A total solar eclipse of the heart

The solar eclipse in Montana, 2017

I do not understand how anyone is planning on doing anything between April 7th and April 9th. 

Because a total solar eclipse will be visible throughout much of the United States on April 8th, and witnessing totality is one of the most extraordinary experiences I have ever had during my one wild and precious time on earth. And we won’t get to see another one in this part of the world until 2044! 

I saw the 2017 solar eclipse in Montana, and it was so strange and beautiful that I’m half convinced I dreamed it. It doesn’t seem like it could have been real. I witnessed it with Mom and Ray and Mikah, and we’re heading to Texas to witness this one in one month.  

Even the existence of solar eclipses is mind-blowing…the moon is way closer to us than the sun, but the sun is way bigger than the moon, and based on both of those things, they just HAPPEN TO LOOK THE SAME SIZE TO US ON EARTH. Like, mathematically, that’s insane. If the sun was just a little closer, or the moon was just a little smaller, we wouldn’t get to see eclipses like this at all. So many planets don’t get eclipses at all! We are so incredibly lucky. 

And it’s not just that the moon blocks the sun—an eclipse like this is also accompanied by all of this incredible phenomena that feel completely otherworldly. 

At “first contact,” the moon seems to take the first little “bite” out of the sun. Not much else is noticeable during this phase—if you didn’t have eclipse glasses*, you might not notice anything is even going on. But as the moon covers more and more of the sun, you’ll be able to see thousands of crescent shadows on the ground near trees and plants. The shrubbery creates natural “pinhole cameras” that project the shape of the crescent sun onto the ground. 

After an hour or so, the light grows strange and eerie. I will never be able to properly describe the quality of the light in the minutes before totality. It’s like twilight, but brighter. It’s like the light before a thunderstorm, but sharper. It’s somehow dim and bright at the same time, and shadows are razor sharp. Sometimes, wildlife that usually come out at dusk make an appearance, thinking it’s already later in the day. 

As totality approaches, the temperature drops by a few degrees—it’s noticeably cooler, and the light continues to dim. If you’re in a very flat area, geographically, you may be able to see the moon’s shadow barreling over the ground at 1600 mph toward you. 

In the few minutes before totality, sometimes you can see “shadow bands” moving along flat surfaces. They look like the dancing light at the bottom of a swimming pool. We actually don’t know for sure what causes them, but the most likely explanation is that the sun’s rays are being distorted by earth’s atmosphere. 

In the very last second before totality, if you’re watching closely, you’ll see the last sliver of the sun suddenly break into a thin string of “Bailey’s Beads.” This is the last of the sun’s light peeking through the VALLEYS OF THE MOON, creating these glittering beads of light that are only visible for a moment. 

And then totality. 

When we experienced this in 2017, on a random hillside in Montana with a few hundred other people, the entire crowd erupted into emotional cheers. I burst into tears, and my mom also burst into tears, and at one point she had to be told to sit down so that she didn’t pass out. It was just so beautiful. It felt like we were on an alien planet, or in a dream, or somehow thrown into a science fiction novel. 

During totality, there’s a 360-degree “sunset”—colored gradients of light in every direction. Stars and planets are visible throughout the sky, even though it’s not quite dark enough to be night. You’re able to see the corona…the sun is a black hole with a white cloudy halo of light surrounding it. If you’re lucky, you’ll catch a solar “prominence,” a flare of solar plasma erupting from the sun’s surface, visible with the naked eye only during an eclipse. 

Totality only lasts a few minutes. (Although this time in Texas, we’ll get four and a half minutes! That’s twice as long as the 2017 eclipse!) And then the whole thing happens in reverse—Bailey’s Beads, shadow bands, temperature changes, crescent shadows. 

And then it’s done. A three-ish hour long wonder complete. 

Then we get back into our cars and slog our way through eclipse traffic** to get back to our Airbnb and wonder if it all really happened. Sometimes we only have to wait a few years for the next one, like in 2017. And sometimes, like now, we have to wait a few decades. 

There are times when I’m absolutely astounded at the beauty of living on this planet. There is so much cause for heartache, but the sun and the moon appear to be the same size in the sky above us and every now and then, we get to see them make magic. 

See you in 26 days, Texas. 

*IMPORTANT NOTE: DO NOT LOOK AT THE SUN WITHOUT ECLIPSE GLASSES. You can buy eclipse glasses online—make sure they’re actually safe and not counterfeit. They should have “ISO 12312-2” printed on them and have an authentic ISO certification label.

**I have never in my life experienced traffic like we did after the eclipse. It took us 11 hours to drive like 200 miles. At several points, we would each get tired of sitting in the car and just get out and walk beside it for a while. We tried to stop for food at a Wendy’s and they were sold out of almost everything, and there was still a mob waiting in line. This time we’ll be prepared! 

"When I go to sleep, I can't count sheep for the white lines in my head" --Bruce Springsteen

Let’s imagine, for a moment, that I prioritize travel. 

I’m actively silencing the voices that say “it’s too expensive” or “that’s not for you.” 

Why the hell not? Why not take the extra $1,000 that sometimes comes in from a well-paid gig and go explore some part of the world? 

Granted, right now I’m prioritizing raising funds for my intimacy direction certification program, and I will always have bills to pay. But I’m daring myself to ask “What would it look like if I prioritized exploring the world?” 

I’m also actively silencing any voices that come from outside of myself, about the dangers of traveling alone. I’m not really worried. Our world looks less like that dumb dumb movie “Taken” than people think, and I’m confident in my ability to navigate potentially dangerous situations safely. (Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I am. *shrug*) 

I also have no qualms about navigating a new city or transportation system by myself, figuring out where to eat, or getting lonely. I’m an introvert and homebody at heart, and most of the things I’d want to do in a foreign place are things that can be done alone–read, wander, eat, write. 

(That said, if anyone I love wants to join me, let’s make plans! We’ll go out dancing!) 

I’ve had wanderlust for a few weeks now. Maybe even months. But I picked up a copy of National Geographic labeled “100 Unforgettable Destinations” and now I’m revisiting my globe-trotter Pinterest board and making lists. 

Amsterdam. 

I’ll bring my tattered copy of “Anne Frank” and my own journal when I visit the place that feels so familiar to me already, see the location of a story that has informed so much of my life. 

Paris. 

An airbnb will probably be cheaper by the month. I’ll find some little place and walk to marketplaces every few days to buy food, sit at cafes and write, visit museums. I’ll eat at an outdoor table with a book in my hands. 

Tahiti. Or Bora Bora? Someplace tropical. 

Because for some reason, I just assume that tropical locations are not for plebes like me? But I don’t need an all-inclusive White Lotus resort experience. Just sun and sand and sea. 

Machu Picchu. 

