Missing You
That time I went away and my whole life found me
Last week I was in the basement, writing about the previous day when my daughter had put her arms around me and told me I was the best mom ever. There I was scrawling in the early morning, letting the minutes pass, blowing past the proper time to wake her up for school.
Best Mom Ever = a woman who writes about her accolades rather than doing what actually helps her child succeed. Yes!! Winning.
In other things, a few weeks ago a whole head of broccoli appeared behind the compost bin. That’s weird, I thought, and continued on my merry way. I finally put it together this week that the whole back of the bin has been open for some time. Mostly-composted soil is spilling out in a big mound, meaning that every night endless critters have had access to the fresh scraps I have lovingly added to the top of the bin, securing the lid tightly after I’ve done so.
Oh, man. I do not look forward to fixing this sitch, shoveling the by-now mostly dirt back into the bin (or across the big yard into the garden sans wheelbarrow), figuring out what happened to the small door that should be anchoring the back. All while the temps keep dropping! I am aware that this is TINY POTATOES compared to folks who actually tend land and/or real animals (not just raccoons and freeloading squirrels lol) but you will NEVER take away my the freedom to whine! And pretend my life is much harder than it is…
On that note, I went to see a friend! In a major city!! It was SO fun and so validating - like, yes, I am much happier in cosmopolitan areas and way happier around people who give me Cheers vibes - where everybody knows my name, etc. etc. I can’t describe the joy of seeing someone who knew me when I was young, scanning each other’s faces for familiar features, finding them there in spite of the incidental lines we also happen to carry. Hearing about their families and aches and hopes, stewing in the inner songs we each have carried this whole time. (Do our souls ever really change? I argue they do not, though of course maybe we evolve?? Unsure... I’ll get back to you at EOL!) I actually got to see two friends, one I went to high school with, one I went to college with (though from this preposition situation you’d never know I graduated with a degree in English, sorry everyone…)
I’m going to try to do justice to something that happened on my trip, but it was such an internal moment I don’t know if I’ll succeed. I got to stay with someone I’ve known since before my 21st birthday. Over the years we’ve sent each other silly gifts and random trinkets. We’ve also exchanged letters throughout all the phases of our lives: the confusing twenties when we dated people who had various vagaries and held jobs that reigned tales and sometimes spikes on our heads; the more solid thirties when we were finding our people and career goals and becoming parents; and now our bewildering forties where illness drops like hail from the heavens and we feel even greater the need to nourish strong earthly cords.
To be honest, one of the great tragedies of my life is that I can’t drop a pot of soup off for some of the people I care about, can’t meet a few of my old friends for coffee without a plane ticket. It’s an ache I hold every day while also trusting somehow that I am where I’m supposed to be - far from the east coast, far from the lands I love. Far from neighborhoods that host artists like roast infestations. Far from people I can laugh and cry with while also trading fashion advice and compliments like so many feathers in the wind.
I once met someone who said all their fiction was about longing. I sometimes interrogate the scenes I’ve manifested in this, my middle life - is my dramatic little Pisces heart addicted to missing, I wonder? Did I somehow script my days like this, so I could successfully have material to write?? This sounds like a crueler inquiry than it is, I just wonder sometimes, in spite of all the whining and processing life, what it is my heart truly desires.
Answer: honestly, a pig!
So there I was, having just arrived in my friend’s house with her handsome partner and beautiful children and a kitchen so warm with a ceiling so tall I could have rolled out a sleeping bag and happily slept there, pretending the glow of a cheerful rooster lamp was the belly of the moon herself. I felt it immediately - Why am I so comfortable here?? I’ve never been here in my life! I saw right away that several random gifts I’ve sent had attained pride of place: an old magazine print framed by the front door, a poster from an antique mall on their living room wall. I was, of course, overjoyed to see these things, as I was also charmed by how quickly their kids went to bed. Missing were hours of parental haranguing, just Goodnight!! and the children went to bed. (What fresh miracle is this? What devil holds their signatures signed in blood that they have achieved this level of parental zen?)
