Making It Through

I want you to imagine that I am talking into a microphone, the kind that hangs down in a ring, or rather used to, in the old boxing days of Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano. I want to give an acceptance speech for making it through this strange final week of the year, but now I think maybe it should be a eulogy. This long strange week, which always seems to contain the year, and maybe all the years, up to it. Do you know what I mean? And maybe a eulogy is a sort of acceptance speech, a statement of gratitude, an acknowledgement of what’s left now. Something like that. Is this thing on?

The last week of the year is slow-moving and quixotic, a strange purgatory. When I am with my family there are always moments of joy and peace interspersed with a third rail hum of unresolved feelings or childhood wounds (mine and everyone’s), love and connection mixed with let’s get this over with. Time is warped, Salvador Dali warped. It goes from 7 am to 2:30 to “I’m going to bed” and who knows what day it is. And then there’s wondering about everything from who am I? and what am I doing? to here I am, in the town I grew up in, slowing my pace and ducking my head in the cereal section of Whole Foods so I won’t run into this guy I used to work with 20 years ago. All of this happens in brief blips, in between beautiful moments of sweetness. Life times a thousand.

Excuse me a minute.

Hello, my name is Deirdre and I’m a human being.

(Hi Deird. Yo D. Deirdre!)

Grateful to be here. It’s been 365 days since my last visit. I’ve been up for a while trying to write something that expresses how I feel in this limbo because I think if I can do that, I can feel better about moving forward, but I am resistant. Why? Endings are hard is the gist of it. Painful and impossible. So I’m here, checking in again, asking God to grant me some serenity, courage and wisdom, lord please, hit me up.

In the old days people used to send out newsletters around this time, little inventories of all the great things that happened, the original humble brags that often ended up in the trash. Now we are on substack. Occasionally I step onto this platform and it feels like I have opened a door into a portal where millions of people are talking at once and I want to back away, to hold off for a bit before saying something that only adds to the commotion. But as soon as I read some things, I realize the beauty of so many voices. It satisfies something I didn’t know I needed. Now I am curious! And nosy! And I am grateful too to all of you who read my work and especially to those of you who have sent me notes saying how much it means to you. I am speechless to that. And with that I pass.

Back in the ring.

I realize now this isn’t an acceptance speech or a eulogy at all, but a letter of appreciation. I’d like to give special shout out to Mo, Darla and Harry, to the old guy at Jiffy Lube who winked and tilted his head at me to come to the counter and give me a good deal; to the two of us who laughed with no sound coming out as we pulled pine needles and an acrylic fingernail out of a huge ball of dough retrieved from a trash can, no one will know! to my sister who took me to a fancy restaurant, to the scent of candles and pine, rain on the skylight, food -cooking, baking, brewing, piano music, cold faces, someone in the car not coming in, taking off scarves and coats by the door, to my mom for letting us all stay at her house, and to the little children walking slowly down the stairs on Christmas morning.

And to you.