Yesterday I found a whole new beach on the ever-moving shores of grief. I’m a long way out and the brusque edges of denial and bargaining and anger have mostly eroded down to sand that seldom hurts. I found acceptance a long time ago, but what I hadn’t felt yet was the lifting of the weight you carry when your children’s other parent dies. The weight of absence can have the gravity of a black hole, and you simply become inured to it because there is no other choice when you are raising humans who contain half of that loss.

For so long I have wanted to pour into my kids the truth of their father. Not the addict who gradually disappeared before our eyes lost in his own hell—but the joyous, boisterous, wickedly funny, incredibly spiritual and wise man who loved books so much sometimes he would tear a page out and eat it, smiling through the words, a sharp twinkle in his eye at my reaction. I wanted them to know the man who would show up at my door with a bucket of pink roses he picked from a stranger’s yard before dawn and pour them on my doorstep. I wanted them to know the David who would walk all night with me and point out the constellations and explain the math of the angles of the the dome of the inky indigo sky. I did everything I could to pour that reality of who their father was–not just to counteract the loss but to paint a fuller picture.

But the new shore I found was one where I was gently invited to rest, and where I was ever so softly told that that burden was no longer mine to bear. I wasn’t invited to set it down, it simply…ceased being mine. I will never be able to give to anyone else what David gave to me. It’s mine alone. What is left now is moving forward being who I am, confident with my whole heart that anyone who knows me will know a part of him.

I can’t hold him. I can’t carry him. I can’t give more of him than I have to the kids. I cannot contain who he was, and the beautiful truth is that I no longer have to try. He’s gone, and he is everywhere for us. My heart is at peace.

It’s just after 4:30 in the morning and I have been up for half an hour. I woke up this morning because we are having our first real Colorado cold snap and my dream mind imagined the sound of running water from my half-conscious state. I guess I’m still not over waking up in 2009 to my entire side yard flooded with a broken outside pipe just prior to losing Big House. Old trauma dies hard. Then once I’m awake, that’s kinda it. I’ve never really been a good sleeper and the combination of peri-menopause and being a suddenly practicing lawyer—well, let’s just say it’s a toss-up which is harder.

So I’m sitting in the deep winter dark, thick socks on my feet that are tucked under me at my thrift store desk, comforted by the glorious background sound of a heater quietly and steadfastly warming my house.

It’s been eight weeks since I started my new life. It’s been hard. They warned me in my interview that the first month or two is brutal, and that wasn’t hyperbole. The sheer volume of information intake and processing and remembering new systems and abbreviations and local rules, of meeting people and remembering names and trying to step into shoes left by someone colleagues really enjoyed and not having the answers to questions they would have readily known…it’s a lot for anyone. As a woman who spent 22 years at home who is the age of most of my colleagues’ mother, and it’s an additional layer of removal and loneliness. Much like in law school, I am the age-contemporary of our bosses, but experientially I am as green as the newest intern. People make assumptions about me and that’s not really fun in either direction—either that I must have more experience than I do, or that I am such an anomaly they don’t know what to do with me.

I work with a lot of good people. Much like law school again, I am slowly forging connections and making low-key friendships. Everyone is just so overloaded with their own cases and work there isn’t a lot of time for much else. And going out after work for a drink is still something that doesn’t work for me, I won’t lie and say it didn’t feel good to finally be invited. I’m lucky that I work at a place that while the caseload is heavy, the senior attorneys make a lot of room for us to learn and making mistakes—in cases where the stakes are lower—is considered part of making us better attorneys and doing our jobs. Of course the newest attorneys are not handling bigger more complicated cases, but the higher-ups have no issue with us handing things like minor motions and routine hearings.

There is no such thing as a 40-hour week. Knowing that in theory and knowing it after two decades of my time being relatively my own to structure is rough. The kids have commented on the “unfairness” of my working from home in the evenings or on the weekends, but this is part of the gig, whether I like it or not. I hear it gets better after the first year, so here’s hoping. Nothing that I am experiencing is a surprise to any lawyer.

It continues to surprise me that every two weeks money shows up in my bank account. After years of making it by stretching royalty checks and random writing gigs that didn’t pay a lot and didn’t pay steadily, its surreal to have an actual income. It’s not a big fancy salary, but it’s more than I personally have earned in my life, and it’s kind of fun after years of poverty to allow the kids to get a new Lego set or pick up a Taylor Swift vinyl for Kelsey and not have to worry about that eating into our grocery budget. Its also a privilege to finally be able to pay it forward for all the people who told me one day I would—I haven’t forgotten and I never will.

We had a low-key holiday. Kelsey was home for a week from college, and we are slowly finding our groove in Colorado. Still don’t have any friends, but maybe once winter is over we can start to get more involved in our community that will change. It’s so hard to make friends as adults—most of my people live in my computer and are hundreds (or even thousands) of miles away in the geographic world. I feel like we’re fledgelings still, but every day I am so, so, so grateful that we are here.

