Always looking out for signs and symbols. My brain is hungry for glyphs, shucks them like oyster shells. I rub a grain until pearl and then back to sand again.
When MS and I first courted each other in 2012, I knew nothing would ever be the same. A mad, true love with an exceptional woman did, in fact, change everything. So much good life happened in the years after. So much hard. When it tragically, improbably, understandably but inexplicably came to the end of the line (like a deep river roaring alive then dumping itself lost into a cold vast ocean, where am I, who are we) and divorce was the only way to breathe or to let each other move forward, we burnt what was left to the ground and prayed each of us alone would find a way to phoenix. I tried.
We were apart for over a year. It was unspeakably horrible. So much was wrong, understanding and insight came a monstrous clock tick too late, and while new freedom is a fine, heady drug, even the good was strained. It was hard to feel hope, even knowing a clean burn leaves a rich field in time. The tide pulled back taking the castle and leaving open ground, but you are only supposed to walk forward on those new paths, right? You are supposed to walk on by, what’s done is done, walk towards the sunset, ever on.
We circled back.
This has been a year of grace and second chances. Florida’s Gulf Coast has received us, our sorrow and fear washed into the salt water. Take your lovers, estranged friends and broken selves here, I tell you, the sun is warm like a blanket and the Fountain of Youth is a myth you can’t afford to ignore. A heron’s footprint is an arrow. Begin again begin again begin again, everything is new but there is no time to waste because we will all die so soon, so soon, each in our lover’s arms or alone. We only have time but we only have so little of it.
I want to spend time with her.
When we started talking again–that’s how it had to begin, this second-chance courting, by simply agreeing to speak to one another, do you know what that took, this all is a miracle–we sought neutral ground. So we went to the beach. Some of the most important conversations of my life have taken place on porches or shores overlooking the Gulf in the short miles between Alligator Point, St. Teresa and St. George Island. This is the place the mean nut of me crashes in two. There are ashes here and there are birds, so many birds. One morning we even saw an eagle, close to the house, perched atop a dead tree, surveying it all, then taking flight. How is that for a symbol?
2023 has been full of grace for me in other ways. Every year I do more of what I love, and amazing things have been able to happen. Some of my favorite things from the year were trips: to attend some of the Listen to Your Mother Shows, and to spend time in San Francisco and the Bay Area, including for Dyke March and Pride. Both of my children are doing well, at the same time, and have made wild strides forward in their own lives. Things were lost or burnt away this year, too, though, it’s not all soulmates-all-the-time and time is never without grief or missteps. I lost friends. I am still estranged from all of my family. I am still not sure how I will create health or self care. I still feel burdened by the past and worry about my children’s future in this world. Tragedy and injustice burrow in, and my activist anger can make me hard.
But, really, I have to come to know this important thing: what you think is gone, broken, a torn kite dead in the water? It might catch a second wind. It might be new again. Things might look different than you expect. You might be wrong.
The second chance of this all, the discovery so late in life that even dormant seeds can be scratched, that softening is possible, that cynicism is just plain wasteful, that I am stronger and more insightful and more capable than I might think (and so is everyone else), and that we don’t begin to access all that we have available to us, don’t even come close: This is an old year to celebrate. This old year is a good friend who taught me a lot.
I love New Year’s Eve. I’m thinking of all of us, every one of us and the fishes in the deep blue sea too, all of us, and wishing hard that 2024 is an oyster shell full of riches and dreams come true, full of kindness and second chances, full of redemption and the tiny victories of love found within the shell’s brine. Happy New Year!