Recharging My Battery

Coming home

I just returned from eight days in the Bay Area, communing with some of my dearest old friends, soaking up their love and immersing them in mine.

A wilted plant when I arrived on a rainy Saturday night—after a flight from Newark that was three hours delayed, collecting my suitcase (Oh why didn’t I pack lighter?) and taking the air train to pick up my rental car—I fell gratefully into the arms of my wise and wonderfully good-hearted friend Diana K.

I have a wealth of wise and wonderfully good-hearted friends. This knowledge was imprinted on my heart during my overnight stays with four of them, and equally meaningful visits with more of them, following what was a winter of almost debilitating isolation for me.

(And yet I’ve also found rare and wonderful friends here on the East Coast. You know who you are—and I hope you know how much I love you, along with the many treasured friends of mine I didn’t get to see during my oh-so-brief visit to California.)

The East Bay and the North Bay burst into bloom after that night of rain—and I filled my grateful lungs with the fresh, sweet air of my homeland.

I was like Emily in “Our Town,” returned to all the places where I lived and struggled, loved and wrote, planted gardens, raised my beloved son, and flirted twice with home ownership in that place where it would be such an amazing thing to own a home now, alas!

My friends feasted me, body and soul, and we laughed and cried and reminisced—and shared stories of our lives on opposite sides of the country during these unbelievably fraught and frightening times. Remembering the depth of our connection, tucking it safely inside me, cured my insomnia.

We hiked on North Sonoma Mountain and at the coast.

A grateful ghost, I showed up at my beloved Brazilian dance class in Sebastopol—and felt that joy again of dancing to the beat of a Samba bateria. Some of us went out to dinner afterwards, and I slept deeply and beautifully that night, following a four-mile hike uphill and the hour-long class.

Maybe the answer for me will be to spend every winter in California, if I can invent a way to make it possible—although I’m loath at this point to do much flying in the U.S., at least until government safety infrastructures and personnel are restored. Will they be restored?

I know how fortunate I am to be ensconced in a safe and beautiful place, with one New England winter, at least, behind me.

I’ve joined the local (quite venerable!) Shakespeare Club. I’m working on getting as physically strong as possible for the rest of my time in this body.

And I’m hunkering down to finish that novel, and get those two novel manuscripts well published, now that my battery has been recharged.

I think I can let go of the voice inside that says I’ll never be safe. (It’s long past time to let go of that one.)

I want to hearken instead to the voice that asks, “Why not write a literary bestseller? Where’s the harm?”

I am a ghost
strolling through
the landscapes of my past.

Past houses where a much younger person who shares my name
lived serial lives, dealt with chaos, planted gardens
and made one unwise decision after another.
Optimism unchecked, walking away each time
empty-handed, glad to have
survived.

What does it mean to be so unskillful
at cultivating safety?
What's the psychic payment I get
for feeling helpless?

Who am I trying to please?

If you’re in the SubStack app when you leave a comment, it’ll show. But I’ll get it in my email, in any case. Thank you for hopping aboard my life-boat today!