Perpetual Wanderlust

“I’ll see you in my dreams, we’ll meet and live and love again, I’ll see you in my dreams…”

I am spinning Letter To You for the first time tonight, because I heard he was pulling from it rather heavily this tour, and I wanted to know the songs when I see him perform them. I don’t know why it matters, but it does, and anyway it’s an excuse to hear some new-to-me Bruce. For all the love I have for Bruce Springsteen, there’s actually an awful lot of his work I haven’t heard. I get in a rut; I get stuck playing Darkness on the Edge of Town, or Live in NYC over and over and over. I can sing along with the saxophone solos on Born to Run just as easily as the songs, I can sing along to the guitar solo on Youngstown, the way they played it live that tour; I barely recognize the album version when I hear it. And there’s something about watching that man sing, something about what he gives to you, what he lets you take away, he must get something back from that or he’d be translucent by now, it’s give and it’s take, and it’s really, really beautiful. He looks an awful lot like my dad.

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“I’ve got your guitar, here by the bed, all your favorite records, and the books that you read…”

When I was 18, I worked at a toy store on the main street of the small town I grew up in, and as interesting as it seemed like it would be, the reality was that very few people in that town could afford to shop there, so my job was actually quite dull. I used to wait impatiently for my Dad to come through that door, coffee in hand (hazelnut, black), smile on his face. I miss that, I miss when I didn’t know him the way I do now. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t seen that darkness, but the heart knows what the heart knows.

After work, he’d sometimes drive me back to his house, in that fire engine red Pontiac Vibe, and I’d sit on the old Texas pine couch my parents bought when I was a baby, drinking cheap beer and watching Bruce Springsteen, Live in NYC. Dad would be in the kitchen, making dinner for us. The dogs would be underfoot, their fur thick on carpets he would pile up, one on top of the other, instead of replacing the vacuum cleaner that had given up a few months before. What’s a new area rug? Literally hiding the dirt away, keep it like a secret, a secret of devils and dust and giving up, a secret I knew so well it lived in my bones. I’d give up before I even tried; I didn’t really know how to try. But I did know that sitting with my Dad, watching that man sing those songs, matching tears in the corners of our eyes, was special. We bonded over the despair he wrote so eloquently of, we bonded over a mutual sadness that we both wore like a cape, hid behind, treasured. But when it came to the redemption, the hope, the resolution, that Bruce is known for, that’s where we separated. I think the idea of hope scared my Dad, I think the idea that it could ever get better scared him more than living within that darkness for the rest of his life.  

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“I’ll see you in my dreams, yeah up around the riverbend, for death is not the end…”

By the time I was 19, he was becoming different. There was an anxiety that pulled at him, he’d chew on his fingertips when he drove me home, he was more distracted. The thing with ghosts like his is that they’re inside, and because they’re inside of you, you can’t actually hide from them, at least not for long. They catch up every time. They catch up every time.

I remember one fresh June day we decided to drive to the mall, to go to the old record store where we used to spend so much time. It was a safe place for us, we liked to do the same things over and over. He was always stuck in a rut, like me, showing me the same songs: “Have you heard this one yet?”, “Yes Dad, I’ve heard this one before.” It didn’t really matter though, because I’ll listen to the same song a hundred times if I listen to it once; once a song gets into my soul like that, I can’t ever really get tired of it. But he was different that day. He wanted to find poignancy in every little thing, like he was trying to remember it all, like he was studying my face to try and memorize every micro-expression. I couldn’t put my finger on why it felt so ‘off’, and my stomach swelled with melancholy for what my heart must have already known; it has been studied that the human heart has the ability to predict the future, and I know mine did that day.

As we were leaving the record store, having failed to uplift ourselves with the usual suspects (I guess grunge wasn’t ever really intended to be uplifting, and we were deep in a grunge phase at that time), he stopped by the new release rack. It was Bruce Springsteen, The Seeger Sessions, that had stopped him, and he picked it up immediately: “I’m going to buy this for you, you have to hear Shenandoah, you just have to”. “Ok Dad, let’s listen to it on the way home.” And we did, and he was right, and I still love that version of that song.