Jeff, Bean, and Abby are doing good. They’re finding their own directions, and all three are planning on going back to school in the fall and getting their own selves rolling. Jon is Jon, steady and stable and always my rock—but a happier rock now that he’s a Colorado Man. So say we all.

I found out I was going to be a mother on New Years Eve 2000/2001. David and I stood in the cramped hallway of our tiny flat-top California post-war bungalow looking at the two pale pink lines on the test, and we knew our lives were about to change. We’d decided before Jeff was even a blip in my belly that when we had a family that I would stay home. It’s what I always wanted—to be home with my babies. We took the expected financial hit and adjusting to one income is what led to us leaving California for Washington state. I have never regretted it. No, not even with everything that happened years later.

It has been a privilege to be home with my children all these years, and I recognize it as such. Its near miraculous that with all we went though, even my years as a single mom, I managed to piece together income by working from home as a seamstress, a quilter, an artists, a designer, a writer, an editor—all work I managed with my children swirling around my feet. Sometimes they were beating each other with pool noodles while I met a deadline, but I met that deadline and they survived. I am conflicted looking back, because I know in some ways I paid dearly for giving up my outside career (and was consequently carried by my community), but I also know that given what my children went through with the prolonged loss of their father, my being there was a life raft for their own grief, turmoil, and longterm emotional wellbeing.

My home has been my identity. I am good at home. It’s a point of pride for me that when family, friends and acquaintances enter my home they feel comfortable, welcome, and safe. There is nothing static or rote about the home I have created, and it hasn’t mattered at all which structure we are inhabiting—the home comes with us, is us, is me. It’s made me incredibly happy to be able to focus on crafting and creating such spaces. I have found delight and satisfaction in making beauty out of meager means, and even when stability finally arrived and the means were no longer so spare, I still couldn’t (and probably never will) justify being casual with resources. From necessity came a second-hand home that is personal, unique, eclectic, welcoming, and beautiful. I wouldn’t do a single thing over.

As I get older I realize what an immense privilege that is: I wouldn’t do a single thing over. I know for folks who went through it with me that might sound unhinged, but what I have learned is that I can say “I am glad I did…” and I have almost no places demanding “I wish I had…” I am glad I married David. I am glad I stayed home with my babies. I am glad I chose mercy over punishment when my marriage failed. I am glad I went to school as a single mom. I am glad David and I found our friendship and bond again before we lost him. I am glad I took a wild chance on Jon. I am glad I was brave enough to try law school. I am glad I got three extra years at home with my kids that I never expected. I am glad that when we saw an opening to go home to the west, we were brave and we jumped all together. I am glad we are home.

I have spent the last several years in intense preparation for a life younger me never dreamed of. I always knew I wanted to have babies and make a home. What I never considered was what came next. There are only so many times and ways you can rearrange a house, and only so many thrifted antiques you can refinish and refine until you are satisfied. My babies are grown and have become lovely young humans who no longer need me to referee pool noodle fights (they still have them, they’re just all bigger than me now). I admire and enjoy my children, they are capable and kind and they are finding their own new lives—and now I will find mine.

The first step of letting go was deciding to go to law school. Then I graduated. Then I passed the bar. Then I was admitted to practice law. Then I packed up our home and we moved 2000 miles, and then we set up a new happy home. And then I found a job.

I have accepted a full-time professional position outside the home.

Yesterday I swore into the Colorado bar. Today I received my license. I sat looking at the screens with my job offer and my bar license and I knew my life was about to change. In a few short days, I start a new life as an attorney. After 22 years at home, I will be letting go. No one will know me as mom, as a thrifting goddess, nor as a fine cook. A tiny part of me is grieving letting go of such familiar comfort and surety, but I also recognize that I don’t know exactly how this will all shake out and no matter what the externalities look like, all of me comes with me wherever I go. All of me will benefit and inform what kind of attorney I will be, what kind of story I can tell in a brief or motion, and what kind of advocacy I will carry with me into the courtroom.

I have to have faith that this will be another thing for which I can someday say “I am glad I did…”

The other day, Jeff and I had to run to Denver to pick up some bookcases, and as we drove, we both kept laughing in random outbursts. The beauty of our new state is ridiculous— to the west are layers and layers of literal towering mountains in strata of lavender and purple and deep blue, suddenly freshly dusted with snow. To the south are sunset-colored mesas and rock formations for which I don’t yet know the names, and looking east are waves of golden prairie. There are trees everywhere that vary in color and textures, peppered in the landscape with boulders and smooth river rocks, steeply cut creeks and gentle deposit banks, sage and lavender and wild sunflowers everywhere—all playing out against the deep blue skies that bring towering thunderheads from the prairie and breathtaking sunsets over the peaks of the Rockies.

