Dying to know

I’m at a point in my life. That much is obvious. Anyone who knows that I am taking a sabbatical from my job next year probably gathered as much. But what point am I at, exactly, and how did I get here?

Well, I’ll tell you. I am at a point in my life where I just want to see if it’s possible for me to live truly and honestly every day. To live fully, even. To live simply and generously, and at a human’s pace. To feel alive to my work, and to feel greater than it. To put 100% in and get as much out. To sink deeply into my contentment without fearing complacency. To shine as brightly as I want, to stand as tall as I am, and to take up as much space as I deserve.

I’m not saying I’m gonna do it. I just want to see if it’s possible.

As for how I got here, I suppose that would be a long story, one I’d rather write once I come out the other side of my little experiment, assuming I am victorious. But the short version is that I’ve tasted this life so many times over the years that I can no longer dismiss it as wishful thinking. That, and the curiosity is killing me.


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Thursday Thoughts

I’m trying this new thing where I write some thoughts here every Thursday. This may be the first and last time it actually happens. For the last thirteen years, this blog has felt like the one place in the world where I can truly do whatever I want. I don’t have to conform to any particular expectations, don’t have to write about music, don’t have to write something that makes sense to everybody. It doesn’t have to be serious. It doesn’t have to be funny. It can be very long or very short. I can write once a year or once a week.

This is my happiest place, and I’m rarely here. That’s dumb.

My favorite thought today, the one I would most like to believe, is that everything is working out just exactly as it should, even when I make a stupid mistake, or someone lets me down, or I’m having a frustratingly unproductive day or week, or I can’t see a way out. This is been true before. The best example is a story that I guess I can’t really tell with all the pertinent details (ok so I guess I can’t do whatever I want), but the gist is that I found myself in a situation several years ago in which I needed to buy a violin, which, as a professional musician, is basically impossible. It’s one of the most ludicrous things in the industry; an instrument fine enough for the concert stage is unaffordable for those expected to buy them.

Even though I didn’t have the money, nor could I secure a loan large enough, I still went violin shopping up and down the east coast, hoping for a miracle. No miracles occurred, and what was even more discouraging, I didn’t like any of the instruments I tried. I spent my free time in those days shaking my fist at the universe and crying into my pillow.

Then, while in Albuquerque for a friend’s wedding, I visited the famed Robertson & Sons Violin Shop and instantly fell in love with a German fiddle from the late 1700s. But I still couldn’t buy it, so I had to leave my beloved violin behind in New Mexico. Less than a month later, a miracle did happen and I was able to bring my baby home.

Now here’s the thing: if the miracle had occurred a year earlier than it did and I’d had adequate funds available to me, there is a very good chance I would have settled for one of the east coast instruments that I didn’t really even like. And yet, if you’d come along during that year when I felt hopeless and ragey and told me not to worry because everything was working out exactly as it should…I probably would have literally growled at you.

I’m not espousing a philosophy of “everything eventually works out for everybody” because it obviously doesn’t, and I’ve long since unsubscribed to the idea that there is a Being behind it all who is consciously pulling the strings according to a master plan, but I do find it helpful–on days when I can’t find my foot pedal, or I can’t seem to get my act together, or my plans go up in smoke–to think that, perhaps, everything is working out just exactly as it should.


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The Leap

There have been a thousand moments, conversations, serendipities, and realizations that have led me to this point, this precipice where known meets unknown, but perhaps the most crucial one came about a month ago when it dawned on me that, as good as it feels to have someone else recognize your potential, and as alluring as the dream was of having such a person descend to the earth and give me a hot blast of confidence and/or a hundred grand to bring forth whatever it is that’s inside me, no one actually knows my potential nearly as well as I do because no one else can see to the far reaches of my inner landscape, and that therefore I am the most likely and qualified candidate to become that angel in disguise. It’s a pretty good disguise, you have to admit. Certainly fooled me.

Liberation is not always a pleasant experience; I felt my share of sadness when I laid this dream to rest, but doing so set me free because I was no longer waiting around like a goddamn damsel in distress.

A few dozen moments, conversations, serendipities, and realizations later, I found myself applying for a fiscal sponsorship through Fractured Atlas for all of my future creative work, in whatever form it takes. That means that Fractured Atlas will vouch for the fact that my work is bound to have some public benefit and that its purpose is not to make money, thereby allowing me to accept tax-deductible donations and apply for grants that are normally reserved for non-profit organizations. I am calling the work First Creatures. (Perhaps I will say more about the name another time.)

