It's going to be ok
A lesson from the writing life
Late last night, out with the dog at bedtime, the normally busy (and noisy!) road we live on went completely silent. The bad weather kept everyone home. Instead of traffic, I heard sleet ticking the trees.
From this same spot a few months ago, I’d seen the aurora borealis—or at least a hazy purple-green glow people on our town Facebook page claimed was the aurora. This was better than that. It wasn’t a hard-driving sleet, the kind that threatens to bring down power lines. It was gentle and steady. And quiet. The kind of sound that reminds you the Earth is, in fact, alive.
Inside the house, my wife had fallen asleep watching a movie. My son, who I could see through his bedroom window, dealt himself a hand of solitaire on his bed and carefully turned over card after card. This was a new habit of his since we instituted a “no screens” after 8 p.m. rule. I watched him a moment, in the yellow light of his room, a teenager, taller than me, but still very much the little boy I’d spent so many nights reading to. “They grow up so fast,” fellow parents have been saying to me for 15 years now. What else is there to say?
Meanwhile, halfway across the country in Indiana, my dad spent the night in the ER with dangerously low sodium levels. My mom had been texting me updates and sounded weary. He’s been in and out of the hospital all year since a rectal cancer diagnosis in April (followed by chemo and a surgery over the summer.) Just last week he’d been doing well enough to go ice fishing on his pond. He texted me a photo of sandhill cranes flying overhead. For all the ways he and I misunderstand each other—for all of our differences—he knew I liked sandhill cranes. It was only, I think, the second time he’s ever texted me anything. The first time, nine years ago, was to send along a photo his buddy took of a bobcat.
On our last Sunday night phone call, I joked that he had an unfair advantage ice fishing now: since he’d had his rectum removed, it was technically impossible for him to freeze his ass off.
But that was last week.
Who knows what next week will bring?
More snow and freezing rain, perhaps—it’s in the forecast. Another movie to fall asleep to. Another hand of solitaire. I’ll keep taking the dog out and watching the woods. When you hold still inside a single moment, it’s impossible not to feel the slow turning of the stars. It’s going to be ok. That’s what all the quiet means. The cold, too. We’ve reached that point in the winter when I don’t even bother with a coat anymore. I just tromp out in shirtsleeves and shiver. Those jagged little bits of ice on my face and hands and the skin of my arms are all telling me: It’s going to be ok.
I thank the writing life for teaching me this lesson. I believe our imaginations are always, always reaching out—to each other and to the world—in search of meaning and meaningful connection. To discover it. And when there is nothing left to discover: to create it. And finally, mercifully, as we surrender to what we can’t control, to become it. The same urgency that propels us across the page as we sit alone in a room and write propels us through our days.
Love and hate, heartache and loss, courage, wonder, fear: these feelings are only an echo of the heart’s deep longing to know itself. The sleet in the woods, its gentle ticking, is ultimately a kind of knowing.
Listen. I’ll say it again.
It’s going to be ok.
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Sometimes you want to hear “it’s going to be okay” even if you aren’t sure it is, or maybe especially then. And you’re right in any case, because somehow or another it’s going to be okay even if it isn’t. Just knowing we’re all here together gazing up at these same stars, feeling scared and uncertain - and not knowing how, or if, we can keep our children safe, or ourselves, or each other. Time is still ticking away regardless. I hope your dad is okay. I hope your mom is okay. I hope your heart is okay, Steve. Thank you for this 🤍
Hi Steve
I try to spend an hour or two each morning reading here on Substack - because I have found a community of good people, with interesting things to say, and sometimes beautiful poetry too, and I find the experience of reading their work enriching. It also helps stimulate my own creativity, and my poetry and other writing has benefited as a result.
Your own post today falls into a different category - because you are simply sharing, in a very thoughtful way, a reflection on what it means to live, and love, and to be connected to those closest to you, and to the natural world. It is a reflection, too, on mortality.
It is beautifully written, but it is also sincere - so my reply is to acknowledge and compliment the former (it really is a lovely piece of writing), and to send my best wishes, as one fallible human to another, because although you are correct that "it will be okay" - and the Buddha would agree too - I also know that day to day, minute to minute, the complex emulsion of joy and grief that we call life can sometimes be hard to bear.
Best wishes to you from (much warmer) Australia
Dave