Category: Childhood

Everyday Love

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apple_heart_by_buhrena-d2yd074

Love shows up in the strangest places.

It’s the Monday before Christmas and I’m walking down 3rd Avenue. I have a chesty cough and my chapped hand clings to a prescription for antibiotics.

“Bronchitis,” the doctor told me matter-of-factly after listening to one, heavy breath with his cold stethoscope pressed to my back. He wished me a “Merry Christmas” as he ushered me out of the exam room and into the hallway where he pulled another chart from the cracked, plastic bracket on the wall.  — They’re running out of room at the inn.

On the avenue, I let out a good, phlegm-y cough. My lungs loosen up, and suddenly, a good energy closes in on me. Bay Ridge shoppers scatter in every direction, colorful tubes of wrapping paper poking out from the tops of their over-sized shopping bags. A man in a JETS sweatshirt yells into his cellphone in a thick Brooklyn accent, “Whatddya mean, yous got the fuckin’ Star Wars pajamas? I just waited in line a fuckin’ hour for these fuckin’ things! Jesus Christ Lorraine.” He lets out a sigh, and then, he laughs and raises his right thumb and forefinger to his lips, taking a final pull off his cigarette before flicking it to the curb in an explosion of sparks. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”

An Arab kid holds the door for me as I walk into Rite Aid on 78th Street, and, when I thank him, he tells me, “No problem lady. Don’t worry about it,” like he’s a member of the Rat Pack. In the line to pick up my prescription, there’s a toddler in a two-tiered stroller shoving Fruit Loops wildly into his face. He smiles at me, rainbow sludge oozing out of the corners of his mouth. I wave at him covertly and when he laughs his mother turns around to look at me suspiciously.

“What’s your last name, honey?” the pharmacy cashier asks me when I finally get to the front of the line. I tell her and she lets out a laugh like tires on gravel. “You Irish, you’ve got the craziest names! What’s your first name honey?” I don’t bother telling her it’s Scottish. “Sarah.” She hands me a white paper bag with a yellow sticker. “Feel better honey. Happy Holidays. Next in line, come on over honey!”

At the produce place on the corner of Ovington Avenue, I’m in line behind a Greek lady who buys four pints of peeled garlic cloves from the Chinese woman wearing blue, latex gloves. They both laugh, sharing some sort of inside joke. — And, I wonder what the fuck she’s planning on cooking, because whatever it is — I want some.

Suddenly, all these little things feel like something big. And, that’s how I know love is edging it’s way back into my life. It always begins with small, innocuous moments. Joy hidden in the bits and pieces of our humanity. I step back and observe it — my Brooklyn. I remind myself that I don’t have to be anything. I’ll just watch this beauty fall around me. And, it doesn’t mean I have to stay here, it just means I have to be here now.

Look. Customers sipping their coffee. My cat curled up on top of my feet. Listen. The murmur of my parent’s conversation downstairs. Sirens wailing out on their way to a fire. Breathe. Someone’s making pasta sauce and its aroma drifts through the window, out onto the street. The clean scent of the pine wreath my mother has fastened to the front door.

I haven’t bought a single gift. Depressed and bed ridden does not a good Christmas-shopper make. But, on the walk home, I convince myself that three days will be plenty of time. I don’t mind waiting in lines. Would you believe I like standing there, watching everyone else’s story unfold? Because, I do. — Especially when I am tired of replaying my own.

I arrive home and I find my mother has left apples out for me on the kitchen counter. She’s placed them neatly on a paper towel in front of the coffee pot.

Love isn’t always wrapped up under the tree.

It’s the kid who’s getting two pairs of Star Wars pajamas this year. It’s an Arab boy with the swagger of Frank Sinatra. It’s macerated Fruit Loops staining the corners of a shrewd toddler’s mouth — and it’s the mother who’ll fiercely protect him. It’s a cashier who calls everyone “Honey.” It’s a Greek lady with a fuck-ton of garlic and it’s a Chinese lady with blue gloves who knows something I don’t.

It’s making my way back home.

And, it’s finding apples waiting for me on the kitchen counter.

 

 

Artwork: “Apple Heart”; http://buhrena.deviantart.com/art/Apple-Heart-178646080

 

The Coffee Shop

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Photo Oct 04, 10 47 31 AM

I watch the sun come up in the window of the coffee shop where I work.

I got the job a few weeks ago. — A barista.

I arrive at 6:25AM, five days a week. I brew big carafes of coffee, set out pastries in a glass case, and watch as the Avenue begins to open its eyes and welcome the day. The coffee is the best part. It smells warm and sweet and I breathe it in as deeply as I can throughout the day. And — I know — that when this time in my life is over, I will walk into some cafe, any cafe, and the smell of coffee will remind me of how the light splashed down Third Avenue in the Autumn of 2015.

