Process

I passed fifty almost two years ago and I won’t say it has been an easy transition. Unlike most other birthdays, fifty has felt like a process. In the lead up and initial days, it felt like grief—the official loss of the person I had always known, or believed myself to be. Someone young, strong, healthy, ambitious, attractive. Looking at the calendar, and myself in the mirror, I felt her slipping away.

I turned fifty the same year I got the position I had been aiming for in my work: Assistant Head of School. Not the top spot, where all of the pressure and responsibility lies, not the face of it all, but right behind her. Capable of doing the work, happy to do it just out of view, no longer feeling the need to be seen, credited, rewarded—just there to make a difference in ways that would make the school strong and improve the experience of students and staff, myself included. A fixer, a problem solver, a systems person.

That same year, Quinn entered fifth grade. It was rocky. But she got through it.

Sometime toward the end of that school year, 2021-2022, feeling irrevocably changed, I started to wonder what it would look like to stop dieing my hair. I had been covering up the emerging grays for more than twenty years. Brown hair, which I had looked at all my life, started to look strange. I found an app that allowed me to take a picture of myself and then change my hair color. I sent a silver-haired version of myself to my sister and asked her what she thought. “I love it!” she told me. “Of course you do,” I replied, “I look like your dead mother.” It was always going to be. When she died, at forty-six, hers was a beautiful silver—past the early, sludgy salt & pepper phase, and onto something shinier, more elegant. She was well into the process then at forty-six, and now I was four years past that time.

When I was younger, I imagined my transition: I imagined taking a long trip to Nepal, trekking in the Himalayas. I would shave my head for convenience and to avoid picking up lice when I slept in backpackers’ hostels. When I returned, forever changed by the landscape and the experience, I would let my hair grow out in its natural color. There would be no roots, no glacially slow process of transforming itself while others spectated. It would be the Himalayas or cancer—one or the other. That’s what I imagined. So like me: two extremes. I would transform either from an experience that was incredibly good, or one that was incredibly bad. And that’s how I’d enter the new phase, the years of my life marked by gray hair. 

I haven’t been to Nepal and I haven’t had cancer. Instead, the summer after I turned fifty, I just stopped adding color to my hair on my monthly visits. At first my hairdresser lightened it a bit, and we cut it shorter, and I told myself I could endure the process, that I didn’t look so bad. But some days I looked in the mirror and felt like I was looking at Alec Baldwin. I don’t know why him, but he was there. The process hasn’t been easy.

At the start of school last fall, students and families showed up and didn’t recognize me at first. I spent a lot of time having to talk about my hair—it was a subject I didn’t really want to discuss with acquaintances and yet couldn’t seem to let go of at home. At school, I just kept responding to people’s comments by saying, “Well, it’s a process!” At home, I just kept looking for reassurance. Was I unrecognizable to Quinn? To Sam? Was I an embarrassment? Did it make me look so old as to be in a different category now, separate from them both?

The more I looked at the evolution of my hair, the more I noticed the other changes. The weight gained, the dry skin, the wrinkles. I wasn’t sleeping. Hot flashes had been going on for seven years. I was drinking “with dinner” each night. I hadn’t exercised in years. My hips hurt—all the time. I was increasingly unhappy.

I was in a yoga class one morning and I was probably the youngest woman in the room by ten years or more. At one point, the instructor was talking about being kind to yourself and she asked “What would you say to your 40 or 50 year old self today.” A lot of women laughed. They  all agreed they would say things like, “hey, you look and feel pretty good—enjoy it!” It didn’t change how I felt about myself, but it registered.

Passing fifty is uncharted territory for me. My mother died before she got here, so I have had no clues about what to expect—what’s around the corner. Interestingly, I feel almost entirely disconnected from her, for the first time in my life. Until a few years ago, I felt a physical ache when I thought of her. I missed her every day. And I held her up in my mind as a flawless and magical person. In the past couple of years, I feel like I can’t quite grasp who she was. My memories of her feel more pixelated and she, as a person, is less tangible than ever before. Admitting this makes me feel guilty. And sad. And again, I feel like I’m walking down a path on my own.

