Roots and Branches

It’s been a little more than a month into this new part of life – a segment that certainly feels like “the worst time of my life” to date. But perhaps in hindsight it’ll register more as a turning point, a stepping stone, or merely “a very strange time.” It’s uncertain, confusing, and painful. But also, deep.

I started this blog in 2012 when I was 28 and I had just gotten married, left Washington DC and moved to Yemen for my husband’s job. After Yemen it was New York City, Madrid, Jerusalem, Morocco, Algeria, and then Princeton and suddenly the year is 2023, I am 39 and back in Washington DC. Along the way there were countless adventures, epic vacations, learning about and appreciating different cultures, an MFA in creating writing, and, most crucially, hundreds of good friends made. A month ago, my husband moved out. Left the cat and then returned for the cat.

So how have I spent the hardest month of my life? Positively swathed in the love and support of my friends. My longtime best friends have showed up for me in such a way that I cannot even talk about it without being overcome and losing my voice. Their love and support has been my salvation during this time and our friendship has deepened. And I’ve talked to or met up with so many other friends who want to know how I’m doing, who are rooting for me. When I think of my next steps, I know I want to remain in DC for a while. It contains so many people I love.

Turns out heartbreak and loss inspire in me boundless physical energy. While I originally lamented the lack of community feel at my neighborhood Orangetheory, I have to admit that it’s hitting the spot: The darkened room, the blasting beats, and dozens of hyperproductive DCers who couldn’t give two fucks about why that one blonde girl sometimes tears up on the treadmill. My daily step count is off the chain. I’ve gone on some bike rides, paddled around the Potomac in a kayak, hiked in Rock Creek Park and Great Falls, and I have an out-of-state yoga retreat planned with one of my besties. A body in motion calms a busy brain, and also I’m chasing the dopamine kick I get from working out. My appetite was at first gone and now just greatly diminished which means I’m finally approaching the arbitrary weight I’d set as my goal for the past eight or nine years but realistically had no chance of being, save for a wasting disease or major crisis. A real “never looked better/never felt worse” situation. I have no interest in grocery shopping or cooking, and that’s a strange feeling for someone whose identity revolves around preparing food and hosting dinner parties.

I’m packing my social schedule to keep busy, and I’m often driving all around this city. Driving in DC is to be constantly alert, as each intersection is five signs to read; sometimes it is, mercifully, a four-way stop, where all objects in motion stop being in motion for a moment of order and reflection on turn-taking; but then sometimes it’s “cross traffic does not stop” and the cross-traffic is coming at a diagonal, and cars are parallel parked at the edges, making it truly hard to see what’s coming. Often, a white curving right turn only arrow appears suddenly under my car too late for me to switch lanes. There have been times this past month where my mind wanders while driving and I am jolted with the thought “I’m not being alert enough!” and feel as though I could die at any millisecond. But then there are other times where my Detroit roots poke through and I feel that driving my car around a city is freedom. It’s a realization I’ve always had once I feel I’ve mastered driving in a new foreign city. Oh, if I’m speaking of driving, I have to mention that I was driving home one night when my car was pretty much engulfed dozens of ATVs and dirtbikes, one dude was popping a wheelie on his motorbike he was standing up tall on his seat. They all just flew through the streets, running lights. It was insane! (Apparently it’s been a longtime problem in DC but cops have a “no chase” policy, so they can’t do a lot to stop them).

Washington DC as a city is better than I even remember it being. It’s so much larger than it once was. Back in my day, everyone I interacted with lived in the same 20 block radius and now, all four quadrants of DC and almost all of its many neighborhoods offer something exciting – a great concert venue, cool restaurants, beer gardens, book stores, interesting architecture.

I also got back into my novel, the one I finished and then pretty much put away for a few years. I feel a new enthusiasm to revisit the story, and it was super validating to read through a middle section and almost forget I’d written the thing, turning pages quickly to see what happened and thinking “this is good writing!” I entered the first chapter into a contest recently. And I’ve reconnected with some of my NYU Paris Writers Program classmates who are living in the DC area and we’ll soon have a writing group meetup.

Also, the design business is picking up and I’ve had a good number of new clients, including a couple whom I had an appointment with and I wanted nothing more than to cancel it after learning of some shocking and painful news a few hours before. But alas, I put myself together, I drove the 30 minutes to their house, and I honestly forgot all my troubles for 90 minutes walking around the house of those lovely clients and brainstorming design ideas. And I have a new potential design client who’s a high-ranking embassy official and not only is the project positively thrilling but it could be a major door-opener for me for future work, so I see a route toward real growth with my design business.

I heard something at the end of this yoga video recently that really resonated. “Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives the roots of the tree; happiness gives the branches.” This sad time for me has also been one where I’ve probed the depths of my self and continue to do so daily, hourly. It’s not an entirely unpleasant thing to do – think deep and painful thoughts on repeat – especially for a creative person. In those moments where I embrace the profundity, I’m aware that I’m laying the deep roots to prepare for the branches to one day positively explode with leaves.

This past Saturday, I went to the Phillips Collection, a wonderful private museum in DC, which houses Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party,” which is the banner for this here blog. A docent marched into a room and said “I’ll be doing an art talk on this painting” and stood by Pierre Bonnard’s “Woods in Summer”, which seemed to me the least exciting painting she could have picked. The painting looks to be a bunch of fully leaved trees, in the summertime, with no obvious focal point. I engaged with her talk, but it wasn’t the art that moved me the most during that visit.

On Saturday evening, faced with no social plans, I decided I was in just the right mental space to return to one of my favorite novels “The Days of Abandonment” by Elena Ferrente (on the nose, I know) and simultaneously open up my own novel and rework a scene that was originally inspired by one in “The Days of Abandonment.” I poured myself a slightly dirty gin martini, had a few delicious sips (martinis only started tasting good again recently) opened Ferrente’s novel and suddenly, I was transported to our beautiful basement living room/boho bar/guest bedroom space in Algeria. How many times I had shaken myself up an ice-cold martini there, read a book or a New Yorker article and felt inspired and proud of the space I created? The gorgeous colorful wallpaper, the bar I’d imagined out of a discarded piece of government furniture, the sofa I’d had custom made from a vision I’d had in my head? There in my “Light in the Attic” artist loft in DC, I was overcome with emotion and cried loudly as dusk approached. Was it because I was recalling something that didn’t exist anymore, something I might not have ever again?

I considered the scene in front of me, the Algerian diamond pattered hot pink pillow on the little couch, the green vintage chair, a bookshelf filled with interesting things (like the creepy porcelain planter I named Fritz, who I brought home to Princeton from New York City), a wall of gorgeous art that stirs me and thought “maybe it does still exist.” I looked up to one of the skylights in this attic apartment and couldn’t believe: The reaching branches of a pine. I’m up on the third floor – how tall must this tree be and how had I not noticed the substantial treetop before? Clouds streamed by these luscious, billowing branches. And then I looked in front of me, through the main window and my view is all branches. Firm straight trunks of tree, and wild, perfect, branches exploding with leaves. It’s so thickly treed, it is basically a vertical wall of vegetation, just across the street. The branches have been here the whole time. I don’t need to wait for them to appear. I don’t need to wallow in a painful time, laying the roots, waiting for the branches. The branches are here. The branches were always here.

Emily