I cannot believe this place existed and I could have been here instead of barely hanging on where I didn’t belong. I am not casting shade on wherever home is for you; this experience has surprised me in how deep that drive for home actually is. Trying to make somewhere that doesn’t fit work may sometimes be necessary, but there is nothing that can replace where you belong. For me, I belong to the west. So does my family.

One of the main reasons we finally moved was my health. I mean, my mental health was trashed like everyone after 3 years of a pandemic that isn’t really over no matter how much we want it to be, but my physical health had been declining—they’re tied together of course, but this was rather precipitous. I have asthma and a plethora of allergies. Eleven years in the verdant, humid, mold-filled, swampy lowlands of northern Virginia and my pulmonary function had decreased alarmingly. I needed a nebulizer 4 times a day, was taking inhaled steroids, and we were discussing therapeutic prednisone to try and prevent further pulmonary loss. It was bad. My pulmonologist is who first suggested moving, “If it’s at all possible, I highly recommend somewhere higher and drier.” My allergist co-signed. Like, literally, they wrote a medical letter.

And that’s why we finally pulled stakes.

We’ve been here a month and a half. Everyone else is mostly acclimated, but its no joke going from sea level to 6000+ feet. It’s taking me a little longer—I have to take my time doing things, but it’s easier every day. The most striking thing? Even with the altitude adjustment, I noticed I needed less medicine almost immediately. Over the last month, I have gradually needed fewer treatments, and as of today I am at zero. It’s been six days with no albuterol or steroids.

I think I shared how the first night we arrived Bean took the dog for a walk and wondered aloud “I can’t believe we get to live here.” And yeah, I think that every day. I feel like a crumpled balloon that is slowly, slowly unfurling and coming back to fullness. I had forgotten what it felt like to be happy to get up in the morning, to sit outside in the backyard and look up at the starry bands of the Milky Way, to sleep with the windows open and feel the air chill after a rain. I can breathe again.

On to other things:

Bean turned 20 yesterday. Yes. You read that right. Tiny Bean, wild Bean, creative Bean. Is 20 years old. I can’t quite wrap my brain around that being true, nevertheless, here we are. His story isn’t mine to tell (it never was, however the kids seem to generally approve of how I told our stories over the years, and I am grateful in hindsight that I managed to thread that needle). He disapproves of birthday singing, and he doesn’t like cake, so we adjusted accordingly. We had breakfast for dinner, and he seemed quite pleased. There was no singing, but he was happy.

The house is mostly unpacked. There are things I want to do (mostly involving paint colors) but it just isn’t pressing at this time, and I can live with it for now. One of the things that I have to fix is the kitchen sink. As a cook I am not a fan of a divided sink. I had the perfect sink in our old house, and while I know I’m not going to score another $600 composite single basin sink at a junk barn here in Colorado, I have to find something. I’d like to swap out the counters for butcher block, but otherwise the rest of the kitchen is mostly fine. I’m getting used to the switch from gas to electric and its legions better for baking, but I still don’t have the hang of it for regular cooking. It is nice that my pan handles don’t get hot now! Another plus for electric? The air quality in my kitchen stays under about 600 ppm no matter how much cooking I do—and that’s very good for my lungs.

My next task, now that the house is unpacked and functioning, is to find a legal job. Before we left, I had two offers in the DMV that I very much wanted but couldn’t accept. Now I am starting from scratch here. There aren’t as many federal jobs or policy jobs, having left the belly of the beast—but its a trade I would do a million times over. There are state and local organizations doing very good work here in Colorado and hopefully I can find one that will hire me. I’m trying to stay limber by keeping up on developing issues, reading briefs, and talking daily with friends in the profession. I’m ready.

I keep waiting to feel like I am ready to write about the last month. In ten minutes I’ve found a dozen reasons to get up from my chair—the curtain is crooked, that lampshade needs to be turned, oh look at how dry my cuticles are, dammit the cat knocked over my trash basket… All of which I recognize are diversionary tactics.

I’m torn. I recognize being able to relocate to a place we wanted to live and have the resources to do so is immense privilege. It is also true that doing so stretched and pulled our resources as a family beyond what we imagined. And another also—it’s also true that we love our new home, even though the move was so hard.

When we started this process my brother (who relocated last year) told me to double whatever I imaged we would need—whether that was boxes, time, resources, energy, patience—double it. He was right. I’m going to just skip over the weeks-long nightmare that is cleaning, packing, and staging a house while still living in it with a family of five and five pets. In Northern Virginia. In a hot, wet July. We accepted a good offer on our house in Virginia the first weekend it was listed. We had an excellent realtor in Colorado and found a house we liked a lot, and they accepted our offer. There is that sketchy part where you have to function on a wing and a prayer while you’ve sold your current home but do not yet own your new home; that’s where most of the stress lives.