After the morning rush — a parade of school teachers, mothers and fathers with sons and daughters keen on a breakfast of doughnuts, chocolate croissants and macaroons, crabby little-old-ladies, suited business men, and a suave Italian who always orders a cortado with “just-a little extra milk” — things slow down. It’s still. One regular sits at his computer quietly, for hours, eating his giant, cinnamon-sugar doughnut. I stock white paper cups and stamp white paper bags with our shop’s logo. I look out the window and I ignore the elephant in the room.

I’m just taking cover here, in Bay Ridge. Other parts of Brooklyn still lay in ruins.

I avoid the subway lines in certain neighborhoods. I decline invitations from friends who are headed into different parts of the borough. I’m still walking around in a mine field without Kevlar.

It’s not just that Brooklyn has changed. Change — I expected. It’s what hasn’t changed. The places that still remain — as if I’d never left  — a skeleton of a city that I once shared with someone else. When I left Brooklyn in November of 2009, I wasn’t an “I.” “I” was a “We.” We left this place. It had been ours. Everything. Parks and street corners. Restaurants and bars. Cafes and clothing stores. And Avenues. So many Avenues. I cannot escape how the light falls here. It’s like a time machine. Brooklyn, B.P. (Before Portland) and Brooklyn, A.D. — the two blur, in some strange warp.

Seven years later, I pass the same places and I want to melt into the cement. — To disappear. — All these little things I once loved, still living in the same space. Some are gone, too. My heart aches — for all of it.

But, here, in the coffee shop, I’m safe. The faces are, for the most part, kind. The Brooklyn accents, comforting. And, the smell. Oh, the smell. I grind the beans and I lean in as I pull the cleaning lever, watching, as a little cloud of fine, ground coffee puffs out into the air — flakes of fragrant, roasted perfume. I pour creamy espresso shots into little, ceramic cups and its aroma wafts up and into my nose. The little metal spoon clinks. The machine drips. drips. drips. the drip coffee into a steel carafe. A woman tears the top off a pack of Domino sugar. Everything feels calm and manageable.

I hand a little boy a clear bag that displays his little, coconut macaroon. His father buys one for him every morning. He tilts his head and smiles at the cellophane bag and the gold sticker that secures it. “What do you say to the lady?,” his father asks him. The little boy teeters back shyly into the wall opposite the counter and mumbles, “Thank you.” His father smiles at me when I hand him his cup of coffee. “Come on bud, let’s go.” He ushers the small boy out the door, but, the boy always looks back in. First, to me, then, to the case filled with macaroons.

I know that feeling. Looking back into a place that’s so hard to leave — so inviting. I feel his melancholy — forced to leave his dreams on the wrong side of a glass pastry case. But, it’s all just a part of growing up. He will learn. The necessity of leaving things behind. Too much sugar. He’ll know better. He’ll know what he can return to, and, he’ll know what he has to abandon. Yes, he’ll know. — Gold stickers will not always hold things in place.

I wipe down the counter where a few drops of coffee have spilled.

When I remember this time in my life — I know — I will remember the smell of this place.

I breathe it in deeply. Warm and sweet.

Coffee.

 

 

Rest, For The Weary

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Weary is a really good word.

Until this past week, I’ve never been truly weary before. I’ve been exhausted, tired, drained, tapped out, and spent. Not weary.

Goodbyes are tiring. Traveling is tiring. Road trips, while they are the experience of a lifetime, are tiring. Sitting in a car at a ninety degree angle for sixteen hours at pop is tiring. Yes — even trail mix — is tiring. And, some combination of these things, at random or in succession, leads to extreme weariness.

So, I sit here in a fog. Waiting. Waiting for the moment to hit. The moment when I’ll begin processing all this change and movement I’ve been barreling through at warp speed. But, now, I allow myself the time to rest.

I try to write about home and place. The two things that have always fascinated me the most. They are synonyms and antonyms simultaneously. And, my search for home never started by going to a place, but, instead, by searching within. You must use caution. Home and place will deceive you. I’ve learned too well how familiar things can, very quickly, become foreign.

On the last leg of our trip, as my mother and I crossed over the Pennsylvania border, she said, “This is the East coast landscape I’m used to. It’s so green and lush. It’s beautiful. And, maybe it’s not as dramatic as the West coast, but, this is my home.” Those few, short sentences, summed up everything. My hopes and expectations for this move, the place I hold and have always held for myself in NYC, the sense of myself that I’ve left behind and — the one I’m returning to.