Apparently it’s a whole-ass PROCESS to get there. But I bet it would be worth it. I’ll stop by the salt flats in Bolivia while I’m nearby. Swing up to the pyramid of Chichen Itza. 

Egypt. 

The pyramids at Giza. Hapshetsut’s palace. Amarna. Karnak. They’ve held me in thrall for as long as I can remember. It seems absurd that I wouldn’t visit them in person at least once. 

England. 

Plays at the West End, and a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon. A pilgrimage for the hopeless theatre kid I am. 

But while I make all these plans, it’s been deeply fulfilling to think back to all of the magical traveling I have gotten to do. Through the generosity of family and friends and happy sets of circumstances, I’ve been able to explore more corners of the earth than some people get to do in their lifetimes. (And I've gotten to do it all with some incredible people!)

I’ve eaten Black Forest gateau in the actual Black Forest of Germany, and explored the fairytale castle of Neuschwanstein, wandered the cobbled streets of towns centuries old.

I’ve strolled the National Mall and wandered past Ford’s theatre, walked through the museum of the home where Lincoln died. 

I’ve snorkeled in Hawai’i and Mexico.  

I’ve climbed ancient ruins in Belize and walked beaches in El Salvador. 

I’ve explored the ruins of ancient Greece, where I ran a footrace in Olympia, had a philosophical discussion in Athens, wandered the alleys of Pompeii, spoke the words of Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” at the ancient theatre Dionysus. 

I’ve wandered past Italian families playing soccer on Sunday afternoons to get to the Coliseum in Rome, and I’ve taken a train through Tuscany to stand before Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” in Florence. I’ve eaten pizza in Naples. 

I’ve walked through the maze of the Grand Bazaar and slipped my shoes off to enter the Hagia Sophia in Instanbul. 

I’ve wandered the French Quarter of New Orleans, jazz music pouring out from every open door, a new pack of tarot cards in my purse. 

I’ve looked up at the Redwoods and looked down into Crater Lake. I’ve hiked slot canyons and hoodoos in southern Utah, and looked up at the stars from the waters of Leigh Lake in Grand Teton National Park. I’ve spent entire summers in Yellowstone. 

I’ve taken a ferry across the San Francisco Bay and taken an elevator to the top of the Empire State Building. 

When I list it out like this, I feel astonishingly lucky. 

So I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, listening to some weird voice that says traveling isn’t for me. It clearly already is for me. I just have to ask myself what it looks like when I make it a priority, instead of something I do when others invite me.  

I guess we’ll find out. 

#ActuallyAutistic

Here’s what happened. 

Multiple people around me got diagnosed with ADHD, including one of my roommates. Watching their journeys, I saw a few things that I recognized. 

Object permanence problems. (If I can’t see a food item in the fridge, it does not exist. I have thrown away so many packages of cheese. And if I need to remember to bring something with me somewhere, I have to either leave myself a note or leave the item right by the door.) 

Bumping into things. All the time. My spatial awareness of my own body is shite. 

Hyperfixations. Having projects or TV shows or movies or hobbies that take up all of my mental time and energy for a significant period of time. Some could be considered specialized interests, since I’ve been obsessed with them for most of my life and have a considerable amount of knowledge about them. (Hey, ancient Egypt.) 

But as I learned more about ADHD, I kept bumping up against one particular idea: that people with ADHD often struggle with executive function. 

 

And I generally…don’t? When I’m in a bad depression dip, I struggle to function, but it’s not quite an executive function issue. It’s not that I have some block surrounding organization or task completion or even being overwhelmed. My block is surrounding energy. In fact, when people talk about how difficult it is to complete a task, I have a hard time understanding what they mean. You just…do it? 

So I was like, “Hey, internet, what has some of the symptoms of ADHD but you’re hella good at organizing things, breaking down a large task into smaller parts, and completing to do list items, and also were a weird kid who struggled with social cues?” 

 

Oh. 

 

Autism. The answer is autism, kids. 

So I had a crisis, because I couldn’t have autism. I hated math growing up, and I’m a deeply empathetic person who’s sensitive to the feelings of those around me, and I actually have lots of friends now, and I understand humor and metaphors. So there’s no way I could be autistic. 

And then I took the RAADS-r test and scored an 83. The minimum score for autism is 65. So I took another test from The Autism Research Centre in Canada, and scored a 30, which is at the low end of high risk. 

And then, based on the RAADS-r questions, I started really looking at myself, and who I was as a kid, and who I am now. A fearless moral inventory, if you will. 

And the truth is that I really was a pretty weird kid. I never quite fit in…I always felt different from other people, and most of the time, that was fine with me. But here is a short list of the ways I was weird, which are all also autistic traits: 

• I was very very anxious about food. I was a very picky eater, refused to try new foods, and had an enormous irrational meltdown if someone tried to get me to eat something I didn’t like or hadn’t tried before. 
• I often wore the exact same thing every day for days and days (and weeks?) on end. For like, a long time. For at least the first half of my freshman year of high school, I wore the same jeans, off-white textured top, and blue cardigan. Every day. 
• I played imagination games (dress up, Barbies, dolls/stuffed animals, etc) for longer than average. (I think.) Until I was 14 or so. 
• I refused to put my head underwater at the pool. I remember a swim teacher specifically giving me this note at the end of several weeks. She might have even bribed me with candy? I also remember having similar anxieties about having my hair washed. 
• Hygiene in general was difficult, because of what I now understand to be sensory issues. I often refused to brush my hair, and would get these awful, matted rat’s nests in my hair as a result. I struggled with brushing my teeth, especially spitting the toothpaste out. 
• In general, I struggled a lot socially. Some of that also probably had to do with the hygiene and outfit things I just listed, but even aside from that, I often just couldn’t connect to my peers. I had a hard time accessing what was “cool” or “popular.” It all seemed so arbitrary to me, and I couldn’t keep track of it, and couldn’t figure out what was important or why. I was teased and picked on, sometimes by people whom I had thought were my friends. I often had a sense of having missed something in social interactions…I could feel the temperature change in a conversation, but I wouldn’t know why or what had happened. I disappeared into books for much of my childhood, and preferred to spend recess in elementary school making daisy chains by myself to playing with my peers. Freshman year of high school, I often sat in the hallway above the auditorium and read books during lunch. Granted, I wasn’t a complete loner. I did have friends and meaningful connections, but for a long time, they were all just as weird (and probably as neurodivergent) as I was. 

 

And you guys. Most of these things were going on well into my teenage years. It took me finally getting into theatre my SOPHOMORE YEAR IN HIGH SCHOOL to feel like I could finally start to fit in with my fellow humans. 

