It’s been many years now since I’ve needed to get myself ready for the first day of school. And yet, every September I feel the call to reassess, get organized, start something new. Last year I joined a choir, though anyone who has stood next to me at a concert or religious service (to some these are one and the same) knows that I can’t carry a tune. But join I did and am grateful for the camaraderie and gentle encouragement of those around me. This year I’m taking on much needed, and let’s face it, overdue, projects around my house. I’ve never made this space my own despite having lived here since just before Covid. I was a tenant at first, then bought it halfway through my lease when the landlord declared the market was getting hot and she was going to sell. I did not want to move again. Currently there are at least a dozen paint chips on my counter, a rainbow of off-white to deep tan. So many choices, without much variation, to freshen up my space. Perhaps I’ll buck all the sage decorating advice my best friend the hot shot realtor has given me and paint the house a color I love. If only I can pick one from the multitudes. What I do know about this inclination to do/change that comes over me every fall is that I have only about 4 weeks to execute it. If I don’t do it now, I’ll get lost in the pending pumpkin spice turned peppermint mocha latte months ahead. At work, my job is to communicate program changes, events and important updates. In other words, it’s always fall. Our work is always evolving. In my opinion, that change is good. It keeps things from getting staid. Like my living room paint. What colors await as the temperatures drop? And what progress will I have to show by Christmas? Perhaps by then I’ll have found the harmony I seek in September.

Today would have been the poet Andrea Gibson’s 50th birthday. Her partner, writer Megan Falley, shared a beautiful love letter on her substack that would make the least sensitive among us weep. For me, who yearned for a marriage like theirs, of the soul, it was a touching reminder that love like that is possible. I am so happy they found each other and shared it, for while, at least.

I am no longer looking outside of myself for that kind of connection. And I’m perfectly fine with that.

This evening, flipping through my old lyrics, I came across the first song I ever wrote. Three months before the first Dar retreat, four years before our separation, and five before the divorce. I guess I knew then, perhaps I always did–what we didn’t have–and how badly I needed to break free.

The drive to Michigan
took two long days.
We shared our souls
in many ways.

We talked and laughed and
we sang
but my heart cried out with that old
familiar pang

I just don’t love you
as I should:
Babe, it’s wonderful, but it’s just no
damned good.

The further I get from you
the clearer I come into view

The train slogs along
the mighty track.
Sometimes I think that I ain’t never
coming back.

Hear that whistle
in the night.
Don’t know what makes you
think you’ve got the right.
To love who you think I am,
But I’m hiding in plain sight.

The further I get from you
the clearer I come into view

I knew I’d love you,
when first I saw your face,
Didn’t know then, I’d be
exhausted from this race.

If they’d have chosen for me,
would this have been the choice?
A picture-perfect life,
left me without a voice?

A lifetime waits for us
on the other side.
Don’t go feeling bad…
Cause I know how hard we tried.

The further I get from you, (3x)
the clearer I come into view

Maura Greenman
May 2013

When I die
I know there will be music played
Stringed guitars and violas
The fingers of my friends and daughters
Hands that I birthed
Intonating the way into the next

When I die
I know there will be poetry read
Sounds combined into words combined into measures combined into feelings that break and reassure your heart
Who knew that the ear was the direct line to mine?

Someone please read Timepieces by Andrea Gibson, that beautiful missive about going home, not to the end, but to eternity. “None of us have ever been our bodies, if we were how could we fit into each other’s hearts?”

That’s been my work here. Find yours, lend you mine, mix with your blood and your oxygen, offer relief. We carry each other this way, when it’s been safe enough to do so.

I am grateful for the hearts I’ve been entwined with. In my next life, if I’m able, I’ll do better at letting people in to mine, whose chambers were closed before I was born

Guarded, protected, armed against love that was not love. Armed against wounding masked as caring, like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and an apple in a brown paper bag packed by myself, everyday.

I was loved, but not in a way that didn’t also hurt.

But I didn’t keep that from carrying, from caring. I’ve tried my best.

To love.

Alex, the irises are about to bloom again. Tomorrow, or maybe the next day. They’re the ones I took from your old townhouse in Herndon the last time I ever went there with you. I’m glad that I have something from then that is still beautiful. Do you know that I don’t remember the name of your street? Isn’t that funny? I spent so much time there in that basement apartment of yours with the red bedding. I’m grateful for the memory lapses. I guess the details that matter stick. Like the way you made salad or coffee or chicken on the grill. You certainly fed me well. The rest of it I let go pretty easily now that 4 years have passed. 4 years have passed. An entire college tenure. I am so grateful to have graduated from that time. It’s spring again and tomorrow or the next day the irises will bloom. And then I’ll forget about them again for the rest of the year. What time we had. What a short-lived flower. 

I am sitting outside on the most perfect spring morning 

Coffee cup in hand and feet propped on the deck rail

Two pileated peckers are spiraling their way up a deserted oak tree in an endless game of bird tag.

I am thinking about what I will plant in my garden.