Sometimes, in those TV shows where famous actors or athletes return to their childhood hometowns the host will say, “Stay tuned, and watch as So-and-So returns to the place that made him!” I keep thinking about that. Because, I returned to my childhood home, and, in doing so, I left the place that made me behind. But, having been re-made somewhere else, and returning back home, has its advantages. — It makes everything here look new. Better. Or, at the very least, different.

It’s an unknown feeling. An exciting one. And, when I’m less weary, it’s one I look forward to exploring.

It’s like crossing a state line into something unexpected, but, still familiar. A life that’s green and lush. And, maybe not as dramatic as the one I left behind out on the West coast. But, here I am. And I won’t look back.

Because this — this is my home. And, weary or not, I’ve arrived.

 

(Un)Pack Your Heart

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Photo Aug 04, 5 12 17 PM

I am leaving Portland in 48 hours.

As I pack, I find stories strewn about everywhere. Stacks of old papers. Pictures. Books. Dresses and socks. Keychains and candles. Molskines and mugs.

I can hardly breathe. — So, bear with me, there won’t be bonafide essays for a few weeks. Just travelogues. Notes on a transient life — which has spilled out in front of me like a bag of rice on the kitchen floor.

One thing is certain — we can tell who we were by the things we carry. Tim O’Brien once wrote a beautiful book that captured those feelings I’m only now beginning to understand.

What follows here are snapshots. Truly. There is so much more. Boxing up my life. Leaving this place I love. I sit with it. I look at it. All of it. I lay it all out on the cutting board. And, I cut away the pieces. Choosing the ones I will throw in my pot — and tossing the rest to the side.

I acknowledge these. These that were. These that shall remain.

1. Adam

Photo Aug 04, 4 40 23 PM

His photos are all in one box. I put them there — years ago. A coffin at the top of a closet. The lid was covered with dust. We used to take photo-booth-photos everywhere we went. I still have all of them. The strip above was from our friend’s wedding. He loved me on that day — I remember — and I loved him back. We danced. We sat on cement steps with plates of food in our laps and we laughed. I have tried to throw everything of ours away before. No matter what I trash, I will forever keep this photo strip. Always. Because he was my first love. And, I will never love that way again. And this. — This is what that looked like.

2. Theresa

Photo Aug 04, 4 46 16 PM

My maternal grandmother died before I was born, but I’m told that we are a lot alike. My mother says that she was no-frills. That she said what she had to say when she felt like saying it. That she insisted on eating salad with every meal. — And, that she was a fox. People see my fair skin and know that I’m Irish. But, they forget that her Mediterranean blood courses through my veins too. In the Summer, my shoulders turn her Italian, olive brown.

I knew my grandfather well. And, I knew he loved her real bad. — Even years after she died. — He’s gone now too. But, every time I consider settling on some guy — I think about them. And, I know, there’s some dude out there who’s gonna love me, real bad, even when I’m dead. And, I’m waiting for him.

When I see the picture above, the one with my mother sitting in Grandma T’s lap, I think to myself — we all look alike. And, we’re beautiful. Three generations of beautiful. Theresa’s dead, but she sees me. — I’ve known that since I was a kid. It’s weird. — I keep her pictures in every room so she can watch me. So she knows — her daughter did a really good thing.

3. Dad

Photo Aug 04, 4 39 13 PM

My dad is, and always will be, a strange bird. But, there’s no guy in the world who will ever love me more. Growing up, he used to listen to a lot of classical music. Opera, symphony, choral — all that stuff. He had bookcases full of classical recordings. One day, he was just over it. Suddenly — it was all Bob Dylan — all the time. He used to pick me up at play rehearsal in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn and blast Blood On The Tracks like it had been released that day — every day. If we’re being honest, I’d rather not admit I know every track by heart — but, I do. My dad gives me Bob Dylan postcards and books. It’s like, he’s telling me — subliminally — if I get Bob, then, I’ll get him. That alone is enough to keep my interest. I don’t always acknowledge it, but, I love that my Dad is weird as fuck. Because, I am too. And, it’s nice not being so alone in my weirdness. He’ll watch an entire season of any HBO show I want — in 1-2 days. When I sold my complete series of OZ DVDs on Hawthorne yesterday, it kinda broke my heart. But, my Dad knows what’s up. He’s got HBO GO. And, I know, we’ll get back into it. And now, while we’re in the car — I get to pick the album. — I paid some dues getting through, Tangled Up In Blue.