We had a gap between closings, where the new owners took possession of the Virginia house but our Colorado house didn’t close for several days. We decided to thread the needle and use those days to drive across the country. I hope the stress is visible between the lines. Wing and prayer, off into the wild blue yonder— in three cars, with three teenagers, and hauling five pets.

The kids and I left ahead of Jon. The boys drove our Tahoe with all three dogs, and Abby and I were in a rental with the cats and all our luggage. I was most worried about Tiberius who had never really traveled. Getting a 200 pound senior dog with arthritic knees and cataracts in and out of the car multiple times a day was something we prepped and planned for, but the anxiety was high. We padded the back of the with egg-crates and his bed, and we put Dingus and Nala in the backseats with a special dog platform. We did a couple of dry runs while we were showing the house (it rained the entire time it was listed). It was stressful and hot and sweaty, but it worked.

The dry runs were also where we realized the cats did better together in one large crate instead of each in their own. I can tolerate a fair amount but a howling cat for 3 days across the country in August was too much. The vet gave us some gentle sedatives that also helped everyone stay calm. The sedatives were for the cats, if that wasn’t clear.

Jon waved us out at 9 am that morning, while he stayed to managed the moving truck which was due to arrive at 10. His plan was to get the house loaded, vacuum and do a quick clean, and then follow and catch up to us.

This is the part I can’t really manage to detail. Nothing went right that day, other than we were all safe at the end of it. The movers didn’t show up, a broker tried to defraud us, we had to find new emergency movers or a storage unit and help to move our stuff with only hours before the new owners took possession (and the cash to pay them), the kids and animals and I were on the road already and somewhere in West Virginia (which you leave and enter THREE times on the route we were on!). My parents in California were trying to help Jon trouble-shoot solutions since I was driving and I couldn’t do much with all the animals except continue on—which is what he wanted me to do.

Remember my brother saying to plan for everything to be twice what we planned? Yeah. That hurt. Anyway, Jon got out of the house around 10 pm, with all of our belongings on an unmarked semi he found and hired that afternoon, and then he hit the road to try and find us—now 13 hours ahead of him.

Meanwhile, the kids and I pulled into a hotel somewhere in Ohio we’d booked because it promised they were pet-friendly. Traveling with five pets, folks, whew… Now I didn’t expect posh lodgings with places that would let us bring our English Mastiff in, but I mean, I don’t think a lock that latches is asking too much, is it? We unloaded everyone and I tried to make the best of 2 very shady rooms that you had to enter from a back alley. I called Jon (who was definitely eyeball deep in his own issues) and said I didn’t think I could stay there. It reeked of weed and both doors had issues with their locks. Abby was near tears, and the dogs were skittish. Everyone back in the cars.

We left. I do not regret leaving that place. I figured we could just drive until we found something else. Multiple hotels advertise being pet friendly, but be very wary–for some “pets” means only under 20 pounds, for others its a steep deposit. Do you know who doesn’t care? Motel 6. But they are all independently owned and operated, so things vary widely by location.

I tried hotels at each exit on the interstate. Red Roof only allowed one pet per room. La Quinta had a size limit plus a deposit—which I would have happily paid but I cannot sneak Tiberius in anywhere. So we just kept driving. It became clear that Motel 6 was the best bet. No size limits, no deposit. So each time we’d see a sign, we’d pull off.

One had external entrances and the only rooms available were upstairs and Tiberius cannot manage concrete stairs. One had a single room. The next one had outside entrances and a ground floor room, but outside of each room were men on lawn chairs and whooooooboy the vibe there was so bad that Jeff got out of the Tahoe with a baseball bat to go look for me when I was inside too long. The next only had a room around back, and there was an overflowing dumpster with about 20 raccoons going to town. I might have been able to handle that, but the yellow caution tape over the stairs and multiple rooms was too scary. Back in the cars and on we go.

We still had no idea where Jon was.

Just over the Ohio border into Indiana there was another Motel 6. I pulled off. It was almost midnight. I went in the lobby (everyone was directed to wait in the car until I gave a yes or no at each stop) and it was clean, and the woman was kind, and there were no raccoons or dealers, they had two rooms on the ground floor, and it was no problem that I was traveling with 3 teenagers and 5 pets—nor that my dog was 200 pounds. I started to cry.

Jon called from one of the three West Virginias and said he could go no further. He’d been so frustrated that he couldn’t help us, but he was going to get a room in WV and sleep a few hours then try and catch us the next day.

