I did not intend to get blackout drunk. I did not intend to drink at all, but I emerged from my home office to see Beverly Young Nelson telling her Roy Moore story and holding up her high school yearbook.
We’ve both been through trauma and have faced it to come out incredibly resilience beings. He just gave a talk on the importance of resilience, yes, but also interdependence. As it turns out, humans are communal beings. Once we stop self-protecting, it’s where we want to be.
At the end of the year, the young moms plan a school-wide cultural arts festival, which includes a rendition of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” in English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and American Sign Language. When they get to the signing, they raise their arms and point to imaginary stars that bathe the night sky, enveloping the universe and inspiring wonder and awe.
I remember sitting on my couch. I remember his off-putting after-hour scent. Heineken and stale musk. I remember thinking he was not my type; I couldn’t take that smell. But he was creative and friendly and nice, and I was lonely.
I thought about my brown-skinned friends. What would happen if I brought them here? The Latina service woman was still polishing tables, and I made one more scrutinizing scan of the happy swimmers, outside.
I faced the smiling man, took a breath and asked politely: “Do you have any African American members here, or people from Latin America?”
Thirty-three is the age you start writing poetry after growing tired of the crazy stream-of- consciousness journaling—catching all the funky beats of transformation in the hands of red lined notebooks, page after page after page. One day you think: something new.
Now that she’s gone, I’d give anything to go back and glimpse into her past, witness her dalliances first-hand: Tooling around with fast boys in fast cars, sipping moonshine with her bad-boy sweetheart, giggling and swapping secrets with her gal pals, and sneaking cigarettes and whiskey after school.
Each one of us probably believes that we possess our own fair amount of altruism, that if someone were obviously in need, we would do whatever was necessary to help. At least I know I do. Despite this, I wouldn’t have stopped to help Leo that day if we hadn’t made eye contact.
I could finally watch “Game of Thrones” so that I could participate in literally every conversation that everyone is having right now, but that would seem to be a whole-scale abandonment of my previously-adopted “book guy” principles, and one that I honestly don’t think I’m quite ready to commit to.
Today, I struggle with separating my childhood experiences from those of my children. My body goes through a painful physical reaction if I happen to stumble upon a headline related to bullying.
Later, Penny messages the instructions you had messaged her. She honored your wishes to send it to Jacob, “should I lose this battle”. Penny kept her promise. It detailed who should get what, including that Jacob should get some of your ashes: “Put them in a pipe and smoke it or I will haunt your ass.”
When I hand you this book, I’m handing you my heart. I hope you will receive it in that spirit. I hope you can tell that, at its core, this book is the truest love letter to you I could ever write.
