Long Distance, Day 64

Unfinished thoughts about moving, hardening, distance, and softness

Note: I wrote part of this post before November 5th, and part after. It has definitely been a before and after kind of week.

There is a corner of my new kitchen in Minnesota that smells like home; just off to the right of the dishwasher, closest to the back door, below the plates and the glasses. I can’t describe the smell, other than “home” but that smell transports me to my grandparents’ kitchen in the 1980’s.

We worked so hard to make our various kitchens smell like home, S and I. His rentals, my house on the East End of Ojai, CA, where he and his boys joined my girl and I, a year after we got married during Covid. 

I lived in that house for twelve years, longer than I have lived anywhere. 

After S and the boys moved in, we picked out the tiles and the paint for the new kitchen cabinets, the new bathroom floor. I found the remodel beautiful, I loved it, and yet, in this new house in Minnesota, where I’ve lived for less than three months, in this new kitchen where I picked nothing out, in that specific corner, I stand and close my eyes and inhale and I am back in my grandparents’ condo. 

The breath passes way too quickly – my whole body leans like a Sunflower towards the sun, I long to hear my grandfather whistling at the stove, my grandmother telling a story at the table. Too soon, the enormous void between those days and this one opens back up.

I close my eyes once again, in the hopes of returning to that frame, and when I inhale the scent is the same – home – but my ability to suspend my disbelief has dissolved. 

Both of my grandparents are gone now, and in light of what transpired this week in the United States, and what has been transpiring around the world, I am glad they are not around to see this.  

When we moved to Ojai, over a decade ago, my girl was three years old. I agreed to Ojai, in part, because it seemed like a good place to raise a small child who was about to have her world turned inside out and upside down. Ojai was our choice for the location where our little dysfunctional family of three could collapse, break down, and be dismantled and rebuilt. 

At age three, despite the chaos of her parents’ separation, my child was afforded stability, being surrounded by Oak trees and kind adults at school.

On more brutal days, I often cried in the parking lot before pick up, overwhelmed by the contrast between the beauty my child inhabited and the ugliness of unraveling a deeply unhappy marriage. 

Observers often complimented us on the grace with which we were navigating it all. I replied with gratitude – it appeared so much better than it felt. 

Another family moved to Ojai at the same time as we did. They too were coming from Brooklyn, they too had one child entering the pre-pre K class. We met them on the first morning of drop off.

“How can you stand the dust?” the Mom wailed. She was wearing high heels and tight leather pants. There was no pavement, only dirt, no real classroom, only the expansive outdoor area of the jungle gym, the water station, the tricycle area, and lots and lots of sand. The kids delighted in getting dirty from the first moment of school until we picked them up, tired and muddy, in the early afternoon.

The other family stayed for less than a month. I heard they returned to Brooklyn and while I envied their reversal for myself, I adored where my daughter got to spend her carefree early childhood days, free from stroller valets, and thousand-mile-long waitlists for every school and activity.  

At  some point one of her teachers brought up the possibility of my child skipping a grade. I refused, believing she would be better served making mud pies and playing on the swingset for as long as possible. The real world would encroach soon enough. 

“You’re lucky you have another passport.” I have lost count of how many people have said this to me since 2016 – and especially this week. I know the value of being able to move, relocate, flee; another passport would have saved many of my relatives in the 1930’s and forties. 

By age twenty-five, I claimed to have moved more times than years I’d been alive, which was pretty much true. Moving came easily to me. Until I became a Mom, moving was my natural state. 

Moving opens up new possibilities – especially big moves across continents, countries, languages, cultures. Everything feels fresh and exciting, old problems appear to fall away. I know now that wherever you are, you bring yourself with you, but when I was younger, I believed it was easier to change locations, that a new place could bring about a new me. 

The hardest, worst part of moving again and again is the people: having moved as much as I did, by age twenty-two, I missed people in four countries. I missed weddings and births of children, funerals, and illnesses. I missed friends falling in love, friends dying, losing parents, their kids’ milestones. Mostly, I missed boring Tuesday night chats over a bowl of soup or a glass of wine.  

Moving means leaving the bad behind, and also the good. It means starting over with relationships instead of deepening them, and while I feel lucky that technology helps in terms of keeping in touch from anywhere, it isn’t the same as stopping by when someone needs a hug. 