4. Mom

Photo Aug 04, 4 43 57 PM

My mom sends me a card for everything. They arrive so frequently, I forget how amazing they are. Now, I’m finding them everywhere. Sometimes, she’ll throw in some cash and tell me to grab a bite, or to do something nice for myself, or to buy the cat a treat. She wants me to be happy — always. In good, motherly fashion, she has always wanted me to have, feel, and be the best. I find her heart scribbled on tiny cards everywhere. Maybe she doesn’t know — I save them all. When I was little, she emphasized the art and necessity of the “Thank You” card. — How it will “never go out of style to have class.” How, to appreciate people and things is important. It occurs to me as I pour over her notes — crying like a child, because it’s uncanny how she always knew exactly when I needed saving — that I should send her more cards. There is no one in my life more deserving of thanks and kindness. She deserves nothing less than 100% class. And, there’s no one who needs more reminding to do kind things for herself. Someone needs to give her permission to feel good. Maybe that person is me.

The card above was sent to me at Christmastime — the year that my heart was first brutally slaughtered. Whenever I come across this note — I’m reminded of who I’m supposed to be. And, that’s a woman who’s a lot like my Mom. — Gracious, brave, strong, and impossibly classy.

5. Me, Myself & Eye

Photo Aug 04, 4 48 08 PM

I took this photo yesterday in my kitchen.

I wanted to share a vulnerable moment with you this week because, well, that’s how I’m feeling. I wanted to show you the vulnerability. But, I don’t have to. I’ve been showing you for months and months. These things I’m packing up aren’t me. They’re my archives. All this crap I’m putting into bags and boxes — those aren’t the moments — they’re the evidence. Proof. My tears are like that too. All that outside stuff.

The good stuff? — It’s packed up and ready to go.

Better still, it’s on its way.

Me. — Coming soon. To a city near you.

 

 

The Invented City

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Photo Jun 30, 8 20 01 PM

Before you leave a place, it’s important that you commit it to memory.

Later, you’ll return to it like a dusty book on your shelf. You’ll run your fingers over its edges, and, you’ll remember something you didn’t realize you’d forgotten. It’s hard to visualize — the passage of all that time. Our memories, warping, fit in tightly-packed-cranial-crevices. But, it’s all right there waiting for us, on the dog-eared pages. We open up to that brittle spot, where the spine is cracked. We revisit our oldest secrets. For me, it’s always a story that begins in the Summer — when things were hot and uncomfortable.

*          *           *

Standing on the corner of Lombardy Street, where Williamsburg and Greenpoint are divided by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, in front of the sports-dive, The Callbox Lounge — Adam and I invented Portland.

Inside the bar, five Hasidic Jews draped their heavy, black coats over the backs of tall chairs. Their tzitzit dangled from their hips and their faces, framed in curls, sweat profusely while they watched the Yankees game. Some of them drank beer, some of them, Coca-Cola. This place was their secret. — And, Portland was ours.

We sat at the bar, bathing ourselves in the intermittent breeze of the sputtering air conditioner. We were so different then. Young. In some kind of love. Complicated, even before cracking. We didn’t care. And, we sat there without any real concept of time. We hardly knew the things that stood before us. Our world spanned the length of the bar — and that was enough. Adam’s face was radiant in a blue glow as Keeno numbers popped up on the grid of an old TV screen and, even now — I want to kiss him. Back then, we had plans. We were getting out of that city. Soon. Maybe a year. Maybe less. And beneath the highway, under a starless sky, the night was humming a song with its passing cars and rattling metal. We drank Budwieser and smoked cigarettes and we planned our escape.

Back then, I wanted anything but Brooklyn. I wanted open sky and long, wide roads. And, green. Lots of green. I dreamed of places where no one knew me. Us. Lost together. Anywhere. Winding through some unknown place. And so, we imagined Portland. I imagined Portland. — I imagined we’d be the opposite of what we were.  — And together, we would draw our maps.

*          *          *

The day we left, I stood at the window of our third floor walk-up. I looked down over Nassau Avenue. It was starting to feel like Fall and my screen was thrown wide open. I remember seeing a woman down below with a baby carriage drop her scarf and an old man leaned down and picked it up for her in front of the deli with the blue awning. The scarf was red. — I was going to miss that place.

My mother was in our living room putting things into boxes. We had overestimated the amount of room in our car and my father walked up and down, up and down, up and down our steps taking bins, boxes, and bags back to my childhood home in Bay Ridge. “Don’t worry Dabba,” he said, “we’ll ship them out to you when you’re settled.” Dabba is my family’s nickname for me.

It occurred to me, as I stared down at my dirty, Brooklyn street — no one would call me Dabba where we were going.

Adam came up behind me and held my shoulders. I only remember this because it was unlike him. He was reserved. He didn’t hold my shoulders often. So, I leaned in, because, when you are scared and lonely and at the precipice of something imagined becoming real — you want Adam to hold you.

“Are we really going to leave today?” I asked, fat tears pooling in my eyes. The apartment still had too many things in it. My mother looked more perplexed with every passing hour. “Sarah,” Adam said, turning me around from the window to face him, “I don’t care if we leave everything we own on this street corner. We are leaving tonight.”

