that's it
November 16 to 22
Sunday
We’re parked on the ferry, heading home. Humming night vessel cutting through black water, black sky.
I thumb through The Count of Monte Cristo, check the page number: four hundred. Moby must’ve warmed me up to long books. I tell Danny about Moby again, how it was a slug. “Slog?” he asks. No, slug. Slugs are slow, slugs are sticky. They’re always where I don’t want them to be.
Monday
The insurance office.
I’m standing in front of a small window with a plastic divider that has just enough room at the bottom to pass papers through. It’s empty in here, liminal: Gray carpet. White walls. Fluorescent lighting that lands too harshly on pilled tweed chairs. Behind the plastic are rows of desks, unoccupied mostly, and two people. The girl is nearer but exercises a great deal of eye control; her gaze doesn’t veer from the screen even once. The man, older, is forced by the woman’s strong will to rise from his seat.
He hands me papers, and I sign them, in the process realizing my signature is not really a signature at all but rather a long squiggly shape devoid of meaning. Probably for anyone to see the h they must already know there is an h. It’s like looking at clouds; only when you say bunny does your friend point to the sloping ears.
The man smiles, tells me I’ve written in the wrong spot, then slides the paper back. His stubby nail-chewed finger stabs twice at an empty box.
“My fault,” he says. “I should’ve shown you where.”
“Our fault,” I say. “I should’ve read what I was signing.” Solidarity. I look in his eyes to see if he knows about solidarity. It’s unclear.
“Sign here, date here, list your address here”—there is now an emphasis on here—then he hands me a check.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” he assures me.
It’s been one month since my car was totaled because the wind dropped a tree onto it while I was driving. That’s the important part, the part emotion latches on to, while I was driving.
Tuesday
I wake to the gray and the cold. I pull the covers to my chin, blue cotton armor. Protected, I fall back asleep.
Wednesday
An unexpected benefit of quitting Amazon is that I’ve started going into stores I once ignored—like the pet shop. The pet shop is in our “downtown,” which is really just one long street with old paint-flaked buildings, buildings that are on stilts, stilts that are pressed deep into the rippling cove. The shop smells like most do: a shock of potent earth that I miraculously forget about by the time I reach the cash register. I like this place; I regret not coming sooner. It has two cats, free roaming. Today one follows me, winds around my ankles, lets me run the back of my hand along its velvet fur. I linger a bit, enjoying the gift of having been chosen.
Thursday
I wish you could smell this tree, bright pine of November morning. I wish you could’ve been with me on my walk through the forest, where the damp was carved by cold—I felt it: wet edge of autumn cutting against my cheek, my nose
I wish you could’ve breathed deep—with me—the dull of moss, the sharp of sap,
could’ve traced with your finger
the silhouette of that rough-barked tree
Friday
Last week we were talking about what kind of new (used) car to get and Danny asked me to keep an open mind and I said my mind is not open and he said I can tell but just try to open it and I said I can’t do that right now stop pushing me. Thus began two days of crying. Everything I hadn’t felt, had been trying not to feel, came rushing from my eyes. The tears carried in them a resistance to instability. I’ve experienced so much change this year, change that I did not want, that has been painful, that has been scary. The decision of the car had become an unconscious ten-fingered clinging to choice, my choice.
Of course when I realized why I’d gotten so upset, the tears slowed and my mind opened. But even so, I noticed a lingering hollowness between my ribs. Having the decision of the car wasn’t enough; what would be enough?
This week I tried beauty: the cat, the moss, the words.
And I do have beauty between my ribs now, yes—but still there is loss.
Saturday
Wearing a men’s XL jacket I bought for eight dollars at the thrift shop, my wine-colored off-brand Sambas (they look more like bowling shoes), the gloves my mom knit me (one’s longer, the other’s wider), and my grandma’s bent rabbit-fur earmuffs, I go for a walk.
The path I like to take winds through the woods and ends up at the bluff’s edge, which overlooks the Sound and faces the snowcapped Olympics, then cuts back along a quaint wood-post fence abutted by blackberry bushes and lined with twisting wire. What I love most about this trail is that you get a little bit of everything: forest, beach, mountains, farmland.
When I first started going on walks, I’d listen to music or podcasts. Now I just think . . . and sometimes talk to myself out loud, as I do today, trying to give form to my emotions:
This morning we went to pick up the new (used) car, and I couldn’t tell if I was scared or excited. They settle similarly in my body: a tightening of the chest, a sinking pit in the stomach. When I saw the car, and realized I loved it, I knew it was excitement. When I drove it home, I knew it was fear.
Love, then fear. A pattern.
I think about my grandma. My stepdad. The house with the pond. The car. November, February, April, October. Eleven months of unexpected absence, of shock. And I’m having a difficult time accepting it, that we are not guaranteed a person or a thing’s continuity, that we are not guaranteed any kind of continuity, no matter how hard we hope, no matter how hard we love.
3:45, soon to be dark. The lowering sun and cloud cover turn the bluff a rich blue. I look to the trees, they are blue. I look to the mountains, they are blue.
A light wind rustles leaves.
Before, I decided that the wind was both a friend and an enemy, both affable and threatening. I don’t see it that way anymore. Now I see its truth: indifference. And that reassures me.
The wind is being wind.
The trees are being trees.
And I am being Hanna—walking, thinking, loving.
We are all existing the only way we know how.
Oh please please do this every week forever?
thank you for being hanna <3