Quinn is in a new phase too. Puberty, adolescence; she is now thirteen. And as I try to find my way through her moments, I find myself not thinking so much about what I can learn from my mother, but thinking more about what I can learn from the person I was at Quinn’s age. I was not easy. And I did not make it easy for anyone else. And Quinn is a force, like I was, but she is also not like I was. The day I got my first period, I hid in my room, trying to convince my mother, and myself, that I had just injured myself riding my bike. I refused to wear a bra for a long time. I really couldn’t accept or talk about any of it. Quinn, on the other hand, was the one to process the facts as facts. Just as she did when she was little, when she told me that it was time for her to stop wearing diapers—a fact I found difficult to accept—she asked me to buy her a bra. And on the spring day when I picked her up from the bus and she told me, casually, that she’d gotten her first period, I freaked out while she casually coached me on what to do. She had soccer practice to get to, and then her first ever school dance, and she needed me to take her to the store so she could get supplies—supplies that I should have had ready for months. And when we got to the store and I asked her what she thought she needed (pads in what size or shape?) so I could go in and get things for her, she looked at me confused: “Can’t I just go in and pick out what I need?” I honestly don’t think I bought my own supplies until I was in college; how was my fifth grader able to?

My fifth grader is now a seventh grader. She has a broad group of friends, and many talents and interests. She is incredible in every way and I love her more than life itself. And she also still struggles to manage her emotions when something sets her off. I’m smiling as I type this. Just this last week I lashed out at my boss, a few colleagues, my husband and new neighbors I haven’t even met (who are considering building not one but two houses on the other side of our stone wall, directly in our line of sight, here in this small wooded sanctuary that is the only thing that keeps me sane). The older she gets, the more I recognize the rage she expresses, and the way she fights rather than flies. When I think back to my version of thirteen, and compare it to her version so far, I can only be thankful. She is so much more reasonable than I was, so much less destructive.

Quinn on cousin Rob's sailboat in June 2023

And maybe this is why I feel so distant from my mother right now, because when I was thirteen, I didn’t like her much. She was doing everything in her power to save me from myself and I hated her for it somehow. She saved me of course, at the expense of herself, but at that time she mostly just disgusted me. For no reason other than that she was my mother and I was trying to be myself.

This past summer the mother of two former students was asking me about Quinn and I told her that Quinn was about to turn thirteen. “Oh,” she said, “well, she is about to enter a very dark tunnel, but in a couple of years she will come out the other side. Just hang in there!” I suppose I can’t reference my mother right now because I was in the tunnel during this phase. It wasn’t a warm time between me and her, and I don’t know how she navigated it or what she thought—she was on the outside.

When I think back to that time, I have only these two primary reference points:

1. Seventh or eighth grade: I thought I hated my family. I was filled with anger all the time. They took me to a therapist. I hated her too and refused to speak. I ran away one day, spent the afternoon and evening at a friend’s house. We were out walking around in the village in the dark and all of a sudden my mother’s car pulled up alongside us. The passenger door opened. She looked straight ahead and said nothing. I got in and said nothing. It had been hours. I can’t even imagine how I would feel. Actually, yes I can. Panic. My mother was steely. I’m sure I was secretly relieved. I don’t think we spoke on the way home.

2. Eighth grade: I was skipping school, stealing alcohol and getting drunk, getting into fights. My mother drove me to the high school pool where the local swim club practiced. She walked me in and handed me over to Marcy, the coach. The coach was a drill sergeant. My mother left. I got in the pool and started to swim. I was a lake swimmer in the company of pool swimming machines. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t flip turn. I didn’t have a choice. I had to keep swimming. I think of this now and wonder what my mother had to say or do to convince the coach to let me in. I didn’t belong, but I needed to be there.

I don’t really remember family vacations, or holidays or birthdays, or much of anything other than being alone in my room, but I did eventually come out of the tunnel, and thankfully it was before she died. By my senior year in high school, I thought of my mother as my best friend. That lasted throughout college. I could tell her anything, and I told her everything. But looking back, I realize we never had time to talk about those dark spots. I never thanked her for saving me. I never asked her questions I would now ask. And I don’t have her to call when I’m adrift as Quinn’s mom, trying to figure out what she needs from me.

13th birthday

Fifty and the beginning of fifty-one were difficult. I can’t say I have been fully happy or healthy. There have been plenty of happy moments, but I think I’ve mostly been disoriented. My habits and perspective have become calcified in the past seven years. I took on more responsibility at work the year Quinn started kindergarten. We had a new head of school when she was in first grade. In her third grade year, school shut down in March. In her fourth grade year, she was able to attend in person only part time to start the year, and we ended it standing outside her school, six feet apart, to watch her “graduate” in her mask. As we were trying to help her navigate this altered life, I was also trying to help 130 students, fifty staff, and all the associated families at my school to also try to navigate. Quinn entered middle school in fifth grade in a mask, the same year I became the Assistant Head of School. Kids in her school, and ours, were off the rails.

