The 2020s have been roaring. Maybe not in the way any of us imagined; more in that “may you live in interesting times” way. Everyone I know seems to be exhausted or on the verge of it. Sometimes it’s lots of good stuff happening and it’s difficult to keep on top of, but for others the last couple of years have been a parade of suck. I’m in the mixed bag but still exhausted camp.
Professionally things have been going well. I won’t be buying a million dollar plus house in California anytime soon, but I’m enjoying a time of creative wins personally. I have sympathy and empathy for what’s going down with my friends and family which has been a mixed bag too. It’s difficult to share without telling too much of other people’s stories but we’ve all had a lot going on.
I think I shared previously that my son has long COVID. His isn’t the worst of it, but it has been difficult. He and his partner made the choice to move to California and in with us so we could better support each other. Moving in together was the retirement, possible long term care, etc. plan, so we really just moved up the timeline. Which meant keifel and I needed to move out of our two bedroom (but one is really an office keifel and I share) apartment into a house that could accommodate four, or five, people and more than one cat.
While the search was on, our upstairs neighbors flooded their kitchen and the ceiling of our kitchen had to be replaced. None of our stuff was damaged but we were stuck in a hotel for three weeks with no access to our apartment to get ready to move. We got back in four days before the movers showed up. My son and his partner and their cats got on a plane a month later to join us in the new house. That week we learned that keifel’s older daughter had died in Trinidad after a long illness. We had been bracing for it but you can never really prepare yourself for something like that.
There is a surreal feeling that settles over you in grief, especially grief at a remove, when there is more going on around it that is definitely not my story to share. Despite the reason for the accelerated house merger, there was so much joy in my son and his partner being here and not 3000 miles away. Am I allowed to feel joy and such sorrow at the same time? How can we not? My sister pointed out that I never do one thing at a time. My son was born the day after my grandmother died and we came home from the hospital the day of her funeral. Joy and sorrow poured into the same glass.
Joy is easier to sit with but is more fleeting. Sorrow lingers and catches us by surprise when we think it has gone. It also stirs the bowl of past sorrows and we grieve those old losses again along with the new one. We often stand alone in that grief, especially those of us who are wired for melancholy and always feel like we shouldn’t trouble anyone else with our darker thoughts and feelings. I’m grateful to have friends and family that know me well enough to check in when I go into hermit mode. I hope you have those folks in your life too.
The surreal or, maybe more truthfully, superreal feeling continues as things settle back into a daily pattern again. That’s where I am. Grief still lingers of course and catches me unawares. But cats still need breakfast, toilets need scrubbed, and work—the loved, creative work I get to do—continues.
The now it feels really weird marketing part at the end.
A Very Cryptid Christmas is on sale for Christmas in July wherever you buy ebooks, if you’d like a little winter (and cooler weather) fun in your sweltering summer. Christmas in July always seemed like such an odd proposal, but I do love Yuletide so I’m happy to celebrate its echo.