The Cocoon

Not everyone has SuperPowers, you know. If they did, they wouldn't be so super. Trudie, for example, does not have any SuperPowers. She has something far, far more impressive, though. Trudie has magic.

Let it be known that when I say "magic", I'm not talking about the prestidigitation of some sketch, middle-aged dude in a mock turtleneck and a bad independent mustache. I'm talking for-real magic. It's ancient; it's domestic; it revolves around the home and the hearth and the heart. And it runs in her family.

I was, like always, alone in the car, on my way from here to there, but I happened to be passing through Trudie's patch of woods, so she asked me to stop for the night at her family home.

I. Was. Exhausted. Physically, emotionally, spiritually. I was spent down to my bones, and I doubted that I would have the energy to operate the car long enough to get to her place. When I got down to the last 40 miles, I swear it was like Sugar Magnolia took over for me like a faithful old horse, seeing her sleeping rider safely home. Operating on pure instinct and vague memory, I managed to make it there--the Lindstrom family home.

I pull over on the side of the road and sit in the car for a while, nervous about going in. I am suddenly acutely aware of my appearance and am intensely embarrassed by it: my eyes red and my face puffy and streaked, my hair both disheveled and dirty, my clothes unwashed and wrinkled, with my jeans hanging down around my hips. I feel like it's disrespectful to show up at the family home looking like this, like some kind of Dickensian street urchin, like some kind of orphan in the storm.

I get the idea to find a town and take a gas station shower to try to smarten myself up a bit, but then I realize that I am too bone-weary to do anything but drag myself up to the front porch. I stumble out of the car and make my way to the front door, weird and self-conscious and empty-handed to boot--no food or drink or tokens to offer my hosts as a thank you. So I brace myself and knock on the door. No one opens it, but I hear a "Come in!" called from within. So I tentatively open the door and step into the front hall, and suddenly everything changes.

As soon as I step in, I hear a “Hello-hello! Welcome!” from Mr. Lindstrom, Trudie’s father, and the first thing I think is, “The last time I heard that voice, I was in a tiny mining village up the side of a mountain. I was starting to think that I had dreamed that up…” Before I can do more than smile at Mr. Lindstrom, Trudie comes bounding through the door, and we hug tight, and the rest of the family comes out to the landing to say hello—Ms. Lindstrom, of course, but also Sister, and I meet Sister’s Boyfriend, and I’m told that Godfather—who I had also met in the mountain wilderness village—was coming to dinner as well.

And as I’m surrounded with people and welcome and warmth, I get the dizzying feeling that this has happened before, that this is some kind of ritual of which I have become a part, but I don’t have time to retreat into my head to analyze it, since I’m quickly ushered into the kitchen, placed in front of the blazing fire in there, and handed, of all things, a sloe gin fizz. I look at Trudie in amazement, since no one—I mean, no one--ever hands over a sloe gin fizz, what with them being simultaneously unfashionably retro and impossibly girly, which of course makes me love them with a passion. Which I have never once told Trudie. I look at her, ready to register my shock and ask why, out of all the drinks in the world, she would have the makings of a sloe gin fizz on hand, but as soon as I open my mouth to ask, she just smiles and says, “I knew you were coming.”

And the evening that followed was strange and hazy and magical in ways that un-enchanted people like me can’t possibly understand. The whole family was milling about the kitchen as dinner was being made, with Trudie and Mr. Linstrom as the primary cooks, but with Mr. Lindstrom consciously ensuring that everyone in the family had some kind of hand in the making—Ms. Lindstrom baked the bread; Sister started the pasta; Boyfriend chose what the dinner was going to be in the first place. Mr. Lindstrom and Trudie made trays full of meatballs and a huge pot of pasta sauce, and I saw Mr. Lindstrom, as he was turning each individual meatball over, whispering words I could not understand over the food. He asks Trudie to tear fresh basil and sprinkle it over the meatballs, and once she starts, all I can think is that the whole kitchen smells like spring, like a world that is bursting with new life. But all I can say is that basil is one of my favorite smells ever, and Mr. Lindstrom posits that I was perhaps a Genoese sailor in another life, smelling the basil as my ship floated off from my homeland.  And then we’re talking about reincarnation, and Mr. Lindstrom has a twinkle in his eye that somehow says he knows a little too much about it. But I don’t know why I think that.

Before I can crawl back up into my head to figure it out, Godfather arrives, and then there are seven of us, a mystical number, buzzing around the fire. Plus one very funny, very bossy cat. He asks about my current art project, naturally, like of course he’s heard of it, and we chat like we’ve done so a thousand times. And as we noisily gather around the heavy wooden table, pouring glasses of water for each other and hauling dish after dish of food over, there are multiple conversations happening at once and laughter and joy and everyone is smiling when Mr. Lindstrom says that it’s time to pray so that we can eat. And the thing is, there’s still laughter and joy and smiling during the prayer, and for the first time since high school, I bow my head with everyone else. And not because I'm obligated--because I'm not--but because this is the only time I’ve seen an example of what I always thought prayer was supposed to be: simultaneous gratitude and joy. And as we pass the dishes around and serve each other, my head still feels a little cloudy, like I know something is happening, something extraordinary is happening, but I can’t get in my head enough to figure out what. So instead I eat food that tastes unusually delicious and listen to the multiple conversations and feel not like a guest, but like family. Because on this night, it is clear that I am. Like a strange doorway to a parallel dimension has opened, and for this one night, I have a home I can always return to.

