May 1st: Arya Samuelson
I’ve been awake for ten minutes and already I’ve descended into Phone Land and flipped through a dozen houses on Zillow – breaking two of my most recent intentions before I’m even out of bed.
But the allure is too much to resist this morning – this possibility that, while I’ve been sleeping, my future home has sprung into being, not unlike the chartreuse leaves that have sprouted from barren branches this past week. I live in Western Massachusetts, where spring is psychedelic; I find myself blinking at pansies or cherry blossom trees that I’m positive were not there yesterday. All it takes is one day.
My girlfriend Abby and I have been house-searching for over a year: slinking by other couples in narrow hallways at Open Houses; mentally replacing the backsplash and light fixtures in every kitchen; schooling ourselves on the merits of German boilers and the perils of knob-and-tube wiring. One of my favorite things about us is how we share the same dream for our future home as a gathering space for all the people that we love. A space to hold the kaleidoscopic facets of ourselves. She dreams of a lofted art studio and farmhouse sinks and a crawl space that can be transformed into a hidden library. As a child of divorce and too many moves to count, what I’m dreaming of is harder to articulate, but it has more to do with how the light slants, what happens in my body when I walk through the door.
But we both know that it’s not really the right moment for us to buy a house. Partially because of our deep ambivalence around rooting ourselves in the US (our other fantasies include a life split between Montreal, Madrid, and Mexico City). Partially because we live separately right now – she owns; I rent – and buying is a pretty enormous jump.
But it’s especially because the past few months have been forcing us to navigate our thorniest and most tender places – both in ourselves and (as it inevitably goes) in our relationship. We’ve discovered how differently we move through a day – she lingers, whereas I am affected by an existential restlessness – and how easily we are repelled by each other’s tendencies – hers towards avoidance, mine towards clinging. I have come to realize how much I allow my world to contract around my partner, how much more I need to re-route my needs to my larger community, re-envision my life as bigger than the two of us.
It's the moment to focus on shifting these core patterns, my own ingrained defenses against abandonment. It’s the moment to trust in the unfurling of spring, the harvest that will come in time.
Most immediately, it’s the moment to take out my nightguard and get on with the day.
*
Today is also K’s due date. K is Abby’s god-sister, a kind of relationship that sounded cult-like the first time Abby said it to me, but really means her godparents’ daughter. Abby and I are both only children, so K is the closest she will know to sister.
By 11am, K is already at the hospital up the street for her induction, but there’s no further news. This is the first time I’ve ever tracked a birth so closely. None of my close friends have had children yet. Births have only ever happened to my coworkers or acquaintances, and they happen offstage: I’m eventually sent a photo of a little baby dumpling swaddled in cloth and then I don’t see the birthing parent for months. But this is a baby who will be part of Abby’s life forever, hopefully mine, too. Since K and her partner are both psychoanalysts, and Abby and I are both the daughters of therapists, the baby will really need us to empathize with their plight – or so I joked at the baby shower a few months ago.
I light a candle in honor of K and her daughter to come – coconut santal, blooming tropical through the air.
Flame sashaying in my periphery, I muddle through the tedium of my workday. I’m a grant writer for an international non-profit that works with sustainable coffee businesses around the world. It’s work that matters, but I feel so far removed. Because of the recent cuts to foreign aid, my organization has recently gone through two rounds of layoffs and I was shocked that they kept me on. To be honest, I had been torn about whether to stay and had been readying myself behind-the-scenes for a major shift towards the work that most lights me up: helping people to unearth the stories of their bodies and transform them into art, which looks like blending my teaching, writing, editing, and somatic work. But for now, I’ve decided to just ride it out with my day job and trust that I’ll know when it’s time to take the plunge.
Right now, I’m finishing up a report due later this afternoon – one focused on our work with women in agriculture, the kind of work that feels more and more radical with each passing day. Still, as I triple check statistics and fix formatting errors and loftily describe programs that are in fact floundering due to lack of funding, I wonder if I’m actually making a difference at all.
