Dead Letter Department #58

weather report

I am crawling (not running) back up the hill, but making progress. It’s slower than I thought, despite my most sensible efforts before & after surgery to remind myself that it was, in fact, going to be slow. I have, as I’ve been recovering, successfully mowed the lawn, sawed up some wood for the garbage, hauled my own laundry up & down the stairs, & reached for the jalapeño cheddar pub cheese on the top shelf at the grocery store. I have not yet managed to work a full day without hitting an absolutely impassable wall of either the incontrovertible need for a nap or what I am continuing to call Lump Time—time in which I become a lump on the couch, doing nothing & saying less.

The lilacs are in their full glory, impossibly fragrant, the later fruit trees & the dogwoods are streaks of color everywhere I go. The painters took incredible care to not crush the various green shoots coming up out of the garden bed, which means the few lilies I planted last year actually have a shot at blooming when I was sure they’d be crushed with all the work being done at the house.

Yesterday I wanted to get out & look at things, so on something of a whim I went a little farther south & drove all the way around Lake Samish, mostly by guessing at cardinal directions, trying to find all the different public access points. Summer’s coming—his things are already packed, & he’s on his way—& this year I am determined to spend more time in the water in the brief window when that’s possible, so I was looking for where I might be able to swim. I won’t really be able to do proper strokes until six months post surgery, since I can’t lift my arms all the way until then, which puts us all the way into the end of August, but I don’t want that to stop me from at least paddling around a little bit & getting that good light feeling of weightlessness when I’m floating on my back.

I stopped to drink my blue jar of coffee on a pullout by a rushing stream, & spent a long time looking at the moss growing on the bank, thinking about rain forests & other places I’d like to get back to. I started a list of spring/summer things, warm weather places, so that if I’m sad or can’t decide I have something to glance at—all I have to do is smack a finger down at random & then go do that thing. So far it’s got one section for local stuff that’s easy to get to, one for things that really might be more aspirational this year due to distance, & one for food & coffee places that are either new or not in my regular rotation, which is currently a delightful circuit from banh mi food truck to dumpling food truck to Greek food truck, but I could really stand to branch out.

Since I got back—essentially since I started being able to drive again a few days after getting home—I’ve only been listening to one band, to the point where I got kind of embarrassed about it & put a decoy band on when my friend got in my car so she wouldn’t know I was still listening to the National, although I then immediately confessed to it.

I’ve been gradually digging out of the backlog of chores that accumulates when you are spending most of your time as a lump, although the paperwork pile remains intimidatingly tall. I’ve started doing weekly calendars again, with the different projects I’m working on & the goal I need to hit for the side gig.

J’s gone, & I’m sad about it. It was the longest amount of time together we’ve had together in years, in decades, actually, since the last time we lived in the same place. The timing was incredible—she was already out here when my top surgery was scheduled, traveled with me to that, took care of me afterward, & then I was able to help her with some appointments immediately afterwards. We intertwine lives so easily, & always have—a hour after picking her up at the airport we’ll be finishing each other’s sentences. The moment of separation is always devastating, but I think it’s worse this round because we had so much more time together, months of it, enough for it to feel normal, routine to be checking in with what the other was doing for dinner, the luxury of regular hangouts & everyday dog park visits.

If I wanted to live in Vermont, or she wanted to live here, it would be so lovely & easy, but I don’t (sky too low, snow interminable, culture all wrong for me) & she doesn’t (Vermonter at heart, deep roots there—a home, which can’t be argued with), so instead we have to take what we can get, which was an absolute feast this time.

Speaking of timing, lately it feels like every time we finish a major house project our neighbors are starting one, which means I am never free from the sound of power tools. Right now next door is putting up a fence, which will blessedly prevent me from making awkward eye contact every time they round the corner, & will allow for more privacy than I’ve had since they started construction last year & had to take the old one down. The only downside I can see is that their incredibly round, soft cat will have to figure out how to come around to the front to visit me instead of traipsing through the shrubbery, or sprinting at full speed across the lawn to try to squeeze in my back door before I close it. I have no idea why he wants to come inside so bad, or what he’s expecting to find there, but I will miss his plaintive little mews of entreaty, & hope he learns to announce his presence at the front gate like the other neighbor’s cat does.

one good thing

I’ve mostly been subsisting off of takeout & convenient reheatable food for dinners the past few weeks, since my stamina for cooking is basically nil, but last night I had a little burst of energy & steamed some asparagus while I made a mushroom, ham & smoked gouda scramble. It was delicious, & I had a nice warm feeling of improvement even as I was doing the dishes.

Thank you for being here at the Dead Letter Department. If you like the newsletter, please share it with a friend or consider subscribing to the secret edition, where I’m writing my way through transition. Write to me anytime at departmentofdeadletters@gmail.com.

I hope to see you here at the Dead Letter Department again soon, & in the meantime, may your lilies remain uncrushed.