As much as I’m sure you would like to know what First Creatures is, I guarantee you that I want to know even more. Most of my creative work over the years has come as a complete surprise to me. That’s the nature of it, I guess. I saw a need, I was asked to do something, I put two and two together, I needed money, and I made something. The elements which eventually coalesced into the So Hot Right Now concert series had been floating around in my head for years, but if you had asked me to talk about “the idea” a moment sooner than June of 2021, I would have surely said some nonsense to you. With First Creatures, I am banking on my potential to rise to unforeseen occasions, to see something in a unique way, and to have ideas which are now nothing more than hundreds of different strands of experience blowing around my brain like confetti.

This is not my first rodeo, and by rodeo I mean “passion project”, so I am well aware of the pitfalls. That’s why, to avoid certain death by burnout, I am taking a somewhat radical approach this time: from the outset, I am valuing myself and all the work I do, work that “goes without saying”–all the thinking and writing and developing that happens before an idea can even be communicated to another human–as well as all the behind-the-scenes work that happens before an idea can be communicated to the general public. It’s the kind of work that is essential to any worthwhile endeavor but does not attract big funders who are only interested in helping with “project costs”.

I am tracking my hours and trying to build a support system for this work by developing a patronage, 21st century style: monthly donors receive end-of-month emails detailing what I’ve been up to that month, what I’ve got up my sleeve, and what’s on my mind. A number of people have signed up already, which is pretty amazing, considering that they can’t possibly know what it is yet since I don’t. At a time when I am feeling so vulnerable, I am grateful beyond belief for this heavenly host of visionaries.

That brings me to this very moment, the moment when I am jumping out of the nest, when I am placing a bet on myself, when I am bringing all of that confetti into center, when I am breathless in anticipation and queasy with excitement.

Mantras Currently in Rotation

It’s been twelve years since I last told you about all the things I tell myself on a regular basis (henceforth casually referred to as “mantras”), unless you count the time I told you about all the things my mother always told me and which I now tell myself. Mantras come and go approximately at the rate of the lunar cycle, which is surely sheer coincidence, so I can only really tell you what’s running on my mantra marquee for the month of January 2023.

  1. There are too many wonderful things to do today.

This immediately 1) lets me off the hook from trying to do it all because that is clearly impossible and 2) reframes all the things I have to do as wonderful. They are wonderful because they mean I am connected to others in some way. Wonderful because they directly involve music. Wonderful because I am physically and mentally able to do them. Wonderful because I am alive to do them.

2. Transformation comes by way of attention, not preoccupation.

I am a solver of problems, real and conceptual. If there is any mental real estate available in my brain (e.g. when I’m walking, driving, or playing offbeats), I’m usually gnawing on some juicy puzzle. This is the definition of preoccupation–being occupied by a problem before it is right in front of you. It’s not the same as worrying–preoccupation can be calm or anxious–so this would all be fine and good if I wanted to be the world’s greatest problem solver and not a poet. And I mean “poet” in the loosest possible sense; I want to see the world as it truly is, not as it appears to be. This is my deepest wish. So when I catch myself obsessively problem-solving like an otherwise scrawny kid doing bicep curls, I remind myself that the world will transform itself before my very eyes if I just look at it rather than past it.

3. Live in music. Find the words.

Actually, this is a throwback to the last lunar cycle, but I want it to be my life mantra. To live inside of music is to forsake the music world, in which there is no music. Music is real; the music world is a construct (see above). By living I mean thinking. Music is what I want to think about, not who’s who and who’s good and where I fit into it all. I find the advice “don’t compare yourself to others” to be altogether unhelpful, but if I start thinking about music itself–about the unspeakable beauty of it–and if I sing music in my head (or out loud in emergency situations), everything else fades away without force.

Finding the words to express what’s in my head and my heart is a rare occurrence because I have an exceptionally slow brain, apparently. It almost never happens in conversation (sorry, guys!). But even in the privacy of my own mind, or when writing in my journal, I don’t always take the time to dig deep. I aspire to take the time to Find the Words. I need to remind myself that there is no greater feeling, and that it will be worth it. I need to have faith in what doesn’t exist yet.

“Live in Music, Find the Words” is actually the abbreviated version. The whole thing, as it stands now, is:

Live in Music–only come out to share, never to compare. Find the Words–email is a leash, social media, a cage.