And, we did, that night, around 5 or 6 PM — I can’t remember. We left to find something we both had lost. Though, now, I know that our lost things were not the same. They had never been the same. But, he had been biding his time and I had ignored the facts. So, we invented a place that already existed. We assigned it meaning. And, we drove. We placed ourselves here, in the City of Roses. We walked along rivers we’d read about in books. We learned the names of mountains that, eventually, would rise up from our backyard into a sky that turned strange colors which we did not know how to name.

Oregon.

At the curb, I cried in my mother’s arms. There is no feeling comparable to leaving your mother when you are scared and she wants you to stay. My father’s arms held me a little too tight, and they spoke the words that he couldn’t. Adam turned the key. Ignition. That was the last time I saw Nassau Avenue — my mother becoming smaller and smaller in the side-view mirror.

As we crossed the Verrazano Bridge, our Polish landlord called my cell phone from Nassau Avenue. “You can’t leave mattress on street like this! I get fine! Garbage pick-up not ’til Thursday. Fifty dollars I going to have to pay!”

I looked at the side of Adam’s face. His silhouette sketched a thin line against a darkening sky that met the edges of Brooklyn’s shadows below. The bridge’s wires held us up. I was seat-belted in with our scotch-taped love and some kind of freedom and an emptiness that I will never be able to describe.

“Tell him to take it out of our security deposit,” he said. “We’re not going back.”

(Photo: Allison Webber; http://www.allisonwebber.photography/ )

A Mass In The Trees

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Photo Jun 02, 9 31 35 PM

In bed, my eyes open and look upward. The world is white and dry like the paint that coats the ceiling. I turn my whole head to look at the bedside clock instead of moving each eyeball in its socket. 6:48AM. The world is still lighting up and the overcast hue of a Portland morning bleeds out from behind the red bed sheet that has served as my curtain for almost a year. I lay there, unmoving, until 7:02AM, when something shifts. My foot, or my thigh, I can’t remember. My own body, now separate from my head, pulled its legs from between the sheets. Stepped into dirty jeans, piled on the floor beside the bed. The pants rose up around my ankles without obvious help from my hands.

I stare into my mirrored face in the bathroom. Flecks of make-up and dust surround my reflected portrait. I look tired. Old. Worried. I think I need saving. I need a blessing. I need someone to hold their hand out over me and make me well. A brush to paint over the dark circles of my eyes and make me appear fresh and young. I need a priest.

As a child there was a magic in the church. The clergy. I still remember the robe, a long green smock with gold threads, that Father Kraus used to wear as he billowed back and forth across the altar of St. Charles Borromeo in Brooklyn Heights. My mother singing out in the folk choir as I sat in the front right pew, on my knees, waiting. Not for salvation or peace, but to be heard. The smell of something ancient and holy. The hollow cold of the marble and stone. Each face, frozen, in its station of the cross. Back then, I believed in something. I’m not sure it was Jesus, but that church, in it’s ethereal enormity, made me feel as if I were part of something larger than my body, two arms, two legs, and a head. I prayed. I knelt at the statue of Holy Mary, her eyes cast to the floor, just to the left of the lamb that bowed at her feet. Mother of God.

Father Kraus is dead and I am in Oregon. I walk out of my apartment and drive to morning mass at St. Ignatius on Powell Boulevard, which in stature, has only a fraction of St. Charles’ dignity. I haven’t been in a Catholic church in years. The light is yellow and everything is as gold as idols. Old biddies in beige shoes and nuns in habits chant the rosary and I don’t belong here. I could not belong here. I entered my pew and sat, eyes closed, and let the sound wash over me. A bell chimes. Enter the priest. His robes are purple and stiff, unlike Father Kraus’, who upon his entrances appeared a holy wizard. I allow the routine of the service return. The call and answers, the prayers, the kneeling, then standing, then kneeling, then standing, then kneeling, then standing again. I swallowed my communion, but, it didn’t taste the same. I genuflected leaving the pew and my knee hit the floor with force before reverence, there will be a bruise.

On the steps of St. Ignatius, I felt as empty upon my exit as I did when entering the heavy door into the stale, sour air. Outside again, new breath moved in my lungs and Oregon sky pulled me closer. There are mountains nearby.

At the trail head, leaves crunch under my feet. The trees arch around me like long arms, bending so slightly, to hold me to the path. A chilled gust of air moves their last leaves, ushering me forward. I walk in quiet, the sun burns off clouds and beams of light search for the ground through the canopy. Pine needles dance in circles as they fall to their soft beds, made of their fallen comrades. Fall color cascades. The earthen smell of damp moss reminds me of the wet cold smell of St. Charles. The landscape opens up as I near the clearing and the wind echos like my mother’s footsteps on the marble.