We stayed up chatting, I probably kept them up too late. It was such heaven for me to discuss with two writers themselves the new vagaries of careers and partnership and general adulting. It felt like a sleepover like the old days. Going to the guest room then, when it was finally time to say goodnight, my eyes caught on a lamp and a chest. My body flooded with something I can’t quite name. Electricity? Oxytocin? It felt like a mix of heroin and coffee and wind, a supercharged zap of thunder and love. This is what I saw:
It was a vase I had in my very first apartment, when this friend and I lived in a town out west. A year after moving to this town, I relocated to be closer to loved ones back east. Eventually, my friend moved east, too, and we had some good times together in New York. After several years and jobs it was time to move again and my friend, saint that she is, let me store some stuff in her closet. I guess I left behind this vase when I finally departed for good, taking my boxes but certainly not all of my heart with me. (Part of it is in New York still.)
“I was going to give it away,” my friend said that night, when I spied it. “But then I thought, I kind of like this.”
She kept it all those years, and I had no idea.
I’ve thought a lot about that vase over time, wondering what thrift store I dropped it by, what town I was leaving, what relationship had ended, what scarf was trailing out the window of what U-Haul. All that time, one of my best friends was holding onto it, cooking dinner next to it, piling books against it and maybe even occasionally adorning it with flowers.
As soon as I saw it, I understood that I was not only soaking in the atmospheric haze of people I love and admire. I was encountering this missing piece of myself which my friend had kept alive all these years - lovingly, effortlessly, like a mother.
This is why I’m always saying friendship saves my life. This known understanding washed over me that night. Every time I passed the vase during my stay I got a little thrill. Coming home and trying to articulate that moment to others, I burst into tears trying to describe the sensation of feeling so known and held through the years by this one person, and finding that expression in this long lost vase.
Even writing that now, I’m tearing up. It’s not the actual vase - I swear it cost $5 and is pock-marked like rough cement. But it is the story of the people that vase holds - the lives we’ve lived, the ways we’ve been separated and come back together - that fills and breaks and fills my heart again. Then there’s the fact of those two copies of her book in front of my old vase (and yes, I did have the thought, Where’s *your* book Kara? Is your legacy only going to be thrift store finds?? lol). It is the trinkets and children’s things that line the cool chest, too. That’s the medicine of the missing vase: found, safe all along, in the dining room of a cherished friend. It’s how I feel, too - found now, safe after all those moves and incarnations, anchored by books and flowers and the friends who still know me, beings who have kept me secure and alive.
That’s it, that’s my story. How did I do? Did it make it across the transom?
Okay friends, that’s my news today. We are heading into what is hopefully a heavy cooking week if you’re in the US (Great American Bagels indeed), with some savory options, maybe a movie night or three if you’re lucky. If you feel inspired you might pour one out for the complexities and vagaries we are contending with, pray for some third options that create solutions where we disagree. I hope you have some people who know and love you, some tellers of good tales.
May the candlelight dance, may the circles be healing.
Thanks for being part of my missing vase tale! May we keep each other safe in the many travels our lives require us to take.
Xoxo
Kara
P.S. I have a sticky note on my desk quoting something one of my kids yelled to the other from a different room recently: “It’s still gonna be the bald guy but it’s gonna be different tricks!” Everyone deserves more of the story but for now let’s admire that dialogue.
Thanks for reading Under a Spell! This post is public so feel free to share it. You can also hit the heart below which is always a thrill.
"That’s the medicine of the missing vase: found, safe all along, in the dining room of a cherished friend." I loved the whole vase story and Colleen's general interiors aesthetic, though it's not quite for me...yet. (The power of yet!!) ;) ;) xoxx
This was an epic traventurelogue meets thrifting, minus the TUV!! And I loved your POTUS jokes, I've been waiting for you to bust those out 🥳. I can't wait to read the future post entitled "I am not for sale, but my wig is." Soon, please! ❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