 

(I have a theory about why—I think it’s because theatre kids are VERY EXPRESSIVE and direct, and I could easily navigate conversations that were with people who were weirdos but also clearly expressing emotions in very dramatic ways. Like, weirdness was embraced among theatre kids. And everyone was so dramatic, which meant social interactions were less subtle. And scripts gave me parameters to interact within. I could make strong individual choices, but there was always a “right thing” I could say when following a script onstage. It was enough to give me confidence to develop those skills more as a person offstage.) 

 

But you grew out of all of it, right, Liz? 

 

Here is a short list of the ways I continue to be weird, most of them starting in childhood but continuing on today, all of which are really common traits among those with autism: 

• I’m still a picky eater, tbh. Spicy foods make me feel like I’m dying, and new foods give me anxiety, and if a food has a texture I dislike, it makes me gag. 
• My most prevalent stim is twirling my hair, followed closely by picking at my nails and swaying while standing. I often use fidget toys during movies or plays to keep myself from stimming hard in other ways that are more damaging (like making my cuticles bloody with picking at them). 
• Little spoons only. I am picky about silverware and dishes in general. They must be the right shape, weight, material, etc. 
• Form follows function when it comes to clothing. If it’s not comfortable, I cannot stand to wear it. I often cut tags out of my shirts, and have occasionally cut collars on t-shirts to be lower so that they weren’t as close to my neck. I’ve been known to trim scratchy inner hems. I dislike wearing pants (as any of my previous roommates can attest), and I dislike wearing shoes (as anyone who knows me can attest). 
• Eye contact actually doesn’t come easily to me. It’s much easier onstage, but in real life, I have to remind myself to consciously do it during other interactions. I also have to consciously remind myself of the rules of casual conversations, especially if it’s with someone I don’t know super well. (If they ask you how your day was, ask them the same thing back. Conversation is reciprocal. And also, not everyone is interested in the random trivial fact you learned on a podcast today.) 
• In fact, I uh…I rehearse social interactions ahead of time. For a long time, one of my deepest secrets was that I’ve rehearsed jokes or stories or conversation bits before telling them for like, most of my life. I’m only comfortable sharing this now because I’ve learned that lots of other people do it. 
• I have a list in my phone of conversation starters and reminders to help me navigate social situations where I don’t know people as well. Topics to bring up, questions to ask, etc. 
• I’m easily overwhelmed in loud, crowded areas. When I’m sitting in a theatre before a show (as an audience member), I usually have to put in headphones and play white noise to keep me from like, freaking out. I’ve also used headphones and white noise in grocery stores, on public transportation, and in airports. 
• Repeated soft touch on one part of my skin sometimes feels actually and literally painful. One or two brushes of someone’s fingers over one part of my arm = lovely. Repeated touch of the same kind in the same place = torture. 
• Spontaneous social interactions are hard for me. 99% of the time, I need a day to sort of emotionally prepare. It’s not that I don’t love people, it’s just that 1, the disruption in my plan for the day is difficult, and 2, social interactions take a lot of work for me and it’s hard to jump in really quickly. 
• Walking on my tiptoes. I don’t do this one quite as much nowadays, but I often walk on just the balls of my feet. 
• Always using movie/YouTube/TV/TikTok/etc quotes in conversations. (Or, more often, thinking them and not saying them, because if people don’t know the reference, it often gets in the way of actually connecting with other people, which is the goal of conversation. And also because I don’t know how to explain that the thing I just said is a reference to the blooper reel from an early 2000s British sitcom that I’ve watched dozens of times with my sister.) 

 

There are also a few things that could be classified as just kind of quirky personality traits, but I see them in a new autistic light nowadays. My deep love for forms, spreadsheets, taxes, and organizational documents of any kind. The meticulous tidiness of my room and/or desk. The game I play in my head when I’m buying something less than $20, when I try to think of a historical event that took place in the year of the total. ($14.92 = Columbus sailed the ocean blue.) 

 

I also have a few common morbidities with autism. I have an auditory processing disorder and misophonia. And hooo, boy, do I have a history of anxiety and depression. 

 

And each of these things on their own are kind of just quirky personality things, but put altogether, it looks a hell of a lot like autism. 

(Okay, quick note: Most of what I've described would have been classified in the past as Asperger's Syndrome, which is now recognized as just part of the autism spectrum. The autism spectrum doesn't mean every person is somewhere on a scale from "not austic at all" to "totally autistic." The autism spectrum means that either you're autistic or you're not, but if you are, there are a spectrum of experiences and supports needed. I have low to medium support needs, where someone else may have more support needs.)

 

I’m a little uncomfortable calling myself autistic without an “official diagnosis.” But it’s not like I took one BuzzFeed quiz and decided I was autistic. I’ve spent months reading articles, visiting websites, using diagnostic tools like the RAADS-r test, listening to other adult women with autism, and speaking about it with other autistic folks. 

 

I’m currently in the process of seeking a formal diagnosis, which is…difficult. One of the clinics I called is booked until the year 2024. And women who can mask their symptoms and have lower support needs are often dismissed or overlooked, so I want to find someone who specializes in autism in adult women, which is not easy. I also understand that if I am not diagnosed as autistic, that could also be accurate. It just…it really seems like an accurate diagnosis to me. 

 

When I told my roommate some of these things that I did and still do, she looked at me incredulously and asked “How did you not know?!” And I replied that I didn’t know because I’ve never been in anyone else’s head! I’ve only been in mine! And also I was born in 1985 and getting an autism diagnosis as a girl in the 1990s was unheard of! 

 

So now, at age 36, I’m navigating the very high possibility that I’m a little bit autistic. My therapist pointed out that I managed to white-knuckle my way through a lot of distress in order to have connection with my fellow human beings, and that I was able to find some helpful coping mechanisms just on my own. That’s worth celebrating. 

 

Does this change anything about my life now? Not really. 

 

Just kidding, I’ve been going through ongoing loops of identity crises, research and self-education, and re-evaluating every single aspect of my life. This also means that all of the social confidence I’ve developed over the last 20 years has frayed at the edges a bit. By my senior year of high school, I’d become confident enough that I could enter into social interactions with very little anxiety. A lot of that anxiety came back after getting divorced in 2017, but nowadays it’s like…middle school level social anxiety, 60% of the time. I’m hyper aware of how I act in every interaction I have with other human beings, while it’s happening, which means that the interaction itself sometimes gets weird because I’m aware of how I act and it’s just a strange, endless loop. 

 

Shout out to anyone who has become friends with me over the past six months or so. 

 

“But Liz, you don’t seem autistic at all!” Maybe not on the outside, I don’t. And maybe not to you. That’s probably because I’ve spent the last 20 years learning and practicing normalcy really really hard. (Also, I thought the same thing but then I learned more about autism.) 

 

But here are a few of the good things that have come from this journey. 