I walked for miles. And became a part of this church. Stopping at its stations to sit on stumps and draw air into nostrils, flaring and alive. At the top of Powell Butte, the sky is open. Mt. Hood is raised in the east like a statue. The sun cradles its peak like a halo, and a soft ring of clouds hangs at the crest, shrouding it in white and blue, like Holy Mary. A beam of sun cast to the Earth, just to the left of the lamb that bowed at her feet. Mother of God.

 

(A Mass In The Trees is an excerpt from my essay collection: The Ascent, And Other Essays.)

 

Start Here.

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Photo Mar 03, 9 21 58 PM

Don’t think. Just start.

While scrolling down my Facebook feed recently, I saw a post from an old pub acquaintance. He announced that he’s been sober for a year now. Back when I first got clean, he’d sent me a message asking me how I did it. I replied: “I have no fuckin’ idea — Just start. That’s all I did. I just started.” I never heard from him again.

It’s a tall order. — Just waking up one day and deciding to do something that’s hard. It takes guile and gumption. And, it takes a certain level of positivity — which is perhaps the most difficult thing for any addict/alkie to cultivate.

Greeting the day warmly has taken lots of practice. I’ve never once woken up and thought to myself: “The world is my oyster!” I was an awkward, chubby kid and I remain an awkward, not-so-chubby adult. Despite my best efforts, those feelings of childhood inadequacy still follow me around like a stray cat. For much of my adult life, I’ve written things off. I learned, a long time ago, I might as well give up before starting, because, really — what’s the point?

Even after getting sober, I still wasted time and effort, highlighting my own failings. It’s hard to find the good in things when you’ve become accustomed to looking for the crap. And, after years of defeat, I considered throwing in the towel, but, even though it took me until the 11th hour to lace up my bootstraps — I did.

Fast forward a few years and I’m finishing up my last week of work at my current job before transitioning to an exciting, new one. I still have to remind myself that starting over is a good thing. But, sober or not — experience or none — change is hard.

The longer I’m off the sauce, the more I see how preparing for the worst all those years has informed my world view. It’s halted my progress and it’s put the kibosh on some of my dreams. While I was looking for all the potential missteps and failures I might encounter, I missed all the things at which I absolutely kick-ass. And, as it happens, there are quite a few of those. Back then, as an active addict, I was sure that all that could go wrong — would go wrong. So, I never started anything. I held tight and waited for change.

Not this time around.

I printed out the manual for my new job and I sat on my couch, geeking out, as I poured over forms and procedures. I caught myself thinking — “Oh shit. This is gonna be good.” I forgot — getting genuinely excited is a crazy high. So, I allow myself these positive thoughts like an evening nightcap, even if my mind is still at work, pulling me toward the rabbit-hole of self-doubt. I have to remember: We can earn our place in the sun, but, to stay there, we have to stop searching for the dark places.

Sometimes, a retrospective is in order. I try to remember that I arrived at my current work position, just shy of nine months sober, fresh out of rehab. A darkness was draped over my shoulders for months. I felt like a failure. But, I kept telling myself: This is it. You have to start over. This is what it takes. Just start here.

Yes. Start here. Even if the odds are stacked against you. If nothing else — do it for the buzz. There is something incredibly intoxicating about it — starting over. There is something wild and reckless about feeling your fear and choosing to move forward anyway.

After all, things do change. One day sober can turn into a year. And, a lousy job can turn into a bitchin’ career.

So, just start. That’s all I did. I just started. But, really, I have no fuckin’ idea.

 

Just My Imagination

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Photo Jan 21, 6 58 59 AM

I still imagine my way back to the bottle. It can’t be helped.

You know the feeling. We’ve all found our way back to something we’ve left behind. Not because we want to slide backwards, but, because it’s necessary to remember certain things before we can move forward. There’s something inherently human about leaning on the things we know — for better or for worse. If nothing else, it’s familiar. Comfortable. The past provides a static level of understanding. A foundation. A trail of breadcrumbs. We’ve been here before — we know it. We’ve mastered the idea of it. And, every once in a while, we have to get close to it again — just to confirm that we still understand. We’re compelled to test the water. We’re curious if things still come to us naturally.

But, like any of the pieces that I’ve left behind — my drinks are only memories I visit. Stories I tell myself. Because, really, there is no going back.

So, instead, I imagine it: Cheers! A birthday toast. A new job. Bad news! I pour a good pour for my crap day — and a better one for my good day. I feel the energy that the cork is suspended in. Then — Pop! All that pressure evaporates. It bubbles over and spills down the sides of the bottle and over my knuckles.

They return to me — moments where I sat at the bar and drank cocktails with purpose.