When he stopped the car outside of the building where I lived, I felt like I couldn’t move. I sat there for a long time, we both did, and when he hugged me good-bye that day it felt like Good-bye. I walked away, up the two flights of stairs to the apartment I shared with my boyfriend, feeling like I would never see my Dad again. I pushed it aside, but it wouldn’t really settle. The heart knows what the heart knows.

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“…when all our summers have come to an end, I’ll see you in my dreams.”

One night, when my youngest child was two, I found myself sitting on the floor of the basement apartment we were crashing in at the time (yet again) and rocking him, while he flailed with sleepy-rage, singing Thunder Road at the top of my lungs and praying it would be enough to put him to sleep. It always worked with my girls, they would fall asleep while I sang to them night after night, year after year. Finn was different though, it was a challenge for him, be louder than Mom. As I sang to him that night, my oldest (now 10) crept up next to me and laid her head on my shoulder. “I love this one Mom, I remember it”. And that was the moment I realized it had worked. I never knew before that day if they remembered the songs I sang to them over and over, nights turned to years. It was one of my most poignant childhood memories, my Dad singing to me, and I hoped more than anything that my kids would remember it like that. The warmth, safety, and comfort of those memories is something I now struggle to reconcile with truths I learned when my childhood was well gone, but they nonetheless fill me with evening light, soft, amber, a bit melancholy, reminders of the linearity of time. I am so glad that my children will remember the sound of my voice when I am gone.

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“…and though you’re gone, and my heart’s been emptied it seems, I’ll see you in my dreams.”

I did see my Dad again, but I will never know if he intended for it to be that way or not. I will never know if I want to know or not. All I know is something fractured then, something fractured that would never really heal. It took me years see the damage it had done, at first I was just happy to hear his voice again, happy that they had found him before it was too late, but as I grew older I wondered, would I ever be able to live with myself if I had put my own kids through something like that? Did the burden of knowing that we knew, knowing that we could never forgot for the rest of our days, lay heavy on him that way? Did he know what he put us through? Could he? Or was he too broken to know? Brokenness is funny like that, it makes you retreat inside, throws you into survival mode. And even when he was so far gone that “survival mode” took him to the very edge of the cliff between time and the beyond, I will always wonder if he was actually able to conceive of what that meant to us. Did he know what he meant to us? You have to believe you’re worth something to believe in a really knowing kind of way that you could matter to someone else. That you could matter so very much. I think about my own feelings, when my kids recognize the songs I sing for them, I see my worth in their eyes, I recognize that I mean the world to them. I wonder, did he ever feel that way? I wish that he could have, because I think that it may have saved his life. Because although his life was saved, I don’t think he ever really came back. I’m not even completely sure he was here to begin with.

And tonight, in the boatyard, as the sun begins to set, I see a seagull flying towards the moon; I see my Grandmother. I see a flying machine on a path to cross in front of the moon; I see my Grandfather. I see the moon herself, so capable of changing everything, if only I would let her in. And I see my Dad, so taken by the ghosts inside of him, living still inside of me. I hold him in my heart, and perhaps, in that one place, warm and soft, perhaps in that place, he is at peace. The heart knows what the heart knows.

“…and I’ll see you in my dreams.”

Spring 2018

  Almost all of my actual sailing experience is in the Chesapeake Bay. The vessel is a mid-80’s Starwind 27, and she is the first and only boat that is basically fully functional the whole time we have her. Her name is Lickity Split, in blatant disregard for the fact that she is not, in fact, a fast boat, or maybe she could have been fast, had her keel not basically become a traveling oyster bed; who knows. (Me, actually, I know. Sailboats work better when you take the oysters off the bottom.) Anyway, she is great fun regardless of her speed or lack thereof, and the time we spend exploring and anchoring out that spring is some of the absolute best time of my life.

