Midori (11-19-2023)
She looked like a warrior. She stood in front of the orchestra, feet wide and gaze to the ground, as if drawing energy from the earth. The air was so still. The orchestra played on.
All at once, as the music behind her crescendoed, she tucked her violin into place and began to play. I do not think she opened her eyes once. She bent and rose with the song, feet sweeping across the stage. I loved the way she arced her bow skyward each time she stopped. It was such an athletic movement—it could have been a tennis racket in her hand, or a javelin.
I hope she is well loved. She's my mother's age, you know.
I thought about strength, and discipline, and sadness. I pictured her as a child, fingertips rubbed raw, treading in sadness so deep it could not fit within words. She chased perfection until it almost killed her. That's what they say in the news, at least. But they say that she is kind.
Her master's thesis was on pain research. She performed with the New York Philharmonic at age 11. She teaches children.
my aunt Zoe (10-17-2023)
This is what my mother said about Aunt Zoe: “She could never be happy in a body that doesn't move. Perhaps it is better that she goes.”
This has been carrying me for a while now. It is better that she goes, it is better that she goes!
I hope she is with Bella. I hope her body feels like light.
my family in august (08-11-2023)
My grandfather died on July 6th, when I was 13, and every year we do a ceremony to remember him.
My mother had forgotten this year. Tonight she held the incense, two sticks lit and two hands together, and she apologized for being late. I hate the way her voice breaks. It happens every year.
She apologized for being late, and then she told him that she hopes he is well. She asked that he look after her cousin, my Aunt Zoe, who is dying of cancer. “Give her more time,” she said. I am not so sure that he is capable of this, but it does not matter—she always thought her dad could do anything. I would let her think the impossible if it brought her peace.
I want to remember the way we held my mother as she cried. I hugged her tight while she shook, and then my brother tucked her forehead beneath his chin and held her tighter. “Your aunt is dying,” she said. I had known this, but it was terrible nonetheless.
My brother leaves in five days—or more-so we take him away and leave him behind. Three round-trip tickets and a single one-way flight. I would like to know if my dad paused as he bought them, and if he thought for a moment about how little his boy was once, and how kind. My brother is bigger than him now. He is bigger than all of us.
love and joy on the 12th of May (05-12-2023)
I have love and joy in spades!!
Alexis learned how to swim today: she kicked her legs just like I taught her, straight and high, and I said look down! and she did, and she swam on her own for the first time in her life and she was thrilled, just absolutely buzzing, and it made up for every time she has ever made me upset.
A week ago, I told Brennan that the sun visor in my car doesn't stay up anymore, and today he brought out his toolkit and told me he would take a look. I held him up as he took a screwdriver to the hinge, and he turned his hat backwards and I stared.
“You have a staring problem,” he tells me sometimes. It's true, I do.
turning 20 (4-10-2023)
I am looking at a picture of myself at age 10, maybe 11, and I feel sick. It's the one of my whole family at a Red Sox game. I look perfect.
I went back in my camera roll to find the exact date of the photo, and when I swiped up I saw that each photo has a caption from whatever the file was named on our old computer. I looked through every single one, and I found a photo captioned “Katie holding Zach for first time,” and I could not stop crying, and then I found one called “Katie's first day,” and this only made things worse.
I write about this often: I have felt old my whole life, but it is different to feel old in a kid's body than to feel old and actually be old. I turn 20 in 14 days. I am not ready.
I know 20 is not that old. But it's the oldest I've ever been!
the library (12-04-2022)
I love the camaraderie of the library during finals week! We are fighting for a table with an outlet as well as for our livelihoods, all in shared somewhat-silence. This building hums with life in a way that makes midnight feels like 4pm.
It smells like an airport, or maybe like resigned productivity. I have been sitting in the same place for two hours, save for a couple seconds perched on a public toilet, and I swear the air is getting staler by the minute. I am on my fourth rotation through the set of every possible way I could sit in this chair. It has taken me this entire time but I have made a breakthrough in my code, so now I'll scroll through Pinterest until my eyes glaze over, because that's how it works.
It smells like an airport, and the side effect is that it feels like I am at a stopping point on my way to somewhere else. I am here until whatever I am waiting for finally happens, which sounds like a solid summary of my college experience thus far. Now I just need to figure out what I'm waiting for. I'll take whatever gets me out of this chair.
soccer (10-19-2022)
Soccer game, 3-2.
Lucas carves his toe, spraying turf. He is a force that stops for nothing.
