March 14th: Anne Pinkerton
It starts like most days, with the cat crying at my closed bedroom door, ahead of the alarm — this time, a full hour ahead. It’s the week of Daylight Savings, “springing ahead,” so he should be an hour behind. His timing never makes sense, how he’s always early, yet also inconsistent with just how early. I follow him downstairs and lock him in the bathroom, cursing, then crawl back up and under the covers, throw an arm over one of the dogs.
But I’m awake, having dreamt of my mother again — despite having tried to will myself into dreaming about my brother instead. Yesterday would have been his 64th birthday had he not died nearly 17 years ago, and I thought he might come to me while I was asleep. I miss him beyond reason, and always wish he would appear when I’m unconscious. Instead, it’s my mom, who is still alive and regularly haunts my dreams. In this one, she fell from a great height wearing a long red dress, and I rushed to try to rescue her. I don’t know how it turned out. Because the cat.
Now the pets are dancing around me, making percussion with their toenails on the wooden floor, eager to greet the day — or at least their breakfast. The two corgis in the pantry and two cats on the kitchen table crunch their kibbles while I brew coffee.
I watch a poetic video on Instagram about how today is the Blood Moon, a rare full moon event, good for helping clear pathways, get rid of psychic clutter, help us manifest what we want. This, after a lunar eclipse overnight! I have a newish friend who is mad about the moon, and I’ve been more open to astrology since the pandemic, and my divorce. I’ll take what energy/help I can get.
The lovely man I’ve been seeing — my first significant romance since my ex and I split four years ago — asked my sign on our first date, to which I responded, “Gemini. Sorry — I can’t help it.” He’s a Scorpio, and while we’re not considered ideal mates, we are thought to be compatible, and even powerful. Lately, when we play music together, I start to feel this potential.
He is here, even though he isn’t here, because while I make my coffee, I see the chocolate on the counter, which is now there all the time for him, to mix up mochas after he stays over. And look what he’s done to me: Never before a sweet tooth, I now add a half teaspoon of the cocoa powder to my own cup, along with a full teaspoon of honey, as if to taste him.
With one of the dogs on my lap on the couch, phone in hand, I sip and do The New York Times’ puzzles, Wordle and Connections, and text my results to my best friend — our morning ritual, our daily hello, trying to avoid scrolling the headlines. She and I keep talking about how it’s harder than ever to stay at all informed while staying at all sane. Self-preservation is currently winning. We are playing a lot of games.
I text my sweetheart good morning with a photo of the moon last night that a friend took, and tell him about its significance. I mean to do some yoga (as usual), but wait too long (as usual), and find myself rushing (as usual) to pack breakfast, dress, and get out the door. I am late to work, but I am literally late every single day now, and no one notices. It’s a luxury I suppose I’ve earned after so many years on the job, at a college doing marketing. Breakfast is blackberries, yogurt, and granola that I eat at my desk nearly every day because I am always running too late to get my shit together to eat ahead of time.
I have a planning meeting for email campaigns and then catch up with my assistant director, who is one of my favorite people, not just at work, so we talk in her office until our stomachs growl, then go to lunch together in the dining commons, helping ourselves to mounds of salad bar stuff and sweet potato fries and brownies alongside the students. Normally, we brown bag it and eat alone in our offices, but we still have a few staff passes left for the semester, and free lunch we didn’t have to pack, along with the camaraderie, is a treat.
My phone pings in my back pocket. Response to my morning message about the moon: That’s beautiful, Anne, he writes. And thoughtful. (purple heart emoji) I smile to myself.
Back in my sunny office at my standing desk, I host a Zoom meeting to plan for another Zoom meeting next week, where we will be planning a new campus tour. Meetings about meetings are my least favorite and smack of corporate inefficiency, but this one is an exception; it’s actually helpful. Then I meet to talk about planning print jobs and mailings with another colleague. We decide to order enough of a certain brochure to last two years, and it feels like faith in the future. Meeting and planning, meeting and planning. Usually, I’d rather be executing, but today feels productive despite it all.
I write all of the projects and all of their outstanding components on my whiteboard, drawing checkboxes next to each of more than a dozen tasks. Visuals help. I’m good at my job — the juggling and managing and nagging, as well as the creating and delivering — and I actually recognize it for the first time in a while.
Oddly, it’s so satisfying, it makes me want to work past quitting time. I’m in the zone, but I need groceries and am always worrying about the dogs needing to be let out. On the drive home from Trader Joe’s, there is a surprising and significant traffic jam — likely from a bad car accident since my GPS indicates it would be quicker to retrace my path and go a very long way around. It occurs to me to be frustrated, but the car windows are open, as it’s the warmest day of the year so far, and the new Sharon Van Etten record is streaming through my speakers and I’m singing along. I also remind myself it could be me in the accident. And if the dogs pee in the house, oh well. I turn around.
I’m thinking about my guy right as I’m carrying bags into the house, and he calls. I love it when we have that kind of synergy. We chat as I put things in the fridge and cupboard, make plans for tomorrow: his band will be playing. I’ll meet him ahead of the show, he’ll stay over, we’ll make mochas.
The new extended sunlight and soft air get the dogs and me out for a long walk around the neighborhood. There is a street around the corner from our house that has a wide esplanade full of trees, and as we loop the sidewalk up one side and down the other, I can sense them on the verge of bursting into leaf. As a native Texan living in New England, each Spring feels like a miracle — the earth seems so deeply and completely dead, yet it bursts back to life every time, just as we’d nearly given up hope.
From far away, I squint and it looks like a man is walking a black rabbit, or even a black guinea pig. As we get closer, we meet him and his very tiny black chihuahua. My dogs are overexcited, as always, but gentle, as always, as they sniff and sniff and sniff. Farther along, an older couple is taking advantage of the newly gentle weather to have an early dinner on their front porch. We wave and smile. I think about how much friendlier people are on a nice day.
Back home, the dogs sit for a treat in the kitchen, then I pour a glass of wine to drink on my own porch. With it, I smoke one of the two cigarettes I allow myself most days lately. The vet calls about one of the cat's bloodwork. He has a new heart murmur, but it’s not too concerning yet.
I think about practicing guitar and working on a new song that I am struggling to wrap up, but instead microwave frozen Indian food and plop in front of the TV, where I get engrossed in a new-to-me show, “Life & Beth,” which has a griefy undertone that speaks to me, and I’m embarrassed to admit I watch four episodes in a row.
Last cigarette and another glass of wine on the porch. The dogs bound outside for their last call. Above us, the still-full moon glows behind a wispy veil of clouds.
In bed, I read a couple of chapters of Neko Case’s new memoir, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, before I lean over and turn out the bedside lamp. I hope I dream of my brother. Or my new love. Or at least the moon.