We hit the road in the morning, intending to stop somewhere in Missouri that night, hopefully with Jon finally with us. We cruised through Indiana—pleasantly surprised at all the solar fields and wind turbines—and then through Illinois. We were making good time and the animals were doing fine. Jon was somewhere in Ohio. We hit the Missouri state line, and folks…what is up with Missouri?? It got hotter, more humid, dirtier, and uglier, the roads were terrible and traffic was horrendous. I get that roadwork has to happen in the summer, but that’s true everywhere—Missouri was just really difficult and seemed very poorly managed. I’m sure there are parts that are probably nice, but those parts are not along the interstate. The entire state was peppered with nothing but billboards for exotic dancers, or bible quotes about going to hell. That’s it. Just those two things. It was so weird. We stopped at a rest stop and even the rest stop had posts about going to hell and strippers. What a strange place.

We kept going.

I was looking for a Motel 6 and before we knew it, we were in Kansas. I don’t know what I was expecting but Kansas was a gorgeous breath of fresh green air after Missouri. No billboards. So green. Traffic circles and a clean expressway. Kansas definitely won some points and we quickly found a Motel 6. It wasn’t quite as clean as the one in Indiana, but it was fine and the desk clerk was kind and welcoming to my dogs and kids. We got two ground floor rooms and some food and settled down. Around midnight Jon finally caught up with us. Two days down.

The next day we caravanned across Kansas and into Colorado.

Everyone knows that Colorado is beautiful, but I wasn’t quite prepared. We drove by the new house that wasn’t ours yet and I saw it for the first time. Our neighborhood has parks and walking trails everywhere—within a minute of the house we found a park where we could let everyone out and have some dinner. We all marveled at the mountains and the clear gorgeous views. Then we tried to find a hotel. We had 3 days until the house closed and the moving truck was supposed to arrive.

I’m going to glance over this part too—suffice it to say that there was big event at the Air Force Academy we didn’t know about and there were no hotels to be had. We tried FIFTEEN different places. There were stress tears. There was frustration and fear and exhaustion. There were parking lot discussions about sleeping in shifts if we could find even ONE room, and someone rotating through staying with the animals. It was not good.

At 11 pm in desperation I texted our realtor to see if she knew anyone with an Air BnB that maybe we could rent. She told us just to come to her house and we could have the basement. I had never met this woman, she didn’t know us beyond showing Jon a dozen houses on his weekend trip out, and she invited us in the middle of the night with all our stuff and animals to come stay with her.

The next morning she fixed us a huge breakfast. I honestly still don’t know how to thank her.

After breakfast Jon managed to find us a Marriott that was happy to have us and all of our animals for the next three days while we waited on our house and stuff. When I say that we cocooned in those two rooms, I mean it. They were clean and comfortable and they welcomed Tiberius and all of us with him. We got some groceries and ate non-fast food and basically decompressed while we waited.

By some order of undeserved miracles, we signed for the new house at 9 am, and the unmarked moving truck arrived at noon. I went back to the hotel to get the kids and the animals and all our traveling stuff. We loaded up and—the Tahoe wouldn’t start. And do you know what? Bean went in the hotel and asked for jumper cables and we got it started ourselves!

And then we went home.

We’re still unpacking, but after three weeks in Colorado I feel more at home than I did after 11 years in Virginia. No shade to any particular place but more of a testament that we all have places where we belong, where our heart is at ease, and we breathe easier. And having that place makes life better. Our first night here, Bean walked to the top of a hill nearby with the dogs, and gazed at the views, over a beautiful park, with the sun setting behind the Rockies and he said “I can’t believe we get to live here…” And same, buddy. Same.

I’m packing up my house. In the time I’ve been keeping this journal of our lives, I’ve written through multiple moves—some happy, some devastating. This one feels different again. Today I packed up my office. This has been a holy space for me, a place where I locked myself in to write The Burning Point in five weeks one winter, where I completed 72 units of law school during a world-wide pandemic, where my kids come to flop in the tattered green chair (that is so comfortable) and tell me what’s on their mind. I was pulling the tacks out of my cork board and putting all the pictures in a box while the Indigo Girls sang Closer to Fine and I just sat down on the carpet in a puddle of tears. Look at these babies. Look at these beautiful faces and theses seasons of life that have come and gone and what good things these people I love have helped me create. So many moments of joy and laughter and happiness in this house. Of course there have been punctuations of sorrow and grief and anger too, but the old adage is true: you remember the good. This beautiful house has been the most stable and loving home of my entire remembered life.

While the house has been good to me, Virginia and I are not made for each other. I tried. I really, really did. So did the six people who live here (all of whom were born in the west). I have concluded, after this extensive experiment, that there is a substantive difference between the east and west of the United States. That conclusion further leads to the hard truth that I am western to the marrow of my bones. In my eleven years on the east coast, I have been enchanted by New York City, by Broadway, by losing Bean in Central Park, by seeing fantastic shows. I have loved having the treasures of the Smithsonians at my pleasure any day of any week. I’ve hung out at Monticello and Mount Vernon, and felt uncomfortable at both. I have been surprised at the warm ocean in the Carolinas. I have seen Williamsburg and Gettysburg and been informed at the Battle of Bull Run that it’s actually the Battle of Manassas because only Yankees call it Bull Run and this is Virginia ma’am.

