When we set off from my grandparent’s house, I wonder if I can remember the way, but once I’ve pedaled by the first house my mother ever lived in, the path immediately grabs hold of me again: through the oddly-angled intersection, past the garage painted with a VW bug, then a sharp right around the blind corner (bike bell clanging furiously) and a final maneuver through the staggered gate onto the main road. All that’s left is the final sprint until houses drop away to open fields that are smaller than they were last time I was here. 

Lilly is riding ahead of me and it’s cold—my hands are chapped beneath my gloves—but then in the middle of the vibrant fields and glowing setting sun I see the familiar copse of trees and the temperature doesn’t matter. We turn onto the rutted track towards the ranch and I feel my heartbeat pulsing under the lumped earth. 

Eventually the tangle of weeds and mud is too thick to bike any further so we dismount and walk through the wet grass. Everything is overgrown and smaller and falling apart more than I remember, and my aunt has moved most of the animals to her new farm, but in my mind’s eye it’s all the same: the flat spot where we pitched a tent when it was so hot that one summer, the same summer my baby sister spent a week naked and mysteriously covered in yogurt, the same summer we picked fat red currants until our fingers were stained crimson. I blink and I see us piled under awning, spending lazy days eating chips and willing our favorite europop songs to come on the radio. The fence post where the odious fly trap hung tilts slightly more askew, but it’s there. By the barn the grass holds the shape of a circle, either evidence of aliens or the old blue pool. The horses still come running, their rubbery lips flapping in anticipation of some sweet clover (then) or a bale of hay (now). When I say that here I’ll always be a child, I mean that this is the only patch of earth that has seen me in every stage of life. 

Rumor has it that the city is reclaiming this piece of land, knocking down the farmhouse where my grandfather was born and cementing the fields in preparation for a highway that will ease congestion in town. And it’s true, traffic is bad. But when I say that here I’ll always be a child, I mean how important is traffic mitigation anyway?

a few years ago in california

When I took a walk this morning the air was balmy and calm, and there was a rainbow splitting the sky. By the end of the walk great gusts of wind blew in and started to slant rain sideways. I made it back home just in time, which is always a surefire path to exhilaration—the knowledge of some misfortune, minor or otherwise, so narrowly missed. It’s been an odd winter thus far. The light is as thin and wan as it should be and the days are frightfully short, but we haven’t been plunged into any real sort of chill. It’s not unlike winters in Oklahoma, which have the potential to be harsh but just as easily may simply be marked by the absence of color.

It’s been many years since I wintered in Oklahoma, but December still makes me think of it, particularly the December that happened seven years ago. I’d just returned from six months of living in Kenya and everything about me was a bit blurry—my sense of self, my sense of time, my sense of home. I was eighteen and had no idea what love was, though I suspected it was something wonderful. There was a boy, of course there was, whose communications over the past few months had escalated from postcards to texts to video calls to finally a visit in person. I was so naive to nearly everything about the world, but I knew he was someone I didn’t dare let go. 

After breakfast and a walk and more coffee during which we danced around the issue at hand, we were less than three minutes from my parents’ house and I (knowing it was uncouth but running out of time and unable to help myself) blurted, “so what are we…?” and he grinned and looked at me and said “I guess we’re dating!” and I felt I was in a dream and then we were home and my mom raised her eyebrows in a question and I nodded and she gasped in delight and that was that.

Now I’m as old as he was then, which doesn’t seem very old at all. We’re proper adults now and we’re figuring it all out; some times have been easier than others and sometimes I get so irritated at him I could scream—but then again, I’m irritating to him too and really all that matters is that we know a little bit more about life than we did back then, and in another seven years we’ll know some more and we’ll keep building on that bit by bit. 

I remember back then—seven years ago and a little while after that, when we fell properly in love—I was so in love I couldn’t think, sleep, eat. It was exhilarating and it was exhausting. Sometimes I miss it and wonder where that passion has gone. We still love each other desperately but it’s more of a quiet, steady love, which of course is the kind of love that’s necessary to sustain a relationship for years and years. But we have things now that we couldn’t fathom back then. We’ve traded infatuation for deep intimacy. We know what it’s like to fight for one another. No longer do we have to settle for stolen moments and brief weekends together; we come home to each other every night and our future is certain in the sense that we are a duo for life. Now I tally up the years and congratulate ourselves for how far we’ve come; I grasp the hands and kiss the lips that are as familiar as my own and marvel that there was once a time we didn’t know if we’d belong to each other in this way. Things are good here on the other side.

newly dating babies

It’s our first Christmas season in our new house. Slowly I’ve been collecting treasures: tinsel, pink glass ornaments, paper stars, twinkle lights. Half the time when I go to hang a garland or star, there’s already a nail in just the right spot. Is it common sense or is it serendipity? 

Sixty-three Christmases have already happened here. In the hallway I can see Wynn, Alan, Holly, and Kenny skidding in stocking feet to the living room, eyes bright with anticipation. When they hear I’ll be home for Christmas do they see big windows and wood paneling and the magic made here? I wonder if Jan baked a ham in the same oven from which I just pulled a loaf of bread, or if Ken hefted a tree onto his shoulder and carried it into the living room, leaving a trail of needles in his wake. Maybe there was a Christmas puppy one year with a red bow tied around its neck. Maybe it was the same puppy that now keeps watch over the backyard. Were the magpies as mesmerizing then as they are now? I assume there was a record player; I hope I’m not the first one lying on the floor listening to Nat King Cole. And when the grandkids started coming—imagine their glee to find stockings with their names!

Last night I got irritated stringing lights on the sappy, prickly branches; we’re getting a fake tree next year, I muttered. But after the struggle, an epiphany: this is not the first time that corner has borne such delight. 

Do the willows feel guilt for the season they’re in? No, of course not. They carry out their work quietly and methodically and we marvel anew every year. 

Does the squirrel worry about whether he deserves his winter rest? No, of course not. He scurries around collecting acorns, growing fat and satiated, and we praise his resilience. 

So, back to you. Are you sad? Good, be sad. Ride the wave. Learn your way around it.

Are you angry or mournful or scared or some other emotion entirely? Good, let yourself be all those things. Half the year the willow tree is spindly and raw and we do not fault her for it. There have been beautiful days before and there will be beautiful days again.