Late last winter I was at an annual doctor’s appointment, feeling pretty good about the fact that I actually scheduled it and managed to make time for it. But, feeling increasingly alien in my own skin, run down by life, and menopause, and feeling disoriented generally, I started to cry when she greeted me with a casual, “How have you been?” I had been sleepless. I had gained weight. I had started looking forward to my evening glass of wine too early in the day. I had been disgusted looking in the mirror. That’s how I had been. But crying in front of that doctor, and admitting all of those things out loud was the beginning of something. Another annual appointment a couple of months later, with another doctor, was similar but less emotional. And that was at the beginning of summer. And summer equals time.

As I approach fifty-two, I think I’m experiencing some sort of cracking open. My hair has finally emerged fully and has grown back to a length that feels like me. On good days, I think it’s beautiful. And when Quinn comes up behind me and buries her nose in my hair and breathes in, she tells me I have a smell that is always the same and is unique to me. And she likes it. 

I’ve been drinking less—almost not at all—and sleeping more. And instead of trying to fix everything, for everyone, all the time—because I realize it’s not my job and no one actually wants me to—I’ve been going for walks. Sometimes, they are long. Sometimes they are emotional. Always I find myself walking forward toward the person I used to be. 

At home, at work, and in my own life, which is a distinct thing in the midst of these other roles, I feel myself cracking off this hard shell. I don’t know what I’m doing in my marriage or in my job some days, but I do know that I’m not striving the way I used to. I’m not aiming for anything, other than good health, more time, more acceptance, more ease. Yesterday, while Quinn was warming up at her boxing lesson, her coach looked at me with a smile and said, “You’re glowing today. Why?” I laughed, told him “It’s just the white hair.” But then I thought about it. Maybe I was glowing because I was with my kid. And she was happy. And in spite of what else was going on in the background at school, or at home, or on the calendar, I was just trying to be in that moment, in my own skin. Probably it also has something to do with the detox I’ve been on for the past four months. The weight I’ve lost, the alcohol I’ve skipped, the miles and fresh air I’ve consumed. Maybe I’m really coming out of the sludgy phase, into something shinier? The silver lining. The chrysalis shed. I can feel Quinn rolling her eyes at these dramatic metaphors. It’s okay. For now, it’s all still okay.

On the train in France, April 2023

Thanksgiving

Last weekend Quinn was invited to go to her friend Addy’s birthday party in Somerville, MA. Addy is a friend she made at ski club and with whom she has stayed close. When Addy’s family is at their house in Vermont, the girls attempt to be inseparable, other family plans permitting. In the summer they spend whole days in goggles in the river, and in the winter they’ll sled and romp in snow until they’re frozen. No matter how long it is between visits, they pick up easily and are at ease with one another. 

It’s a sweet and important friendship—a steady constant outside their normal contexts—and for this reason I said yes to having Quinn leave school early on a Friday, and yes to driving her to Boston during the afternoon hours of traffic, and yes to leaving her there for the weekend. 

The format for the party was bowling and pizza with Addy and 10 girls from Addy’s life in Boston, and then sleeping over for just Quinn. On Saturday Addy’s family would tour her around the city, which she loves, and on Sunday she was invited to join Addy for a pick up soccer game, with her team, at a nearby indoor field. Quinn was thrilled by all of it—a quick “Yes, please!” to each element of the itinerary. She felt a bit guilty for not being home with me on my birthday, but I tried to assure her that I was happy to have her go—it was a special opportunity and I didn’t want her to miss out.

The truth is, I felt both things—happy for her and also sad for me. The further we got from home, the more sad I felt…I wasn’t going to be nearby if she needed me, and it wasn’t just for a night. The real sadness, I suppose, came from the realization that she wouldn’t need me, and also that for her the time would pass quickly. It is also true that I tend to be a bit morose on my birthday, dwelling annually on the fact that it all has to come to an end.

The pace of her growing up seems sped up by comparison to the two and half years of time we’ve just experienced with everything seeming to stand still. Now that the Earth is spinning again, it sometimes feels like it’s spinning out of control. Not only that, but the changes wrought by these two versions of Quinn’s life—the COVID version and the “post” COVID version—are starkly different. Six months ago Quinn might not have been able to accept such an invitation; twelve months ago she may not have even been able to consider it. Leaving home for two nights, being with a big group of girls she didn’t know, bowling—which she’s only done once or twice and may not be good at, playing soccer on someone else’s team, with coaches and teammates she’s never met?!?! There is just no way she would have felt able to do these things.