Questions I had on November 7

Can I include recorded music on a podcast, or is there a copyright issue with that? How much would I have to pay for health insurance if I didn’t have my job? Am I saving enough for retirement? How does book publishing work, and would anyone actually be interested in my “essays”? What does music do in us? What does music do for a community? For an individual? When can I learn how to read poetry? Could I learn to sing? To conduct? To dance? To compose? How long can I really expect to be able to play the violin? What will happen to me once my body and mind become feeble? Once I don’t have parents or a husband or even a brother to help me? Once I lose my youthful verve? Where will I fit into this world when I am old? Can I still help people when I become weak? Does our house require a lot more maintenance than we are providing? Do we need to paint? What do we do with our old electronics? What exactly am I trying to prove/achieve/accomplish with everything I do? Am I capable of sitting still? Does doing stuff make me happy or sad? Does it make me happy and then sad, and is that cycle inevitable? Is it healthy? Is it natural? Am I a “good” person, or am I actually pretty bad? What is underneath my ability to be what society values? Am I doing way too much or not nearly enough, and according to whom? Is it possible to live a life inside of music but outside the music world?

This Stays Here

A few days ago I had the radical impulse to write nothing but my honest thoughts and feelings in my private journal. I obeyed and was surprised by how many pages I was able to fill in no time at all, how easily the words flowed out of my pen. I was surprised by some of the words themselves.

“I just filled five pages of my journal with nothing but honest thoughts and feelings,” I announced to my husband afterwards, with the air of someone who has just run ten miles or asked their boss for a raise or cleaned their bathtub. Hours later, I heard what I said and added, “I realize that’s what most people use their journals for, but that’s not how I use mine.”

“Uh-huh,” he replied, his level of concern going in the wrong direction.

What can I say, I’m a practical gal. I wouldn’t even buy chips and salsa in college because I didn’t feel their nutritional value was worthy of such a big chunk of my grocery budget. Apparently, I ruled my own private diary entries with the same iron fist.

If, while journaling, a thought or a feeling related to something beyond my control–the behavior of a family member, the artistic choices of my employer, the behavior of a family member–rose to the surface, it was tossed aside in favor of things I can control–my behavior, my artistic choices, my self. Healthy, right?

Useful, perhaps. People like me acknowledge that feelings are unavoidable (and that they are neither good nor bad), but they tend to think of them as obstacles to getting stuff done. And there you have my dirty little secret.

The danger with people like me (see Siobhan from Succession for a chilling portrayal of the worst version of this type of person) is that we become so alienated from what it is we actually want that we couldn’t tell you honestly if we tried. Our lives become hollow charades in which we seek to impress others in hopes of proving our worth. Surely, if it takes all kinds to make the world go ’round, Achievers are among the kinds needed. But when our own desires are so divorced from our ambitions, we’re like some sort of mutant beanstalk. Impressive? Maybe. Obnoxious? Uh-huh.

Ever since my radical impulse I have consistently filled eight pages a day with honest thoughts and feelings. Compare that with my usual daily goal of three and my average of one (which was often heavily peppered with my favorite phrase, “I don’t know”). Now, I can barely turn the pages fast enough–my pen just will not stop. No word is off-limits, no thought unspeakable, no opinion too unenlightened. I even use all caps sometimes.

Whereas I used to dole out my words and sentences like individual lentils, screening them for stones and unfair generalizations, I now pour the entire sack onto the page. (And, if you don’t already know, few things feel better in this world than running your hand through a giant sack of dried lentils.) It feels like I’m taking a swim in Truth, not caring if my hair gets wet, or if I stay in too long, or if I sound like a jerk.

This is not a story yet. It’s either the beginning of something, the end of something, or a wide spot in the road that no one’s even going to stop to take a selfie with. I don’t know myself well enough (there’s that phrase again!) to predict which direction this is going to go, or if you will still like me (assuming you like me) while this new update is in progress. All I know is that, while my Logic Machete has gotten me this far, it’s time to get to work on my Wisdom Canoe.

Life in the Drive-Thru Lane

For years I have been stuck in line at a drive-thru. This establishment is not dealing with staffing shortages or supply chain issues. No, the problem here predates the pandemic. The problem is me.

I can’t decide what I want. The question lingers in the air: “Small, Medium, or Large?” I used to think that I just needed more time with the menu, which appeared at first to be teeming with information, but I’ve been here long enough to see that it is shockingly incomplete.