 It’s easy to put hard times into words, but how do you describe the way the sun hits the water on a perfect, cloudless day? The sound of the wind filling your sails? The way the spray feels on your face? The way your chest swells up with perfect happiness during those moments is enough to make every other thing you’ve ever felt worth it. Words will never be enough, and it will never not be worth it.

 The first time we raise her sails, I am overcome with a feeling of success. After four years, two failed boat projects, two failed attempts at #vanlife, and two more babies added to the mix, the joy of actually being out there, of doing the thing, is almost overwhelming.  It is not a perfect sail, we try to pick a day without much swell for our first trip out of the marina, but by the time we near our destination in Mobjack Bay, the Chesapeake is serving up her classic choppy bullshit, and I am becoming seasick. Then comes navigating the minefield of crab pots at the mouth of the river, and anchoring in close quarters for the first time, but we manage it all and celebrate with probably canned clam chowder. I don’t actually remember what we ate, but probably that. It is a beautiful and moody evening, humid but not too hot, no bugs yet so early in the season; I think I could do this forever.

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Earlier in Spring 2018

     Before we begin sailing Lickity Split for real, we take her out to anchor for a couple of nights as a trial run. We chose a spot just up the James River, not far from our staging point in Portsmouth, and drop anchor as the sun is setting. My heart could absolutely break free from my chest and join the clouds and the seagulls in the sky, it is all so perfect. I stand on the deck and hang onto the backstay with one hand, kinda lean out, feel my boat move beneath me with my shifting weight; I trust her completely.

 As I lay in the v-berth that evening, cuddling the big girls (geeze, how did I think 2 and 6 were “big girls” back then?) before bed, the wind begins to pick up. And then it continues to pick up. I do not yet have enough experience with the Chesapeake to know about the thunderstorms, about how they just fucking happen like that, boom. The boat begins to spin, faster and faster, and the wind, stronger and stronger. I crawl out of the v-berth, trade places with their Dad, since for some reason he is not about to vomit, and flail around simultaneously for the handheld GPS which will tell me if our anchor is dragging (it does not, miraculously, that whole night), and a sauce pan in which to empty my stomach. 

So there I am, hurling violently into cookware, while not only checking but comprehending our coordinates. I actually do take the time in that moment to recognize that I am a badass. Baby Natalie sleeps through all of this.

  The storm passes, but the choppy waves do not, and by morning I am so nauseous I actually can’t feel my lips or fingers anymore. I am not sure if this happens to anyone else when they get seasick; I guess I hope it doesn’t. It’s a warm and sunny spring day, and sitting in the cockpit is the only activity that allows me to feel normal-ish, so that’s all I do. I just sit, and watch, and be, and if that isn’t what it’s all about I don’t know what is. I think I could do this forever.

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Mid-Autumn 2019

  I didn’t know I could feel this way about a boat. I had no idea what it would be like to step inside one of those big sailboats I thought I’d never have, and know that she is mine. She is ours. 

She needs a hell of a lot of work.

 The kids will spend the next three years reminding us about the leaves all over the floor when we first bought her. Like that was the biggest issue, and not how they got there in the first place (turns out, when you leave all the port-lights open for who knows how long, it’s kinda gross?). It is such a great feeling though, cleaning her up, picturing the future sailing around the world on a boat that can actually feasibly carry a family of 6 that far. She is One Love all over again, at least for me, at least at first. I love that boat so fucking much.

 Newly pregnant with my fourth, and last, baby, I lay in the v-berth with the hatch wide open, a crisp, warm autumn breeze blows across my face, and I can see the mast, so very much taller than I am used to, and the rigging sways in the wind, and the gentle pull against the dock lines as she sways reverberates through my body like the promise of stories yet untold. She has energy, she desperately wants to be set free, and I swear I will be the one to free her and show her the world. We’ll show each other the world.