Turns out I’m not only western, but I am a Yankee too.

I won’t weigh in on the South, because I have been informed that the part of Virginia in which I live is not actually the South. It’s a peculiar place. For the folks who love it here, I am so genuinely happy for you! You may have your charming coastal flats, your curling ivy and ancient magnolias, your pervasive green with a heavy white sky, and your gentle ocean with shallow waves and a wide slope into the sea. You can also have your hot fog and mosquitos.

It was hard to make friends here—at least for me. Western openness and friendliness seems to be viewed with wariness. Never in my life did I have a hard time making friends. People in my neighborhood kept to themselves and were not open to more than a polite driveway greeting. I didn’t know what to do with that. Connections and community seem to be founded on family connections, what school you went to, who you know, where your spouse works, what summer camp your kids go to (that was a new thing—you send your kids away all summer?) than on being neighborly with folks. It really is different. Not bad, but different. And it never felt like home.

So I am leaving a very good, very lovely, very charming, and very happy house. We are taking all the kids and all the animals with us, and we are heading to the Rockies. Jon hasn’t been able to stop smiling since we received word that his job will allow the change in locale. We hope that whoever will live in our house next finds it as loving and happy as we did, and I hope they have family nearby that will add laughter and joy to the walls and allow them to feel truly at home. It was a wonderful house for us. But it was not home, and we are ready to go home.

For years I have wished I had something David wrote before he died. Today I had a powerful reminder that that wish unfulfilled is a mercy.

It’s easy to forget in the fading distance of years what a monster addiction is and what it does to the person you love. You’d think I would never be able to forget, but time does in fact dull the edges. Addiction takes over the mind and body of the person you love—and while the face and shapes are still there as you desperately try to reach them, Addiction is has taken the wheel and is in the driver’s seat. That person will say and do terrible things with the information they have access to in the mind of your loved one—both to you, and to themselves. It’s monstrous.

I was fortunate that in between relapses, when I would tell David about the things he said and did—when I still had hope that maybe this time recovery would stick—he was suitably horrified and ashamed. He had no memory of his words or his actions, and did his best to make amends. But there are things seared into my memories that I will never be able to forget. However briefly though, I was able to see him again. That cycle, as awful as it was, allowed me to see that active Addiction and David were not the same.

I don’t write that to make excuses. The addict is responsible for the harm they cause; I write to try and remind myself of the distinction. The Addict did things David would never do. The addict said things David would never say, and things he did not feel, think, or believe. The Addict was a monster who stole every good thing and a million possible futures not just from me and our children, but ultimately from David.

If he’d written something as he was finally driven off the cliff, it would not have been from David. For the first time, I am grateful for the silent absence tonight.

Peace and mercy to anyone who is familiar with this path. May time soften the edges of your grief, too.

And on I read
Until the day was gone
And I sat in regret
Of all the things I’ve done
For all that I’ve blessed
And all that I’ve wronged
In dreams until my death
I will wander on

In your house, I long to be
Room by room, patiently
I’ll wait for you there
Like a stone
I’ll wait for you there
Alone

I once read somewhere that when a person loses a limb they may feel phantom pains and sensations where that part of themselves once was. My heart finds it poetic and achey that the mind continues to carve space and precious dendrites and electricity for something that is missing, gone, an echo.

Last week I came across a little query meme asking if you had ten minutes with someone you lost, who would you choose— my breath didn’t even catch before the answer spilled into my hands, but before I could even catch his name, I knew would give every last second of that time to my children. Ten minutes. Ten. Precious. Minutes.

As the years roll on, the time he’s been gone grows longer; our children have known more life without him than they knew with him, and they were barely old enough to know him at all. That truth will stretch on infinitely. They barely remember him except for the stories I tell and the finite pictures (where there will never be more). I talk of him often and easily, but it’s not enough. It was never going to be enough.

And I feel that phantom pain in the part of me he took with him. Parts of me are missing and will be missing forever—there is no getting them back, no magic word or prayer or modern marvel that will restore what is gone. They are parts that no one can see or feel, and that when you look at me don’t even exist anymore. But those missing pieces do exist. They exist as real as anything that ever was in my mind, where precious dendrites and electricity perform a magical and painful alchemy of what once was.

If we’re all stories in the end who is to say what’s real anyway.

