When I was a photographer in earnest and printed and framed my photos, hung them in public spaces and sometimes sold them, I was not interested in naming them. I always thought it would disturb the relationship the viewer might have to the image.
The same has been true for me with sermons, which, I don’t even like the word, sermon, but I don’t name them in the way so many pastors do. Or title, I guess. I don’t put a title to them. It doesn’t feel necessary.
Yes, it’s part refusal to play the game the way it’s usually played, but it’s also following my own instincts about what’s happening in life. If I name something, you will have a certain expectation before you’ve really heard or looked.
I feel this way today, sitting here in a hotel room in Park City, wanting to put some words to the thoughts and experiences I’ve had for the past week or so. There is no way I could possibly come up with a title for all that has transpired, though I suspect this medium will require me to do so before it can be sent to you.
I’ve lost track of time, day and places. We’ve crossed two time zones and lots of states. Today is our last leg on our way to Incline Village, Nevada where Coco has a job and space in her brother’s home waiting for her.
The day before we left Vermont, the night, actually, she spent with her closest friends as they prepared to part ways. That evening I wandered around her room, tidying up. In the past I might strip the bed to wash her sheets, perhaps do her laundry, maybe vacuum. I tried to be respectful of her space but I’m a compulsive cleaner and tidier, so it wasn’t always easy.
Coco would often come and go, from her father’s house, from her friends’ houses, then come back. She always came back and it was that truth that made her goings-away OK for me. I always missed her, felt her absence keenly, but I could handle it knowing she would be back in a day or sometimes a few, if it was a vacation.
I realized in my wanderings in her space that evening that this was the big one—that she was not coming back this time.
For holidays, yes, but this time was really, really different.
And that hit me like a heart attack. In the subsequent hours scanned the landscape of my life trying to find something that might anchor me in Vermont.
I realized that for the past eighteen years it’s been her.
For the past 28 years I have been tethered to Vermont as a mom: tied to the school calendar, tethered to my role as mother to my three kids, and for the past ten or so, especially, since Coco grew into her personality, to her, specifically.
She is so funny and smart and wise-alecky. She is the very best company I could ever and have ever had. She is the person I wish I had been when I was younger: savvy, clever, independent, strong, smart, healthy, the best skier in the family.
The list goes on.
So much has changed in our lives together: the places where we’ve lived, the lives of her brothers, the relationships both of her parents have had, and we have weathered it all, together.
The together part is going to evaporate very soon and I am out here on the road wondering, still, what will, if anything, anchor me to the state where I have lived for the past thirty years.
It’s both terrifyingly sad and also, maybe, a little liberating. Where to go? Who to be? What to do?
Before we left to travel west my beloved former father-in-law took a turn for the worse, medically, and had to go to the hospital in Burlington. He has not and may not leave. In the course of treatment he chose to cease his dialysis and is now in the process of dying. My heart is breaking for this, too. All of us who love Lee are loathe to see him and his big, engaging personality and sharp mind leave this world.
At the very same time we are awaiting word of the birth of a new baby into our lives: my partner, Sverre’s, son and his wife are a couple of days now past their due date.
The circles of life … wow.
Before she left Vermont Coco had to bid farewell to her childhood home in Charlotte, the place she came home to as a newborn, the place she knew all her life. Her dad sold the house and is readying himself for his new life, part-time in Florida. Coco had to drive away from her beloved homestead by the lake, for the last time.
And, too, she had to bid farewell to her two very close friends, Tully and Clare, both of whom are going to Spain, for different reasons.
Layers and layers of sorrow and change.
Somewhere along the way on this trip I lost my watch. I’m not much of one to get attached to things, but I will confess that I loved that Swiss Army Watch. I’ve had it for about 20 years, it was the first gift Coco’s dad gave me. I’ve found it curious that it has disappeared, left, perhaps, in a motel room in Nebraska.
I’ve thought a lot on this journey about the difference between taking a long road trip like this and flying across the country. Flying is so weirdly disconnected, the way you get onto a large metal bird and several hours later end up in an entirely different place. On the road you feel every mile and you see things. So many things! This country is so weird and so beautiful and so filled with nice people. And it is so very, very large. There is a lot of decay, a lot of Trump signs, a lot of wealth, a lot of really, really bad coffee. There are homes in Aspen selling for 45 million dollars. For real.
We’ll be with Sam by dinnertime tonight. What a strange tug-of-war moment for me: to want to get there to be with my boy, to share Grandpa Lee stories, at the same time wanting to make time stand still so that Coco remains here with me as long as possible.
What do I title a moment like this in my life?
This trip has been so much fun. Coco and I find humor in the same things, I like her music, she likes a lot of the stuff I listened to at her age. I have loved watching her take interest in the world: she loved the University of Denver and will probably end up as a student there next year; we both thought Omaha was a cool place.
She had never seen the real mountains of this country: the Rockies, and watching her see the beauty of all of that was a mamma’s bliss.
Once we encountered a vanfull of young Amish men and both wanted to ask them a thousand questions. She has my curious heart.
It doesn’t feel possible that I will be able to leave Tahoe and fly back to Vermont into a life void of Helen Cooper Hood Eyre (and Grandpa Lee). I guess we’ll see.
For now, the last leg, across the Nevada desert into her freedom, her new life as a nanny, roommate to her brother, after all these years apart … Godspeed, us. Godspeed Lee, Godspeed new Caldwell baby. All of us, I guess, on our way someplace new, all the time.
with love,
Melissa
An old life changes, and a new life begins for both of you. You will find where you are being lead into the future. Nothing remains the same forever.. To every season, change, change. Bless you both in Coco's independence and new ventures and you with a renewed purpose. May the sadness of change and loss pass quickly. May new ventures lead into your heart.
As usual. wonderful......changes, changes.....