I’m watching the bartender pull the beer. He paints a semi-circle with his damp bar-rag before he places the glass down with a well-rehearsed sweep of his arm. My partner-in-crime puts his lips to the edge of the pint glass and little bubbles rise up and cling to the tip of his nose. I smile and I sip my bourbon — the kind that’s aged in sherry oak casks. It coats my tongue with wood and vanilla and something else — something smokey, something spicy. My lips curl into a telling smile that, without effort, contains the entirety of this moment. I try to remember why I’m here. Maybe it’s some kind of celebration — or better still — maybe it’s just a regular day.  Either way, I look happy.

Then, I remember. The ending. My face sinks when the very same man who’s handed me my perfect drink tells me that he won’t serve me any longer — not tonight. The same toast to which we raised our glasses will spill on the floor when I slip from my bar stool, looking back at the bartender with a face that is half humiliated and half apologetic.

I wake up on my couch in all my clothes at a strange hour and wonder how the day got away from me. What did I say? Was I mean? Funny? Did I complain about work or the weather? Did I insist I was fine to drive in slurred, sloppy sentences? Next time, I expect the bartender will greet me with the oh-it’s-pitiful-you look as I pony up to the bar. But, I won’t care. This routine. — It’s comfortable.

So, I allow it. I make make space for it. I give in to the bottle. The old one, that still tastes good. I dream about bar stools and other people’s liquor cabinets and white teeth stained with good, red wine. I allow myself these moments. Moments where, eventually, I recall that the time I spent happy and drunk — well, that was imagined too.

So, I find myself back here. In this moment. Because, a trail of breadcrumbs will only take you so far. And, now, here, sober, I allow for my greatest re-imagining. This moment, it’s uncharted. Maybe it’s some kind of celebration — or better still — maybe it’s just a regular day.

Either way, I look happy.

The Re-gifted Reindeer

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Photo Dec 24, 2 05 42 AM

Get out the wrapping paper. It’s re-gifting time.

Yes, I’m home for Christmas. I’m 30. And — in some cultures — I’m what passes for an adult. Yet, here I am, on the couch in my parent’s living room, sitting cross-legged in my pajamas — wearing sparkly reindeer antlers.

For a just a moment — I judge myself harshly. I mean, how is it, really, that after all this time and after all the crap I’ve been through — grown-up heartbreak, real-life lessons, crap-ass jobs, meaningful-to-meager relationships — that I’ve returned home only to be reduced to some primitive version of myself?

Truthfully, I’m not sure. Which is why, this year, I’m trying to cut my bad self a little slack. I’m starting to realize that my self-assessments were never really quite accurate. Each sober day that passes, I make new peace with whoever this woman is that I’m becoming. I’m no teenager — despite the very-real-feeling that I will remain seventeen for all perpetuity. And, while it’s true that, most days, I wish I were something different — something more — I’m starting to feel more comfortable declaring my own instability.

The holiday season is a time for compassion. We’re supposed to go deep and give big. And this year, the only way I can give more of myself is to dust off those old, buried pieces of my soul — the ones that I deemed unfit for consumption. Perhaps I was too hasty in writing myself off. I think it’s time that I dug out my old gifts and gave my new, sober hardware a run for its money.

It’s time to start re-gifting. — Re-gifting myself.

So many of us hand out the same gifts, year after year. We give away the safe pieces of our heart — the pieces with smooth edges — the parts of us that we think are worthy. I’m realizing that it’s time to start putting more on the table. It’s time to bust out the sharp-edged-second-tier-heart-bits.

Sobriety has taught me how to give more of myself. And, sometimes, it’s uncomfortable. Showing up to the holiday party with extra baggage is scary. We give ourselves the illusion of being in control when we allow everything in our lives to remain the same. — And, let’s face it, there is something comforting about the neighbor showing up with the same-fucking-fruitcake every year — even if it’s become your annual tradition to drop it into the trash can like a brick.

I sit on the couch, my festive, sequined antlers twinkling in the Christmas tree lights, and I’m reminded that I need to re-purpose these negative feelings. Especially the ancient ones that were written into my DNA long ago. How we see ourselves is just the story we write in our own heads. It’s time to write something better. My family will always expect one version of Sarah — but the truth is, they’ll have to accept whatever Santa decides to throw under the tree. And, by actually facing my own shortcomings, I become less apologetic for the things I’m not.

This year, I encourage you to re-gift all the things that don’t serve you. Write something new. Find the unused parts of your heart. Predictable appearances are overrated.

Give more.

Red noses get noticed. Let your freak flag fly.

The Ghosts Of Christmas Past

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Photo Dec 16, 7 29 02 PM

“Spirit!” said Scrooge in a broken voice, “remove me from this place.”

“I told you these were shadows of the things that have been,” said the Ghost. “That they are what they are, do not blame me!”