 Letting go of that promise is a heartbreak for which I am utterly unprepared. I will love her forever.

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Summer 2014

Her name was One Love, and she was the most beautiful sailboat I had ever seen, not that I’d seen all that many sailboats. I knew nothing of boats, but my artists eye told me that she had good lines, and the previous owner had painted her in a really pirate-y red/black/white theme; it was love at first sight. I ran headfirst into her arms and held her like I’d never let her go, and for a time she held me too.

She taught me so much in those months, I’m still unraveling it all.

Her previous owner had a memorable sounding last name, and it quickly become an epithet, uttered every time something new broke, someone put a foot through a new soft spot, water found a new way to intrude. To be fair to the poor guy, none of it was probably really his fault, he’d inherited a rotting mess, and we had taken her on in her death throes. She needed a real shipwright, someone with time and money. We had time, but sometimes you really do need to have all the things. All that aside, what happened happened, and she exists now as salvaged pieces on the walls of friends homes, in two different states.

It was relatively early on that our cat put her head right through the transom of the boat, like right through it, like “cat shaped hole in the back of our boat” through it. “We’ll fix it eventually” became a mantra. The dock master would remark to me that we’d “bitten off a large bite with that boat”, projects piled up, leaks grew worse, and life was lived in the in-between spaces. And it was a good life, despite the hardships I grew so used to stuffing aside I swear some of them will stay buried forever, it was good. Sofia, our dog Lucy, and I had some of the best adventures during that time. Going exploring with my kids is one of my greatest strengths as a mother, anything can be magical if you frame it the right way.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll continue to say it: I don’t regret one single sunset. All those years, all those struggles, the fear, the sadness, the absolute hopeless despair, I wouldn’t trade a single one of those sunsets for anything. The person I am now could not exist without them.

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Spring 2015

Money is low; it’s nothing I’m not used to, but an added stress on top of a project that is truly beginning to seem impossible. I do finally manage to put my skills to use though. Nothing I know how to do at this time actually applies to boats; I learn by doing, and since it is also my job to raise our kid and keep her happy, I really don’t have much chance to learn about boat restoration. But I know plants, and I can feed my family on those skills; I’ve proven this. It’s a different kind of walk in the woods, when you’re looking for a meal. Less taking in the scenery in general, more scanning the undergrowth, looking for the certain types of situations that I simply cannot put into words but know with an almost religious conviction will provide me with food, with medicine. It’s the edges, the places between the fields and the forests, the sides of roads and the place where deciduous forests give way to conifers, they live in those places, and at this point I can spot them from much farther away than I can read a street sign. It would be another handful of years before I would admit I needed glasses.

Sea beans are a new acquaintance, tasting like what the ocean would taste like if it were a vegetable, and there is plenty of chickweed, wild lettuce, sorrel. The mulberries are prolific. I even try my hand at digging for clams, until I’m informed by a concerned fisherman that, even though I have a fishing license, I can’t just dig for clams wherever the hell I want, and I lose my nerve. That was one amazing meal though. Protein is the hardest thing to forage. I never learned how to fish, the crab pot we found washed up on the beach yields a solitary shrimp that falls through the gaps in the wire as we pull it up, not one crab. We quickly give up on trying to be fishermen.

Slowly, slowly, the work is done. I don’t do much of it myself, a bit of sanding here and there, but overall my work is in keeping the kids (both in and out of my belly) fed and happy, and keeping up the front that everything is, indeed, just fucking fine. And it sort of is? The decks forward of the cockpit are replaced and painted, the leaks should be drastically reduced, we take a few photos, exchange a few high fives, and leave her for what was planned to be a two-week trip to visit family.

I would never see One Love again.

