been over the past twenty-four years. The featured picture is from our ‘shades of gray‘ party – held in October of 2024 to celebrate the release of my ‘shades of gray’ project, which is going up now in blog posts here and there, to see us though this often-dour month. I’ll resume in the next post – for now, a fun look back with this photo, and the following up-to-date scene of what an average morning is like in our home.
ANDY, waking me up: “Did you oversleep?”
ME, waking in an immediate panic thinking I’m late for work: “Why?! What time is it?!?!”
ANDY: “It’s 8:20.”
ME, realizing it’s Saturday: “Wait, what day is it?”
ANDY, realizing it’s Saturday: “Oh. Well, you’re really late. You were supposed to be at work yesterday.”
This day began in usual fashion. I signed on early to the work laptop and began sorting through e-mails. Andy padded out to the living room, put on his classical music, then turned on the coffee-maker. I went outside for a minute and took these pictures of the sky and the remaining leaves in the early sunlight. They would fall off soon enough. The air was warm – warmer than it should be for November, a little blessing when the mornings have recently been so cold.
I wondered why it didn’t feel like I was in proper mourning. Maybe when you’ve mourned things that really matter, you no longer feel so affected by world events. Then I realized: I’ve already mourned.
I mourned when Donald Trump got elected the first time.
I mourned when his administration separated children from their families.
I mourned when he incited an insurrection, his followers trashed our Capitol, and he tried to overthrow an election.
I mourned when he stole classified documents and got away with it.
I mourned when he was convicted of sexual assault and didn’t serve jail time.
I mourned when he appointed Supreme Court Justices who promptly took away reproductive freedom from women.
I mourned when he allowed a pandemic to ravage our people by downplaying it and giving out misinformation.
I mourned when he embraced racism and homophobia and sexism.
I mourned when the media presented both candidates as relatively equal, and then people who didn’t really follow politics assumed they must be, so any little thing could sway them one way or another rather than presenting the clear and present danger one candidate was.
I mourned when I saw interviews with young people who said they were voting for Trump and when pressed why didn’t have any answer whatsoever, and didn’t even seem to care.
I mourned when this country even considered that someone who spoke like that man would be a fit President.
Mostly, I mourned for the people who suffered the most under his policies and didn’t even realize it until it was too late.
So for me, I’ve already mourned what has happened, and what is about to happen. I’m not mourning this again.
Outside, I watch the sun move a little higher in the sky. Feathery seed heads of fountain grass sway gently in the breeze, and every now and then an oak leaf spins slowly to the ground. It truly is a beautiful morning. Our little world, of beauty and love and compassion, is still intact. Find me here.
We jumped the gun on thinking we had our last swim of the season, as Andy and I both went into the pool yesterday – November 5 – which marks our very latest to be in the water. It was quite a different experience, even more-so than last time. Where the late spring swims were perfumed by lilacs and lilies-of-the-valley, this time the air was seasoned with the earthy scent of fallen leaves – it was the smell of rust and brown and gray, a tinge of rot, a dollop of decay – fall upon the fallen.
There was also a restless wind, a playful wind, that reminded me of Dad, somewhere still watching over me. I wonder what he would make of things now. What would he make of this world, of the world he once knew, so wholly transformed into something likely unrecognizable to him? I shudder in the air, so cool after the warm water.
The yard about us is changed, leveled by the frosts, laid bare and barren by the onslaught of fall in the nights. Grasses have spilled over the pool ladder, pots of tomato plants have fallen onto their side. This will be the disheveled scene until we clean it all up in the spring. Winter snows will offer some reprieve. The focus turns to the interior. It’s time, but both of us will miss the pool. On that November afternoon, before we know what this country was capable of doing, it offered healing and calm – one last chance at floating away.
PS – Don’t take this as the definitive last swim – perhaps we’ll be in again when snow is in the air. Like it used to cover the roses…
When you’ve grown up in this country as part of a marginalized community, you see and feel enough hate to not have much faith in other Americans. While a small part of me had hope that this country was better than that, deep down I doubted it. And with a media machine that kept people woefully misled and uninformed, electing a black woman was just too difficult for many people to do. So no, I’m not surprised, just profoundly disappointed. Again.
And I’m sad – mostly for my niece Emi – and all the young girls – because they saw so many of their fellow citizens choose a convicted felon over a capable and competent woman… again. She texted me early this morning, writing, “How awful today is… We can only hope and pray.”
She then followed it up with, “I can vote next election!”
I hope she’s right.
Saving some daylight, night comes early now, increasing its hold and sway for the next two months. This post concludes our intended day of peace and calm, with a cozy glimpse of candlelight. I used this candle to light a stick of Palo Santo incense, then sat in the early evening doing my daily meditation.
A very long, slow, deep breath in…
a very long, slow, controlled breath out…
and again… and again… slowly, calmly, deliberately.
When all else fails, and you feel like you’re been left with nothing, you always have your breath, right up until the day you die. It’s one of the few constants in a world where everything we once thought we could count on has slowly dissolved away. The older I get, the more I realize that. At first it was sad, as most of the changes had to do with loss – of health, of loved ones, of youth – but then it was jubilant, as it meant a certain freedom. Some days, all we have is our breath – and it is enough. When I focus on breathing – when I slow it down and let it occupy my mind – it pushes the silly things out of the way – the grievances, the hurt, the offenses. In their place I can plant swaths of peace and cultivated calm. Weeds will always pop up in the neglected patches of our minds – the trick is to fill the space with mindfulness.
On this night, of all the nights, I burrow into that mindfulness, and by the light of this candle I begin the deep breathing.
With a few hard frosts already under our autumn belt, I assumed that our outside blooms were long over. It was a happy surprise when I discovered in a hidden section of our back porch, these fuchsia and begonia flowers, still intact and still in bloom. The immediately brought me back to early summer, when the season was fresh and new, and hope seeped out of every living thing. It was the start of our beautiful coquette summer, and life was a beautiful pink gingham fantasy.
It feels far away, but it was only a few months, and in that same span of time we’ll be returning to spring next year. In spite of several hard frosts, this fall has been remarkably kind, weather-wise. It’s stayed warm – so much so that Andy was swimming on Halloween – something that has never happened before – and the pool is still open with a possibility of one more dip today or tomorrow. We’ve already made a deep dent into fall, and it hasn’t really felt like it – may that mean a swift move through winter as well. We can slow things down again in the spring.