Advice on this topic runs the gamut. Choose Large, because #yolo. Choose Medium, because it’s prudent/responsible/respectable (and, let’s be honest, you’ve probably already chosen Medium). Choose Small, because the meek shall inherit the earth. Some would simply recommend choosing something, anything, because drive-thru life ain’t no kinda life, but I’m not convinced that I get to go through this line more than once.

Lately I’ve been managing the situation by trying to recognize that Drive-Thru Life, while perhaps no one’s definition of Best Life, is life nonetheless, and woe to the person who fails to appreciate the full tank of gas, the privilege of being able to adjust the temperature and choose the soundtrack, or the cup holders which enable them to go through such a line in the first place. As I serenely take a deep breath of stale air heavily scented with artificial watermelon, I grow ever more certain that I am either on the path to enlightenment or to a padded cell.

Remarkably, I’m not putting anybody out with my indecision. There are no cars behind me, no one is waiting at home for dinner, and the intercom lady certainly couldn’t care less. Her job is just to ask the question. I ratchet the seat warmer up to super-maximum in an attempt to simulate an urgent situation.

Deep down, I know what I should do. I should rip off my seat belt and run as fast as I can into the Wilderness, rejecting forever the question as it was put to me. But here, in the increasingly uncomfortable comfort of the car, I weigh the options. I wonder if I’m really willing to give up Small, Medium, and Large forever. I consider whether or not I am sturdy enough to shiver through those long Wilderness nights. I try to imagine myself slaying the dragon called “Thou Shalt” upon our inevitable encounter. I close my eyes and struggle to picture a world without fast food.

Indebted

I am grateful for people who didn’t write me off when I said something ignorant, naïve, or vapid.

I am grateful for the many musical organizations who accommodated me and my religious beliefs in my youth.

I am grateful for the people who reached out and included me when I was new.

I am grateful for friends who pointed out a difficult truth but broke my fall with love and respect.

I am grateful for the violin teacher who did not dismiss me when my family fell on hard times.

I am grateful for a mom whose life advice often centered around giving others the benefit of the doubt, but always ended with, “but you’re the one who was there”, thereby giving me the benefit of the doubt.

I am grateful for all the grown-ups who believed I was capable of leadership, responsibility, and excellence, even as a young person.

I am grateful for friends who offered admiration, not advice, when I was hanging on for dear life.

I am grateful for complete strangers who offered me encouragement, assistance, or a smile.

I am grateful for all the clerks, cashiers, and waitstaff who met my ineptitude, indecision, or incoherence with patience and kindness.

I am grateful for everyone who has ever shown me grace, mercy, kindness, generosity, patience, and understanding. I am grateful for everyone who has given me a second chance, overlooked my faults, or had faith in me despite my shortcomings.

“Deserving” is a concept I can’t really wrap my head around. It seems it can only apply to everyone or no one at all.

Resting B*tch Brain

She sits in the corner, quietly minding her own business at first. Legs crossed, eyebrows pressing together, she is a vision of pragmatism as she scribbles notes on a clipboard, pausing occasionally to press the pen to her lips and squint at nothing in particular. I don’t know how she knows I’m awake. I don’t even know I’m awake yet.

“Ah, there you are,” she pounces, putting down her pen. “I’m glad you’re awake so that we can discuss all your failures. Failures and failings, actually, as so many are ongoing.”

“I don’t know, I thought I was doing pretty good,” I manage to croak out, eyes still sealed shut.

She laughs. “Of course you did! That’s what I told you last night so you could fall asleep. But it’s daytime now (has been for a while, not that you would know), and it’s time to take a long, hard, ruthless look in the mirror. Oh, I’m sorry, would you like to have coffee first?”

“It would be nice,” I mutter.

“Of course you would. You’re a weak person.”

“Hey,” I retort.

“Good! Your eyes are mostly open now. Take a look around this room. How long have you lived here? Four years? And you’re still using these dumb curtains that aren’t even long enough? And please don’t tell me you’re still pretending that you’re going to paint the walls someday.”

“I might,” I muse.

“Yeah. Kind of like you ‘might’ wash that mound of delicates one day?”

“Rude.”

“Well, whatever you want to call it, I’m just trying to help. Help you be better! Speaking of which, is today the day you’re going to start reading books? Doing yoga? Drinking enough water?”

“We’ll see how I feel,” I say, picking up a cup of coffee which has quite magically appeared on my nightstand.

