Six Months. One Year. An Eternity

Six months ago, tonight, was the last time any of your friends ever saw you. Resolute, you went home and left us all forever. I'll never understand your decision.

One year ago, on Halloween, we attended the same party. I was unaware of your spectral figure looming over me, until a friend whispered in my ear, "Steve is right behind you, staring."

I spent the rest of the night glancing over my shoulder, avoiding you at all costs.

~~~~~~

I'll never see you again.

In this past 6 months, I've swum through an ocean of "ifs," piercing the surface like dorsal fins.

I have lived through a season of the conditional tense: would'a/could'a/should'a.

The heartbreak is unending. But you taught me more, in this one act, than I could have possibly learned in years of making my own mistakes--about forgiveness. About love. About life.

Like the supernovas whose glowing deaths have revealed untold secrets about the heavens, about distances between stars and the age, size, and weight of the universe...

In your wake, it is a different word, a world where love is the objective, where acceptance is requisite, and where memory is precious. I know we are never over.

I just wish we lasted a little bit longer, and hoped a little harder.

love, ~F

Auspicious Times

Autumn is delicious, is happening, is turning every day ever shorter and I dare say ever sweeter.

This time is a good one. There are friends and family galore, no dearth of love in life of late.

My father's mother, my Grandmother Maria, passed last week. She was 98 years old.

Her funeral was a sign post, a moment of reckoning where I was forced to realize, as I watched the priest dab at his eyes, as I heard the anecdotes about her, that I did not know my grandmother. I knew her, but I did not know her.

I wish I could have seen her in love, young, heartbreakingly beautiful. Before my grandfather flew into the side of a volcanic mountain, killing all crew and passengers aboard, leaving her a widow in her prime. Before she became so worried and fearful. Before she became a free woman, free to live in relative solitude, unmolested.

I heard stories of a woman who was a singer, who sang in the church choir and at friends' weddings. I found out that she was a stray collector, like myself, who fed a dozen cats at a time. Who fed the squirrels, and the "cha-cha-lakas" (gossamer, grackle-like birds) she pretended not to like. Who could make anything grow and flourish, bear fruit.

I found the Calderoni clan to be softer, more loving, more interesting and enjoyable than I had. Perhaps, in the wake of Steve's death, and this very odd year, I am learning how to forgive, deeply, and with purpose.

In the midst of death there is life. Everyone is having babies, bearing fruit, moving personal mountains of reservation aside and devoting their attentions to the next generation of young, blithe souls who will rule the world and eventually acquiesce it to their children.

It's a fine and admirable cycle, this constant sloughing and regenerating thing that our little blue-green planet so aptly performs. Like an ablution, the earth forgives itself and is cleansed of past misgivings constantly. What's not to love about this thing?

And me? Little old me? I'm trying to maintain this foothold I've found. I'm designing spaces and going out dancing. Drinking wine and remembering why I am here. I'm doing well and trying to do good as well. Living fearlessly, loving recklessly, and paying attention to all the trivial matters that make life a little less ordinary.

Despite my quietude, I am here. Mostly listening. Looking for auspicious signs.

Summertime Rolls

Smoothly, we've transitioned out of summer's brutality, into gentler dog days, highs in the mid-nineties. A relenting.

I'm not easily daunted by mere weather. You may remember my dispatches from Dubai, Oman, and Abu Dhabi. I've trekked through the blistering Sahara, and have generally worn a smile, and a brow beaded with sweat.

But this summer was something different. Something sinister and cruel, hastening the end of century-old trees and once-proud lawns. There is an agreement amongst most of the Texans of my generation: this was the worst one yet: islands rising in the center of the lake, uncovering terrible secrets (so I hear, I know better than to watch the 5-o'clock news). It's enough to make a landscape architect reconsider the entire vocation.

I'd do better to while away my days raking patterns into sandy zen gardens, wearing a loose, white robe.


But then, that is the effect of the weather, a constant reminder that we are not in the driver's seat of this life, but rather all passengers on a strange and unpredictable rollercoaster of sorts.

There is so much happening, always so much action, hedged in between sleepy mornings and evenings of dancing and dreaming.

We all get older, and incubate new life inside us, and cultivate wondrous things. And go through the daily motions.

Birthdays of the living and the dead rise up and fall away, and the rest of us just keep moving to our own little beat.

My heart beats with each of you, a little "lub-dub" symphony. You all cross my mind, and I smile a little brighter.

There is so much ahead, and so much behind. And perhaps, one day I will stop being vague and just out with it, a laundry list of day-to-day doings.

In the meantime, there is love and life. I feel you out there through all of it.

Slivers.

There is a part of each of us, I believe, that still longs to tremble under the unfathomable newness of something.

No matter how jaded, how embittered, how battered and beleaguered, this feeling is sleeping beneath our skins, coiled tight like a snake in the chill of night, waiting to be released by a warm breath, or a sigh.

To ignore that feeling is to allow oneself to partake in death, one small denial at a time.

There are dips and swells, furrows and chasms--all concealing and revealing everything at once.

This is a blessing, because we would all crumble beneath the weight of so much Truth delivered at once. It would annihilate any one of us instantly.

We digest as we are able, one bite at a time, of this wild feast of a life. There will never be enough time for all of it, and if we go too fast or swallow too much- there is danger of choking, or worse yet--forgetting to savor each little moment.

My fingers tremble in time to the leaves clinging to the dessicated trees outside the window. The lake is blue, receded, punctuated by century-old stumps, reminding us that they once owned this place.

We all tremble beneath the strokings of the wind, all waiting for rain, thunder, night. Anything to break the spell, and uncoil our secret selves anew.

Focus on the Family

Monday, I returned home after 5 blissful days in the clutches of family for a family reunion in North Carolina.

I forget sometimes how marvelous my family is. And how lucky we are to all get along so well and genuinely enjoy one anothers company.

My female cousins are all in college now, which means that our interactions have escalated to the next level of camaraderie. They have grown into such lovely young women, each so distinct and decidedly themselves. My youngest cousin, Adam, is a towering 6-foot tall 16 year old (unheard of in my family--we are munchkins!) who is so talented an artist it is almost scary.

I can't remember the last time I had so much fun. I watched Adam and Katherine go from squeamish to heroic in their efforts to catch and hook worms for our many fishing trips on the pond. We caught and released bass and perch against a backdrop of singing (bun unseen) frogs, whiled away our days playing boggle, scrabble, and watching the hummingbirds and hawks do their dance against the sky.


I am a fancy fisherfolk.

We caught baby frogs and went running in the woods, we laughed until our sides ached and got to know each other all over.

Impromptu dance parties in the kitchen from which absurd amounts of gorgeous food constantly flowed into our bellies, late nights of cocktails and poker games, and excellent, top-notch conversations... We even hang glided at Kitty Hawk, off towering 100 foot dunes!

I came home feeling restored, despite the 104 degree day I landed in.

It's no secret, how low my spirits have been these past couple of months. But today, working in the triple digit heat, it hit me--I'm back.
I'm doing what I want to be doing: designing, consulting, and building beautiful landscapes. Reading books in bed. Entertaining friends. Smiling. Laughing. Loving.

It's not a bad gig, this life. Not bad at all.

I'm feeling grateful again, for all I've been given. I hope it sticks around awhile.

The year of treading water

This year has really been a trial. A series of trials.

Here I am, 30 years old, and it just seems like an avalanche of life experiences and forced growth have beset me on all sides.

This is not exactly a complaint, but rather an acknowledgment. What does not kill you may or may not make you stronger. It will, more likely than not, make you wiser, and more capable of coping with the future incidents that fail to kill you.

I like bullet points, which leads me to the short list of maladies and inflictions suffered this year:

• serious ankle injury
• lack of decent job market
• constant feelings of overwhelmedness
• Steve's death
• Student Loans returning to haunt me

Okay, kvetching over.

There has just been so much, in all the spaces between those things, too much to encapsulate into a little, tiny space like this. Too much to inflict upon my few, sweet readers.

Never have I worked so hard and felt so ineffective. I hope this will pass. It simply must, right?

Someday I will post some sunshine here, and some smiles and some mirth.

But for now, just know I am still here, kicking against all those things that are failing to kill me.

It's a strange and semi-sweet journey, this life.

I'm glad we're all in it together.

Goodye, Steve

Steve Grosskopf ~~August 29, 1977----May 6, 2009