Over the last three and a half years, I’ve written only a scant two dozen pieces documenting this life. Right now I’m comfortable in my office, cold dark outside the window, warm light bathing my desk. Brandi Carlile is singing to me about saints and sinners and wild horses and she’s always perfect. She also made me think about the gaps in my story, and why I started writing so long ago. Maybe the gaps speak for themselves but if I were reading my grandma’s story, I’d want to know more.

The last few years have deconstructed me in ways that I never could have anticipated or wished for, and yet like most things unwished for, the sharpness also often bears gifts. There have been relationships that have deepened and nurtured, and there have been others that I have quietly let go and others that remain unresolved. There have been surprising, unlikely friendships I never expected, and there have been missed opportunities beyond my control that I won’t be able to recover, and potential experiences I am forced to watch fade with melancholy sadness decorating the edges of my field.

Somehow I picked the worst and hardest possible time and way to go back to school as a returning student, on top of picking one of the harder professions to join. I did it. There are lovely framed papers up and down my office walls, peppered in latin and gold calligraphy. They all say I did something, that I am learned, and licensed, and honored, and that I may represent others before tribunals and courts. It came at great cost.

I’m not meaning to be oblique or cagey. We’re just not all the way through to whatever the new normal is going to be. Along with looking for a good permanent home for my legal work, I am still schooling several of my kids as well as trying to shepherd them through the last few years of their teens and into adulthood and independence. When I write, I am aware now that their stories are not mine to tell—if they ever were. We’ve had talks all along about the things I share in my writing, and they’ve always had a say, but how much can a child actually consent? I hope I threaded the needle and never exploited them in sharing, but it ultimately is up to them to decide if I did or not.

David always told me just to write and not worry about other people, but I don’t think that applies to our kids. But it does mean that now that they are young adults my own transition continues. I have gone from young expectant mother, to harried mom of many littles, to mom of a kid with a disability, to a woman processing divorce and the loss of a spouse, to single welfare mom, to college student mom, to a woman remarried and finding new joy, to step mom, to mom of teens, to law student, to pandemic homeschooling mom, to bar-passing attorney. And I’ve written through it all. Who am I now? I don’t quite know.

I have a second career queued-up and I know what I want to do. But in 2023, I am not the same person I was in 2019 when I started school. There were so many things I was certain of back then, and now I am certain of very little. I suppose every law student goes through a period of disillusionment and cynicism. I understand better why old lawyers tell young people not to go to law school. I would do it again anyway. But I understand.

One of the benefits of this extended time at least a degree removed from the world has been the realization that I deeply love and enjoy the company of my husband and children. I never would have chosen this experience from a grab-bag of choices, but the secret gift held on the spiked cost has been time together. Uninterrupted time. We’ve all had responsibilities for sure—and school took a lot of my time. But there were no carpools, no conflicting schedules, no one had to be anywhere but home. There was time to learn to cook together, to watch shows together, to really listen to and appreciate each other, to have unexpectedly deep conversations around the kitchen counter at 3 a.m. because no one had to be to school in the morning. And we realized that we all deeply like each other. I personally realized that nothing came close to the importance of the people I love.

I am learning—sometimes gracefully, sometimes as an abject mess—to navigate the new ways my family needs me. Jon and I are shifting from the intensity of parenting teen children to letting go and being there in meaningful ways for children transitioning to adulthood. They still need us, but in different ways—they also need us to step back, to watch as they practice the skills and values we hopefully taught them. And Jon and I are able to turn to each other more, as the intensity of parenting lessens. We didn’t have the early years of a marriage without kids, and jumped in together midstream. I don’t know what I expected but its been better than I could have hoped. Jon, just by being who he is, has provided us with a stability and safety we never knew. That in turn has allowed us to process our own experiences and sorrow in healthier ways, which then allowed us to be better people. Jon has likewise been transformed, but his story is not for me to tell. He has his own blog, but it remains his secret.

We also have the patina of the pandemic over our entire lives, and we aren’t done yet, nor have we figured out (and I mean “we” in the collective, as a country and the world) how to process it. Our family has largely returned to basic activities, but as a family we still mask and don’t eat inside restaurants. While Jon’s been to visit his family in Utah a few times and he travels occasionally for work, I haven’t seen my west coast family since before law school.

Oddly, my relationship with my brothers and my mom is better than its been in memory. It’s amazing what therapy can do. Who knew? Historically I seldom write about my mom, and there were/are good reasons for that. It’s been a long and difficult relationship but there have been major (major) breakthroughs and accountability that have allowed me to heal long neglected sorrows. I think this can also be credited to the forced slow down and having time to look at ourselves and what we value a little closer over the pandemic. I hear Lizzo in my head, it’s about damn time.