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Late Summer 2020

I have taken to walking again, months after the disastrous birth of my fourth child left my body unable to do any of the things I generally count on it to be able to do, I am slowly growing more active. It comes as such a relief, going on walks has always been a standby for me. Cranky kids? Throw them in the stroller, strap the smallest to my back, walk until no-one’s screaming anymore. This time period is hard to bring into focus, existing beneath the cloud of the deepest and darkest bout of postpartum depression I would ever experience, my memories mostly center around light. Deltaville has really great light.

There is a point in the late afternoon, early evening, when the sunlight filters through the trees around the boatyard and makes everything glow for a few moments, like you can actually physically see the hope contained within those hulls. Like the dreams they represent have substance for a moment, before fading back away like dreams do. Boatyards know this better than most places, enfolding within their gates so many dreams that will never sail away, so many hours of labor that will never pay off, so many valuable lessons learned, regardless of the outcomes.

There is one walk in particular that I always take with the kids. The late light throws the corn field into sharp relief, you might even see a few deer race by. The yarrow flowers indomitably all season long here, my favorite medicine forever, she brings me hope when hope is otherwise nowhere to be found. This evening I see the seasons first ghost pipes, and something inside me flickers, just for a moment, a reminder that I’m still alive in there somewhere. That there really is an end in sight. We are coming up on one year in the boatyard. What was meant to be only a couple months stretched, as time does, until most mornings I wake up with a silent scream stuck in my throat; “Will this ever end?” But with the sight of those otherworldly white flowers, tinged with bright pink and so pale they almost glow, I remember that right now is all I have. Right now, in the boatyard, giving up, and I have to somehow find a way to make it alright.

It’s a good thing the light is so perfect in Deltaville, it makes it easier to pretend that everything is just fucking fine.

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Summer 2018

We are motoring out of Jackson Creek; the crisp early morning sunlight bathes us all, renewing us, and the ridiculous, question mark shaped, entrance channel is much easier to navigate in daylight. The sandbar on our starboard side is alive with splashing and shimmering, and I point excitedly to Sofia and Naomi:

“Look girls, dolphins!”

“Uh, mom?” Sofia looks at me like I’ve grown an extra head, “ Aren’t those stingrays?”

They were, absolutely, 100%, stingrays.

Listen, I can identify plants all day long, but nobody’s perfect.

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Somewhere in 2014

My sister is sitting on the front stoop, watching two year old Sofia play in the yard; she turns her head as I walk outside, and she knows. I don’t know what my face looks like, but she knows.

“You bought a boat, huh?”

“Yup.”

“The pirate ship?”

“Yeah.”

I’m still in shock, but my brain is already beginning to process what it all means. The musical equipment that’s been sitting in the hall closet for years, collecting dog fur, will be the first of many casualties, destined to be packed in the trunk of that old reliable Camry, trooped over the bridge to Guitar Center, and sold to finish paying for the boat. Then comes the garage sale, and the massive exodus of three years worth of accumulated stuff, that will leave a pile small enough to pack around the kid and the pets in the poor old Camry that would see us through so much. The last few bags of clothing fit nicely beneath the canoe we strap to the roof, and an entire life (seven lives, actually) crams itself into a four door sedan, yet again, and begins the overnight drive to Charleston, to a fresh start.

We would arrive around four in the morning, when the mist over the harbor lends everything it touches an air of magic, of promise. We have no idea what we are getting ourselves into.

I will never get over that mist, that city; or that boat. They will follow me wherever I go.

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I don’t remember the first time it occurs to me that we’ve made a poor decision, but all of the times involve rain where it shouldn’t be.

Maybe it’s the first weekend, visiting with my sister, Sofias third birthday. It begins to rain, and we quickly realize how leaky wooden boats can be, as we scramble to find enough pots and pans to collect it all. Maybe it’s when the garbage bag I’ve taped up to keep the rain off my face while I sleep suddenly breaks in the middle of the night, pouring icy water directly into my ear. Or maybe it’s when the locker under the cockpit fills with water, unbeknownst to us, and finally gives up, pouring a literal waterfall into our living space. Who knows when the doubts begin to creep in, but no worries, nothing we can’t fix. I would sing it to myself near constantly during that time, and the ensuing eight years: “Don’t worry, about a thing, cos every little thing’s gonna be alright”. And it will be alright, but it will not be easy.

