Birthday week

TL;DR Keep going

In this life

we walk on the roof of hell

gazing at flowers

—Issa

Last week, I drove up the coast to the Bay Area.

Thirty minutes into the drive, I realized I’d forgotten things—migraine medication, running shoes, a 6-pack of beer. Important things. I’ll be fine, I said. I don’t need my medication, I said. These were lies, of course. We turned around and went back. I cried.

It wasn’t forgetting the things that upset me. And it wasn’t having to turn back and add an hour to our trip, either (though that was really annoying). It was that the domino fell. Over the last month my Grandma passed, my Dad had a stroke, I watched the debate, I put my daughter on an airplane alone for the first time.

And then I forgot all the things.

We stopped in Los Alamos that night, stayed at a motel that’s been around since the 1950s and sits atop a hill overlooking a vineyard. A slice of heaven, I thought. We caught our breath over a carafe of margarita and I slept like shit. Alcohol does that to me.

Wednesday morning came. 7am and 63 degrees. A crisp and gentle wind. A cup of piping hot coffee with a splash of cream, the steam rising and dancing. A garden to sit in, succulents and palo verde trees in yellow and magenta bloom.

We stopped for breakfast burritos on the way out of town. How many eggs do they put in these things?, I thought. There was a flier on our table advertising “Chingona Community Inc.” Chingona is Spanish slang for badass woman. I ate half of my burrito and put the flyer in my purse.

The next day was the Fourth. We went to my parent’s to swim, met up with some family there. I wore red, mostly because I look good in it. My brother has a tattoo of the American flag on his upper arm. The stripes face front, the stars face your heart, he tell us. I’m still not sure why.

By accident we saw fireworks that night from the fourth floor of our hotel room, the colors exploding and then vanishing in the sky, leaving behind clouds of smoke. Is this bad for the environment? I think. I love fireworks and I know too much these days.

Friday was my Grandma’s memorial. It was also my birthday. We celebrated my Grandma’s life and I barely gave a thought to my own apart from a few happy birthdays from cousins which felt wrong somehow but that’s how life comes doesn’t it? Joy and grief, fireworks and smoke, birth and death.

A friend once described the music he made as “exploring the gray” in a world of “warring opposites”. Are the opposites at war or are they simply ways to know the other?

I think back to the start of the trip, forgetting all the things, crying about it. Almost as if someone or something had tripped the line and sent the dominoes falling on purpose, so that we had to stop. So that we had to turn back. So that we had to start again.

I was watching a video of a friend doing a difficult yoga pose. She fell at the end but she was close to nailing it. I’ll get it next time, she said.

Another friend sent me a text. I think of the Churchill quote often, he said: When you’re going through hell, keep going.