Harrison is a trajectory. He is on a path before the path exists.
They fly and they fall together, and the ball arcs between them before the rest of us can turn to take in the action.
Charge, and press, and switch, and move!
I stand under the lights and survey the scene and wonder where I went wrong in my life that I am now involved in this activity. It is so outside of who I am. But I am here nonetheless, out of friendship for Emme but also because of a chance to try.
And try I do! Mostly I am not where I am supposed to be, but there are moments where I am running, arms paddling and legs driving, and there is no thinking in the way. And I get in between people and I get rid of the ball as quickly as possible and I am so nervous, to the point of vision blurring around the edges, and I am elated.
I love to see them move the way they do. Kaz uses his head until I begin to be concerned, Fil goes to work with beautiful and violent intention, Mclain dances with an ease that borders on laziness, Lucas is a blur of blond who tears through opposing team players until he himself is on the ground, Cooper is solid and clumsy and always in the right place, and Ashton runs with an eagerness that makes the other boys cheer. “Is he gonna get there? Of course he got there!” Max and Jake call orders from the sidelines.
They are terrifying. I know they are just boys, and they are severe because they feel that they have to be, and everything is heightened because that is the nature of the game, but I can hardly stand to be near them. There is sweat on every surface and they speak in a language that I have never learned and likely never will. It is a language that sounds like knowing where they belong. I will be back again next week, though, and maybe I will be better.
new-old friends (10-02-2022)
We saw each other on the bus, and it felt like finding a piece of home. I hadn't seen her since high school, at least three years before.
We small-talked at Pho Bistro a few days later, little things like classes and what I like about Santa Barbara, and I laughed and she asked why and I said it felt so strange asking her questions because it felt like I already knew her, and she told me that she had felt the exact same way and had told her mother. We decided that this was because we had seen so many photos of each others' lives and there were all these things that we knew even though we had never actually spoken. And so we kept asking questions, and I told her about my freshman year, and she told me about her friends from high school, and mostly I thought about how she has the best smile I have ever seen.
Then we parked at the intersection of Camino Corto and Pasado and walked down to the beach, and I watched her look at the ocean. “I could stand here forever,” she said. I could've, too.
At one point, we passed a house that could not have been lit more perfectly by the sun, and as I wondered if it would be weird to stop and take a picture, she said “I like this” and took out her phone. She lined up the angles and took the exact photo I would have taken, with the shadow of the Jeep centered in the patch of paint on the fence and with that orange tabby cat in the corner. And then we talked about our hobbies, sewing and thrifting and reading, and we were still a little quiet but I felt more at ease.
And then we drove down Hollister to the golf course, with its rolling hills and clean line to the ocean, because I wanted her to feel what I felt the first time I saw it. “Do you get it?” I asked. “Oh, I get it,” she said. I asked her what she thinks about most and she told me that she's a worrier, which she gets from her mom, and that she worries about her future. I told her that I'm also a worrier, and she said I didn't seem like one, and I told her that was funny because I spend a lot of time worrying about seeming like a worrier. She asked what I worry about and I told her that I don't know who I am outside of the context of how other people perceive me, like I don't even know what my life would consist of if I were to have one without other people's opinions in it. I think I know: it would be writing and music and ocean forever, and surely a good amount of loneliness, but what I really want to know is whether I would rather live to be admired or live for my own peace. Maybe in my head they are the same thing. She told me that she has been working on not trying to please people for the sake of being liked, and she told me a bit about her family until her eyes welled up a little.
There was a pause, and she looked out at the grass before turning to me and saying “so you wouldn't go with me down there?” I smiled and turned the car off.
She slid over the fence, right over the no trespassing sign—“we're not gonna get in trouble, we're two pretty girls,” she said—and we walked all the way to where the hills became water. She told me that she felt like I was the older one, even though she is a year older, and I said that I have always kind of felt old. “Me too,” she said. “Except now.” We walked back as it got dark, and a few feet from the fence we realized that there was a man watching us from a window. We ran to the car and you better believe I drove much too fast to get out of that parking lot.
I have never met a person like her, I don't think. She seems impossible to fully know.
about getting older (03-26-2022)
Today I sat on the floor with Kaitlyn and her parents, and Grace, too, and we passed my new guitar around so that we could all feel the thrum of music beneath our fingers. The electricity of it was softer than you would expect. Kaitlyn plugged her headphones into the amp and I strummed, gently, for no one else in the world but her. The sun was setting and the doors were open and the hardwood floors were cast in gold. It was perfect, but for my sweaty hands.
