What If the Cracks Are the Story?

This Summer Feels Like New Growth

A lot of people are struggling right now. I wonder if it’s because we braced our way through last summer, uncertain when things might return to a version of normal. This summer feels more like a usual one. I relish simple routines, like entering a grocery store without having a panic attack.

Some days, though, the grief catches up, because I’m not on high alert all the time. Between the bursts of appreciation for what feels normal, I spot constant reminders of what we’ve been through—what we’re still going through. I wear a mask in indoor public places because I have a child under twelve at home. I flinch when I hear someone cough. I haven’t been inside anyone’s house, except once when my teen knocked the finicky closet doors off the house where she was cat-sitting and needed my help to put them back on. 

This perspective—weighing last summer against this one—has allowed for some seismic shifts in my thinking. Here are a few examples:

1.     I missed a deadline: this newsletter. I set up the expectation of delivering it twice a month, but I couldn’t focus on the second June edition, because my novel’s developmental edits arrived and everything else on my plate fell away. And now half of July has passed. This summer, I’m putting my life first, not my (often over-stretched) expectations for myself. And I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty or stressed!

2.     My children both attended summer camp for one week. Six hours a day, five days in a row. They haven’t been away from me like that since their last normal days in school, back in March 2020. Instead of rejoicing and joking about freedom, I missed them. Which led me to realize I’ve been doing creative work with family present, instead of waiting for everyone to go away. Now my daughters have a deeper understanding of what I do, who I am.

3.     In all aspects of my life, I’m not holding myself to pre-pandemic standards. I used to push and push; people used to ask when I rested, or joke that I ran on batteries. Speed and intensity fueled me to say yes to projects and get them finished, then add new projects to my list. Now I operate on a much-slower schedule, and I’ve found it to be more productive. More fertile. I’m still deeply committed to literary community and helping other writers, but I’m factoring my work, my health, and my energy levels into the equation too. 

I hosted a friend’s birthday party yesterday (at my parents’ house) and didn’t bother to hide their moving boxes. Who cares? I decided. It was enough to gather, vaccinated, in the same space and talk. I didn’t even turn on the radio. Voices, I decided, were plenty. Besides, this way I didn’t have to stress about what kind of music to play—an old, old trigger of mine from growing up listening to classical music and jukebox records, not the radio like all my classmates. 

I prepared the party space over a few days, so there was no last-minute rush, and my teen offered to help with the fruit and veggie platters. She stayed around to chat and listen with the adults for almost all of the party—enjoying herself as much as anyone. I had zero energy left afterwards, but my heart was full. 

Grief flares keep surprising me, but I’m quicker to acknowledge that this is the way things are now. I don’t get frustrated or angry with myself.

A healthy young man who helped shepherd my children through the pandemic, working as an aide and PE teacher at their school, suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm on July 14. I am so worried for him and for his family. He was out on his bike, preparing a route for a bike-and-comedy event he was hosting the next day, when the symptoms showed up. I have thought so much about the moment when health not only disappears in a blink, but where the family has to step in to make medical decisions. My youngest, who is super social, adored having him as a teacher. My inner child keeps stamping around shouting IT’S NOT FAIR. There’s a GoFundMe if you want to help his family with medical expenses; just send me a note or leave a comment and I’ll pass that along. 

Our tomato plants aren’t doing that well, but our dragon tongue beans are starting to take off. I thought the headline-making heat had fried them. The beans are green with purple streaks. We’ve been reading the Wings of Fire series out loud for months now—and I ordered these seeds accordingly. I can’t wait to taste them.

And the grapes! My parents have an arbor at their new house, and the spindliest of their vines is producing teardrop-shaped fruit. I wonder if those will stay green or turn purple-red in the next weeks. I already am anticipating two kinds we know about: red seedless table grapes and dark-purple Concords. Now there’s a mystery to enjoy, too. When I sit in the hammock and stare at the new grapevine growth, I feel present and also like I am still the person from a year ago, missing my best friend. Like the world has stilled, then emptied, and nothing can fill it back up.

But in the empty places, new thoughts and words and experiences are rooting.

Teardrop grapes and five-color silverbeet and dragon tongue beans and even our first jelly melon cucumber, which has urchin-like spines. I’m learning to be around not-coughing humans without flinching. My teen is pet sitting and watering yards and making art when she’s not in summer school. 

This summer, my front yard curbside garden has a small white plastic goat in it. Also a tiny yellow traffic cone a friend added. And a volunteer plastic alligator. I put in a butterfly bathtub the other day; the alligator can take a dip anytime she wants. The neighborhood crows have been taking turns drinking out of the bathtub; I wonder if they are the ones who took the traffic cone and dropped it into the yard early this morning, then upended the bathtub. Or if a child did. I like the idea of this garden space as an interactive, playful one. Not just for me, but the whole neighborhood.

The hammock holds me; I hold my grief. The vines hold fruit and veggies. My neighbor’s yard holds a rock I painted and sneaked into the landscape to surprise her. She found it the same day I planted it, so I’ll make another and hide that one better. I haven’t printed the Kindness Bingo board to play with my kids. (Yet. Maybe we’ll start later today, or maybe not.) The tomatoes, I hope, are growing, sweetening. We will hold them when they’re ripe. In the kitchen, we keep finding pebbles of glass from two days ago, when a cup fell out of the cupboard and smashed into the butter dish. We keep thinking we’ve found them all. But then we find three more.

Pieces. 

All of these thoughts and losses and beauties, held together. In my life. In this newsletter edition. Bundled, jumbled, juxtaposed.  

Who ever thought we needed to make everything fit like interlocking puzzle pieces? To create one seamless picture? I’m starting to think all the seams and cracks are the story. 

YOUR BRIGHT SIDE INVITATION: What’s one difference between your life last summer and this one? Make a list of the differences, if you’d like. Is this summer shaped by last year’s in any unexpected ways? Are you traveling, seeing family, eating out, and if so, does it feel more important—more ritualized, perhaps—than in pre-pandemic days?

Feel free to leave a comment! I started this newsletter to create an intimate but accessible conversation space about creativity, grief, and the societal reset that the pandemic has offered creatives like us. I’d love to hear your thoughts. You can reply to this email to have a conversation just with me, or you can comment on the post to connect with other readers too.