So much of this, her sixth grade year, has been like this—Quinn saying yes to all kinds of things she recently wouldn’t have even been able to consider. She advocated to play on the soccer team where she knew less people because she loved the coach and felt she would learn more. She signed up for an after school cooking class. She signed up for Tech Crew. She signed up for Ski & Ride, and indoor soccer for the winter, even though she’d have to go to the co-ed night since the all-girls night wouldn’t work. She filled out an application to be on the Governor’s Youth Council, and requested two letters of recommendation to complete it, and she handled her sadness about not being selected with grace. She has volunteered to stay after school to help with projects, and she’s attended parties and Fun Night dances and sleepovers with ease and excitement and joy. 

In the past two years, she has experienced so little joy and so much anxiety. To see her navigate life, and school, and people and challenges right now is amazing. Sometimes I feel like I’m meeting a girl I’ve never met--at least one I haven't seen in a while. I’m so relieved for her, and so happy for her, and so proud. And of course I know life won’t always be smooth sailing—and that’s okay. For right now, whenever there is joy to be had, I want her to have it. I want to pump as much joy into her tank as possible so that she remembers what it feels like and looks like and how to find it…maybe that way she won’t feel such despair next time she feels lonely or alone.

Driving home after dropping her off I listened to a Hidden Brain podcast about loneliness. The host interviewed the US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, who spoke about what he called “the epidemic of loneliness” we are suffering from as a culture. It spoke to me because I was lonely in that moment and I was overcome with sadness at the thought of always being lonely in the too-near future when Quinn will leave home. 

From a biological perspective, Dr. Murthy explained, humans are hard-wired to be in the company of others, thanks to our origins when the physical survival of the species depended on our working together to defend against threats, to hunt, gather, shelter and reproduce. Emerging from those early cave days we have come to rely on each other less, but still our brains hold the fear response to being truly alone. On top of that, when we feel lonely, our brains are wired, out of fear, to be suspicious of attention and even to start feeling that we are to blame for our loneliness—we are alone, we might think, because we are unlikable or unlovable. It’s easy to see it become self-fulfilling. 

In the discussion, Dr. Murthy also explained that loneliness often looks like something else. Alcoholism, he explained, is often a symptom of loneliness. Thinking of my father, after my mother’s death, it made easy sense, but then he went on to say that there are other manifestations, like depression, and anxiety, and even rage—three words I would use to describe Quinn’s experience in the two years before this one. Surely Quinn, like all of us, was lonely during those years, but I don't think I stopped to blame loneliness necessarily as the root cause of the other things she was experiencing.

Two Christmases ago, after a rare day of having company in the house, Quinn had a sudden, violent meltdown at bedtime. She wanted to sleep in our bed, and when we said no she screamed and raged—I remember it vividly. “I don’t want to be alone! I’m lonely!” She screamed at us in a way that was surprising, even confusing at the time. We’d just had a lovely day—but thinking back on it now, I can see it differently—it was her response to the saber-toothed reality of her isolation. Even this fall, after full and happy weeks of school, and Saturdays full of soccer and friends, she would turn bitter quickly at the notion of returning home to our house in the woods with no friends nearby until school would resume on Monday.

It’s stunning how fully our routines have turned around. Instead of the weekends being marked by a rising tide of dread at having to return to school on Monday, she seems to get lighter and happier as the prospect of school gets closer. I lost count of how many days last year, and the year before that, that she refused to go. Usually she would end up there, but not without a considerable fight—at home, in the car, in the parking lot. On more than one occasion she screamed at me right in front of the school, or headed toward the woods instead of the front door. I lost count of how many days I had to text her guidance counselor, or call her principal, and ask them to come out and help me get her into the building. Last year she refused to get her picture taken on picture day, and then she refused on the make-up day. She is frozen in 4th grade in the frame on our shelf; 5th grade, you would think, never happened, and in some ways it didn’t.

