Hashtag / Blessed
Maybe fifteen years ago, I was sitting in my car, so beyond hungover that I could hardly keep my eyes open. I was in my old silver Taurus, the one I drove for a decade, from Arizona to Idaho to Oregon to Washington State. It was probably 10 in the morning.
We were waiting to get on the ferry to leave Orcas Island. The day before, we had watched our good friends get married, as I recall, on a bluff overlooking the Pacific ocean. My hair frizzed in the sea-salt air. My then-boyfriend (now ex-husband) sat next to me in the car, and another friend of ours from grad school in the back.
I might have gone into a little shop nearby to get bagels with cream cheese. I seem to remember trying to take sips of water, but I also remember the general sense that my internal organs were most certainly mashing against each other. There was some kind of a to-do, I think, about the timing of getting to the little shop and back in time for when the ferry would start loading.
The sun was so bright.
Despite our hangovers, we were all in a good mood. It had been a beautiful wedding. Maybe it wasn’t fifteen years ago, because as I recall it now, we were out of graduate school, and we were all happy to have reunited for the first time the night before.
When, in my memory, I pull up the file of this wedding, I have a sense that we took an Uber that night, but I don’t think there were any Ubers on the island. I may be confusing another friend's wedding, another wedding near water and Seattle, malleable as memory is.
The line of cars began to move toward the ferry, and I, driving, watching the numbers tick off on the line to enter the ferry.
Shit, we said. It was getting close and the next ferry wasn’t until the afternoon. Maybe one of us had a plane to catch?
We looked behind us. The car behind us had stopped, and we drove onto the ferry.
“Are we seriously the last car?” I kept looking in the rear view mirror.
“We were the last car on the ferry!” we kept repeating. Maybe this was funnier then.
“Hashtag blessed,” we kept saying. This was when we thought Twitter was quaint. Or at least I did. When Twitter was Twitter.
We parked the car and sat on the deck, the heavy salt air resting on my skin. I could taste metal in my mouth, that old hungover feeling. I probably lit a cigarette and met up with the rest of our friends. The boat rocked.
“Hashtag blessed,” we laughed. To use the word blessed sincerely, we laughed. Fools.
I’d like the children to have a daily gratitude, I say to my second husband.
Between the two of us, we brought seven children to the marriage, and added one more. I am thinking it would be a nice idea to have the kids sit around the table and say things they are grateful for.
I think you’re the most Christian non-Christian I’ve ever met, he says to me.
When I move to the South, something happens. I start putting up signs with words on them, signs with bullshit phrases that I used to hate.
Start Each Day with a Grateful Heart, I hang on the wall in the dining room. This phrase is on a round plate with a strand of rope to hold it up and greenery around the words.
Be Kind, I put above the hutch where I had the changing pad.
I have the sign here to remind me to be kind to my children, I would explain, when they’re gator rolling on the changing pad. I had three in diapers then.
I remember those very early days when we first moved into this house. I would prepare a roast in the crockpot, or pork tenderloin in the oven. I made rice in the Instapot. I had dinner ready when my first husband would get got home around 4:30. We would look at each other sheepishly. How was your day? I might have asked, serving dinner to him on a plate.
Who were we, those two strangers looking at each other, in this house in the suburbs, with decor that had kind words.
Sometimes I bought three cans of champagne at Walmart in the middle of the day while also buying strawberries for my babies in the shopping cart with me. It was wonderful to have those cans, half a bottle of champagne, that I could just crush and put in the recycling bin. No bottles clanking.
Who were we, I would wonder, owning this house in the suburbs, when it wasn’t that long ago one of us threw up in a bag while waiting to cross the ocean on a ferry from Orcas Island.
Who was I now, with one baby on my hip and two toddlers clambering at my feet, about to pour the first of many glasses of wine that night.
What a blessing, people would say of my three children.
I had IUD when I got pregnant with this one, I would say, seething.
“We ask that you limit your share to the topic or the events of your day as they relate to your alcoholism,” a woman I like on a meeting says. She pauses, looks up over her glasses and peers out toward the rest of the Zoom squares. “To which I say, what isn’t related?”
And I think I am so, you know, hashtag blessed to live in a world where I could get sober in the rooms of Zoom.
The sign in our dining room today reads: When you have more than you need, build a longer table, not a higher fence.
Seven children sit at the table. The baby is old enough to sit in a high chair.
She has just tasted butternut squash for the first time. Her face twists. She isn’t sure if she likes it. But then, she grabs the spoon with her fingers, pulls it into her mouth.
More, she seems to say. More.
My heart jumps when she smiles. My milk lets down. I feel it in my bones, the love I have for this baby. She has the sweetest smile. I melt when I look at her, something I also never thought I would say.
A daughter, I still struggle to say sometimes. I have a daughter.
What was I so afraid of back then, what did I think was so miserable? Being happy?
God, I think, bringing another spoonful to my daughter’s mouth, I hope she can know when to say enough.
LOVED THS.
Amen!