Twenty-two years ago today I met my husband, and eight years ago on Tuesday, February 16, he died in a single-car accident about 1/4 mile from our home.
I was teaching at New Options Middle School in Seattle (now Salmon Bay, and the best school ever) and had just received a call from the garage looking at my car. It was an unseasonably warm and sunny Friday afternoon, a Friday when I was scheduled to chaperone the school’s Ski Club trip to Snoqualmie Pass.
Instead, I found myself sweating in long underwear after school, listening to the mechanic as he said things like, “The wheels could have fallen off,” and “You cannot drive this car anymore.”
Claire. I had only had her for a week. A powder blue car whose make and model I forget but who was a replacement for a car that was totaled when I was hit-and-run from behind by a drunk driver on the way home from another Ski Club outing, late the previous Friday night. Insurance gave me $1600 for that car, and I spent it on Claire, the only car I could find for small cash, a car that had been apparently submerged at one point and was now in possession of rusted-out wheel bearings and an axle or two of uncertain stability.
I canceled Ski Club chaperoning. I called a tow truck. I called a rental car place. I got a ride to the mechanic.
I emptied Claire out and sat like a hobo with all of my possessions on the concrete wall in front of the mechanic to wait for the rental car people to pick me up.
Eventually, the tow truck showed up and pulled into the lot. I turned around to look into the shop and saw a tall, lanky man with bleachy, spiky hair leaning on the counter. He had a cast on his left arm from his wrist to his elbow and had the practiced lean of a person who was not really in an hurry. I turned back around and sat for a few minutes, sweating and fretting about the money I was about to lose, then turned back around to see him still there.
I stood up, hopped over the concrete divider I was sitting on, opened the door, and stuck my head in.
“You looking for me?” I asked.
“I guess I am,” he said.
I canceled the rental car and let Dane drive me to the car lot, where I had him turn on his tow truck lights and park smack in the middle of their business. I stormed into the office and demanded my money back. I was aware of Dane watching me as I harangued the guy behind the counter, aware of him watching me as I climbed back into the tow truck.
Our first date wouldn’t happen until February 16, 1999, a date where he picked me up in a wide Lincoln Continental, white with crimson velvet interior, an auction car. We listened to Portishead on the way to the bar, and when he walked through the front door he reached his hand back for mine without looking, a surprisingly intimate gesture for a first date.
We played darts, drank beer.
We built a life together, and then that life disappeared on the side of the road in the middle of the night, 14 years later.
As time stretches away from the night he died, I am beginning to forget some things. Specific dates, times, things we fought about, what we did every day in our life together.
But I knew when he reached for my hand on that first date, the way you know things in your bones, that we would make a life together. We lived an entire life together in just 14 years – lost parents, had a baby, lost a house, lost jobs, lost a baby, moved across the country – so much loss, but joy, too. Love.
As I write this I feel a literal ache in the place where my heart is. In many ways, this beautiful life of mine now is what it is because of Dane. He loved me, and he loved our child, with every part of himself – all of the broken bits and the joyful, exuberant parts, too. I think of him most this time of year, but he is not often far from my thoughts.
I feel lucky to have been able to understand what is really important in life, early, to get an idea that we think we have time, but it’s no use dwelling on how much or how little.
And that our days and lives are made up of small, quiet moments, not huge gestures. Reaching out for a hand. A greeting kiss. Your beloved’s hand on the small of your back. The idea that you have a person in the world who is home for you, no matter what.
On this bittersweet day, I remember Dane. His smile. His sweet blue eyes. His laugh. The way he loved me.
I remember that my people are the most important thing. And for that, and for Dane – the whole messy, tragic, and joyful experience of our life together – I am also grateful.
I don’t have many encouraging words right now. I am in quarantine, unexpectedly, and the 8th anniversary of Dane’s death is approaching. The winds are high, and my anxiety is leveling up exponentially as we barrel full-steam into an unpredictable year. So I offer these words, to myself and to you, on this extraordinary inauguration day.
For this days, and all of the others to come, HOLD YOUR OWN.
Thanks to Gina Hogan Edwards for posting this extraordinary reminder today of what is important.
Every year, and KWeeks makes a little fun of me for this, I record all of the books I read. I do this for several reasons, not the least of which being that I have the short-term memory of a fruit fly, and I will literally forget what I have read from January to December.
That’s not such a big deal until the third time you think a book looks really good, so you buy it…and it’s already on your bookshelf. And you have already read it. Sometimes more than once.
This year I also began keeping track of how many male-identified and female-identified authors I read, plus how many writers of color I reach for without going out of my way. This year, I read:
47 books by women
24 books by men
18 writers of color
My total number of books was 77. The discrepancy between my total and the above numbers is because I read multiple books by the same author. The percentage of authors of color is 25% of the total – in line with the demographics of the U.S., but not nearly enough, IMVHO. This past year I just kept reading like I do to get a baseline, and I hope to incorporate less white-centric books in 2021.