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Did you know that boats of a certain age just pump their toilets directly overboard? Me neither, at least not until I find myself the proud owner of a “boat of a certain age”. So our first boat project involves removing the old toilet (or in boat terms, the head), and replacing it with the cheapest temporary solution: a cassette toilet. This means emptying the thing every damn night, but at least I don’t have to walk the quarter mile to the bathrooms in the middle of the night, with a cranky toddler in tow, for more than a few days. It also means that when, after only a couple short weeks of living aboard full time, I find myself pregnant, I will experience the absolute worst morning sickness of my life. Between that abominable toilet and the rocking of the boat, at times gentle and at times so jarring I wonder that our poor sailboat doesn’t rattle herself apart, I would spend most of my mornings those first months so sick I could barely function, let alone keep down any food, while also solely responsible for the kid and the pets.

Kids still need to eat, even when their Mom feels like the very incarnation of death; dogs still need to be walked, fuel for heat still needs to be sourced, laundry still needs to be dragged down to the facilities. I do it all, and with the full understanding that this is the life I have chosen, I bear it with as much grace as any newly pregnant person can muster. That said, when our tax refund manages to pay for a composting head, I can honestly say I have never been happier about a toilet in my life. (Foreshadowing: I would be equally delirious with joy about toilets multiple times over the course of the years, a feeling generally followed rather quickly by despair, as any boater will tell you there is literally no perfect solution for shitting in such a confined space.)

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Somewhere in 2021

There’s a cold wind here tonight; it howls like an ornery ghost through the rigging, as it hurls paint dust into the air, and fails completely in making everything fresh and new. The boatyard is going to eat me alive. I can feel it gnawing away at my gristle and my sanity, bit by bit, even as the end inches closer. And the door slams, gently and more forcefully in turn. And the rustling leaves of the tomato plant dying in the cockpit, and the humming crickets, occasional bullfrogs, crunching gravel as a car drives by. These are the sounds of this place, where I have lived for nearly two years now. And all the while growing increasingly George Bailey about the whole ordeal. And god if it doesn’t sometimes feel like I’ll never shake the dust of this damn place off my feet.

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Somewhere in 2015

It takes me some time to grow brave enough to venture too far into Charleston, terrified of getting lost, and even more of driving over the Ravenel Bridge, but when I do finally attempt the thing, I find it to be well worth my time. After that, Sofia and I spend our days exploring the city, eating gelato in the park while we watch the boats go by, blasting The Pogues as we drive to Sullivans Island for yet another winter beach walk, throwing stranded starfish back into the water at Folly Beach, wandering along all those old cobbled streets downtown, and generally taking it all in. The hot tub at the marina provides a perfect activity right at home too, we are so happy during that honeymoon time, it’s still easy to ignore the hard parts. I often wonder if I will ever love another city the way I loved Charleston in the winter.

The cracks start to show as the boat work becomes more reality than dream, as my pregnancy necessitates a reassessment of our budget, as all the ways we don’t understand the norms and mores of marina life begin to add up. We are in over our heads, but too proud to admit it, and to some degree, it feels as though we no longer have a choice. The only way out is through.

To be continued…

The mountaintops

Were white with snow.

Ahead of the storm,

(barely)

We took our chances on lunch

In Blue Mountain Lake.