 

I have enormous compassion for little Liz. That weird girl with un-brushed hair who was reading by herself throughout school was doing the best she could with what she had, and no one had the tools or knowledge to help her navigate a world that presented challenges for her. I see her isolation and confusion and pain in a different light, and now I can reach back through time and offer so much love and patience to that young girl. 

 

And some of that sense of isolation has been lifted as well. When I first began my journey with a possible autism diagnosis, I felt this strange sense that the diagnosis would erase my experiences growing up. Like if I was autistic, I was just like a bunch of other people, instead of an unusual, otherworldly creature who single-handedly figured out how to connect to others on her own terms and was more highly evolved than her peers in middle school. I had come to embrace my strangeness as something beautiful that I then grew out of. But nowadays, I see things differently. I can still be an unusual, otherworldly creature…it’s just that now I don’t have to be alone in it. I get to keep the strangeness, but let go of the isolation. (I also now understand that I’m no better or worse than my peers…we just had different tools and experiences.) 

 

And I’ve seen this as an opportunity to embrace my strangeness and my needs. I follow a couple on TikTok who both have autism, and they posted a video about how one day, they just decided to be themselves, in all their strangeness. To not hide their wild, unusual quirks, and to live bravely as exactly who they are. Hearing this didn’t change a lot about my behavior, but it lifted a lot of the shame and embarrassment I had about my behavior. Okay, so I need some time to prep for social interactions! That’s a legitimate need and not a character flaw. So I’m a picky eater. So certain kinds of touch are painful to me. So I need headphones to help me not meltdown in large, noisy crowds. ALL OF THAT IS FINE. I’m allowed to have those needs and to speak them and to do what I can to meet them. 

 

And that’s actually true whether or not I get an official autism diagnosis from a licensed professional. That’s true of all of us. We’re allowed to give ourselves tools to navigate the things in the world that don’t work for us. We’re allowed to look back in time on our younger selves with compassion. We’re allowed to like what we like and dislike what we dislike and be our weirdest selves. 

 

Connection with our fellow human beings is still possible when we do those things. And the more we are our truest selves, the more authentic that connection will be.

COVID-19 blah blah blah, for posterity

Here’s what it was like. Here’s what I will remember.

I spend early January to mid-March dismissing everyone’s fears, before actually doing the research and realizing that this is serious. Not necessarily because of the mortality rate, but because our healthcare systems will not able to handle the load, and that will lead to a loss of life on a terrifying scale.

Early on, grocery stores are chaos. They’re quickly cleaned out of hand sanitizer, bottled water, and toilet paper. When I go grocery shopping, I can’t find eggs, flour, baking powder, vegetable oil, or frozen lasagna. A lot of other things are almost gone—butter, cereal, sour cream (for some reason?), canned veggies, fruit, beans, meat. With toilet paper being so hard to come by, I decide to take a “greener” route and learn how to use and launder “the family cloth.” I get into the habit of ordering my groceries online for curbside pickup. We all wear masks when we're out in public. (AT LEAST WE'RE SUPPOSED TO.) When we do go into grocery stores, the lines all have markers six feet apart, and the aisles are all one-way only.

Schools close for “two weeks,” which quickly becomes “until the end of the school year” as the governor publishes a “shelter in place” directive until the end of April.

Early on a Wednesday morning in mid-March, we’re awoken by a 5.7 earthquake in Utah. My roommates and I feel dozens of aftershocks, and spend the whole day sitting in the living room together, for comfort.

America collectively loses its mind over a Netflix documentary series called "Tiger King," which has everything from polygamy to arson to murder-for-hire, because in the hours we're watching that, we're not thinking about the pandemic.

K goes to Boise to be with her parents for a few days, although things are so uncertain when she leaves town that we say goodbye accompanied by “See you in a few days! Or a few months…?” She stays there for four weeks.

A and I have “reading parties” in the living room most nights. We trade book recommendations back and forth and read the same things at different times. There’s one memorable night when we get high and watch “A Goofy Movie.” At one point, early in the movie, A struggles to reach the remote to pause the movie and say to me, very seriously, “This is important. I need to tell you this. All of the teenagers in this movie are dogs.”

When K comes back into town, our reading parties turn into “reading, stitching, video gaming, writing, puzzling” parties. We spend one week watching films based on/thematically related to novels written in the 1800s. All of our home improvement projects are put on hold, since we can’t go to Home Depot for supplies. I work from home roughly 4 hours a week, and spend the rest of my time cycling through the same half dozen activities.

I complete jigsaw puzzles on an app on my iPad. I journal. I read. I watch TV. I listen to podcasts. I stitch. I write. I do some work for Royter Snow. I do chores. I go on so many walks that I grow bored with my neighborhood and drive out to other neighborhoods to walk there. I come to enjoy the solitude of the days when A is at work and K is out of town, although I joke to A that I understand why housewives in the 1960s rebelled because this is “boring as f***.” Lock-down has turned me into the housewife that my Mormon upbringing has trained me to be. When K does return from Boise, it takes me a few days to adjust to someone else being there during the day.

My sleep schedule, despite my best efforts, reverts to its preferred pattern of 1:30 am – 10:30 am. I take a lot of naps early on, dealing with the stress of it all. Time has ceased to matter or make sense anyway. I rarely have a strong sense of what day of the week it is, and the passage of time is impossible to measure. At any given moment, it feels like we’ve been under lock-down for at least three months.

On a morning in early April, I awake longing for the pillowy soft sweetness of a freshly made donut, and lament that it’s out of reach for who knows how long. I attempt to make beignets to satisfy this craving, which is only sort of successful. I do learn an excellent apple dumplings recipe a little while later.

After a while, I find myself applying COVID-19 social distancing rules to the characters in books I’m reading. Sometimes the characters will be having a big gathering, and I’ll think, “No! You can’t do that!” before realizing that it’s not real.

Around mid-April, my dreams start to get strange and vivid. I mention it to A and she tells me that multiple people have mentioned the same thing. Later that day, National Geographic publishes an article about how the pandemic is causing widespread vivid dreams—both because of the lack of new stimulus to process, and because of our anxiety about a virus that’s essentially invisible to us.

Beckah and I begin a tradition of watching bad Netflix movies together once a week, via Skype and a Google Chrome extension called “Netflix Party.” By far the best one is “Iron Sky 2: The Coming Race,” the sequel to “Iron Sky,” a Finnish-German-Australian-comic-science fiction-action film. Major elements of the film include a reptilian Sarah Palin, a cult of Apple lovers called “Jobsists,” a hollow earth, a moon-Führer, and Hitler riding a T-rex. At one point, Beckah and I get really hung up on one particular plot point regarding how a compass would work in the middle of a hollow earth before remembering that no part of the movie made any sense.

My cousin starts a movie watching group and we meet weekly on Zoom. I do a lot of Zoom/virtual meetings. We all do. Patrick and I are stuck in separate homes, and connect through Skype a few times a week, and I long for his arms around me so much I can hardly stand it.