The coconut santal turns cloying, and I switch it out for lavender and eucalyptus (“Relax Your Mind” reads the tin). I think about how K’s baby is already changing us – how loved she already is even without doing anything to prove herself worthy. I make a mental note to try and remember the same thing is true for myself. For all of us.
*
Sunlight unfolds like satin through my half-open window. I text Abby and she comes to meet for a walk at the Mill River, a wooded path that meanders along the Smith College campus. We link hands, but it feels to me more out of habit than affection.
Abby tells me about how she stayed up until 4am finishing the sequel to Fourth Wing (a Young Adult Fantasy book) and how the ending devastated her. How she only felt better once she hopped onto Reddit and saw how wrecked everyone else was. I’m aware that our conversation has started very far away from the material world that we both live in, and I feel my own distance, my forcedly measured tone as she debates whether or not to start on the third book, having learned (from Reddit) that it will leave her on a similar cliffhanger.
My throat pulses wildly. The tension of the last few months still vibrates between our negative space, at least for me, and I know that I have to say something, even though I wish I didn’t.
We steer towards this beautiful section of the path with hundreds of saffron orange prayer flags, where people are constantly writing notes of gratitude on them. To their loved ones. To dogs who have died. To the river itself. We find some logs to sit on, and I offer to start us off.
I think that we are going through a death, I tell her. But I am beginning to understand that it’s a Tarot-style death. The kind of death with more life inside it.
It is one of those conversations where we really are able to hear each other. Things haven’t been working, we both agree. But there’s an opportunity here – an opportunity to step into something neither of us has ever really known. For me, this looks like a radical letting go. For her, it is more of a radical leaning in. We agree that we’re both here for the wild ride of it all.
Afterwards, all goosy-bumped, we reach out for each other again and everything feels different. Her skin. The wrap of her arms. Something between us urgent and full of blood.
*
We part ways for a few hours while I visit my friend M. She cooks dinner and we cozy ourselves on the porch, her tabby cat Brooklyn careening to watch us through the screen. We don’t have much time, but sometimes short conversations get right to the point. We spend most of it bonding about how we could give AAA a run for their money by starting an Anxious Attachment Anonymous support group.
In passing, M mentions her guitar students, and a breeze dances in my ear. I’ve always wanted to study guitar, but it has always felt too daunting, yet another demand to add to my ever piled-high plate. But what if I studied with my friend? Could this be an example of leaning into my community? I can’t quite believe that I hadn’t thought of it until now, but we only realize certain things once we’re really ready.
For the moment, I let the idea float between us, this new possibility softening behind my collarbone.
*
Around 9pm, I reheat leftovers and remember that I have an artist’s residency application due by midnight. Abby comes over and I feel guilty that the ten minutes I promised I’d need silently bloat into over an hour. But Abby doesn’t mind. She is already deep into the third book of the series, having decided to ride out the adventure, as thrilling and devastating as it might turn out. We curl up on the couch, every now and then stroking each other’s arm or foot to remember that -- despite our separate projects – we’re still right here together.
By the time we’re ready for bed, there is still no word about K’s baby. Tomorrow then. I blow out the candle, but lavender suffuses the air we dream into.
Arya Samuelson is a writer, editor, educator, and somatic practitioner-in-training whose passion is to help people unearth the stories of their bodies and transform them into art. Her work has been awarded literary prizes, including New Ohio Review's Nonfiction Prize, Lascaux Review's Prize in Nonfiction, and CutBank's Montana Prize in Nonfiction. Her writing has also been published in Fourth Genre, Bellevue Literary Review, Columbia Journal, and has been featured as Notable in Best American Essays 2024. Arya teaches widely and works as a developmental editor. When she's not writing, she is probably scouting out adorable dogs in nearby parks. You can find out more at www.aryasamuelson.com.