Like a Ghost Into the Fog

When I was first spiraling down in my postpartum, grief-induced mental health crisis, I would scour the Internet for articles about Adam Duritz and Glen Phillips, and their individual battles with depression, anxiety, and whatever other demons they expelled beautifully enough to keep writing, and performing. To keep living and loving. It was inspiring to me, as a fan of both, and also someone lucky enough to have seen them perform live multiple times. There’s a grin that Glen Phillips once gave the crowd right before a show in Webster, MA and I happened to be sitting alone while waiting for my friends to get drinks and snacks, and I just know he grinned at me. It lit up the world. I guess I see myself in them, as a writer and a sensitive soul, although, of course, I’m not nearly as successful as they both are. They are worlds more successful than I am, but they are human, with soft cores and holes and fillers. Good days, bad days, weak days, strong days. I get inspired that they are both still creating and producing, and that they take time off.

Round here, we’re a month into the new school year, and went to our first Open House in three years. There was a middle school one last week or so, but we couldn’t get it together to go. And of course we could not, with our baby and our toddler; our busy work days and how the night’s chill comes down early these days. It’s hard to get it together to go, with well over two years of pandemic-induced social anxiety, and how it’s been like a time warp. I’ll see a friend who had a three-year-old in 2019 and I’ll expect him to be four by now, because I’ll forget about the hole that two years of canceled events have given us. It’s been a time warp and a black hole and it’s weird and unsettling, and it’s also beautiful and settling. Not everyone is touched so harshly by time, and people continue to thrive and teach and parent and love, with their soft cores and holes and fillers. All kinds of days, but they’re still creating and producing. They take time off.

Round here, I dig that, and I’ve been around people, even in great crowds (weddings, airports, planes, conventions, oh my), but not in the way I was at the Open House last night. I couldn’t walk two feet without seeing a familiar face, an old friend, a new friend, and a child who has grown three whole years, and not just the one year I had expected them to grow. It’s weird and unsettling, and beautiful and settling, to have had just this one last open house at this beloved school. And then, realize, nope, we’re doing this all again in a few years. I baby-wore Sawyer throughout the whole evening, and as it always is when I do so, people talk to him. They smile and coo and want to squeeze his cheeks, touch his feet, or poke his thighs. Usually I grant them that, because his thighs are like stress balls and though he often makes silly facial expressions, his grin can always light up the world. And that’s what we need in these weird, unsettling days.

Round here, Sawyer turned six months and Rider is turning two soon. I’m flabbergasted by their deliciousness, and overwhelmed, and I’m flabbergasted that people think it goes by fast. Surely we have found a way to bend time, looking at the clock as we wait for, yearn for, and also dread naptime. It’s the way I used to stay up until midnight every Thursday night, to ring in a new week of pregnancy. Sometimes it rains for five days straight, and sometimes reading a friend’s joking existential thought will still send me reeling for a few days. Or only for a few hours. Maybe just until the rain has stopped, and the persistent autumn birdsong is so loud that we search through the house sure a bird has flown in. Sometimes I realize that I heard that same birdsong in the dark of the night, and through the most torrential rain. It sounds happy, and unexpected. Maybe this bird didn’t expect to be here, this late in the game. And that’s ok. I hadn’t either.

Round here, the world will drive you batty if you let it. After I got so (mentally) sick, I started to hear the sadness in all of the words around me. They were probably always there, but I hadn’t noticed it, or if I had, it hadn’t gotten in. Even for a laugh, like one of the kids complaining about something, and Cassidy saying, “Life is pain” as a joke. Or people lamenting about short days and long years, or long days and short years, and we all seem bewildered by time passing. I am too, of course. Even though I know how to spin and stretch a rainy day into a web of experiences and time-standing-still moments. I really do take the time to poke his soft thighs, gently, like stress balls, and lock eyes with him for seconds at a time. He looks from one of my eyes to the other, both speeding up and slowing down. What is he looking for, and what is he finding?

Round here, it seems we have no choice but to find meaning in what’s around us, and delight in every specific detail and color. Punch buggies and birdsong; Radio Gods and 11:11 wishes. I find it hard not to think there’s some larger purpose and meaning, because even when it’s hard not to think the world is devoid of meaning, love is that unexplainable magic. And within us all, there’s a galaxy; a universe. Intertwining with meaning, and overlapping with journeys and pathways and openings. There is a fire that burns within us and around us. Earth magic. Divine magic. Childhood magic. Love magic. Surely we all yearn to know there’s something more out there.