Dawn

Two years go by, and it can feel like no time at all. In a story, two years can mean barely an inch of white space, or the indentation of a new paragraph, or turning the page to a new chapter. In life, two years is two years. It is 730 days of getting out of bed, meeting the dawn, making choices, moving forward. Then suddenly and at very long last, it is two years later.

My last post was almost two years ago. I stopped posting because I wasn’t volunteering anywhere, I wasn’t seeking out multicultural experiences as much, and I didn’t have much to say. Also because keeping up with a writing schedule is hard.

Regardless, I am picking the whole mess up again. My life is quite different now than it was in 2015, and it seems a good time to return to healthy habits. Like writing and volunteering.

I didn’t volunteer much after grad school because there wasn’t room for it. My focus on an inner turmoil that I was determined to hide from the world took up all the emotional room in my life. Now that I have moved through a few stages of development—namely those of affecting chaos, cocooning from chaos, wallowing in self-pity, and clinging to old narratives only to have them ripped from me like so much stolen property—I think I’m ready to move forward. Giving time to others helped give me perspective once; I’m hoping that if I turn my focus away from the mirror once more, I might find clarity.

And what better way to kick off my reboot of volunteering than with Porch Rokr 2017!!

This was the easiest volunteering ever. It was for an event I had planned to attend anyway, that was two blocks from my home, and that offers a wide variety of music and people, good food, and a free t-shirt. A total no-brainer.

The sum total of my volunteering responsibilities was to hang out at an info booth with another volunteer, hand out free maps and sell t-shirts. Being friendly, giving directions and people-watching were all bonus contributions.

Before being whisked off in a golf cart to my appointed post, I got to watch the guitar orchestra—directed by my friend, Jim—begin the festivities, hug a few dear friends I hadn’t seen in a while, and observe the earliest rumblings of getting this enormous endeavor up and running. After my three hours of helping people navigate the not-grid-like neighborhood, read the map, and find the port-o-lets, I meandered about the crowded streets. I stopped to listen to a couple of different bands, but mostly I watched and listened to the people all around me. It was hot, hotter than it had promised at 8:30 when it rained. By 3:00, kids were getting tired, adults were sun-burned, and dogs were panting frothily. I texted a few friends, but none were available to meet.

I am not yet entirely adept at being alone in a crowd, but I’m getting better at it. This was an easy crowd to practice in, with its inherent state of flux. Two or three times, a total stranger began a mini-conversation with me. It felt like a family reunion full of cousins I hadn’t seen since infancy: strange and familiar at once.

I made my way to the main stage area from the far wilderness of my info booth and aimed for the beer tent. Once inside and armed with my of-age wristband and three beer tickets, I scanned the wobbly crowd for a friend. The one who materialized was unexpected.

He was my husband’s friend, actually, mine only by association. It might be important to this narrative to interject here that my husband of 21 years and I separated less than a year ago. We are amicable, but the marriage is over for reasons that have no place in this narrative. So suddenly being in line for beer next to this friend was just ever so slightly uncomfortable.

That discomfort dissipated quickly, though, because he is a friendly sort and so am I. We simply chatted about nothing of any importance and inched toward our libations. Once we had them, he led the way to a shady spot off the beaten, where we could watch the crowd and cool our palettes in comfort.

It’s strange how people surface and resurface in our lives. The ones who stick are seldom the ones you anticipate. Likewise the ones who disappear. When I decided to take a wrecking ball to my seemingly perfect life, I knew there would be loss. What I hadn’t expected was the amount of gain that would come of it. While a few friends have receded in the wake of massive change, many have come more sharply into focus in my new field of vision. And, of course, I’ve made new friends, met people I never would have had I stayed the course of quiet, desperate status quo. 

It seems nine months is the gestation period of my new self. Nine months have passed since, as I put it in my journal on October 28, the first night of the end of our 23 years together. That was the night he moved to a hotel so I could pack and leave our house. His house now.

Back then, all I could see was the end. The end of a marriage, a friendship, a story that was supposed to be happy-ever-after. Now, after nine months of change that felt every bit as painful as growing limbs in a womb, I can see the beginning. It is not yet fully formed, and there is a definite soft spot in the spongy skull of my newborn self. I have to be careful about what I feed this infant, what I expose her to, whom I let care for her. But she is beautiful. I see infinite hope and promise in her, qualities I had thought were out of reach in the crone I came dangerously close to devolving into. Now, if I can be patient and let her grow, this new me will lead me somewhere fantastic and unexpected and new.

Two years? That’s nothing. White space. It is now 5:58 am on the first day of a new chapter in a story unfolding in real time. Let the dawn come.