I came home and we ate dinner outside, in those few minutes between dusk and dark, and the sky was navy blue above the string lights that stretch across our porch. I was sad, but in the way that feels like love. My father put on his shoes a little too slowly, with a stiffness that I had never noticed before, and I thought about how difficult it is going to be to watch them age. At the same time, though, I would choose a front row seat over not having them here at all: I would choose it a thousand times over. I miss them when I leave and I miss them when I am here. It is goodbyes for the rest of my life.
I once wrote about my ideal life, and much of it is still true, but at this point I would be entirely content with a life where everyone I love is within arm's reach. No one told me that growing up was going to be goodbyes on a conveyor belt and buying bigger jeans every year and missing a version of a childhood that couldn't have possibly existed. I want a life where I never have to say goodbye again. I want to be frozen in time, in a place where nothing grows and nothing is new but nothing ever changes. Nothing ever leaves in a place that doesn't move. I am tired of being left. I am tired of doing the leaving.
thoughts on the future (02-02-2022)
Feels like it's a special day, maybe. Lucky number 2, lucky number 2/2/22. 222 means a fresh start apparently. I definitely need one of those. I've been worried lately about getting into the computer science major: there are so many things I need to do and I'm already two quarters behind and it's so hard for me to get the classes I need and even after all of that there's still such a small chance that they'll let me in.
My life feels together, mostly. I'm exercising and eating better and sleeping more and reading more and seeing my friends all the time and calling my parents and liking my classes and my cheeks are always sunburnt and my legs are always sore and when I have therapy I just about can't think of anything to tell her. I have all of this and I am still so sick about the future. I want each day as it comes, without a single thought about the next one.
I am sitting in a stairwell that goes down into the ocean. The tide is high and I'm not sure if I've ever been anywhere better. I am warm under the sun. If I stare at the railing and let the water move in my peripheral, it feels like I'm adrift at sea, like the waves are taking me away. I wouldn't mind, I don't think, if they did. It is so beautiful. I took my first deep breath in a good while. It smells like wet wood and sand and salt. The water is music and I am in love. I want the whole world to be here.
ideal life (10-10-2021)
I live in a house by the ocean. There is no one I am trying to impress. I do art and I don't worry about money. I see friends often. I read constantly, and I write without wanting to stop. My parents live nearby, in a house that I bought them. It comes with a garden and a view.
I am healthy: I eat what feels right and I exercise and I am gentle with myself. I put myself first while still loving to the best of my ability. Words come easily, and I don't second guess myself—or when I do, it is not for long. When I cry, it is not because life feels devoid of meaning, and it is never because I don't know what I want. I learn endlessly: instruments, languages, hobbies, theories, science, math; it does not feel like work. I help people because I am able, and I don't expect anything in return.
Eventually I have my own family. My kids go to public school and they are funny and kind and smart and I am a mother they are proud of. We have cats and dogs, and these are spoiled and loyal. When I am tired, I sit in a hammock by the ocean and I listen to the waves, and I wait for my kids to come out to be with me, because they always come. Sometimes I am lonely, but the feeling never lasts. My house smells like banana bread and sweet olive flowers.
Every morning I look at the ocean and I think about how small I am, and I am entirely okay with my tiny role in a grand scheme. I know who I am. I sing and I write and I paint and I learn and I love my children selflessly and I am happy, not because everything is easy but because I know the good will always outlast the hard.
pools and growing pains (09-14-2021)
I went back to the pool today. I haven't been there since Ashley was home. It smelled like another lifetime, like applying for college and like waking up in the dark. It smelled like merging onto the 210 and staring into the full face of the sunrise. I miss Ashley, and I miss routine.
I pushed myself a little harder than I probably should have; my heart felt cold and my back aches now. But it was like tearing a wall down and I felt like myself. It was a good kind of pain. Funny how I am stepping back into my old life when an entirely new one is a few days away—entirely new, as in can't-take-it-back kind of new, as in nothing-will-ever-be-the-same kind of new.
I used to complain about how it feels like nothing ever changes. My life is stagnant, the days blend together, and I would rather look down than look forward because the voice in my head says there's nothing in front of me. But then I am reminded of the past, and in this moment I can truly see just how much has changed. The girl I was a year ago feels like an old friend; familiar, but living a life entirely different from mine.
I am terrified to leave my life behind, but maybe I need to. I want a life where the pain is always good. Growing pain, if you will.
