Washington State is a beautiful place. Especially that Olympic Peninsula. I see it. I get it. I like visiting. It’s extra-beautiful to me because my nieces and nephews are there, and my brother and sis-in-love. I adore them all.
But I don’t know if I could live there.
My mother kept asking on our vacation, “But don’t you love the water?”
“Of course I love the water,” I told her, again and again. After all, I took my first steps at a sandy beach in Jersey, was possibly conceived in a Wildwood motel. I come from modest, watery circumstances, in every way.
I do love salt water. The ocean calms me like nothing else. The rhythmic loud drowns out the buzz of my mind, and I’m grateful for it. Not much manages to drown out that buzz. It’s hard to explain to anyone who’s not familiar with the buzz, the noise, of a brain that insists on having its own way. It can be vicious, a stubborn brain that refuses to take no for an answer, a mind that will not go to its room and behave, no matter how much I implore it to.
Mom prefers Washington to Massachusetts, it’s clear. I look forward to a day when she’s able to spend more time there. Maybe she’ll find a way to move there. I don’t want to say goodbye to her—never—but I want her to be living out her fullest life. And it may be there, not here, in what I’ve come to think of as my New England.
I am working on that too, living my fullest life. New England feels like a better fit, for now. It asks little of me; it doesn’t care whether I admire it or not. It does not need my admiration, although it has it, in spades. Rolling hills instead of the admittedly majestic Rockies. Unassuming beaches that descend into the Atlantic Ocean and climb back up and out onto the shores of Nova Scotia, Iceland, Ireland, England. I especially love the old two-story Colonial homes, paint peeling, porches slanting. I love the wobbly white picket fences with bushels of black-eyed Susans crowded behind, each flower shoving forward for a better view. And the wonderful New England snow! Snow upon snow upon snow. Icicles dripping from icicles.
It is hard for me to be anywhere right now, except perched on my own fluffy bed. I am not feeling so safe. Better to be in the shadow of low lush hills than in the shadow of Mount Rainier when you are already feeling pretty small.
*****
The day before we left Washington, Mom and I had taken some of the kids to roam downtown Port Townsend. I appreciate the Old West feel of the downtown, the Victorian brothels turned hotels and art galleries and New Age crystal shops, all with the bay and its boats a stone’s throw away. Scrappy people lived here once, before it was a tourist destination with stunningly beautiful B&Bs overlooking the water, and ferries hailing their quick hellos and goodbyes.
But there’s no such thing as a quick goodbye for people.
On the way back to my brother and sis-in-love’s house, Hattie Belle suddenly began to sob. She wanted to know why her daddy wasn’t on this vacation. Did he hate her? Did he hate us? She couldn’t remember his face, she bawled. She wanted me to stop the divorce, right now, or she would die.
I tried to explain. I tried. And tried. But she is four. I reached back behind my seat, I touched her soft knee, I patted her, and we both bawled. She bawled for what she did not understand. I bawled for what I understood but could not convey.
My mother got us back to the house safely though worriedly. I know she was desperately wishing for safe passage of another kind for her daughter and grandchildren.
Back at the house, the van emptied save for me, I was curled into a ball in the passenger seat, sobbing, wracked with the grief that has settled into my bones and offers no sign of leaving anytime soon. These are the things that no one can prepare you for. With a life change so vast, it may as well be a climb to the top of Mount Rainier, with none of the supplies or gear you’re pretty sure you might need. Sometimes, the What-Ifs and If-Onlys of life loss stretch out like Western distances, and it is impossible to guess accurately where the trek will end.
My brother arrived home just then. He saw the driver’s side door of the van was still open; he took a look for himself. Then he hopped into the driver’s seat and shut the door.
I could not look at him. Instead, I cried snot all over the inside of his passenger window.
“Water?” he said.
I may have nodded. I don’t know. I was folded nearly in half. This is not ordinary pain, these days.
We drove. I would say we drove in silence, except I was gulping and sobbing too loudly for silence to have space, so the silence grumpily strapped itself into a car seat in the back row.