One of the things I am looking forward to as we return to life is traveling again. It’s part of why I haven’t been in a rush to find just any job—I am looking for one that allows me to have a work/life balance, and that’s not something that’s easy to do as a new lawyer. But I am also not 26. I have a family of six, and working grinding billable hours isn’t something I want to pursue. There is a cost in that choice—public service jobs never pay as well as private practice, but that’s always been a known. I also am not the primary earner, which is a massive privilege I fully recognize and which allows me to look for work I want.

Another iron in the fire is a collective familial desire to return west. Both of our families are anchored in the west, and all of our children were born in the west—as well as both of us. And I still have David with me; I would like to find a resting place for him. The west is home for all of us. For now we are tied to D.C. and we don’t know when that will change, but we have the door open and are starting to look at what may come our way. Being closer to family—especially as both of our parents really start to age—is becoming more and more important. I feel the arc of time more than I used to.

I also want the kids to have opportunities to put down their own roots, to find their own paths and people, and start to craft their own lives and adult educations and aspirations. Everything was paused three years ago, and while we’ve been quiet and slow about it, we have been gently working towards some longterm goals for each of them. I am so proud of all of them and the work they’ve put in, each completely unique in how and what they have focused on and contributed.

In the meantime, I cruise between open job-listing tabs and Zillow, looking for quirky towns with old houses and imagining what spring may bring.

Recently I lucked upon a 1903 Craftsman library table at a local secondhand store. It was battered and the table top was damaged but a quick once-over revealed that it was otherwise solid quatersawn oak with mortise and tenon joinery instead of nails or screws. I gleefully paid the $60 price tag without haggling and had Jeff help me shove it in the back of the car.

I snapped a photo of it and texted it to my mom, who spent my youth refinishing antique furniture and whom I knew would appreciate my find. She coached me through the handwork necessary to bring back a 120 year old piece of furniture while honoring its integrity. I didn’t want to modernize it, but rather to gently bring back its beauty to what it would have been. (I admit I am someone who usually (not always) cringes in pain at folks painting and flipping vintage wooden furniture.)

In order to protect the wood, I sanded everything by hand. It took days, and my shoulders ached and my hand had numb spots. Each time I imagined I was done, I would find another little spot where just a bit more sanding would remove the decades of grime. I suspected what was under the near-black layers of buildup on the old stain. but I wasn’t quite prepared. Before sanding, and after:

The whole thing went this way. Deep grime gave way to gorgeous quatersawn flake. (This is usually found on old furniture, where the wood is sawn at an angle to bring out the depth of the growth rings.) The table had build-in bookshelves on each end, and was meant to be floating in a room, where it could be a work table and also hold necessary books and supplies close at hand. Hence, “library table.” Anyway I could go on about the beauty of old furniture crafstmanship, but know this piece is remarkable and I appreciate the hell out of it.

Honestly, a couple of times working on it I caught my breath. It’s just beyond beautiful, and perfectly encapsulates the design and mission/craftsman movement of the very early twentieth century. Natural materials and their simple beauty were embraced and showcased. As a point of fact, those small pyramids on the corners? Those are the tops of the solid oak legs, which continue unbroken through the desk top. The same grain is on the bottoms of the feet.

Now I have a predicament. The piece is sanded, moisturized, stained, oiled, and restored. I have temporarily placed it in my living room while I try and figure out how to rearrange the Jenga-tower that is my home. With two adults working from home, and 3 kids still at home full-time, two of whom are also home-schooling (covid is not over for the immunocompromised) we have had to make use of every corner of our not-large (by American standards for a family of six) home. The dining room has been transformed into Jon’s home office, the front room is the kids’ school space, the boys are doubled up in the basement, the girls have their own space, and I took over the smallest bedroom (9′ x 10′) as my law school classroom and office.

Because my room is so small and because I spend so much time in there, I have carefully curated my setup. Its a good room, but because the space constraints are so tight—even with my tetris skills—the options on arrangement are limited. I use an old console table as my desk that was a gift from my brother-in-law. It’s narrower that a typical desk, it wobbled a bit, and the finish is scarred from years of writing and law school. I do not love it…and yet I discovered this week that I am oddly attached to it.

I have a gloriously restored 120 year old desk that takes my breath away. I spent several hours and generated a lot of chaos and mess rearranging my tiny room in an attempt to make the desk work. It’s hard to fit a 4-foot wide floating desk in a 9-foot wide room and still have functional shelves and space around it. It may be impossible. But in the process of trying, I realized that my working desk has actually become quite sentimental to me, despite my general lack of appreciation for its design. It’s quite functional for the space I have, and besides that, we’ve been through a lot together.

I imagine my working desk feeling bad at being replaced after years of service, and I laugh at my own absurdity. And yet, here I sit, my trusty computer perched upon the scarred and slightly uneven familiar surface as its always been. I once again measure out the room and reimagine all the possible configurations, while the restored library table waits downstairs.

I wonder what I will do.