a year in seasons
winter
Your family goes to a theme park at the last minute because this is what you do, ever since you were little and saving crumpled-up dollar bills from birthday cards, coins found under couch cushions. The rollercoasters let you fly and so you ride until the wind steals your voice, until your cheeks are chapped from all the tears, until the stars replace the sun and fill the night with magic.
Your niece who is five begs to go on the log ride, earlier in the day, the one with the big waterfall. She is barely tall enough but you teach her how to stand with an arched back, and then she grins and skips through the line when they let her through. That hurt my tummy so good, she tells you at the bottom, water droplets on her eyelashes, her face flushed with joy. You get in line again. The two of you ride three times that day and you wrap your arms around her tiny body every time the log crests, every time you’re swallowed by the mist, just so she feels snug and safe at zero gravity. Then you wrap her in your shirt when she gets soaked and begins to shiver.
Your mother drives seven hours to stay as long as you need. It is not your first doctor’s office, not your last, but it is the first time you have a procedure and are given medicine to mask the pain, though it doesn’t really. You cry on the table while the doctor looks at your fallopian tubes to see if they are open or closed, to see if this is why you can’t have a baby. They are open. You are disappointed for lack of answers, but also relieved. You and your mom eat bowls of pasta the night before and bookend the visit with an afternoon on the beach. You are weary but held—by the sand, by the promise of what comes next, by your mother.
In March, you return in your mind to the frozen fjord and snow-covered driveway from five years ago—a trip to your aunt and uncle’s house. The photo had come in the middle of the night when everything except your toes was black and frozen. Her face looked so tiny on the screen, so pink, so much like your sister’s. You cried beneath the blankets, silently so as not to wake the others, then stared out the small window at the fjord. An ache. An expansion. Your heart doubled, then exploded. Now you drive across a desert state every March and remember. How a heart can widen like a canyon, you’ll never understand.
spring
The first breath of spring is a memory because you are not really here, not present, not in your right mind. At an airshow, you sweat through your jacket and smile in conversations with strangers. Is this the fertility medication? You ask your husband on the car ride home, sobbing, then again beneath the covers. Or is this me?
You fall in love with the orange tree. Buy the house, then change your mind.
When the air is still cold at the end of spring, you pack a small bag and bring your favorite books to a cabin on a lake. You and your dog spend the weekend in silence—bathing in ice water, eating olives in the sun, reheating pots of coffee on the small burner. Your mind is clear and you put words to feelings while seated at the kitchen table, spill your blood on the linoleum floor. The towering pines offer perspective and meaning. Relief comes in seeing it all there: your life splayed on the page, mapped high above in the sky.
summer
You haven’t figured out how to truly love your body yet, and that bothers you but it’s also okay. You have had to unlearn and reckon with so many messages telling you to be a certain size and shape. In June heat, you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and are startled by what you see. You snap a photo. It’s dark and grainy, an outline of a woman in a hallway mirror. You are amazed by her. You keep the image to remember.
The afternoon is so ordinary but the warmth of his breath on your skin feels anything but. Lake water falls from his lifejacket and onto your toes, wets the boat carpet. You kiss his blonde baby hair, watch his spider lashes flutter. The towels dry slowly in the late summer sun and you think about how you’re anchored in place yet swaying. Moving yet going nowhere. You feel so unlike yourself these days, terrified and overwhelmed by where life is headed. Yet his tiny hands wrapped around your body remind you that everything will be okay, eventually.
Your brother is married under an arbor at a Victorian mansion tucked into the rocky mountains. His eyes glitter when she walks down the aisle, a look you’ve never seen on his face before. It feels like a privilege to witness, a reminder that you don’t know everything about those closest to you.
autumn
You are learning that change is inevitable. Your thoughts, beliefs, and opinions are constantly evolving. You’ve already belonged to two political parties; both found and lost and then found spirituality again. A decade ago, you left the church and thought that, maybe, one day you’d be back. But then years passed and every time you sat through a service, you felt like a stranger.
On the cusp of another winter, you feel a longing you haven’t felt in years. For God? For hope? For something familiar? You think it’s likely all those things, so you find a church that is softer around the edges, take a seat in the back, and cradle your coffee. Then you go again, and again.
On the day you get the call that your first IVF cycle failed, you walk to the bookstore down the street. You spend an hour talking with one of the employees about what to read next, taking his recommendations and buying a pile of books. A jazz band plays in the cafe. The pain is still there, but it looks smaller outside your home. You can hold it up and see it alongside other feelings, not just your own but those of others too. Your grief is no longer your entire world; it is only a piece of it. And you think maybe someday you’ll open a bookstore, a soft and safe place for others to come when they have nowhere else.
You don’t actually like drinking, which you discover in an attic apartment in Berlin. You hate how it makes your head feel and how you never sleep well. You haven’t figured out how to say no when offered a glass of wine or when going out with friends, but you’re learning to stop being so hard on yourself. You trust you will figure out how to balance this, eventually.
Music maps the year. Silence does too. Months without any sounds except the pulsing thoughts you can’t escape, weeks in which you start running, listening to the same old song on repeat, finally feeling strong and like you could leave your thoughts behind on the treadmill. August is marked by moody country mixes, songs for open roads and watercolor sunsets. In October, the music becomes desperate, old hymns for when you can’t breathe. In November, it’s white noise—to sleep, to drown out airport conversations, to write and read in faraway cafes. In December, jazz floods your home, audiobooks and podcasts too. In the final week of December, you start to run again. How strange that we change so frequently, you think. How strange.
You come alive again while wading in the Pacific, just off the coast of Malibu, collecting shells with a friend. The waves surprise you and soak your leggings, making the rest of the night sticky with salt and sand. Instead of going home, you get a tattoo, buy a bottle of wine, watch an indie movie that makes you feel cultured. On Sunday, your friend helps you move your couch and you both try on all your clothes and look at yourselves in the mirror. You buy green paint that reminds you of a library and streak it across your apartment walls. You find yourself again. You find your breath again. You find you. On the way to the airport, your friend turns to you and says: You are okay. You are okay. You are more than okay.
Watch: Lady Bird. A few weeks ago, a man approached me at Target with a flyer for a screening of a new film. He started listing off similar movies in his spiel—“You’ve seen Lady Bird, right?” he asked—I (shamefully) hadn’t. I watched it later that weekend to give myself a break from holiday films. It is, of course, beyond excellent. If you haven’t seen it (or even if you have), I recommend watching it over the New Year weekend. It’s currently on Netflix.
Read: Severance by Ling Ma. I’m still reading this and hope to finish over the weekend. It was one of the recommended books from my trip to the bookstore on the day of our failed IVF cycle (mentioned above). So far, it’s captivating.
For a shorter read, this piece by Toby Lowenfels is fantastic: In Praise of Lived-In Homes.
Listen: This mantra loop from a yoga class I took this morning. Plus, a song for the end of the year:
We are okay. We are okay. ....I’ll take that one and try it out.
maybe one my favorite pieces to date. the details, the emotion, the sense of place. I’ve been playing around more with second-person writing and it’s incredible what it accesses! anyway, I’ve been off insta but have been thinking about you. I hope the start of your 2024 is gentle. 🧡