~~~

For 2 and a half tumultuous years, I shared my bed, my heart, my secrets, and my self with this man.
We lived together roughly half that time, and sometimes it was wonderful.

Steve was a gifted artist. He was tall, dark, and handsome, and had a wicked sense of humor.
He was also coy, contrary, and prone to long, dark depressions.

My initial attraction to him was visceral, magnetic, and impossible.
When I saw him, my hands would shake, and I would be tongue tied and nervous.
He was way too good-looking to possibly be interested in me, I thought.
But I was wrong.

We were caught up, smitten, and things were sweet for a time.
And then the cycle began. We loved each other and we hurt each other.
I never really took his depression all that seriously, believing he was just being petulant and dramatic.
"Morosekopf" was his nickname, playfully bandied about.

After he followed me to Indiana, things really fell apart.
The relationship became increasingly abusive.
I threw him out.

The last time I spoke to him, I was standing upstairs in what had once been our bedroom, on the phone.
Screaming at him.

That was about 4 and a half years ago.

So much anger, hurt, hate, and shame has followed in the wake of all that.
Moving back to Austin, I was terrified that I would run into him.
I refused to slander him publicly, but my dislike was powerful and no secret.

At 4am, driving to Indiana to clear out the house, I thought about him kindly, for the first time in years.
I imagined calling him, telling him I forgave him, that it was both our faults.
I remembered the good times, and laughing together.
I was surprised by all of these things.

Sometime, in the darkness of that morning he took his own life.

I think my imagined conversation was real.

I have lit candles, and spoken to the walls, I have laughed and wept and remembered.

I wish him a safe journey, and love, and peace.

Steve, I never hated you. It was love, peering at it's reflection in an angry mirror.

I am not angry anymore. And you are free.