Hey Darlin'

Some quick notes on resurrection

It’s Easter Sunday.

Families stream through the open I hosted; new construction, Kirkland zip code, everyone is wearing their Sunday best.

A Gen Alpha private school teen compliments my outfit,

“Love the ‘fit.”

I am absolutely and completely vindicated by every single decision I’ve made in my life to that point.

Their mother quickly ushers them and their siblings out of the house before I can capture their email address and attempt to sell them this house, any house. I resume my purposeful, solitary strut about the house in my dress, my blazer, and my little black high heels.

I drive home, back to the beach to walk my dog and soak in some sunshine before I call a colleague for cohort work.

Everyone was out on the beach.

I walked back to Bonair, the street where my first apartment on Alki had been. A paper-thin-walled, hastily built duplex where I spent one Christmas completely alone and miserable. The thermostat had caught on fire in the wall, and I spent the evening trying to get a hold of my landlord to scream at him. He screamed back.

I sometimes miss that old version of myself; she feels so close.

I can walk to her house. But she doesn’t live there anymore. It’s been over 3 years.

I am having a hard time understanding this new version; it’s like I’m waiting for the molten edges to harden, to find their grooves, to allow the water to run over my anger and solidify me into cooled iron.

I turn back, heading south down the beach. I notice a woman, solitary. She captivates me.

She’s wearing a sensible grey cashmere cardigan, cheery pastel pants. She’s sitting in a protective, but elegant, position; back slightly curled inward, abdomen contracted toward her spine.

She is holding an ice cream cone in her right hand. As I approach from the north and pass her, her downcast glance over her left shoulder catches my eye.

Strikingly lonely hazel eyes decorated by crows’ feet catch mine for a moment, and I quickly look away.

The intimacy of the moment takes me off guard.

Moments later, on the same concrete ledge, a young girl walks towards me.
The girl is missing her mother, who is right behind her, glued to her phone, and a slight frown flashes across her young face. The mother is missing her boyfriend, and she texts him photos of the girl. He didn’t join them at the beach.

I wonder if all four of us girls were gathered on that beach in that moment to understand one universal truth; the human condition is loneliness. And women can resurrect the dead.

An eagle calls, the shrill, unmistakable sound. It makes me miss my friend from San Juan Island.

Her eldest daughter learned how to replicate their high-pitched, resonant whistle, a sound that echoes across the Puget Sound from another realm.

Eagles always remind me of her. What a legacy; the girl with the eagle call.

I call a friend in San Diego instead of my friend from San Juan Island.

She and I perform our own version of resurrecting the dead over the phone: we lament over boys we love who don’t love us, boys who love us but who we don’t love, shudder over the boys who thought they had a chance to love us.

We ask the hard questions:

What if? What if he doesn’t like me? What if I do like him? What if he’s the father of my children? What if he doesn’t want children? What if I don’t? What if he actually marries his girlfriend? What if he’s depressed? What if they always circle back?

What if it never rains in Southern California?

It’s in this moment that I realize if I don’t get a move on, I’ll never know, and if I ruminate on it much longer, I’m going to go insane.

I wonder if the girl who learned the eagle’s call felt alone on her island.

I wonder if she needed to resurrect something.