as it turns out

I significantly underestimated the sacredness of this space. though quite frankly, my underestimation looks more like forgetting and then remembering, forgetting and then remembering. back in may, the night before ezra graduated from high school, the subject of the butter came up. that is, the infamous tub of butter that went missing when ezra was just three years-old and mysteriously showed up a few days later inside a lidded pot (which was nestled behind a mess of many lidded pots in the very back of a kitchen cabinet so high up I needed a small step stool myself to reach it). surely ezra was the culprit, though it still seems impossible. we were never able to prove it or explain it and he doesn't remember (or, says he doesn't) and anyway, now it's as embedded in the family folklore as both birth stories, the time I put fake toilet paper in the bathroom and the crazy magic christmas of 2010. 

I remembered writing about the butter here and went looking for it in my archives that night. something else I underestimated: the unmitigated joy of reading old posts out loud to the humans you wrote about. one post led to another and before long, we were swimming in stories and details I had long since forgotten. I cannot explain what it felt like to read these pieces out loud to the kids for the first time. the kids, who are now 18 and 22. I cannot explain what it felt like in the room that night-- story after story, their joy, my joy. I cannot overstate this. and in writing this right now, I can feel how much I want to get it right, how tempted I am to overthink it, to leave this draft open and unpublished, to get up and do something else-- to check stupid dumb instagram, to reorganize the book shelves, to wash the three dishes in the sink-- something/anything to keep from thinking through/writing through this thing that happened that was so wonderfully deep and joyful though also strangely (inexplicably, ever so slightly) painful. I want to get it right and I don't think I can.

in a year, five years, maybe ten, I'll read this and remember. what I know now, after nearly eighteen years of blogging, is that this is all that really matters.

351/365

things I thought about as the tow truck pulled our totaled car away forever this past week:

I thought about just how much life that car had seen

how it had faithfully carried us up and down so many favorite portland and atlanta streets

and back and forth to our beloved oregon coast, our manzanita, our shorty's, and then up and down stretches of the 101 too many times to count

and down I-5 to friends in san francisco and unexpected adventures in northern california along the way

and then how many times we packed it with pillows and blankets and popcorn and candy to take the kids to the drive-in, both the newberg 99w in oregon and the old starlight here in atlanta

I thought about the last day we drove it in portland, down 64th avenue one last time, the street where we lived for seven years, and along the sacramento ridge, past the view of mount hood, and down sandy boulevard across the burnside bridge, past the old portland sign one last time, and to powells books and the photobooth at the ace one last time, and then across all the bridges we loved-- the broadway, the fremont, st. johns, the hawthorne one last time before we finally pulled out of the city and watched portland grow smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror

I thought about how it carried us all the way across the country, through nine different states, from portland, oregon back home to atlanta, georgia

how we drove it to the the top of snowy crater lake that june in 2014, and through the winding roads of the redwood forest, down the miraculous avenue of the giants and slowly through every drive-through tree we could find

and how we drove it across the golden gate bridge one last time, and down 24th and valencia streets in the mission and up the narrow streets of chinatown

and then through palm springs, out to the edge of town where we parked it between the windmills and the train tracks and went treasure hunting

and then past the salton sea to salvation mountain, where the dashboard temps read 120, where it was so hot we could only stand to be outside the car for five minutes at a time 

and then to the grand canyon at magic hour, and through the legendary monument valley and the four corners, and down a street in holbrook, arizona actually named bucket of blood, and all along historic route 66, where we stopped a kajillion times to take pictures of old motels

I thought about how we built a tower of coolers and books between the kids on the trip so they wouldn't fight

I thought about how we pulled the car over the minute we finally crossed the georgia state line and took photographs of the kids jumping up and down in front of the state sign

I thought about how this car carried ward and I down to new orleans to celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary and then, miraculously, back down again to celebrate our twenty-fifth

and how we drove it down to savannah, georgia so many times, how it felt to be back beneath all that hanging spanish moss, and out to tybee island, where ward and I took our very first road trip back in 1990

and down to florida five summers in a row, over the long bridge to sanibel island, where we often pulled over to watch fiery skies fade to pink

and to the north georgia mountains to see the leaves change, to see the falls, to bring home pumpkins to carve

I thought about how we have filled it and stuffed it with suitcases and pool floats backpacks and art supplies and my very favorite beach blanket and camping chairs and picnic baskets and thrift hauls and furniture salvaged from the side of the road and buckets of fresh-picked strawberries and blackberries and baskets of peaches and how many christmas trees we've lovingly selected and then crossed our fingers and strapped to the top of it

I thought about how many times we've hauled the kids back and forth to school in it, how many conversations we've had about classes and too much homework and good teachers and bad teachers and good test grades and bad test grades and shenanigans and projects and friends and enemies and bad days and good days 

I thought about the time I picked ava up from prom, how she had such a horrible time she burst into tears the minute she opened the car door, how my heart broke while she cried all the way home and poured her story out between sobs

I thought about the time I took her to the emergency room at 5:30 in the morning, how I gripped the steering wheel and prayed so hard for everything to be okay

I thought about how it was the very first car ava learned to drive, and how ezra will learn in a completely different, yet unknown, family car