“Right. Do I need to tell you that you’ve been saying that almost every day for the last, oh, twelve years?”

I sip my coffee in silence, seeing how I feel.

“Okay,” she says, “I’ll back off a touch. What would you like to accomplish today?”

Encouraged by the subtle optimism of this question, I sit up.

“Well, for starters, I was thinking I might actually do some writing this morning…”

She snickers.

“…and then I’d like to finally clip my toenails…”

She snorts.

“…and then, I don’t know, maybe I’ll clean my bathroom!”

She cackles. “Darling, have you met you? What’s next, are you going to jump-start your old Volvo? Return everybody’s chamber music parts that you’ve been sitting on for the last nine years? Who knows, maybe you’ll go grocery shopping and cook dinner!”

She laughs at this hilarious joke. I sigh and take another sip.

“But seriously, dear, why don’t you get showered and we’ll get to work. I have a number of ideas which I think you’ll find compelling as to why Megan might have been giving you the cold shoulder yesterday, and we might as well review all the possible reasons why Edward and his wife both unfriended you at the same time.”

“Yeah. Okay, that sounds good,” I say as I swing my legs out from under the covers.

“There’s one more thing. This is a big one for you. Honey, why is it so hard for you to have fun?”

I stare at her incredulously.

She vanishes.

Easter Someday

Believers and nonbelievers alike will find it hard to believe that losing my faith on Easter weekend was merely a coincidence, but it’s true. As religious as my upbringing was, Easter was never celebrated in any significant way. Our laundry list of tenets included The Virgin Birth, The Death on the Cross, and The Resurrection, but far greater emphasis was placed on The Second Coming, which was not a thing that happened long ago but rather something that could literally happen at any moment.

Consequently, the religion of my childhood was a hyper-vigilant struggle to measure up at every possible turn. You didn’t have the luxury of waiting until the weekend to repent of your latest sin—better to do it right now. Sure, the Death on the Cross was what would ultimately give you clearance at the Pearly Gates, not your good works, but you did have one small responsibility: to love Jesus.

This Love, provided it was authentic (a caveat which is crucial yet maddeningly unverifiable), would naturally result in living a good, wholesome, healthy, and productive life. Signs that you were on the right track included obedience to ten fairly straight-forward commandments (the 4th of which secured our place in history as the first ones to have gotten it alllll right), not smoking, not drinking alcohol or caffeine, not eating meat, not wearing jewelry or fine garments or make-up, not swearing, not playing card games, not going to the movies, not dancing, and not being gay.

Since these were not rules so much as outward signs of inner convictions, you could almost get away with pretending to be genuinely concerned for your neighbor when you saw them drinking a kind of soda known to contain caffeine. You know, for their eternal well-being. “Sister, will I see you there?”

Unsurprisingly, the only people who seemed to follow all of these (not) rules to a T also happened to be quite embittered and harshly judgmental, which is also considered to be sinful and un-Christlike. Thus, Seventh-day Adventists are caught in an endless judgement-loop, both of themselves and of each other.

By the time Easter of 2007 rolled around, I was no doubt already exhausted by this loop, especially considering my idealistic tendencies and the fact that I’m an enneagram Type 3. A junior at the Cleveland Institute of Music, I had recently turned 21, but had still never tasted alcohol (though I had been slipping on the caffeine thing for years). But being different from my classmates didn’t bother me, and the never-ending sin-repent-repeat cycle wasn’t wearing on me too badly, either. What I did find troubling, however, were the blinders with which my Brothers and Sisters in Christ viewed the world.

The World was seen as something to move through warily, cautiously. It was something to be taught and never something from which to learn. We were always either hiding from it or trying to influence it. It was something to be “in” but not “of” (i.e. something to attend, not to enjoy). Here we were, the Salt of the Earth, yet we were terrified of dissolving.

I began to notice that church people didn’t seem to be listening to what they themselves were saying half the time. What was even more alarming was that no one else seemed to mind. All around me, heads nodded, Amens were murmured, and hymnals opened to the appropriate page. People requested prayer for a common cold and Praised the Lord for recovered car keys. Scientific findings were touted when they reinforced the church’s teachings on health but derided when they challenged the book of Genesis. Non-believers were painted either as conquests or lost causes.