I learn how to play Risk on my iPad, and decide that I’m a Risk prodigy, winning 51 out of 56 games by the beginning of May, at all levels of difficulty, against both bots and humans.

I deal with my anxiety about the current situation by small-scale compulsive internet shopping, purchasing new sheets, new cookware, fridge organization sets, and a dozen other things I probably don’t need, but will definitely use.

Most of the time nowadays, I’m okay with our “new normal.” I feel guilty about the times when I’m not…when I wake up in the morning and fill with dread at the realization of being stuck at home for who knows how long. But we’re all taking it one day at a time.

At the time of this writing, from January on, I’ve played 56 games of Risk, completed 31 jigsaw puzzles, and read 9 books. I could look up how many stitches I’ve completed and how many hours of podcasts I’ve listened to, and all of the television and movies I’ve watched, but the answer doesn’t interest me enough to do the work required.

That’s what it’s like right now.

Newcastle, California

I’ve been thinking a lot about my late Grandma Jo’s house lately. I have only snippets of memories of the place, but something about it has been floating to the surface a lot lately. And recently, it has become deeply important for me to find it.

I follow a winding path through the internet, from FamilySearch to burial records, until I narrow my search down to one small town outside of Sacramento, California that “feels” right.

I’m fairly certain the house was on a hill. I remember my cousin Hillary falling down the gravel driveway. I know there’s some kind of large body of water within walking distance. There was a summer when I found “fool’s gold” in the mud on the shore and was certain I’d struck it rich. There are lots of trees and blackberry bushes—or at least there were in the early 90s.

I search “Josephine Avellino Newcastle California,” and instantly, an address pops up. 520 Mandarin Hill Road. I look at the satellite image on Google maps. Lots of trees. A long winding dirt road. A nearby reservoir. I think this is it. There’s no Google Street view available, but…I think this is it.

It’s hard to verify. I only have one picture from the house, of all of us cousins on the back deck, which doesn’t provide much “corroborating evidence” for this 520 Mandarin Hill Road house being Grandma Jo’s.

I check Zillow and Realtor.com and half a dozen other realtor websites, hoping for pictures. They all say the same thing. “Single family home built in 1973. Approximately 2,584 square feet, 4 beds, 2.5 baths. 5.7 acre lot. Last sold in June of 2000.” None of the sites have any pictures.

The problem is that I know how unreliable memory can be. I have a distinct picture in my head of the color of the exterior paint, of the garage on the right side of the front door, of the layout inside. But I have no way to check the reliability of these memories. And for some reason, I want to see it. I want to remember the house as it was.

I doubt I could find any old internet listings for the home from June of 2000. The internet was barely a thing in 2000. But I keep thinking about my old backyard on Rio Street in Medford, how it was one of my favorite places in the whole world, and now it’s gone. There’s a whole additional house built on the lot where I spent my teenage years gardening and reading and swimming and eating. I don’t want to lose Grandma Jo’s house, too.

My memories are fading, and if I don’t see pictures, if I don’t draw it, if I don’t write it, it will be gone forever. In this time when so many things feel uncertain, I need this to be certain. I need to know that my grandmother lived in a house on Mandarin Hill Road, because I know that I loved that place dearly.

Maybe I’ll have to write it.

The one picture I have is of warm red wood planks. A railing and a bench. To the left, a gazebo with a hot tub. There was a thermometer with birds on it hanging from the side of the gazebo. Trees and trees and trees all around. One growing right through the deck. There was a large field of grass down further left, with rhythmic sprinklers watering throughout the day. The sound still makes me think of Grandma Jo’s.

There were blackberry bushes all along the left side of the road near the house. In the summer, we’d go out and pick buckets full. Grandma Jo would put them into bowls and pour heavy cream over them, and we’d eat them with a spoon.

There was a two-car garage on the right side of the house, which I don’t have any memory of every going into. The house was painted with a weathered grayish green…the color of homes near the coast. The interior was decorated in this antique Victorian style, with late 1980s sensibilities. There was a cabinet full of antique dolls. Needlepoint samplers and lace doilies everywhere.

The living room was wide and comfortable. Overstuffed couches and armchairs, and lamps on end tables. I think the carpet was thick brown shag. A large sliding glass door led to the deck, where that picture of us cousins was taken.

The kitchen was a territory where children were in the way, and I don’t have strong memories of it. Light wood cabinets, maybe? White patterned linoleum?

The dining room is giving me some trouble, too. It was either through the kitchen, on the farthest left side of the house, or it was through the living room. Both feel equally accurate in my fading memories. I remember the continued theme of Victorian décor. Finely decorated china on the table, which was covered with a white tablecloth.

And I remember the food I ate there. Breakfasts like American gods. Breakfasts I still dream of and attempt to find at diners and restaurants around the world. Thick, buttered slices of toast. Plates of bacon. Orange juice and waffles.

There are two bedrooms and one bathroom down the hallway, off the living room. The bedrooms are forbidden territory. I don’t know if I ever even saw inside of them. The bathroom was small but available for use by guests. There was a soft pink toilet seat cover.

There’s a narrow staircase near the front door. If you walk up it, dead ahead is one of the bedrooms. (I think.) Right next to it is the upstairs bathroom, and at a 45 degree angle to that is the other bedroom—the one Beckah and I stayed in when we visited. And alongside the staircase, with a wooden railing protecting us from falling, a large landing. Right above the front door, there was a window seat. My memory is that books lined the walls, but I’m not completely certain—I may have just filled that in with my own description of a fantasy room.

This “room” was a perfect playroom for all of the cousins. Out of the way of the adults, but still within eyesight and earshot. We kids could peer through or over the railing (depending on our heights) into the living room below, spying on our parents. (What DID adults do when they weren’t taking care of us?) We played games up there for hours. A crowd favorite was “animals,” which didn’t seem to have any rules, in that way that children’s games often don’t. It mainly consisted of just…pretending to be animals. There was a rule about no two people being the same animal, so there was often some fighting over who got to be certain creatures. For some reason, “flying squirrel” was the most coveted species.

Maybe I’m drawn to memories of this house because as I imagine my own dream house, it looks a lot like Grandma Jo’s. In the trees, with wild blackberries all around. Enough room for the entire extended family to stay. A deck and an upstairs landing with a window seat. Rooms crowded with things that mean something.

Of all the things I love now, so many of them can be traced back to those summer visits to Grandma Jo’s. Outdoor decks and big sumptuous breakfasts and big family gatherings.

Maybe that’s how Grandma Jo’s house stays alive. Through more of those things.

(That said, if any Whittakers or Fortuners have pictures of Grandma Jo's house, and/or can verify that it was on Mandarin Road, let me know.) 