I thought about how it held remnants of spilled ice cream cones and spilled coffee and cookie crumbs and collected rocks and bits and pieces of other collected things and loose change and candy wrappers and forgotten seashells and ketchup packets and bobby pins and travel games and old receipts and broken umbrellas and flashlights that still need batteries and at least a dozen stickers from trips to the high museum of art and sand, no matter how many times we cleaned it out, sand

and I thought about how many arguments it had seen, how many times I'd cried in it and laughed in it and sang really loud in it and softly to myself in it, and fell asleep on the way home in it and read books in it and got lost, got stuck in traffic in it, and how many times I'd crammed my feet up on its dash, how many times I told ward he was driving too fast or that he'd taken the wrong way and how many times we kissed in it, pulled over for a mcdonalds coke in it or for shakes and tater tots from sonic or how many times we pulled over for something that looked interesting, or how many times I made ward pull over so I could cut some wildflowers growing alongside the highway, how many times I'd taken photographs of the sunset in my rearview mirror, or of myself in the rearview mirror, how many times we'd rolled the windows down to let our hands ride the wind while we drove to wherever it was we were going

I mean, I know. it's just a car. but, still. my heart seized up a little. 

333/365

lists I can't bring myself to make:

motherhood wins
motherhood fails
things about grief

325/365

things I remember about the day I made this polaroid:

needed a photograph of ava for a piece I was writing for uppercase about lockets
shot in the backyard in late afternoon
blew through a whole pack of expired 600 in minutes
and I remember how good that felt
and I remember how good the air felt too-- clear and true
and I remember thinking, in just one month she will graduate
and I remember thinking, in just one month everything will change

(april 24, 2018)

(monday's polaroid for fall polaroid week happening over on ye olde flickr)

249/365

lists I am unable to make right now:

ordinary moments for remembering, the morning we left to take ava to college
all the things I felt, all of them 
any list, any list at all

I am outside my own body, hovering somewhere between heartbreak and elation. motherhood is contradictory at every turn, the map always changing, always bending, curving towards the unknown.

248/365

lists I am unable to make right now:

ordinary moments for remembering, on the night before ava leaves for college 
questions I'd like to ask my mom about this particular part of motherhood
times I cried about it this week 

three years ago

march, three years ago (march, a lifetime ago)

this one

we were so tired that night. so tired. we'd been on the road for a week, spent the larger part of the day driving the streets of palm springs. the children were through with the architecture, done with adult conversations about easter egg color and mid-century everything. we made our way back to the motel 6, back to the swimming pool and the serious, serious business of cheap pizza and cable television. but the light turned gold, real actual liquid gold and just five short blocks from the motel, we remembered: the windmills. miraculously, the children did not put up much of a fight. large slushees had been consumed, extreme heat experienced, no one had much fight left. the day was still a fairly malleable thing. windmills, we said. yes, we said. let's go.

ten minutes later, we found ourselves out on the edge of town, parked as close to the windmills as we could manage. and we stood, in what can only be defined as a sort of desert wasteland. sandwiched between a stretch of highway and a chunk of train track, we stood. canyons to the right of us, windmills to the left, a sea of windmills, an endless, impossible chorus. below us, a desert floor so littered with trash we could not help but look down. palm tree pieces, glittery glassy bits, flattened cans from decades past. a toilet, a few tires, a flannel shirt, an old brocade couch. the deeper we wandered, the stranger the items. the stranger the items, the more excited we became. listen, the children were excited about the trash. you know what? so were the adults. collections were started, possibilities discussed. could we fit the ginormous tree branch aka wizard staff in the car? surely that palm tree chunk would make an excellent planter. hey, were those ray ban glasses? because we should not leave without those ray ban glasses. I don't know how long we went on like this. hours, it seemed.

the wind picked up, the last of the honeyed light fell over ava and I shot what would be my most treasured photograph of the year. as if on cue, a train rumbled past and the wind from it snatched that polaroid right out of my hands. we ran for it, all four of us, scrambled like animals to catch it before it completely disappeared. the same wind whipped hair into my eyes, sand into my mouth, picked up the edges of my skirt, flipped it over my head again and again. I should have been miserable, I should have been frantic. instead, I found myself laughing, half-running, half-stumbling in the direction of the polaroid. what i felt was joy. wild, delirious, unexpected joy. what was this strange, beautiful place we were lost in anyway? how did we end up here? how had it managed to completely charm us?

this. my most treasured moment of twenty fourteen, my most treasured photograph. 2014 holds a thousand different stories, a thousand different images but, this. the best of the best because I look at it and I remember and I think, yes. we said yes. in twenty fourteen, we said yes. when it was difficult to say yes, when we weren't sure about yes, when we were tired and didn't think we'd make it, we said yes. and certainly, it has been no walk in the park but the good stuff, the best stuff, happened because we said yes.

I don't know about twenty fifteen, I don't know how I feel about it yet. though there's bound to be some yes in there somewhere. I don't know about you but I'm rooting for the yes, for the running and the stumbling and the laughing in the general direction of yes, for unexpected desert wastelands and unexpected happiness and more honeyed light than I know what do with.