I won’t bore you with the entire list, some of which is completely forgettable, even written down, but here are my top 13 books, in the order in which I experienced them.
I was going to put stars by the ones I really recommend, but I just can’t. They were all so fucking good.
Top 13 for 2020 – a mix of non-fiction, one exceptional book of short stories, and fiction. Some stunning writing in this list, and I recommend each one of these unreservedly – purchased from your local bookstore, not Amazon, natch.
I already have a list longer than my arm, but tell me what I missed last year – what books should have been on my radar, and what should I look out for next year?
The irony is not lost on me that this is the year that I decided to emulate Austin Kleon’s annual “100 Things to Love about _____.”
First, comes COVID, a righteous clusterfuck if ever there was one. So much suffering.
And in the midst of this, the final straw of George Floyd and (add more names here). It’s not like police killing Black people is new. But combine this with a pandemic and horrible politicians and it hits harder. Different. And hopefully this time will be different (but I believe change will only occur when the revolution is violent. Viva la Revolucion. I am here for it.).
Finally, sometime in September, I accidentally deleted every. Single. File. On my computer.
All of them. My writing. My photography. My mercenary writing.
A week at the computer doc recovered nothing, but some things magically reappeared, and, by some stroke of luck/genius, I was able to recover 100% of my writing because I had either printed out or submitted all of my work in the past year, so there was a record of everything, cobbled together.
Now I have everything precious saved on two thumb drives, and I save to another once a week (my working drive).
One of the things that was deleted and not recovered was the original version of this list, up to about 70 things. There were links, and longer entries.
I am going to do my level best to remember what I wrote, but with caveats: they will no longer be in the order in which I experienced them (which is a nice little way to remember a year), and they won’t have the sensory immediacy that I had when I wrote them.
But that’s ok. We will manage.
50/100 Things To Love About 2020
1. The Grand Hotel and Spa in Ocean City, MD (room 1001, with a view of the sunrise over the ocean and the sunset over the Bay), just before COVID became reality, so it was nothing to go to a hotel in the off-season and then site cheek-by-jowl at the bar to dine at an incredible restaurant the last night I was there.
This needs a picture. There was a video, but that was lost.
3. The chance to start over, and the feeling of gratitude that comes when you realize that the slate is wiped clean, whether by choice or by chance. To recalibrate and live the life you envisioned as a child.
4. Susquehanna State Park. The black trail that parallels the water and features blue herons. A gift of a day when 30 blue herons perched in the river, fishing, while juvenile bald eagles hovered on the air current above the river, diving for fish.
5. Finishing three paintings with a theme: The Poetics Series. The first inspired by a poem (”Dropping Keys” by Hafiz) and the second two inspiring poems (“Precarious Thoughts” and “Collecting Tin” – all three are available for purchase and can be viewed at Cobalt Workspace in Hampden, Baltimore!)
6. Getting waitlisted at Brush Creek (and then Brush Creek closing – not good, but part of the life cycle of COVID, I suppose)
7. The late summer/early fall breeze coming through the window.
8. Fresh blackberry lavender jam from Martha’s blackberries and lavender. Incorporated into what might be the very most perfect cake in all of the land: Blackberry (Lavender) Naked Cake With White Chocolate Buttercream.
9. Canning peaches, also from Martha.
10. Hiking the Appalachian Trail for the first time. Annapolis Rocks, on a perfect summer day, early, with very few hikers.
11. Lewis Orchards, about a mile away from Greenbrier State Park, with the best peaches in Maryland (and a better price, at $5/peck for seconds, which mostly consisted of peaches that needed more ripening but were sweet and delicious).
12. Dinner at The Shark on the Harbor in in Ocean City. Being inexplicably social that evening and meeting a lovely retired man and his wife as we ate a delicious meal at the bar together (a short week before the specter of COVID shut everything down). Feeling unexpectedly grown up and settled in myself for having that experience.
14. Making tea blends from things I have grown and/or foraged. Lemon balm plants that don’t quit on the balcony.
15. Cabin ____ at New Germany State Park, and the unexpected internet signal that allowed me to get a text from KWeeks on the front porch as I ate lunch while watching a storm roll in. I don’t want to tell you which cabin – it’s hard enough to get a reservation.
18. Hiking trails all to myself in New Germany State Park. Adventuring meanders for five days as part of a hiking/writing retreat.
19. The satisfaction of putting up silver corrugated metal as a porch roof to keep the rain off for less than $100, after getting two quotes to do it, one for $600 and another for $4200.
20. Writing someone else’s life story – being hired to write a memoir after speaking aloud my intention to look for larger pieces of work. Seeing more of that work on the horizon. Struggling with the task as something much different than the smaller pieces I have become accustomed to. Leaning into that.
21. Levis 314 jeans. FUCKING FINALLY jeans that fit and don’t cost $100. Plus, 3/14 is my birthday, and I will be motherfucking 50 in 2021, so feel free to send along an appropriate tribute. #pleaseandthankyou
23. The fall Renewal with Martha Rogers of Full Moon Acupuncture. Space to develop a morning ritual of coffee, yoga, breakfast, and morning pages.