It's Gonna Be Okay

There are so many things I want to write about. Kathleen and her memorial, opening night of Safe, thoughts on loneliness and friendship and love and illness and grief and self-esteem and romance. But every time I try, my psyche is like NOPE. So I’ll just have to let those things out slowly I think—just let them grow until they’re ready to be set down fully formed, or else put them down a little bit at a time.

So instead, I’m going to write a bit of encouragement to myself. A short imagined letter from the future Liz. If I’m continuing the growth metaphor from above, consider this the Miracle-Gro. (Or maybe this is an oblique way to write about some of those things I listed after all.)

Dear Liz,

It’s okay to feel grief. It’s okay to not “handle it well” and to accidentally fall short while you’re trying to process your sadness and fear. Grief creates a fog that sometimes you simply must walk through. You’re doing your best, and it’s going to be okay.

I know you’ve got the blues lately. It’s partly just January. Keep going on walks—I know you never feel like it, but you can handle the cold for 20 minutes, and those 20 minutes of walking make all the difference in the world to your mental health. You’re always glad you went, even if you never feel like going. Take naps if you need to. Be compassionate to yourself.

I know you may feel lonely lately. In your efforts to be professional as a director, you’ve put up a few walls between you and the cast and crew. In your efforts to protect Patrick from your own sadness, you’ve put some distance between you. And after Kathleen’s memorial, it was hard to leave Medford and Beckah and everyone behind—all of that love felt blinding and you still ache with it. But it will be okay. You are loved and loveable, even in your grief and sadness and confusion.

I know you haven’t felt very pretty lately. That’s okay. We all have those phases. So you’re fatter than you used to be and your hair is kind of at an in-between stage and your body hair is doing weird things lately. You still rock those curves, girl. Your eyes still sparkle, you beautiful soul. Give yourself a pedicure and a face mask just because it feels good. Stand in a hot shower with your beautiful body just because it feels good. “Pretty” isn’t objective. You’ll find it in yourself again eventually.

I know you’re dreading that audition on Wednesday. But I promise, it will be fine. You dread every single audition you ever do, and then you survive it and sometimes you even get to do a show afterwards. You have nothing to lose in doing this audition. The worst that could happen is they could say no, and if you do get cast and are overwhelmed by scheduling conflicts and other challenges, you can decline. It’s good to just practice auditioning, if anything.

I know that there are a lot of things that just feel uncertain right now. And you can look for guidance in tarot cards and universe splitter apps and self-help books, but sometimes you have to just embrace the uncertainty. You can embrace the age-old wisdom of that damned Serenity Prayer, which is so trite as to be cloying but is nevertheless one of the truest prayers ever written. You can accept the things you cannot change, change the things you can, and be wise enough to know the difference. Trust your intuition. It hasn’t failed you yet. You are a divine being navigating a beautiful world where you can grow and learn and give and heal. Trust that your journey is perfect exactly as it is. Let yourself be carried where you need to be carried.

And to give you some perspective on the goodness you do get to experience, here are a few things to give you hope and happiness. Between your tax return and your savings, you’ll be able to make a down payment on a car in the next few weeks…one that gets better than 18 mpg. Aaaaand you’ll be able to start saving for a bike soon too, which for short distances will be better for your wallet, your body, and the earth. In two weeks, you’ll be in Disneyland with Beckah and Mom and Ray. You have wonderful roommates and a wonderful boyfriend and a wonderful family and wonderful friends.

It’s gonna be okay. Better than that…it’s gonna be beautiful. It already is.

Gratitude Journal, again

Sunday, June 17, 2019
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Friday, October 4, 2019
and a dozen others
Today I love my life for naps/sleep.

I rarely want to go to sleep at night. There are just usually more interesting things to do. Books to read, shows to watch, Instagram feeds to scroll. But I find myself enjoying more and more the slow drifting in and out of long afternoon naps, or weekend mornings when I can sleep in.

I’m enjoying the simple possibility of naps. My therapist once gave me permission to sleep if I need to, and I think that absolution is what makes the naps so enjoyable. I don’t need to be productive every second of every day. Sometimes living life to the fullest means listening when your body says it needs rest. My instinct is still to think of naps as a “treat” or something to indulge in on special occasions. But I’m learning to let that go. I’m learning to embrace the “unproductive” “lazy” “indulgent” and “childish” practice of naps.

*  *  *

Wednesday, September 18, 2019
Today I love my life for going on a walk and rehearsing for auditions even though I didn’t feel like doing either.

I don’t feel like doing any of the things I need to be doing tonight either, or even could be doing tonight. I don’t feel like taking this dog on a walk, and I don’t feel like blogging, and I don’t feel like reading, or watching something, or sleeping, or being alone, or being with friends, or eating, or sound designing, or anything. But I’m going to take this dog on a walk, because I’m being paid to and because I suspect it will actually make me feel better. And I’m going to eat, because I suspect that will make me feel better too.

But that’s as far as I’m going to plan ahead. If I don’t actually feel better, maybe I’ll at least have the satisfaction of doing 2 things. I’ll figure the rest out after I get that far.

*  *  *

Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Today I love my life for Aaron and Jessa.

I’ve got some kind of poem building in me as this chapter closes. Right now it feels too big to write. Right now I’m simply holding it in my heart, waiting to see how it grows.

*  *  *

Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Today I love my life for impeachment.

I know it’s complicated. And I know that it all feels so partisan. And I know that it’s very unlikely that all of the Democrats and all of the Independents and at least 20 of the Republicans all currently in the Senate will convict the current President.

But dammit, we did the right thing. Even if it doesn’t lead to removal from office, impeachment was the right thing to do. It showed our commitment to the just laws that govern our citizens and leaders. It emphasized that no one is above the law.

I don’t think impeachment is meaningful ONLY if it leads to conviction and removal from office. No President in United States history has ever been convicted and removed from office. Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were both impeached by the House, but not convicted by the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned before he could be removed. But we remember that Nixon was impeached. We remember that Clinton was impeached. We remember that people stood up and said, “You can’t too that.” And that’s powerful. I like to think I’m bipartisan in this, even though I know my own biases run pretty deep. The rule of law applies equally to both/all parties.

*  *  *

Wednesday, December 25, 2019
Today I love my life for a beautiful Christmas with someone I love.

Here’s the problem with healing old family traumas and wounds. It means that now I miss my family all the time, and especially on holidays.

I think every family has traumas and wounds—it’s just the nature and extent of them that differs. I won’t spend time here describing mine, because that’s not the point. The point is that I’ve spent the last few years in therapy working to heal. And I’m discovering that all of those old wounds and traumas were also a wall keeping me from connecting with loved ones. And now that the wall is crumbling, I miss loved ones. We’re spread far and wide—California to Oregon to Colorado to Nevada to South America.

