The heater isn’t working, so I pull out a hoodie, remembering Zoe telling me last week that everyone needs a hoodie – a cozy pullover that goes over your head, that you might even hide out in. Zoe said that their own hoodie had saved them many times. Maybe it can be that simple, I think, pulling on the hoodie, finding a pair of warm socks, putting on some morning music, then making a cup of coffee.

Walking with my friend Stephanie yesterday, I said it almost feels obscene to think or write about my life when there are so many horrors going on in the world. We nodded at the overwhelm, how so much feels beyond us, and which is why, by default, we return to the things we can attend to; whether we need milk, what we might make for dinner, a reminder to get out into the garden, to call a friend, to pull on a hoodie.

If anything there’s a grief of proximity, a grief in knowing too much about things happening far from this house; children starving in Gaza, an ongoing war in Ukraine, a flash flood that rushes through a summer camp in Texas, the obscenity in Washington, for starters.

When I ask people how they are they tell might tell me how their work is, or maybe there’s an an issue with a friend, or they hurt their shoulder, but “you know,” they say, “it’s nothing compared to…” and then they look away and wince, as if referencing what’s going on in the rest of the world. Because what can you say about anything these days and actually finish that sentence?

Hiking with my brother the other day, I said, “Nothing that is happening in the world today touches us, does it?” And he said, “No, it doesn’t.” And we kept walking in silence.

Primordial relief meets ethical anxiety; knowing you want to help but not sure how to. My brother says he’s going to pick up groceries for people who are afraid to show up to get their own. My friend Rachel and I will sign up for a weekly assignment at our local Rise Up office. We will tell ourselves that we are doing something, though the existential uncertainty remains, the knowing that it’s not enough. 

My body knows something. Last week I dreamt that Nazis were on my street and coming for me and Zoe – who was a baby. In the next dream that night, Zoe – who is 27 now, but who was a baby in the dream – took an irreparable fall. I woke up breathing hard, forgetting for a moment what was real and what was dream.

So I return to what is in front of me, the list of things I call my life; find a poem for the Monday class, call the heating people to see if Cody, the technician can come out next week, halve the plums from Ruby and Isaac’s tree and put them in a simmering pot of water to make jam, think about that old friend I haven’t spoken to for months, wonder what comes next for us, whether we will repair our misunderstanding or let this long friendship go. Wondering a lot about that in general; what to hold on to and what to let go of?

At night I’ve been disappearing into english dramas on Masterpiece Theater, where any number of sad things can happen to country folk, including the death of children from diseases that are easily treatable today if we wanted to. In one scene, a father who had lost a child years earlier, hugs an inconsolable man who has only just lost his baby to a weak heart. It was more than a hug though, they were holding on to each other – for dear life – as if the other were a raft in a storm and they could not let go. Staring at the men on the screen as they stood together, arms tightly wrapped around each other, I wondered when was the last time I let someone hold me like that, or I held onto someone else like that. To hold on for dear life. 

Maybe that time has come. Maybe it’s as simple as opening my arms wide when I see a friend, pulling them in, breathing together, taking one extra beat before we turn back to whatever it was that we were supposed to be doing.

Wild Writing Small Group Classes

We have two Wild Writing small group classes open for the Summer Session. 

If you’ve been curious about what it would be like to be in a small, devoted group of Wild Writers, who not only write together every week, but who read their work aloud to one another, please consider joining one of our classes.