In an hour I’ll drive to an old church in Herndon to celebrate a woman I didn’t know well, but who was there when I needed healing.

Life is dense and packed with small seeds which can be planted and bloom into abundance. Or, become lodged in between your teeth.

Just for today, I am taking a bite. And savoring the sweetness of the fruit.

Suddenly she realized it was him crossing in front of her car at the Home Depot, Sunday afternoon when at least half of the community would be out buying mulch.

He was gaunt and gray. He didn’t look up or acknowledge any recognition. Neither did she. Just sat there, stunned to see this stranger she once was married to, carrying brand new deck coverings out of the store. 

She wondered who, now that she no longer lived there, stocked the fridge, prepped the salads, prepared the meat for the fire–as she’d done, back before she was the talk of the town?

She forced herself to remember, not the little details of life that they’d shared, but rather, that her infamy exists in her head alone. The others, all-too-consumed with their perfect suburban flower beds.

My father calls me every week, usually on Sundays, around 3, after he’s gone to the grocery store and picked up a roast or some chicken or maybe crabmeat, if it’s on sale. He’ll make a nice meal for my stepmom and himself, she’ll do the dishes and then he’ll go lay down in the bed they’ve shared for more than 40 years. But first, he’ll let out a heavy sigh, he’ll call out loud, “Hey, Sand, I’m going to take a nap.” He’ll take out the hearing aids he’s needed for decades longer than he’s worn them, and curiously, just as he’s easing into his rest, he’ll pick up the phone and call me. This won’t be a conversation, because he won’t hear my responses, but he’ll talk. He’ll tell me about the meatballs he made, with a little rice and tomato sauce inside like his mother, Basha, used to make. He’ll tell me about Fareed Zakaria on channel 19 and ask me for the umpeenth time if I’ve watched it, thought he knows I no longer have cable, and if I did, the channels are different here in VA. My dad’s in Florida, of course. Flaarida. He’ll tell me about the stock market and he’ll sigh again as his beloved Nvidia has taken a dive. He won’t ask me any questions, as he knows there’s but much I’ll share with him anyway, since the divorce. I think he’s waiting to hear me say that I’m gay, why else would my marriage have ended? But I’m not. It ended because it was over. The same as it did between him and my mom. But he doesn’t really get it. And besides, he wouldn’t hear my explanation anyway. 

My dad calls me once a week. He’s 93. How many calls could we have left? 100? 150, maybe?

If we’re both incredibly lucky? 

Tomorrow is Sunday. I think I’ll go sit by the phone. 

I get it now. This weight, the sadness this thing that we’re all feeling is dying. It’s not a death but rather a divorce. From a marriage sure that wasn’t perfect, wasn’t happy. Wasn’t really the stuff of dreams but still it was ours, mine, yours. It was what we came home to from 10 days abroad. It was groceries on the table and dishes in the sink. It was familiar. And it had the potential to get better. It had the potential to be great. But now what we’re faced with is the reality that this thing that we thought was always under our feet came home one night and made a declaration that it wanted to do things differently, play by different rules. It wanted to follow its own discretion and not be bothered by what was fair or kind or just. It was selfish. It was cruel. The hardest part is the realization that we were in denial. We were never safe. We were never even happy. We were just comfortable. And now it’s not dying we cannot grieve it’s permanent loss. We still have to look at it across the courtroom, on the TV, Read it’s emails and fume. We were complicit. In fact we were the ones that strayed first by not paying closer attention, offering more compliments, respecting the other. As I think this I also think about how as I’m aging I am disappearing, slowly at first, and then all at once. My hair so thin, My flesh missing its fleshy bits. Even my vagina has given up. Receded in these dark times. A sexual organ that I never even knew that I had, my labia minora is gone and I miss it. I wished I had appreciated it more. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust is what they tell you but what they don’t say out loud is that that process happens right before your eyes. Skin becoming flaky and falling off in millimeter sized squares and circles. Lips no longer full enough for even a little bit of lipstick. No need to call attention to lines so thin. Encircling a mouth full of chipping teeth. What we had we didn’t know…what we had we didn’t want enough to protect. And now, well, now the future will be written in a foreign language that our grandchildren will speak from birth. There is no burial stone here just signed agreements in a court of law that doesn’t give a shit. 

My old friend and I perused the aisles in the thrift store 

Eyeing serving platters and mismatched tea cups 

We reminisced about the days when our children were so little and fit into 2T buffalo plaid flannel shirts like the one hanging on the rack.

Now they buy their own clothing. 

It’s Christmas time, or nearly, and she’ll be hosting my kids for holiday brunch.

But I won’t be there. 

She reached down and picked up a curious thing–a padlock. She said do you need a lock? I replied, “No thank you. I need a key.”

The glass panel door behind my head rattled when you hit it headfirst 

It was not the entryway you thought it was. 

The solid force threw you backwards, left you dazed. But you gathered yourself. 

Shook off your feathers. And launched yourself back into the wind. 

How beautiful to know that your wings are strong enough to fight the gusts.

And that before long, you will find a safer place to land.