Till the wheels fall off.

nothingness, but shining

Another winter has come and gone, although I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the skies were to darken this afternoon and open up to a snowstorm overnight. Still, though, spring manages to find a way, despite my uncertainty.

The oak trees in the small patch of woods in my backyard have bright, lime green buds that burst through the otherwise muted earth tones of the swamp. Paired with a bright blue sky, it is truly a poetic sight. Why am I so nervous?

Driving around Shawano Lake the other day with Elliott and Lee, we saw a bright sunset. All pinks, and purples, and oranges. I told them it was a Sabrina sunset - that every time I see a sunset like that, I know it’s Sabrina.

“It’s hard to explain,” I said, staring directly into the setting sun, forcing my eyes open. Absorbing her.

“No, I get it,” Lee said. Elliott asked us what we would want to be remembered as when we died.

I said that I couldn’t think of a specific thing but I think that I would want to be remembered as a pleasant light. I said that when our dad dies I think I will remember him as the feeling of warmth.

Lee talked of hummingbirds and music. Elliott said he doesn’t attribute such things to death and humanity, but I think he would be a big laugh. The kind where all the air goes out of your lungs and the lines scrunch up next to your eyes.

I don’t think it’s too much to talk about, these living death things. We stopped at a cemetery and wandered around, looking at the names and dates on the stones. We came across a stone of a husband and a wife with two giant trees arching over the gravesite and meeting at their tops.

“I’m wondering if it’s them,” Lee said, motioning towards the swaying branches, moved by wind and undoubtedly, love.

Last month, I was shaving my brother’s head in our parent’s bathroom. Post-chemo hair regrowth can be uneven, and he likes to keep it buzzed short. I was using ancient clippers on him as he sat perched on the bathtub, in the bathroom - the same one we grew up in. The same one where Allie sat me down when I was fourteen and showed me how to put on black eyeliner and mascara. The same one where I hid my first tattoo when I was eighteen and examined it in the mirror while slathering it in Aquaphor. The same one my parent’s bathed us in - the only (and holiest) baptisms we’ve ever received - where we’d lean over and look out the tiny window into the neighbor’s yard below.

I held the clippers and gently shaved his hair, watching the new growth fall onto his chest. I was careful around his ears, tender, when I was hit with a flashback memory of when he was a baby and he had translucent tiny baby hairs covering the tops of his ears all the way down his neck. I remember being fascinated by this as a child. Now, here we are. The same bathroom. Dad’s old clippers. No more baby hairs, but chemical regrowth. Regrowth. What a concept.

“Till the wheels fall off,” I’d say. And I mean it. But in a different way than the traditional phrasing implies, because there is more work to be done when the wheels fall off. We can repair the wheels, I always think, or we can go buy new wheels. Or we can ask our neighbors if they have a wheel to spare, or if they mind giving us a ride today.

These are the most difficult days of my life. I’m spinning plates that are spinning plates. I’m not holding it together as well as anyone thinks. I can barely get through the day, most days. But the wheel weaves as the wheel wills. And if I was put here for a reason, then the least I can do is approach it all with some semblance of loving kindness.

And if I was put here for no reason, then the least I can do is approach it all with some semblance of loving kindness.

Here now,

Hannah