24. The return of The Great British Baking Show in October 2020.
25. Getting published in 50Haikus and Scarlet Leaf Review.
26. Approaching my goal of 100 rejections by the end of 2020.
27. Making my goal of saving two years’ worth of basic living expenses by the end of 2020. Not even a humble brag. But a huge relief in a job that has zero guarantees and now more than ever is precarious at best. But see #43 on how that turned out for me.
28. Learning more about wildcrafting and herbalism through She is of the Woods. Making fire cider for the first time, as well as dandelion oxymel, goldenrod tincture, lemon balm tincture, and blue spruce cough syrup, all from foraged plants.
29. A weekend at John Cage Park with Khristian, trying to figure out how we might collaborate. Coming home unfortunately with a mysterious series of bites.
31. Stuff You Should Know. Especially their two-part podcast on the Tylenol Murders.
32. Ruth Asawa and her remarkable sculpture and drawing. Also, KWeeks for getting me her amazing biography, Everything She Touched, also read during my idyll at New Germany State Park.
33. Fruits & Vegetable stamps from the USPS.
34. The possibility of seeing Gerhard Richter’s show in Los Angeles, most likely his last and one of his largest, a retrospective worth driving across the country for (since I missed in when it was in New York, a scant four hours away, because I wasn’t paying attention).
36. Getting the green light on a foraging book with a focus on wildcrafting herbal medicines for the urban dweller. Scheduled to be published late fall of 2021 by Akinoga Press.
37. Taking horseback riding lessons at Graham Equestrian Center. If I had known that such bliss and contentment and focus and awareness was available to me, I would not have waited so long.
38. The first snow of the year, beautiful, fat flakes that were magical while they lasted and then gave way to sleety, icy bullshit (but this list is not about that).
40. Hand-poured candles from KSM Candle Company. They have been sold out for most of the pandemic, good news for them, but super challenging because their candles are delicious, local, and handcrafted by a Black woman. Win, win, win.
41. CBD oil from Seed2System. So, so good. Ticks all the boxes: organic plants, no chemical processing, and great customer service. I wrote for them for a bit, but I am a convert to treat anxiety without benzos. Full-spectrum CBD oil. Look for sales (they have great ones).
42. Bitter orange marmalade made from bitter orange harvested in the alley behind KWeeks’s house. It’s bitter, not gonna lie, and the sticky goo in the pith was challenging, but it’s delicious.
43. A new-to-me car, even though I had to spend most of my savings for it, and I wasn’t quite done with the old car, which died unceremoniously and abruptly on 95 north.
44. Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman. An astonishment of a book, along the same lines for me as David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.
45. And while we are on the subject of incredible books, Anxious People by Frederik Backman, a quiet little novel about everyone doing the best they can and how chance encounters can shape an entire life, although not written in such a schlocky way as that summary. This same author wrote A Man Called Ove. Read that book, then watch the movie. I promise you it will be lovely.
46. Foraging for spicebush along the Susquehanna, and then turning it into spicebush dram, which smells delicious but I have yet to try.
47. Helping KWeeks with the final shot of his piece The Realest in Leakin Park.
48. A visit to the beach, mid-July. Not a populated beach – a tiny stretch of sand at the end of a dead-end road in Delaware where we parked the tiny house for two years. A brief, relaxed interlude when COVID walls felt like they were closing in.
49. The ritual of the last day of the year – cleaning the house, doing laundry, provisioning to promote a feeling of abundance.
50. Early morning walks on the last day of the year. The sliver of a sunrise peeking blood-red gold through the clouds – red skies in the morning promising a rainy first day of 2021. An opportunity, even as things remain the same, to feel washed clean and renewed.
Looking forward to starting this list again in 2021, starting with a rainy first-day hike and a 30-day commitment to a breath practice with Adriene.
Rising from the mud, what were the highlights of your year?
A week ago today, the nation suffered through the actual day of election after weeks of mail-in ballots and early voting and pontificating and bullshit leading up to it..
Four days later, president-elect Joe Biden was announced while the current president went golfing and the nation’s COVID rate spiked sharply.
Today, the current administration refuses to acknowledge their defeat. They believe, somehow, that election results favoring Republicans down ballot were somehow legitimate but the main event was bogus, a stolen election, a lie.
I am having a hard time spending time on this blog. I will still bake, cook, and write. But it seems insignificant and stupid to post anything right now.
Now is a time for reflection, renewed action, and meaningful planning.
Look after the vulnerable people in your life and wear your fucking mask.
Cancel your Thanksgiving plans and wash your hands.
I may or may not continue here. For now, I need to come out of the virtual space and make attempts to ground myself and not hate the 70 million people who voted (and all of those who chose, yet again, to sit one out).
Take care of yourselves. Maybe I’ll see you on the other side.
