Mourning Walk
A kitten-shaped lump, soft and gray in the long-limbed haze of dawn, flicks a tiny ear. Oh, I think. You’re real.
Among black cottonwood and willow and dogwood, atop a cement structure sporting vines and graffiti sit two teens. Three legs dangle. Chin on knee, a pair of eyes rest on a pink cheek.
Fog hugs the river.
For weeks, I’ve meant to write to you about a thing that broke my heart. I’ve meant to give you an update, a good one. I tell myself to offer both up on a scale—sorrow huddled into a tight ball on the right pan, good news, chest to the sky, on the left. But all week long, pain has flared as it hasn’t in months. And this sorrow knows it’s not to be heard. And is there even a connection?
So I make a note about kayaking through watercolor under an osprey’s gaze and sleeping with a squirrel and confusing a cow for a bear on a yellow hill. I lie in the back of Ruby the van in the garden where she rests. I think of how sobbing is like walking into ocean. A wave crashes against me, and I falter, sniffing salt and wet. The next crest comes, and I dive deep, eyes squeezed tight. Coming up for air, I look back to shore. And I’m tumbling; up and down, meaningless; gasping. On the sand after, I’m spent and new. A man towing a boat arrived the day after I’d paddled. He raised his brows at my inflatable rig. He’d rescued more kayakers than he could remember. “The wind picks up, and they can’t make it back,” he said, his eyes on the lake like maybe I was still out there.
Back when spring seduced long, thin hairs from salmonberry flowers, I got all Buddha-eyed and accepted pain. Or I said I did. Only part of me was trained on the shore. Which was fall, when I’d lie, burning with sun and strength, on the hard dirt, illness managed, next adventure cued.
The pain coming back now is not what broke my heart. No. The pain’s the base of the scale. Me and it and the bird with talons like razors and the cow/bear and the man with the boat who didn’t need to rescue me because I am woman, and I row (and because the wind that day was a breeze) and the sea on Ruby’s bed in a garden—we’re all what is. We’re support structure and beams and pans.
A scan of my lungs found them healthy. (No, I hadn’t told you my doctors, having diagnosed the first autoimmune disease, were worried a second one was having its way with my lungs. But it’s not.) Yes, this news is dawn. This news is sun spilling across lake and golden hill and lumbering dot on golden hill and woman in ruby-colored van waking up to fluffy tail and slightly older woman in van turned ocean in garden and this entire essay, even the heartbreak. The lede’s not buried. You just never start at the beginning.
In a writing class,
said she believes memoirists aren’t oversharers. Rather, they’re secretive. She had multiple secret lives for as long as she can remember. I said, “Mirror.” I leaned my head against the screen and touched her forehead. I said, “Thank you.”I read recent policy updates made by the church I left as a child—left my childhood home early because of—on its treatment of transgender members. I said, “Oh.” I said, “Funhouse mirror.” I said, “No wonder I’ve had such a hard time with love.” I said, “You gotta take that sash off your mouth.”
It won’t surprise you that I took my secret lives with me. You know how things embedded in childhood, in DNA even, work. But it did surprise younger me, who left to give no fucks. And current me? Well, she’s all, Can we just go lie in the back of the van? She’s all, Mom, please stop reading now.
Per a spokesman, the policy’s purpose is to enable leaders to “minister with love, patience and respect.” To wit, they should not give transgender members positions working with young people. They should define “gender” as “biological sex at birth” and use pronouns accordingly. They should bar anyone who’s transitioned from baptism. They should praise anyone who transitions back. They say, “We love you.” They say, “You’re not to be trusted around children.” They say, “Or to define yourself.” They say, “Want in? Deny the parts of you that don’t work for us.” They say, “We respect you.”
I wake up thinking of the parts of me I’ve treated like just such a love sandwich. I say, “I’m sorry.” My joints throb. I say, “Let’s walk.”
The lungs, in Chinese medicine (this beautiful essay by
reminded me), control grief and the idea of letting go. The fog had just lifted when a colony of swallows alit from the brush on the bank.The teens are no longer atop the cement structure by the time I’ve circled back. I want to hoist myself up and dangle my legs in their legs’ shadow. I want to say, “The world or, some part of it, may be feeding you a kind of ‘love’ that’s meant to make you hate parts of yourself.” I want to say, “They don’t know any better.” Some of them do. But I’m with
; I want to sell them the world. I mean, I think, if I can become myself, like all of me, on the page, I might do more than improve the curb appeal, at least to myself. I want to say, “Fuck that sandwich though.”I want to say, “But if you find someday you’ve swallowed it, go to a lake and watch dawn watercolor. Soak in honey-gold rays and be surveyed by a fish hawk. Watch a bear moving lazily across a straw-gold field far away and call it a cow. Share your pillow with a squirrel and try not to freak out about it. Row till your arms burn with strength and sun and lie on the sand.”
I want to say, “Be you.”
Oh, I think when I see the kitten-shaped lump, no longer hazy, just a mound of clay. I fill my lungs with air and chuckle.
The video version of the note. Leader Lake, Northern Cascades, Washington, USA.
Thank you for reading, liking, commenting, and restacking. I don’t think I have the adequate words to say how glad I am you’re here.
If you wanna share in the comments, I’d love to know, what makes you most you? What keeps you from it?
What’s up next? If I get up the nerve, The Rolling Desk will be coming to your inboxes early next week with a little something special (and just a tad bit out of my comfort zone—eeeeeee) thanks to a community project hosted by
. In November, travel writer will share a story of when a stranger showed up for him. And we’ll meet more of the people I’ve met while living on the road. Beyond that, I’m teaming up with some other Substack favs (including and ) on projects I can’t wait to share. And of course, we’ll rubber tramp and see how we can connect on the road.Don’t miss any of it:
I could only answer this gorgeous post with a poem.
.
Dear Holly,
I see how radiance
claims you as its favorite,
holds
so tightly that
your body flames --
truth-fire
too hot, too close,
captivating
after all;
.
this body,
aching witness of
bright disclosures,
bobbing in
tidal grief for all
who double down
on what's not love.
In this mad world,
a cow/bear knows enough
(of love)
and a "church" does not.
No wonder every limb protests.
.
.
Look, Holly, deer!
Down by the edge of the lake
Drinking from the measureless
basin, where
last night, dear,
you wept.
.
I'm glad you had light breezes that day, and the man with the boat did not have to play rescue. :-)
Your prose is poetic. It grabs my heart. Here’s how I would describe a teary afternoon— I had a sob fest.
You have not only a way with words but your way with words.