My brother parked the car at North Beach. My favorite little beach, he knew. It was nearing sundown. We sat in the minivan (minivan! to think we are those people now, people who use minivans to haul our own children to and fro, when we were once kids unbuckled in the back of a powder blue Oldsmobile named Henrietta).
I straightened up to watch the tide coming in. The tears kept coming. Of course they did. Joe didn’t need to ask why. (And neither of us would be surprised to learn later that Hattie Belle cheered up immediately inside the house when given a gingerbread cookie. But gingerbread cookies don’t work on grownups, sadly.)
“We could head up to the bluff, or sit on the beach,” he offered.
“I don’t know if bluffs or cliffs are a good move at the moment,” I said. “Let’s sit on some driftwood. Stay low.”
We talked some. It was the kind of private, quiet talk that happens between siblings who love each other very much, but don’t often have an opportunity to say so in person, or say so at all.
We acknowledged our differences. We threw rocks into the sea. We met a black dog named Ishta (“Eye of the eagle,” said her owner. “She wants to welcome you to her beach.”). I cried, on and off. It’s the truest communication at my disposal these days. But more than anything else, we listened to the water, while my own salt-watery eyes scanned the horizon for, what? Clues? We find ourselves looking for clues in the strangest places as we get older.
When I was all cried out, and the air grew cool, he called home, to tell Katie to order some sushi for takeout.
Sometimes, there is not much that needs to be said, in the end. The sitting, the weeping, the flinging of rocks—that will suffice.
I imagine sometimes that it is difficult for him, a doctor, to be unable to heal me, to be so far away. I would like to make him proud, would like to make myself proud, would like to heal myself and need nothing from anyone.
Right now, the sense of acute failure is palpable and cutting. It’s only me who feels this way. My family does not see me as a failure, I know. They worry, but they do not see me as a failure. Nonetheless, the feeling lingers. I don’t know that I am doing what I should. I envy my brother’s ability to heal others in such a tangible way, to reach out to strangers who come to him in pain, looking for relief.
“One shower and one meal a day would be a good start,” said Joe. I wondered briefly if I had forgotten to put on deodorant that day. He has grown supremely practical over the years—being a family doctor will do that to you. He believes in Doing, when at all possible. His point (a point of view also held by many of my friends) is that Doing prevents Wallowing.
I explained to him that there is necessary soul in this grief—that I am not Wallowing, that I want no part of Wallowing. I hurt, but I still see myself as a fighter. There is paradox at work under this surface. Right now, I need to Be rather than to Do. If I expect myself to Do right now, the sense of failure I can’t seem to shake will only get worse. I don’t want pity, but I could sure use to hear about anything I’m doing right.
I worry about my girls. I worry because I see no clear path to a better life for us.
(And for the record, I do shower every day. I even scrubbed the old tub so I can take baths. But sometimes I forget to eat, it’s true. Or I eat too much. I lurch from day to day, and there’s no telling what my caloric intake will be in any 12-hour period, but I do stay clean. That’s something.)
*****
That night, we had amazing sushi, and the kids watched “The Shaggy Dog” while I fell asleep on Joe and Katie’s loveseat. It reminded me of the times I fell asleep in the back seat of the car with Joe, on our way home late from some family function. The noise of the kids, the grownups talking—there was some blessed grace in that. Being near them, having them nearby, but being permitted to simply BE outside the circle of activity. Being allowed to rest, to fall asleep with my fingers in my mouth, drooling, with my nose pressed up against the loveseat cushions.
I am more tired than I have words for. Words fail—it is their way. They don’t mind failing; they know their limitations and don’t give a damn. The expectations are ours, not theirs. The words slip through my fingers these days, more than they ever did. They slip into deep cracks into my mind, and I cannot fish them out, not for the life of me. I would be angry at them, these lost words, except I am beginning to realize that they do not belong to me.
I’m the only thing that belongs to me, and I’d like to learn what to do with myself. This is going to take some time. I have Western distances inside, and far to go—not the easy passing from state to state I’m used to here in New England.
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