And holidays can be hard. I wish I could spend Christmas in the kitchens and living rooms of my own family, eating good food and singing and laughing and playing games and watching movies. I miss being with my people. I miss baked goods and caroling and homemade candy and reading aloud. I miss conversations with the people I belong to.

So if I can’t have all of those things with my own family, I’m grateful I could share some of them with someone else’s, and with someone I love.

Patrick and I opened presents together at his mom’s house, along with his sister and her husband, and it was a beautiful chaos of wrapping paper and explanations and thank you’s. We had dinner at a neighbor/family friend’s, where we played games and talked. I read “Angela and the Baby Jesus” and we did a Christmas Mad Libs.

But my fondest memory of Christmas is later that night, when Patrick and I listened to musicals and sang and played Rummikub and talked and laughed. It's so easy get lost in the stresses and uncertainties of life and dating and schedules, especially during the holidays, and in my anxiety, I forget to do the things together that fulfill us: good music and good company and good conversations. That Christmas night, just the two of us, I felt connected to him and to myself and to us as a couple, and it was beautiful. It felt like family.

So much past inside my present

PART I: TEN YEARS

I’ve been seeing people posting a cool little summary of the past decade on social media. And it occurred to me that I’ve had a pretty full decade, and I feel really happy looking back on it. I have a handful of socially celebrated “achievements” on this list—school and career things. But I’ve also accomplished a lot of things that were personal goals, or things that I’ve dreamt of for years. And many of them don’t come with particular rewards or accolades. But I love that I did them. So in my long decade summary, I’m including both the things that were a big deal in general (whether accomplishments or just experiences), and the things that were a big deal just to me. So here are the things I accomplished from 2009 – 2019.

Moved back to Rexburg after living and working in California.
Did improv comedy with Comic Frenzy at BYU-Idaho.
Performed an original song at Acoustic Café at BYU-Idaho.
Got married.
Got a Bachelor’s Degree.
Taught English as adjunct faculty at the university level.
Finally got an iPhone.
Visited Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Italy, Greece, and Turkey.
Met Mike McCready and attended 2 Pearl Jam concerts.
Moved to Utah.
Got a talent agent.
Worked in public education.
Worked with Stephen Soderberg and Michael Cerberus on an HBO mini series.
Worked with Rob Reiner and Cary Elwes (FIRST TEENAGE CELEBRITY CRUSH) on a film.
Got divorced, and survived the trauma and heartbreak of it.
Got a Master’s degree, which included writing a 143-page thesis.
Lived in seven different places.
Got paid to act.
Played a romantic lead in a comedy.
Performed in 26 full-length theatre productions.
Sound designed 8 full-length theatre productions.
Auditioned over 135 times.
Joined the Improvables Improv Comedy team in Centerville.
Had a speaking role in a Lifetime horror film.
Did 3 commercials.
Did 2 industrials.
Worked as background on 12 film/television projects.
Watched a ton of live theatre, both in New York and in Utah.
Became a company member at An Other Theater Company.
Opened an Etsy shop of subversive cross stitches, which made a little over $1,600 in its first year.
Wrote 655 blog entries.
Upped my dose of antidepressants from 50 mg to 100 mg
Spent 3 days in a psychiatric hospital.
Started working with a therapist to unpack and work through past traumas, and build a toolbox to help me through current and future challenges.
Became an aunt (x4!)
Began a “Sister Blog Challenge.”
Got my first tattoo.
Had a major faith transition.
Worked in a law office.
Worked as a simulation patient at a university medical program.
Started a long-term relationship, post-divorce.
Began training as an intimacy choreographer.
Started directing my first full-length theatrical production.
Got called back for my #1 bucket list dream role of Miss Hannigan in “Annie” (which callback I bombed because I was WAAAYYY in my head and also because I hiked a volcano in Hawai’i, took a red-eye flight back to Utah, showered and changed at home, then drove to Orem and attempted to do the callback with very little sleep or preparation and it was probably the worst callback I’ve ever done in my life).
Started learning how to read tarot cards.
Went on as an understudy for a theatrical performance.

That’s a pretty damn awesome decade.

PART II: FOUR YEARS

I was thinking about how my life has changed since early 2017. I’ve had the occasional sensation of “being on the wrong timeline.” It feels like the end of 2016 sent our universe spinning off into some unfamiliar dimension. But I also feel like I’ve been “leveling up” since being thrown off course. And I feel like each year has a particular theme.

2017: Survival
This was the year of just getting through it. A morally dubious and incredibly un-qualified man was in the highest office of the United States. My marriage of almost seven years was ending. The whole world seemed upside down. So I had to just sort of hibernate for a lot of it. I embraced the self-induced coma. I worked and studied and rehearsed and performed and slept and cried and art journaled and watched a helluva lot of TV.

2018: Distraction
I did like, six overlapping theatre projects during 2018. I didn’t need to be in survival mode quite as much anymore, but I wasn’t quite ready to just be still. I wasn’t quite ready to “do the work” outside of my therapist’s office. Some of the distraction was to avoid feeling and working through things, but some of it was just circumstantial. A new romance is generally pretty distracting, in a good way.

2019: Incubation
This past year, I’ve felt like there are all these little seeds that have been just waiting, growing, getting stronger, getting ready to burst into the light. Things with careers and relationships and friendships and just…life in general. I’ve been preparing, consciously and unconsciously, to take some steps towards some of my mountains.

So I think 2020 will be the year of building. I think it will be when some of these seeds sprout, and some of them may wither and some of them may grow roots. But we’ll see.

I'm excited to see.

Stories I Inherited

Children playing in the rubble, Hamburg, Germany, WWII

For most of my life, there was only one time I can remember my Opa speak about World War II. We were watching television, some program on the Discovery Channel, and from the silence, he said in his thick German accent, “I have seen a plane wing falling from the sky in Bavaria.” I turned and looked at him. He lifted his hand and let it drift, floating towards his knee, demonstrating the path the wing he saw followed.

“When was that?” I asked.

“I was a boy,” is all the detail he gave.

Opa’s father lost his arm during World War I. Ferdinand Wolff. When Hitler called men up to march, I’m told that Ferdinand sat behind a desk. Oma’s father, he was a soldier, too. Friedrich Flack’s military records no longer exist, but I know that I am descended from men who wore swastikas on their arms. Oma was ten when World War II ended, twelve when her father returned from a Russian prison camp, 90 pounds, tuberculosis-ridden. It’s difficult to untangle the war from the Holocaust. They aren’t exactly the same thing.

