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She didn’t wear makeup, never had, in part because no one had taught her, until that summer when the wall went red and her lips along with it, when she perfected the art of applying red lipstick. M.A.C. Lady Danger, I think it was. She rarely left home without it past sunset. She was 25.
I am not the only one trying to shake the sleep of winter. Not the only one working to build something, gathering stray bits and rearranging them to make a home more pleasing, or more supportive of my needs. I am not the only one propelled by instinct, even when I do not recognize it as such.
If you sliced open a caterpillar’s cocoon, you’d expect to find a tiny beast, a creature that would look new to you yet somehow familiar. Half caterpillar, half butterfly, perhaps a shiny and squiggly green grub just starting to sprout wings; wet, furled, squished into its soft, shrouding casing. But that is not what you would find.
Last night I dreamt of my mother. She had been gone a long time.
“Can you stay?” I asked her. “I never get to see you.”
She didn’t answer, and instead pointed to my chest.
“Your heart is bigger than it was last time,” she said, more observation than offering. “But it still has room to grow.”
There is something haunting about a rip in your skin. It reminds you that the whole thing could fall apart, turn to ribbons and dust. It reminds you, in fact, that one day it will. And then you are left with that to think about.
I know there does not seem to be enough of you, or enough of the day, or perhaps there is too much of the day. You come home and take off your shoes and lean in your chair, and it is not the relief of hours well used that you feel, or the exhale of your soles, but a breath allowed. Stillness. You gather.
Journalists are a lot like scientists, really, seeking an objective truth, trying to put pieces together. No one does it for the money. It’s a longstanding joke in the industry that most of us make very little. Some might do it for the power, or a hopeful slice of fame, although both are unlikely. I do it because information matters, because while there are some relative truths in life, often the answer is strictly “true” or “false.”
Is anyone else finding it hard to make words? In the past two weeks, I have started and stopped three separate letters. None of them will be thrown away or forgotten, I want to finish them all, and they are about things, things that matter, at least to me. But I keep getting partway and then wandering off lost, like the trail of breadcrumbs has just gone missing, pecked up by some jerk of a bird.
There was a particular pleasure in trying to skateboard in 1995 in Boulder, Colorado, when you were 13 and shy and a girl. The real word for it was probably pride, and at that age, it was a sensation worthy of a few skinned knees.