Once A Day, I Cried
The hills were Van Gogh paintings—thick dabs of vibrant colors, textured and breathing, radiating energy. Sometimes the yellow seemed to glow and encompass us, so that the world was shimmering, and we walked about dazed, wild with saffron, drunk on garish beauty.
And in each day, there came a time when we reached the cusp of tears. Exhausted and traumatized, we wondered how we were going to get through. The clouds of doubt and worry cast their great shadows, and we searched within ourselves to find the light in our brokenness, and we held the hands of our friends.
Maybe someday in the future someone will read this and understand how it felt to be here at this moment. Maybe not. In any case, I am writing through it. This is how it was.
I walked with two girlfriends in the green and yellow hills a few days ago. Amidst bands of mustard flowers and lush grass, there were lupines and mariposa lilies, wild hyacinths and owl’s clover. There were old oaks telling stories, long uphill roads, views of sea and canyon. Perhaps incongruously, we discussed things like planned protests, curating our news feeds, and calling legislators, but also childhood memories and beloved horses, and the importance of bicep curls and lateral raises; the message in the latter was that tedium and consistency can yield results, and I have since put my tiny chartreuse dumbbells in a conspicuous place, where I am more likely to lift them now and then.
As we approached the creek crossing, we heard a splash and caught a welcome glimpse of Turtle! It was a healthy-looking turtle, too, swimming with vigor and getting cozy beneath the sycamore leaves along the bank.
On this very day 33 years ago, my brother Eddie died. I rode my bicycle up the highest hill, sobbing, and the anguish of that loss has never gone away, but I promise him he matters still, and I will not squander the absurd abundance granted me. I have grown surprisingly old in the ensuing decades. Everything on me aches a bit, and my peers and I recite our litanies of ailments, refusing to go gently. I haul around my weighty love, both burden and fuel, clinging to hope. And the world around me shines.
We are planning an event, a community gathering to be held at a local church, and I’ll tell you more about it after it happens, but it has been a source of sustenance as well as fretting. There will be song and spoken word, and we’ll raise money for Democracy Forward, and maybe it’s a small thing, but if people keep connecting and everyone does small things, what a difference that will make!
We ran into a friend yesterday and stopped to chat along the road, as we tend to do around here. “I’m just hiding out,” he basically said. “I don’t want to know what’s happening out there. It’s too much. Everything, the whole damned world. There’s no one to trust, nothing makes sense. I’m just staying right here.”
I could understand his feelings.
All around him, the yellowness was gleaming. The ocean sparkled. The inscrutable sky looked beyond us.
I’m documenting the way it was.
It’s fair to say I cried once a day, but I also prayed, in my own way, and kept on moving.