I know my great grandfathers weren’t tried at Nuremburg. Neither of them were Goethe, or Hoesse, or Himmler, or Mengele. I’ve heard other stories, the thoughts of the men and women who knew their ancestors were the architects of the “final solution.” Monika Goethe, whose father ran the work camp Plaszow. Rainer Hoess, whose grandfather was in charge of Auschwitz. His grandmother used to tell the children to be sure and wash the strawberries they brought in from the garden; they always “tasted of ashes.” Niklas Frank, who executes his father anew every time he speaks at a school or a community center.

The Nazis I come from do not have stories that are published and dramatized and studied. I do not have that weight to carry. I have the weight of an ordinary man. A man from Hamburg, father of four, who smoked a pipe and got tuberculosis during his stay in a Russian prison camp, and returned years later to the ivy-covered house a few blocks from the harbor. I have the weight of a man whose son and daughter were sent to live in the country for protection, while he sat behind a desk and went home to a freezing house.

Over the years, I’ve heard excuses made for the SS. They were just doing what they were told, Stanley Milgram-style obedience. They didn’t know what Hitler was really doing. They were poor and starving and just trying to survive. And I’ve heard that every single German is culpable for the millions of lives lost in those dark years. My grandparents have stories of homes being destroyed, of eating turnips fried in coffee grounds, of winters so cold and no coal for heat. And I carry the stories of the people who hid, who were taken, who were murdered.

I do not want my feelings about World War II to be complicated. Hitler was wrong, and those who supported him were wrong, too. But I love my Oma and Opa. I love the stories of their fathers, and their families. My compassion for my family feels like betrayal. I am not a Nazi sympathizer. But I sympathize for my family.

There are white supremacists and Neo-Nazis among us still. Skinheads who run poorly designed websites about the “white genocide.” (Which, for the record, is not a thing that is happening.) For years, I thought they were too isolated to do much more than talk, but the last few years have shown me how many have been in the shadows. A tire iron swung behind a bar. An arm raised in an SS style salute. Hiel Hitler. Men with rifles and tattoos, who walk in parades, glowering. Women who cook meals for them and bear them blonde children.

These men, and Hitler, propped an entire movement up on a belief that the worst of humanity must be “bred out.” In 1922, Hitler said to a friend: “We must try to bring to the surface the valuable traits of the people… to cultivate and to develop them, and we must find ways and means to prevent the propagation of all the bad, inferior, criminal and decadent tendencies and all the congenital diseases so damaging to the Volk.”

When I first learned about World War II, there was a part of me that ached. I felt guilt for my family’s part in the story. I feared what I had within me. I feared there was an evil in my heritage. I was born of the “bad guys.” I’ve dealt with this fear in different ways over the years—making jokes, ignoring it, playing devil’s advocate. Writing about it.

But perhaps this fear of what I carry is the very fear at the heart of Nazi thought. I fear “the bad, inferior, criminal tendencies” that may have somehow made their way into my blood. But no doubt all of us carry darkness in our family trees. And if I’ve learned anything from the past few years, it’s that fear should not rule us. Fear can lead us to betray ourselves and each other.

So if I have darkness in my blood, I will carry it. But it’s not all I will carry. I will carry with me the story of Oma and Opa meeting at a dance hall and spending all night in one another’s arms before they knew each other’s names. I will carry the story of Oma’s mother pulling down the picket fence to burn, rail by rail, to keep her children warm. I will carry Ur-Opa’s pipe and Ur-Tante Maren’s red socks mended with white yarn and Ur-Onkel’s car-tracks in the backyard. And I will give these things to my own children someday. Every story—the aching ones and the shining ones—and they can carry those, too.

Of lake and parks and creeks

When I was very small, I thought Lake Elizabeth was named after me. It’s a man-made lake in Fremont, a city to the southeast of San Francisco Bay, where I grew up. It’s surrounded by a large park, several playgrounds, and a couple of community buildings. 450 acres, and a lake that’s around 80 acres and maybe 8 feet deep. I sat in my grandparents’ sailboat on Lake Elizabeth’s waters. We rented paddleboats and bought ice cream cones. I fed ducks on its shores. A few times, we went swimming in the roped off area that demanded payment for use. I remember once we found a tiny orange kitten in the reeds on the south side of the lake, his little eyes glued shut with sickness. We named him Moses and took him to the nearby animal shelter.

There was one summer when my sister and I went to a day camp there. My sister and I were separated and the teenagers working there never gave us the color of marker we requested. If I could have figured out how to wander off, I would have. Maybe I did. As a child, I much preferred the company of nature to the company of my peers.

So many of my memories of Lake Elizabeth are of the small creek that meandered from the lake, through the playground, and into a wilderness refuge. To a dreamy girl like me, it was paradise. I was a small peasant girl, fetching water from the river to bring back to my family in our hut. I was a witch, gathering herbs and performing spells in the grass on the edges of the water. I was a pioneer, lifting my petticoats to ford a river on my way across the Oregon Trail.

There are strange, unspoken rules among children in public spaces. There are two ways to stake a claim on a particular area: be the first, or be the loudest. I was rarely the loudest, so I usually tried to be first. If I wasn’t, I had to settle for some other, smaller patch of shore to call my own.

I moved back home to Fremont for one semester during college. In the afternoons before my closing shift at the bookstore, I would take my grandmother’s old bike and ride out to Lake Elizabeth. As a twenty-two-year-old, the walk around Lake Elizabeth was short and manageable, an easy two miles. I would bring a book, or my journal, or a picnic lunch. Sometimes all of the above. I would watch as kids played by the same unspoken rules of territory by the creek. The grass was kept short (and often soiled) by flocks of Canadian geese.

There was less imagination in my use of the park as an adult. I went there for a change of scenery while doing the things I would be doing at home—reading, writing, walking, eating. But I could still feel the green of the park seep into my spine. It made me feel calm and quiet in the same way that it did when I was a child. Like a fish returning to water. Or more like breathing when you’ve been underwater.

I still visit Lake Elizabeth now and then. Everything at the lake is a little smaller to me now. The creek that was a wilderness to 6-year-old me doesn’t have the same untamed nature that it did then. I’ve embraced the fact that it was not, in fact, named after me, but rather after Fremont’s sister city, Elizabeth, South Australia. There’s a tunnel for BART, the public train, that runs right under the lake now. There’s a tree there planted for my late uncle, who died when I was too little to understand what that meant.

We adults still follow the same unspoken rules about territory—whoever’s first or loudest claims a spot. We’re more civilized about our claims, but we make them nonetheless. A picnic blanket here marks the border between my space and yours. Stay away from my picnic table, strangers. I didn’t come here to connect with people. I came to connect with the trees.

I wonder how long Lake Elizabeth will remain. If I’ll wheel a stroller with my own daughter around its perimeter. If I’ll watch her wade in the creek. If she’ll have a daughter that will do the same. I wonder if Lake Elizabeth will be a precious sanctuary to them, as it was to me. I hope it is. I believe it will be.