There is no good time in one’s life to experience a prolonged global pandemic, I know, and yet I can’t help but think the timing was particularly bad for Quinn. It arrived in the final months of her third grade year, a year that was going so well. It continued into fourth, cutting her weeks up into fifths, with some days “at home” and some days “in person.” The “at home” days were at a neighbor’s house since we had to go to school. And the “in person” days were only sort of in person. Attendance was unpredictable, depending on everyone’s exposure to the virus, and no one felt fully present as they hid behind their masks. She lost the confidence building months and celebration that would have marked her departure from elementary school. It followed her into middle school for fifth grade. By the two-year anniversary of the pandemic, she was panicky all the time—never sure what the next day would bring, what hoped-for thing would get cancelled, and what dreaded things she’d actually have to do. And her sense of self was deteriorated. She’d spent two years unable to count on anything, unable to read the faces or feelings of others, getting clear and constant messaging that she should not get too close to anyone else, and all this alongside the arrival of puberty—a time when her whole system was wired to worry about how she was being perceived by others, hyper-sensitive to social cues that were indecipherable and she was unable to read. Of course she was lonely. Of course she was anxious. Of course she was full of rage.

In September her school hosted an Open House. As we pulled into the long drive we could see cars parked everywhere and people everywhere. Last year she would have had me turn around; we never would have even parked the car. This year she strolled in ahead of me with a smile on her face. She greeted everyone she met. She showed me around proudly and engaged confidently in conversations. Sam was away, in Chile, and in his absence as a witness, it was hard to believe it was real. 

On the way home I asked her, what had changed. She acknowledged that things are different this year. “I don’t know,” she said, “I guess I just have friends now.” We talked about the change in her approach. In previous months, when she was feeling anxious, her hood would go up, her head would go down, her arms would cross like armor over her chest. Kids, and even some adults, would read that as a warning to steer clear. Now she makes eye contact, she smiles, and people are drawn to her—reflecting back the energy she puts out in the world. 

When you’re not lonely, you’re less suspicious. When you believe you are likable, you are. It is so logical. If only we could always be. I wish I could erase the multi-year experience of stress from her system, and put those years back on her life, but to do that would be to erase all the other memories in that time as well, and the incredible experience of watching her grow. 

Fierce. Determined. Courageous. Courageous in a way I never had to be.

Following Moses

Last winter Moses started going out in the middle of the night. He’d bark, Sam would let him out, and then he’d take off. I protested at first, worried that he’d freeze to death. He was skin and bones; there’s no way he could have kept warm. Sometimes he’d be gone for a couple of hours and Sam would search for him; this happened many times at first, but a black dog in the black night is hard to find and eventually we started to trust his return. He always came home, eventually, barking to come back in. By the end of winter, instead of barking to go out for a short adventure, he just insisted on sleeping outside the whole night, so we put a bed out on the covered front porch. For five months the day ended with Sam letting Moses out when it was time for bed. And for five months the day began, usually around 4:45am, with a single gruff bark waking us up. If ignored, it would be repeated until answered. "Ruff!" Pause. "Ruff!" Pause. Eventually we’d relent and feed him, even though it was long before our time to wake up.

Before Sam left for Chile last month, he brought Moses to the vet for the latest of his ailments. This time a droopy eye. He didn’t look good. At fifteen and a half, what could you expect? Dr. Hadden didn’t think he was in pain, but Sam and I, aware that winter is coming, acknowledged that this fall would be his last season, we just had to get through the September trip, hope for some good days in October, and then prepare to say good bye. While Sam was away, I worried about whether or not Moses would make it through the two weeks until he could be home. 

Mosey spent most of his time on his bed on the front porch. He slept for most of every day. Still, when I’d reach for my sneakers, he’d spring to life, jump in circles, and be ready to go. We’d walk up to the brook and back, or occasionally walk the lower loop. He’d be behind, but he’d be there—always happy to go. One day he wandered off from the porch and enough time passed that I had started to think about looking for him when the phone rang. It was my neighbor, Karen, from down below. Mosey was wandering around in their meadow, about a half mile downhill from here. I drove down to pick him up and met Karen in the road with Richard, who is using a walker at this point, while Linda, our other neighbor, guided Mosey toward us. While we waited, Karen lectured me about tying him up so he wouldn’t get lost. I felt duly scolded for being careless, but at the same time thought about how Moses had never been tied up; his whole life has been a free-spirited wandering on this hill.

We got Moses in the spring of 2007, during the final months we were living in the parsonage, as we were getting ready to build our house, and he has been here for all of the projects that have been our life in the time since.

Mosey was always a gentle dog. Tall, sweet, easy going. Compared to Boone, he seemed so laid back. While Boone would manically fetch a frisbee, Mosey would try to get it just to get Boone to chase him. He was happy to just be along for most of what we did; he never needed much. 