Three inches wet snow

Piled up during our venison stew;

Kept falling while we searched

(in vain)

For somewhere to buy

The second time I spent the night in a Walmart parking lot, I was surrounded by humanity. There was the woman in the dilapidated van, whose dogs pooped where they pleased. There was the frail older couple, who set out lawn chairs by their car, and made no eye contact with anyone. There was the man with the curly gray hair, who slept in a convertible with no roof save a weathered tarp and two old tires. In the morning, he carefully folded back the tarp, stowed away the tires, and procured from somewhere a meticulously folded business suit.

The third time I spent the night in a Walmart parking lot, a van pulled up next to me. "Howdy neighbor", he said with a grin, "I know all the parking lots in town as'll let ya get a few hours sleep." Turns out he was headed to California, gold prospecting, he said. I have always wondered if he made it or not,

The fourth time I spent the night in a Walmart parking lot, a woman and two teenage girls stood outside my camper in the early summer heat. I didn't get a chance to read what their sign said before a man driving an expensive SUV stopped by, handed them two bags of groceries. Someone was getting arrested for something nearby.

The fifth time I spent the night in a Walmart parking lot, there was a party. Maybe in a town with no bars, you have to make your own fun. There must have been a dozen pickup trucks, and one man in particular stood out. "MyGodDamnFuckinAsshahaha", he crowed enthusiastically, smashing a beer bottle for emphasis, "MyGodDamnFuckinAss".

I had to catch a flight

Later that day

Back home to Greensboro

With my baby girl in tow

But we set out anyway

Trying to make up for a lifetime

Of all the places

You wished I knew Inside your heart.

And when you said

Now this is Bernalillo

The word rolled off your tongue

With such tenderness

And sorrow for the past,

I knew it would always come to mind

Whenever I thought of you.

And we can't ever get that time back

Not even if we try

But I will love you all the same

With your New Mexico heart

Like a guardian

Of the lonely places

My first impression was of the yard, verdant green North Carolina summer shade, and the house was cute too. The roof needed a little work but- Dear Lord How long would it take a metal roof to get like that?

It is then I noticed the swollen wood propped up by crumbling bricks. The way the door looked lopsided. Turned out the living room floor offered a lovely view of that plush green grass, and the walls of the kitchen buckled inward, pregnant with rainwater and mold.

I was scared to sneeze and feel the whole damn thing collapse in a heap of rotten planks and ruin scattered over the empty cough syrup bottles and broken glass in that sad southern town. We would see five houses in total that day, tied together by the common thread of "no credit check". Three were missing windows, one lacked a bathroom roof.

There was little claim to the phrase 'habitable', but inhabited they had been, and recently, as evidenced by shiny new locks and eviction notices tacked to warped front doors. As I walked up the front porch of the last prospect of the day I found my eye drawn inward, through the shattered window. Princess stickers still adorned the walls, jarring to see amongst the glass shards, the crowbar on the floor, and the angry yellow paper pinned to the door.

"This is no longer your home, move on from here, I don't care where." "It's your fault you're poor, you know?" "Why don't you just stop being a burden on the rest of us?" "If only you were more productive, more motivated, more thrifty, more, more more..." And so I stood there feeling hollow, trying to picture my life in any one of these places. But I could not imagine my children growing up here, surrounded by the gaunt faces of their neighbors, for whom the weight of fentanyl and despair had made even a smile too heavy to lift. 

It is in these streets that the 'American Dream' goes to die, and one gets the impression there is little chance of resuscitation left. And so I turned away. Nudging broken glass with my toe, I walked back to my car,

crossed my fingers it would start one more time,

and turned the ignition.

I drove away from that place with the sinking feeling there was nowhere left for us to go, and I wonder if her mother felt the same way, when she left that house with the princess stickers in the dust behind her

and drove away.

I wondered if she was also tired of the way the ground kept falling apart

   Stepping out of the terminal, I could see the rain pouring down in sheets.  I found my senses assaulted by a wall of people, quick walking, suitcase pulling, Spanish speaking, drenched in autumn rain.  Maybe it was all the free wine I drank on the flight, or maybe it was the shock of arriving in Buenos Aires when my original ticket read ‘Lima, Peru’, or the almost overwhelming confusion of trading in late spring in North Carolina for the humid Argentine fall, but I really just wanted to duck behind a luggage rack and hide for a while. 