I long for softness, for respite from the sharp hardness, the hard sharpness that appears to be a prerequisite for life during these cruel days. 

That might be why I reach for fabrics and threads, for the feel of cotton, linen, silk, and on lucky (or more desperate) days, cashmere, merino, alpaca – all that softness under my fingers, between them. I hold each piece up to my face.  

I was one of those child adults, the kind that is forced to make decisions that I wasn’t ready for, because the grownups around me couldn’t distinguish right from wrong. Today, that same child-adult part of me aches for justice and fairness; my compass indicating my right and my wrong is always on high alert. (In California, I was told it’s because I’m a Libra and some planet is in my something – maybe it’s ultimately all in the stars, who the hell knows anything anymore?)

I long for softness, not sometimes, always – even though softness is more and more rare. 

Three years of long distance with my love, during these dark times. Softness is challenging over the phone, even with a husband whose voice sounds like melted butter. 

My fingers have quickly caught on to the calm that accompanies the act of weaving. I am constantly planning when my next opportunity might be. Can I find a smaller loom for the plane?  Can I afford another class? 

The second piece I wove is called “Long Distance, Day 64.” I started it on day 64 of this California / Minnesota experiment. In these last nine-plus weeks, both S and I have experienced the equivalent of years of emotions (and this before the election). 

We have found ways to circumnavigate the distance, and also discovered that there is nothing like holding hands, as we did when he picked me up at the Santa Barbara airport – I flew in for a quick five-day visit in September. 

We already knew that secret about holding hands, but feel it more acutely now. I spend large chunks of my days with a single headphone in one ear, listening, yammering, often forgetting to remove it between calls. It reminds me of NYC cab drivers, and nannies, and housekeepers, who spend their days talking to “back home” while they drive or push the stroller, or clean. S and I are constantly on the phone with one another. 

“Don’t use your wireless headphones for too long,” I cautioned my child, “it’s not good for you.” Now I do it too. And, of course, because everything is constantly coming back to this, I am aware of our insane privilege: we are not in danger of being bombed, neither of us lives in a tent – we don’t even have roommates – we can make plans to get on a plane and visit one another, our children are healthy. 

I weave the different colors together like I shift between thoughts. Hostages, school shootings, the fucking damned election. I know what it feels like to be alone even inside a relationship, and now, despite the plan to live apart for all this time, S  and I are building a rhythm, we are finding closeness, connection. 

And as good friends keep reminding me: every disaster also offers opportunities. The physical proximity that I miss, has also made space for new discoveries. S and I have started asking questions of each other that we didn’t when daily administrative requirements – pick ups, drop offs, work, bills – flooded out many other moments. That is what I wove into “Long Distance, Day 64.”

I chose softer yarn, just as our conversations, our connection have found a way to softness. I notice the tone of his voice – and mine – changes when he picks up and it’s me. I want him to hear what I didn’t need to state when we inhabited the same space. 

Of course there are tough moments – misunderstandings are quick and easy with voice being our main point of connection. I miss his body language, his specific way of standing and moving  that I have learned to decipher after nine+ years together.  There is planning and the admin has doubled, and when S requests more time to “just be, without talking about bills and lists,” while I share his desire, a part of me wants to ask “when exactly is there time for that?” 

My instinct is to harden, to hide behind to-dos, and platitudes about how lucky we are, how privileged – which we are, but that knowledge won’t help us connect, S points out. I know he’s right, I can feel it in the rigidity of my thoughts. I need his tenderness to keep me from falling back into the emotional numbness that kept me safe as a child. 

Shetland wool, Vicuña wool, virgin wool – the young person at the Weaver’s Guild smiles behind their mask, every time I walk in. I’m pretty sure, it’s the equivalent of a polite sigh. I arrive, silver streak in my hair, with a million questions about fabrics and shuttles and looms, and cotton and spinning and weaving and classes and, and, and.

The colors I chose for “Long Distance, Day 64” are warm, reflective of the weather getting chillier, the autumn leaves, the walks I wish S was with me on.  

I listen to books on tape as I weave – over, under, over, under, dark yellows, greens, pinks, grays, Robin Wall Kimerer, Padraìg O’Tuama - peace makers, naturalists, students of human nature and the natural world. 

I want to drown out the noise, remember what is good. That too is a privilege.