Five True Things.
Since September I’ve been doing a writing practice I call Five Things. It’s simply five paragraphs where I try to describe something that is still with me, still rattling around my head. I try to create a scene, a vignette. I try to stay away from writing about feelings, but hope that the writing conveys feeling. I try to put the onus on the details. I also try to tell the truth, to reveal something from my interior. Sometimes when I sit down to blog, I think I’m supposed to make a point or have a good story to tell, and I find that exhausting. With Five Things I’m simply lifting the curtain and seeing what’s there.
To set the stage for the five things below, I will say that for the last six years I’ve been living six months a year, with my former husband, Mark, who sleeps upstairs with his dog in our old bedroom, while I sleep downstairs. That detail is meant to give you a picture of us – a couple who were together for 30 years, divorced for 12, and during much of that time lived together as friends in the house. But now there are changes. Mark, who lives outside of Taos, New Mexico for the warm parts of the year, has gone to live there permanently, and this week we said goodbye.
- The goodbye with Mark is simple, not dramatic or drawn out. We drink coffee in the living room before 7am, and as he speaks, I make a note of how both of our hair is thinning, how much he looks like an Einstein who has stuck his finger in a live socket – wild white hair sticking up everywhere. Such a contrast to the pictures I’d found in my mother’s garage from 35 years ago when we married. How thick and dark my eyebrows were, how red my lips. His face young and open at 31, a full head of dark hair. Then, when it was time for him to go, I walk him out to his truck in my pajamas, we hug and have a light kiss, but not like we’re trying to hold on to something. We’d said everything – for years we’ve been saying it all. It didn’t feel like I wouldn’t see him again. It felt like so many other times I’ve said goodbye, knowing we are connected, knowing it’s just time and distance, but that that doesn’t separate us.
- The day before we’d gone for breakfast. “I don’t have my wallet,” he said as we reached The Blue Dot cafe. In the past that would have been worthy of an eye roll, but today it didn’t matter. “Let’s do appreciations,” he said, as we waited in the sun for the cafe to open.“Thank you for bringing dogs into our life,” I began. “Thank you for keeping us all so healthy,” he added. “Thank you for building my first website and being my total tech guy for the first many years.” “Thank you for all the house concerts you held,” he said, “and how we used to carry the living room furniture out of the living room into the yard, how we said we’d stop doing house concerts when we couldn’t lift the furniture anymore,” I added. “Thank you for loving my parents and my siblings as your own,” I said. “Thank you for living like a real artist,” he said.
- I had originally taken Mark off of Find My Phone, because I noticed when he was in Taos last winter I had gotten interested in where he was, more specifically whether he was at his house or his girlfriend’s house, and the stories I was making up about that, the trouble I was getting myself into. So I took him off. But now, on the road with Zoe, and as they head from Alameda to Barstow, to New Mexico, I find myself imagining them in his truck, on the road, Zoe’s feet on the dash, the bag of nuts between them, Mark’s dog, Flora, head out the back window, smiling the way dogs smile. I find myself following them.
- Since Mark left, the house feels more silent, more still. Doors and windows are open to the yard, the occasional siren or car from the big street a block away. Crows. Even though Mark was often gone at his studio during the day, I knew he was coming home at some point. I collected his mail and left it on the couch for him. There was a shared-ness about this space. I bought coffee for us and in the morning we often met in the living room to drink it, to check in for the day or talk about something going on with one of the kids. Even though he’d leave in May, I knew he’d come back in October, so things left behind were tucked away until he got back. The room upstairs smelled like Mark and his dog for months after they’d leave. But yesterday, moving through this quiet house, I realized I lived alone again, and this time maybe for good.
- I remember when Mark would take the girls away when they were young – maybe a weekend camping trip, or maybe just for the day – and I would wander this house, going from room to room, not sure where to land, where I might finally lay myself down so I could take a good, long breath and collect myself. I often felt lost in those moments – that tug between thinking I should be getting something done and collapsing from the rapid fire schedule, the way Monday would roll around and I’d have to be strategic about what I could get done in between school drop offs and pick ups – whether there was time to work out, whether I had poems for classes, whether there was food for dinner. So many years of thinking about others, all of my attention going outwards. But now, sitting here in the living room, the front door wide open, a squirrel rustling around in the plants, an airplane overhead, the bells of my cat’s collar as he comes up the brick path. I am landing.
Five True Things.
Wild Wonder Retreats
Ready to have a delicious and soulful adventure?
Come away with us. Andrea and I are heading to Taos, New Mexico (Sept 27 – Oct 2, 2026) for writing, SoulCollage®, big skies, and a day at the Ojo Caliente hot springs. Then we’re going to the beach at Mar de Jade in Nayarit, Mexico (Dec 12 – 19, 2026) for seven nights of waves, yoga, and exhaling at the end of the year.
Both retreats are small, soulful, and full of beauty. We’d love to have you.