   The last flight I had been on, before then, was when I was barely two.  My Mom and I flew over the country, from Texas to New York, while my father drove the Ryder truck.  He would meet us in Grahamsville, and some of my earliest memories would be there.  I will never forget the view from my grandparents house, on the side of Denman Mountain, or the feel of those fresh blueberries between my tiny fingers.  More than the Adirondacks, more than the Piedmont, the Catskills feel like home.  In that deep down in your chest way, like you will never really be apart, like you will always come back.  And it was in the early spring, in the cool mountain stream, outside of Woodstock, that I tried to wash my father’s ghosts away.  And it was those mountains who reminded me, with all their ancient love, of the person locked away inside of me, trying desperately to be free.  

  Later that night, as the sun set and the stars came out, it struck me again just how far from home I was.  It’s a different sky above your head in the Southern hemisphere.  But surrounded as we were by ancient ombu trees, sleeping bodies, and the pleasant fuzz brought on by white wine from a box and exhaustion, I don’t know that I have ever felt so completely at home.  Under the stars, even in that pervasive autumn drizzle, in a city so vibrant and alive, so new, so scared, so lonely, so at peace, I slept like a stone. I slept like a stone.

Sometimes at night,

When I can't sleep,

I convince myself

That everything is rocking.

Back and forth,

Back and forth.

And when I wake

I will hear the seagulls again,

And my lips will taste of salt,

When I sold my Dad’s record collection.

It’s just that sometimes,

Money is worth more than memories.

I am lying in a puddle of wet sand.

This is the last time I will trust my fate to

“it probably won’t rain”.

There is clearly a reason tents come with rain-flies.

As the sun slowly awakens the day

I can feel that old familiar panic build in my chest.

It’s a hold-over from the days of

“I’ve been up all night drinking and now I must go to work”.

And maybe I did drink last night.

Maybe it was red wine, straight outta the bottle.

Maybe my lips tasted like salt water

And the air around us smelled sticky sweet

With pipe tobacco.

And maybe that’s alright.

Maybe I don’t have to let my past,

Messy as it is,

Decide my future.

Maybe this sunrise over the ocean 

Is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,

    The streetlight outside the window illuminates two bodies, one sleeping (my five month old baby), and me, sleepless that night, all full of trepidation for what the next day may bring; the day we finally make our escape. It must be 4:43 AM because I can hear the alarm in the next room. Confirming my suspicions of the past few weeks, I hear the alarm grow louder as it is pressed up against the shared wall between our bedrooms.  The staggering way he exits his room would have been loud enough by itself, but this is clearly intentional, he is waking my baby up on purpose.  In the next moment he has shoved my bedroom door open, and, as my baby girl indeed begins to wake from all the commotion (as she has every day for the past two hellish months), I see his face, eyes bulging, movements jerky and uncontrolled, as he takes a moment to tower over my bed.  

    He is gone as quickly as he came, staggering down the hall, like he does every morning. I hear him pushing my four year old daughter’s door open as he flails his way towards the days’ first cigarette. The door slams back in his face with all the force of my husband’s feet against it. My husband has slept on the floor of our daughter’s room, to keep her safe, every night since we have been here.  I scoop up my baby and walk into the hallway.  “Thanks, thanks a lot” I half mutter, half shout down the hallway. He stops, startled like a deer in the headlights.  His head jerks up and, as blank eyes scan the hallway for what may have made the noise, I realize he can neither see nor hear me anymore.  I wonder how long it has been since he could?  It is with a confusing mixture of relief and gut-wrenching sorrow that I slip back into my room, clutching baby-girl close to my heart, with the realization that this, this moment right here, is the last time I will ever see my father.