the through line, if you want one, will probably be something about wanting

Winter is a real thing. Something even stubborn people must yield to. 

I lost – and had a hand in losing – a home a few winters ago. Breakup/eviction combo. My possessions piled up in the alley dumpster. The bed I’d shared with my once-partner was loaded, without me, into a truck and down the highway to North Dakota.

I trimmed down. One fork, one spoon, one knife, one plate, one bowl, one glass. Everything could be washed before I went to bed at night. I began to bleach the sheets every week. Showered twice a day. Said the rosary with Mom over the phone. Slept with the radio on.

How much time I’ve spent thinking about that time, the bodily fear and painstakingly slow recovery, the oozing process of remembering. Its emotional rhythm plays back again every year, echoed in the days between Christmas and my February birthday. A learned anticipation of nothing in particular – the other shoe, I think.

Vigilance. The kitchen table must be clear between tasks and meals. The bed must be made the same way each day. Pink slime in the bathroom hits like personal failure. I know, bodily, that the bed frame is too heavy to move alone. And so I pre-grieve it, envision it so clearly, jettisoned in some alley pile.

I’m not moving alone, and I don’t plan to anytime soon, but I wasn’t planning on it in that moment either. My constant homemaking, the maintenance and weighing of my things, is the equivalent of knocking on wood. Keep clean, keep the earthquakes at bay.

This December, hometown holidays, I went on walks with Dad and listened to him. He told me about his dedication to stability, his lifelong pursuit of security. He described himself as a child, always trying to change his environment, tweak it to be better. Immigrant’s son, never spending long in one school or house, moving up and down the length of California to chase ripening fruit in its pollen waves. Go bag in the trunk. Nimble. Untethered.

He told me about riding to the orchards as a kid, seven children and two parents, most in the truck cab, him and his brother in the bed. On the freeway it was too loud for him to communicate with the others where they sat in the front seats – he worried he’d fall out and no one would know. This pushed him to figure out that if he strung a pair of connected speakers between the cab and the truck bed and yelled into his end, the riders in the cab could hear him over the wind. He thinks he was seven, maybe eight.

This winter, on the last day of my visit, I crawl upstairs at six a.m., eyes blurry, glasses lost somewhere in the still-warm blankets, to sit with him while he has coffee before work. We’re quiet while the caffeine soaks in. When it hits him, he talks about the rest of his life. What he wants for himself, for us. I talk back about the future, speaking as if he’ll be in it forever.

The conversation turns, as it must, to my finances. Well-intentioned advice, underscored by questions that I just can’t answer – what am I saving for retirement? What can I do to improve my credit score? Do I think I’ll ever own a home? What will I leave for the next generation? He has found some kind of safety in these numbers, the spreadsheets and graphs rising and falling with us treading the wave.

It’s in my DNA – his search for safety becomes my own, and if I have kids, it will become theirs too.

I’ve been making things about safety (or a lack thereof) for a long time now. I think little me started drawing because it gave her a place to go when the rest felt hostile. I think Dad learned to make music for similar reasons. Or maybe I just say that because I want to be like him: a fixer with seemingly endless energy, which is needed, because nothing stays fixed. Stays put. Stays safe.

Our search for safety, which is also a search for danger, because to stay safe you have to be able to see the next threat coming.

How does anyone stand any of it? How does anyone stand being in love or having a family or having an origin or being on the damp earth while everything is happening? Bombs in many other skies while I sit in my bath, bombs that serve me whether I like it or not. And my baby, who I adore, who could hurt me so badly without ever trying to, who I could hurt so badly without ever wanting to. And money, of course. The rent and wifi bill and ComEd and Peoplesgas and the pap smear that (trauma-wise) set me back ten miniature years and the fee for it that (wallet-wise) set me back thirty five dollars. And all of us talking over each other. How do we bear any of it, and what other choice is there?

Imagine it with me, please, the other choice.

I don’t want fear of losing to overtake my love of having. Even if it would be smarter to be afraid.