After dinner, Trudie and I slip away for a while and hole up in her room. And we sit close together and talk in a whisper like a couple of kids at a slumber party, careful not to wake up the rest of the house. And later on we sneak down to the kitchen to make more sloe gin fizzes only to find that Ms. Lindstrom and Sister are still awake, so the ladies of the house sit around the kitchen hearth again and eat candied walnuts and tiny, pretty ice cream desserts and discuss Ms. Lindstrom’s upcoming speaking engagement, which turns into her waxing philosophical about the Fear of Communicating. She seems to be speaking to me, gently, kindly, as she suggests that we are all so afraid of connecting with each other, but that we shouldn’t be because we’re human and connection is why we’re here.  But I can’t quite wrap my head around why or how I know she’s speaking to me, since the fire smells so good and a very demanding cat has elected me for belly rub duty and I’m getting very, very sleepy…

Trudie sets me up in her own room, a cozy little space with a little twin bed layered in handmade blankets and quilts and walls covered in old wooden crates that are filled to capacity with books. She excuses herself for a moment, and without even thinking, I strip down to my undies and tank and snuggle under the covers. Trudie comes back in to say goodnight and to give me a present that I can open in the morning when I wake up, like Christmas in March. But as soon as she turns to leave the room, I start to feel remarkably, overwhelmingly small and alone and completely unprepared to face the darkness.  And as beat as I am, I know that I will never, never, never be able to sleep. This knowledge makes something close to despair begin to spread throughout my chest. Because at this point, what I need more than anything else in the world is sleep.

But there’s a problem: as intensely tenacious as my insomnia is, there are a few things that other people can do to help me fall asleep. But the thing is, I will never ask, not in a million years. It's too intimate. It's too vulnerable. And that is saying a lot, since I'm pretty much vulnerability on legs. And while I hate asking for help more than anything in the world, asking for help with something that's so personal, so tender, and so necessary...I'd never. Instead, I just kind of hope that every now and then, maybe someone will accidentally do one of the things that help. And sometimes they do, and it's beautiful and sweet and more touching than they could ever fully realize. And otherwise--which I have calculated to be 99.7% of the time--I just tough it out alone. As you do.

But as Trudie turns to leave, I feel impossibly solitary and completely unprepared to lie awake in that bed all night with only my thoughts and my faults and my demons for company. So I get as close as I ever have to asking for help.

So here's me: Ummmmmmmmm, Trudie?

And here's her: Yeah?

And here's me again: This is so stupid, but could you come here and hug me for a little while before you go?

And she just laughs and leaps onto the bed, and we sit there for a while with our arms around each other, and we talk and plan outfits for Swedish paper dolls, and I don't remember it happening, but suddenly I was asleep. At one point, I remember getting restless and starting to fight my way out of the slumber. The world was so soft and warm and dark like a cushiony little cocoon, and it was so lovely that it seemed impossible, like it had to be a trap, so my instincts kicked in, telling me to get up quick, to watch for potential threats, to get out at the first sign of trouble. But before my brain could panic my body out of sleep, I heard this other voice saying, "It's okay...it's okay...you're safe. We'll watch out for you. You can sleep...you can sleep..."

And for the first night in years and years and years, I slept the sleep of the innocent. Deep, tranquil, soothing, with a smattering of light, fluffy dreams. And I woke up the in the morning knowing in my soul that if I had two more days in the cocoon, I’d be restored. I’d be whole. All of the little tears in my fibers would knit back together, and all of the little fears in my thoughts would be soothed away. With two more days in the magical little cocoon.

But I didn’t have two more days. There’s work and a show to do and the road. (There’s always the road.) And I stumble down the stairs like a newborn foal that doesn’t know how to work its legs yet. And the whole Lindstrom family is there, and it feels like they know that something important transpired during the night but that I still need more time. They also seem to know that there isn’t more time, so they make me breakfast, and we drink tea together, and Mr. Lindstrom talks about Pliny the Elder vs. Pliny the Younger. Then one by one, the rest of the family leaves the house until it’s just me and Trudie. And I hear the clock ticking away in my head, and I know I have to leave, but something strange has happened while I was sleeping, and I feel like a soft little baby and just as incapable of travelling alone. And I feel like there’s something I must be able to do to buy myself a little more time, like maybe I can leave part of myself behind for repair—maybe I can bury my head or my heart or my soul somewhere on her land and then come back to pick it up when it’s ready, when it’s healed, when it’s new again and shiny and strong.

But there’s nothing to be done. So Trudie and I take my last hour at the house, and I play guitar badly while she plays the accordion and then the violin beautifully, because it is the only thing left to do. Then as if on cue, we’re packing up the car, and one by one the family comes home and to say goodbye and visit again soon and thanks for coming to see us. And as Mr. Lindstrom is so graciously saying how good it was to have me visit, I try to say, “Thanks, I love visiting your family,” but what actually comes out is, “Thanks. I love you.” And it occurs to me that I should be shocked or embarrassed but I’m not. And I don’t try to correct it. Because it’s true.

And Trudie and I stand next to my car and hug until we’re both nearly frozen to death with the cold. And then I drive away in a daze, feeling half-formed in a way—knowing that something started to shift inside me in that house during the night, but that it didn’t finish. The magic didn’t have as much time as it needed to do its work.

So I drive along the country roads in the cold winter sun, knowing in the moment that I have not been fully restored, that there is something somewhere inside of me that still needs to be healed or helped or reconciled.

But as I drive along, I also know to my core that there's a difference between being raw and being open, a difference between being damaged and being scarred, a difference between being reckless and being brave. And while I have most certainly been the former at times--raw, reckless, and damaged--now, in my day-to-day life, I am the latter. And there's no shame in that. In being so open. In having scars. In trying to be brave. There's fear in that, to be sure, but there is no shame.

So I just breathe and follow the road—sensitive and confused and imperfect and hurting, but wonderfully unashamed.