December 20, 2011 — My phone rang, waking me with a start. It was my mother, which I found odd because she knew to never to call me before noon. And, in that off moment of sleepy confusion — I knew — she had bad news. At the end of the line, a coast away, my mother choked out the words: My cousin had been killed the night before in a tragic accident. She had bought me a plane ticket home. I was going back East.

I had been drunk, almost constantly, for several months prior to his death. And, in the truly sobering moments that followed my mother’s phone call, I struggled to locate my emotion. I had rendered myself dull and numb. Tears dammed up behind my eyes. Words got caught in my larynx. Nothing in the room moved — except my arm — which swung out to my right side, off the bed, and grabbed for the open bottle of gin sitting on my bedside table. 7:43AM. I remember. I took a swig.

At work, my gracious coworkers had rallied for me. The skeleton crew that remained for the Christmas holiday had all divvied up my waitressing shifts without complaint. The bartender slipped me shots of whiskey during dinner service. It was the first time I ever drank on the job. After my shift, I sat at the pub around the corner from my apartment and I drank more. Bourbon. I left at last call and I only slept for a few hours before waking up and tossing my clothing into a suitcase haphazardly between swigs from my bottle of bedroom gin.

I arrived at the airport early and I sat at the bar while I waited to board my flight. As I slurped up the last, red sip of my 4th Bloody Mary through a long black straw, the man next to me asked me if he could buy me another. “I’m guessing you’re not having such a Merry Christmas,” he said. The bartender put my 5th drink down in front of me as the man got up. “Happy Holidays,” he said, wheeling his bag toward the gate. When I asked the bartender for my tab, she told me that the man had taken care of my entire bill.

I have never been so drunk on a plane. I ordered two 2 vodkas — the flight attendant handed me the 4 little minis like a vendor at a sporting event. I didn’t bother to mix them with my club soda. I remember holding each blue bottle up to my lips — one, then another, then another. I woke up from a blackout as we hit the runway at JFK International Airport. My head felt like it had been slammed between two bricks. My cousin met me at the baggage claim, where we collapsed into each other’s arms and cried. As we walked to the car she said, “Jesus Christ, Sarah. You reek of vodka.”

It has never been necessary to hide my drinking from my family. This behavior was routine — my routine — our routine. And, given the circumstance of my return, I wasn’t the only one taking nips on the sly. We shuttled from my childhood home, to my aunt and uncle’s house in New Jersey, and back again. We all wept and drank. We sat perfectly still between embraces, and we were silent between sobs. The Christmas decorations only noted the season. We’d all forgotten what day is was — the clocks had stopped and the calendar was just a piece of paper on the wall.

Christmas Day, just days after the funeral, I flew home to Portland. I drank more vodka on the plane. And, when we landed, I had my cabbie drive me directly to the pub. I didn’t bother to stop at home and drop off my bags. For last call, the bartender turned off the juke box and played Elvis’ Blue Christmas and I got up to vomit in the women’s room.

*           *           *

This will be my third sober Christmas. And, when I arrive at PDX to fly East, I will sit and wait for my plane at the gate — not the bar. I will sip my complimentary cranberry cocktail and I will page through a fashion magazine and listen to Frank Sinatra’s Christmas albums on my headphones. I will lay my head on the folding tray and try to sleep until the captain illuminates the “Fasten Seat Belt Sign” and announces our descent.

At JFK, I will walk past the baggage carousel and see the same spot where my cousin and I fell into each other’s arms before she drove me home, stinking of vodka. And, while I wait in the taxi line, the dam will break and I will cry again for my cousin who is gone.

I will pull my bags out of the back seat of a yellow cab and I will hug my mother on the stoop of our house in Brooklyn. When I walk in our front door, I will smell the perfume of the Douglas Fir. And when I see that Christmas tree, lit, in the corner of our living room — nostalgia will stop my heart for a just a few beats. My father will come down the squeaky steps and fold me in his arms before he kisses my forehead and says, “It’s good to have you home Monkeybird.” And, in my eyes, he’ll see — It’s good to be home.

It’s also good to be sober. So, I won’t think about drinking until I open the cabinet to the left of the microwave. I always find my old bottle of Jim Beam while I’m looking for something else in my mother’s kitchen. I poured my cousin a secret drink from that same bottle on Thanksgiving Day, 2011, just a month before his death. It seems fitting that the bottle should remain unfinished. And so, I honor his memory with every drink I do not take.

These were shadows of things that have been. — That they are what they are, do not blame me.

So, I leave my bottle on the shelf for ghosts. Because, my parents never cared for bourbon.

Which is crazy. — I know.

 

 

[Italicized Prose Excerpt: Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol; Artwork (before edits): Sol Eytinge, Jr.]