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A Keystone I Left Behind
The light never looked clearer, even when my glasses were off. It reflected on cat dishes that line the staircase, the black stove and the match box cars from when my brother was three. They sit on a shelf with a picture I drew. I’m holding my mother’s hands. I’m holding her hands and we have dots for eyes. She’s kept it for twenty years and it hasn’t yellowed much around the edges.
The snow makes this world seem aloof, deaf, abandoned. It’s a ghost town where footprints of dogs, cats, and my parents circle around the backyard in scatterplot zigzags of snow boots and pawprints. It’s a world I abandoned twice, once for college and once for a boy, and it hasn’t seemed to forgive me yet. But I fall asleep to rushing waters from the creekbed and I think of how many cigarette butts are still hidden under the river rock.
I moved back home to Pennsylvania, into my parents’ old farmhouse. The one that creaks its arthritic floorboards. The one that I lived in, the interim between Kentucky and my year in Italy. I moved back home to Pennsylvania, compelled by failure and the aborted dreams of a life based on already broken promises. To myself. To someone else. I moved back to Pennsylvania on Saturday, paid an extra $270 to move my flight three hours earlier. I couldn’t wait any longer. Not even a second. Not even the fifteen minutes that we taxied on the tarmac and I texted my dad, “Be waiting for me in Pittsburgh. There’s no turning back now.”
I took a dog with me, the small one I named Milo. I left two behind. I tried not to cry, but I did. But Milo is small, durable. He took a tranquilizer and slept the whole time. When he woke up in a new bed, a new house, he wagged his tail and kissed me. Milo: the dog I once described as a “smoke ring of huffs and puffs” whose permanency I questioned is now the anchor to a past life. Milo, in his small sweater, breathes heavy and deep sighs when I touch him. Being home makes me feel like a person, human. Being home means the snow is blinding but I’m keeping my eyes opened.
My dad picked me up, a Diet Coke in hand. He carried my luggage, two bags I packed with enough clothes to last me a lifetime. Both tied with bandanas: one navy, one mustard. I wore those bandanas when I would clean the house or work out. I don’t have that house anymore, my body aches from packing boxes. I’ve repurposed my life into snowflakes that melt and toast that burns from a temperamental toaster oven. I’m taking it slow. It’s only been four days.
I took January off, I tried to plant a heart full of succulents. Dehydrated and delicate. But I wasn’t able to succeed; instead, evergreens of self-doubt grew in its place. I had to leave the world behind. The west never symbolized opportunity for me. Even Alcatraz had a coastline. But I rode in the passenger seat of my dad’s Nissan Pathfinder and I saw a world that didn’t forgive the guilty, and I never felt so innocent in my life.
And some updates!
- I am now on snapchat! Find me @figandbleu for more selfies like the one below
- I also have a Facebook page to really get into the new millenium
- I will be working with many amazing brands this upcoming year and I am so excited to tell you all! Check back around Valentine's Day for a post I have with Bob's Red Mill
- I miss and love you all!
Ansuz.
I was eight in Kentucky, visiting family that still lived in the double-wide trailer I was babysat at. It was blue with a water bed, where my cousins and I would watch Twister with our aunt, Tammy. I was at the mall and I didn't hold my mother's hand. For two hours I was lost, wandering around and navigating the shops that lined the main concourse. We probably circled each other's paces like satellites. And when she saw me, she hugged me tight and promised not to let go.
Of course, it's silly to promise things conditional on the human emotion, on circumstance and change. I left my mother when I was seventeen and she was never able to hold my hand again.
But we place reminders on ourselves to not forget to stay connected, grounded to the bluegrass roots that shaped us in one way or another. She used to leave me post-it notes on my dashboard to read before school and I still try to revive that tradition with an occasional text. It goes unanswered, lost to the lull of technological synapses between our generations. I have a reminder on my calendar for her birthday with a little heart next to the 14 and the days leading up to it are marked in my planner with "Don't forget to buy the card", "Don't forget to mail the card", "Don't forget to call her."
They're all unnecessary insurance, anyway. I don't plan on forgetting anytime soon.
But that's how I am with many things, with all things, in some way. I like the insurance of planning, of making a to-do list and never marking anything off because it's all finished before I even looked to it for guidance. That's how I am with myself, with my body. I like to be organized, to have constant totems nearby to retrieve the inherent "me" that's sometimes fogged by the daily coil of corporate life. I didn't want this to happen with writing, something I've always valued within myself. I wanted to remember it as it was, and not lose it for two hours and come back scared. I wanted my talent to shine in a way that was nurtured and remembered like when your mother remembers your favorite dish for dinner after you haven't been home for a year. I wanted to build a relationship with my writing, and I just needed a reminder to appreciate it while it's still around.
My new tattoo is the Elder Futhrak rune Ansuz, which symbolizes the creative mind, the poetic soul, and the "god's breath". I wanted to hold it on my forearm and invoke that metaphysical energy during my day-to-day life and remind myself of the innocence of the energy that, when reduced by half like a marsala wine, just boils down to love.
still healing. don't you love this quilt?
PS, I updated my "Connect" page and you can find me on pinterest, instagram, and VSCOgrid. Feel free to say hi :)