44 degrees

My friend and fellow Substack writer Mary from Alma Jette sent out a newsletter this morning. I enjoyed reading it, as I enjoy everything she writes. It arrived in my inbox minutes ago, right after I had sat down and decided I’d send you something and then failed to come up with anything worthy to ship.

In Mary’s letter, she made a playlist and sent the following message:

“I can’t write at the level I want to, with the frequency I desire, so I’m allowing myself the delicate and perfect joy of NOT subjecting you to any half-baked shit today, and instead offer you a playlist I made just called kissing. I’ve been examining lots of long-held beliefs about everything from career to money to love… In the words of Robert Greene: “What makes us intensely appreciate something is previous suffering. A brush with death makes us fall in love with life; a long journey makes a return home that much more pleasurable.”

So here I am at my desk again, because I have something to say, apparently. The only fully baked shit I have on offer.

It’s cold here in Nashville, 44 degrees at the time of writing this, according to the app on my phone. I have waited for what feels like all year for this, though it has really only been a couple of months. As you know, Summer wasn’t kind to me and for several weeks now I’ve been waiting for the season to change. Being deep in grief while it’s scorching outside was at times crazy-making. I have been looking forward to the weather outside to not feel the same way it did when I got the call that my mom was dying.

Someone asked me in earnest this week if everything feels like it goes back to her right now, and it does. I can’t write about much outside of it. Everything the light touches has shadows of losing her. Even the loss of my grandmother is eclipsed by the fact that four months later, I lost my mom. It’s been 20 Mondays without her, nearing half the year. Every Monday, another week ticks over, and I feel it so deep, right in the center of my chest.

And still, life isn’t expressly sad or mournful right now, though it seems I keep finding my way back to those things. Today, instead, I feel optimistic because it is cold out. The season has changed, which feels fitting because I feel like I’ve been changing, too.

There’s warm granola cooling on the table, because instead of scrolling on my phone this morning, I made granola with pumpkin seeds, coconut chunks, and walnuts. It smells heavenly.

Every time I go to my kitchen to cook, I am learn the lesson that I can make something sustaining out of very little, and it feels like the universe is shoring up the walls that make me, and maybe that’s why I keep at it.

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