What was beginning to seem myopic to me was purported by the Church to be a bird’s-eye view. We were taught to see the hand of God and the temptations of Satan everywhere, from history books, to politics, all the way down to the most mundane occurrences and chance encounters in our daily lives. Rather than serving to awaken, this kind of worldview tends to put a person into a sort of daze. Why pay attention to anything when you already know the answer to everything? Why listen to what someone else is saying if your primary objective is to persuade them to believe as you do? Why give real consideration to other ways of thinking and being (and risk giving the Devil a foothold) if you know you are part of the remnant church?

As frustrated as I was by this zombie-like approach to a world which, I was beginning to suspect, had a lot more to offer than I’d been led to believe, I never once thought of giving up. I would keep fighting, keep searching, keep trying to understand. I would be a lifelong Adventist, moving through the secular world of music gracefully, bravely, never agreeing to work on Saturdays, upholding church values through example.

All of that went out the window like so much rubbish over the course of about three hours. I was doing some late-night practicing in the whitewashed cinderblock basement of CIM, delving into the second movement of the Sibelius Violin Concerto with a loving obsession. As music tends to do, it somehow reached past my defenses, right into my heart, and jostled loose an irreversible revelation: that the reason I was hanging on so tightly to a religion that left an increasingly bad taste my mouth was simple—I didn’t want to lose my special connection with my dad.

My dad is a preacher. I listened to his sermons nearly every week from age 8 to 18. He was the best, I thought. His sermons were always fresh and well-constructed, and his delivery was well-paced and engaging. He performed oft-neglected aspects of the job, like visiting the sick and the elderly, with earnest dedication. I admired him completely and was proud to be a P.K.

Although my dad has a lovely singing voice and can actually carry a tune (even if his life doesn’t depend on it), he is not nearly as musically inclined as is my mother. My brother and I both took strongly after her. We had weekly lessons on cello/violin, played in the city’s youth orchestra, sang in choirs at church and at school (directed by our mother), and were members of a touring handbell choir. Make that two touring handbell choirs.

So while my brother and I could talk to my mom about music all day long, my dad was never part of the club. He was always very supportive—paying for lessons, attending my recitals, saying he was proud of me—but I knew it wasn’t the same kind of pride he felt when I showed an interest in spiritual things. Calling home from college, I relished the opportunity to apprise him of all the ways in which religion was still playing an important role in my new worldly life. I could practically hear the buttons bursting over the phone.

But when I realized that my desire for his approval and affection was the last thing tethering me to my familiar but hollowed out religious fervor, I knew I could not continue along the same path. It wouldn’t be an authentic life. My faith wouldn’t really be mine. Even God, if he did exist, would surely understand my need to walk away. After shedding a bucket of tears and returning to my apartment in Little Italy, I somberly said goodbye to my dad in my heart. It was finished.

The next morning, which just happened to be Good Friday, I was surprised to discover that I’d shed approximately 50 pounds. There was a lightness in my step as I filled my lungs with fresh air, awakening to this world which I would finally be permitted to encounter, explore, and even enjoy. I could let a question hang in the air without answering it, shutting it down, or laughing it off. I could meet people without judging them, love them without trying to change, educate, or convince them. I would finally be allowed to be truly humble.

Two days later, on Easter Sunday, I composed an email to my dad. I pictured him at home, working in his shop and sonorously whistling a hymn tune. In the email, I apologized. I explained. I assured him that I was making an intellectual decision, not merely succumbing to temptation. I wanted him to know that I came by my loss of faith honestly.

I hit “send” and braced myself for a sermon, one that I’d heard before but which had always been aimed at another wayward sinner. I closed my laptop and walked down the hill to a friend’s house for Easter brunch. Such a celebration would have felt foreign to me anyway, but I reveled in the new sense of distance I felt from the nostalgia everyone around me seemed to be feeling. For the first time, this day meant absolutely nothing to me.

Belly full of quiche and crudités, I walked back up the hill to my apartment and sat down at my computer. I took a deep breath and logged into my email account, fully expecting a cascade of disappointment, sorrow, and Bible verses. Instead, I found a tender response from my dad, the dad I had known since I was a baby, the dad who called me Ella-Belle and carried me on his shoulders. The dad who told bedtime stories and made pancakes and bundled me up in a big, fuzzy blanket. The dad who took so much joy in showing me how to tend a garden and use a nail gun and draw a railroad disappearing onto the horizon with proper perspective. The dad whose love for me transcends religious constructs and moral codes, whose love for me can’t be explained or controlled or reasoned away.

My dad, whom I love beyond measure.