standing still and learning to be astonished

Dear friend, 

When I first moved into my home, the sun from the rear bay windows flooded the dining room and filled the near-emptiness with a kind of otherworldly, three-dimensional light. At golden hour, I danced and danced and danced watching my shadow imprint on the wall like art then disappear within an hour of the sun setting.

A few weeks earlier in the fall of 2021, after roadtripping for nearly five months, I returned to Chicago to tend to the relational seeds I had planted with newfound devotion and hope. I signed a lease and resigned it, committing to stay in the same place for three years -- the longest I’ve lived anywhere since I was seventeen. As someone who has spent much of her life uprooting in hopes of more fertile ground, it is strange to acknowledge that the next great adventure is sitting still; witnessing and being witnessed by the mundane and magical parts of a grounded life.

This experience of returning continues to be one of the most humbling and nourishing of my life so far.

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Ever since leaving for my road trip, everything has felt both stunningly real and fleeting. Forgotten advice has become prophecy fulfilled. Old prayers are coming back around as fully fleshed out answers. Childhood dreams are now real, daily occurrences.

Friends left the city for San Diego, San Francisco, New York, DC and New Orleans. My lost patches of hair grew back gray and my family dog of over a decade did not survive cancer. Loved ones experienced life threatening mental health crises. Heartbreak racked my body at least twice. So many things ended and died and fell apart. 

I sat in my friend’s boxed-up apartment and watcher her say goodbye to the space she spent her second decade of life. I left communities whose shapes no longer fit me. I joined and co-created new ones that fit better. I have stayed up with friends all night in the deepest distress and, weeks later, watched them float, free as fireflies on neon dance floors. 

At the height of Autumn, I sat under a shedding, terracotta-colored tree at sunrise and held my friend while they cried.  

I drove alone through prehistoric mountain ranges and walked humbly on the land of my grandparents’ desolate hometowns in Mississippi and Alabama. I shared meals with biological and chosen family; tried to traverse conflict with grace and graciousness. Made mediocre pottery at a studio outside Atlanta. 

I learned to worship the onion. The perfectly pealed garlic head. Expensive olive oil. I started naming my plants and my car and my bike (Montey and Sara, Gina and Charlie, respectively).  

I grew an abundance of tomatoes. 

At sunset, I laid on the rooftop of my friend’s Harlem apartment. While sipping sparkling wine and listening to Frank Ocean, I understood what it was to access your own dreams through someone else’s hard-won reality. 

Midsummer in my community garden, everything touching the earth was alive. Dragonflies and bees and babies and dogs and butterflies wandered around the grassy grounds, drunk on the warm air. I saw deer and waterfalls and the shiniest, un-plucked purple eggplants.

In a room full of masked strangers, I wept as a harpist strummed and sang, convinced I was encountering an angel. 

Walking alone by the mystical Pacific ocean in a tiny beach town off the coast of California, I felt just as free as hearing half a dozen people fill my living room with their laughter. I was surprised by how completely the sensation overtook me both times. 

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I have been held by many people the last few months. Resuming this writing practice is undeniably a byproduct of that holding. Sitting together on picnic blankets and pillow-filled couches and café chairs. Receiving the care of a handwritten letter, an intentionally prepared guest bedroom, an unexpectedly beautiful gift wrapped in playful paper or a genuine invitation to leave the house. 

In the midst of one of those genuine invitations a few weeks ago, my friend leaned in with childlike delight to share her newest discovery: when trees shed their leaves, they immediately start developing new buds. That is to say that trees are really at the beginning of their annual cycle in Winter, not the end. 

I’ve been walking through the city streets and staring up at the pale branches, thinking about all the life hidden in plain sight. In the midst of Winter, I smile and pause under a tree in awe of the many mysterious things around us and within us waiting patiently for their season to thrive. 

With love,

Jas