The only time he ever seemed particularly intent on anything was when I was expecting Quinn. I remember lying down for naps during my pregnancy, a time when we still allowed the dogs on the bed, and Mosey would rest his chin on my belly. Later on, as we got closer to Quinn’s arrival, Mosey would sit right next to me when anyone other than Sam was in the house. He was protective, quietly so, but his attention to the presence and purpose of her was clearly expressed in the way he sat, tall shouldered and alert, pressed up against me. And for her whole life, this has remained true.

Unlike Boone, who always had some sort of agenda, Moses was easy going. He never needed much; he was never the center of attention, never the boss, but he was always paying attention and he was always right there.

The weather in September was particularly stormy. It rained nearly the whole time Sam was away, with some torrential days and nights. I pulled Mosey’s bed back from the edge of the roofline to keep it dry, and kept him inside whenever he was willing to be there. One night, as we talked to Sam on Zoom at the dining room table, Quinn looked over to the living room and said, “Mom, look.” Buddy and Moses were lying right next to each other, bodies pressed together in a way they never did. Quinn took a photo and then, before we said goodbye to Sam, we brought the computer to the living room rug so Sam could see Mosey and be reassured that he was doing okay. Mosey woke up when he heard Sam’s voice nearby. He looked toward the computer, but who knows if he could see Sam’s face. 

The rain was so unbelievable that night that the thought of putting him out on the porch was awful. He was sound asleep in the living room, safe and dry. When it was time for bed, I left all the lights on and tiptoed upstairs, thinking he might just stay asleep if he thought we were still there, but as soon as I got upstairs, he knew. He started to pace, and to whine, and he paced and whined and barked until I relented. I opened the door and watched him go right to his bed. He lay down and looked out into the darkness as the rain poured down. Thinking back, I recalled that he didn’t lay his head down before I closed the door. I wish I had waited for that. Maybe that was the sign that he wasn’t going to settle, and I missed it. 

I woke up the next morning and it was lighter than normal. I looked at the clock, having had a good night’s sleep, and celebrated the fact that I had slept until 6am. Until I woke up enough, a moment later, to realize that Moses hadn’t woken me up as he had every other day for months. When I went to the door, he wasn’t there. And when Quinn came down, a short while later, I convinced her, and myself, that he was just out for a wander and he’d be back. 

I dropped her off at school and was headed toward work, but as I approached the base of our road, I knew I had to go back up and look for him. I cancelled my meetings, changed my clothes, and headed out into the rain. I walked our usual loops and paths. I called his name. I retraced those steps in the opposite direction. I went back to the meadow by the Richards’ houses, and walked along the brook. I let all the neighbors know I was looking. And the hours of the day passed this way, with Buddy and me wandering the woods, calling for Moses.

Eventually I started searching off the trails, wading through ferns on the steep sections of hill, trying to imagine where he might have accidentally fallen, or gotten tangled up. I started covering ground I’d never seen in fifteen years of living here. When Buddy and I got to the bottom of Richard’s ski hill and came up behind his pond, a place I’d never been, with rain and fog all around, a Great Blue Heron lifted up just in front of us and flew off down the hill. It was so close and happened so slowly, its spindly legs dragging behind its massive wings. That’s probably when I started to think I wasn’t going to find him.

Quinn was surprised when I picked her up at four o’clock and he still wasn’t home. I worried it would undo her. For years after Boone’s death, she would explain her tears and dark moods by saying she missed Boone. And she’s been doing so well this year—managing life’s natural worries, putting herself out there, being open to joy. She kept her feelings close and didn’t have much to say about Mosey being gone, but when I went to shut the front door that night, after Quinn had gone to bed, I saw that she put a treat on his bed on the porch. We were both hoping he’d come home.

After a couple of days of searching, I finally told Sam. Even though he was the one who insisted that Mosey was happier on the porch at night than inside, I still felt like I had lost his best friend. I heard my neighbors’ insistent instructions to keep him close and knew I should have listened. Guilt and worry kept me wandering the woods that whole week until Sam came home, but I never found even a trace of him.

There is no doubt it was his time, but of course that is not how we imagined it to go. We all wanted to be there with him, to be sure he knew he was loved, and that his years of loyal attention mattered. Driving to school one day I realized that just as it had been for Boone, Mosey’s passing was like his life. He never caused any trouble. He never asked for anything. 

In the days that Sam was away, when I was searching for Moses, I kept thinking of the brook. I walked down the middle, in water high from all of the rain. I climbed over branches and downed trees, and forced my way through ferns and brambles, and I thought there was no way Mosey could have made it that far, even though it turns out he did. And as I walked along, in the ravine carved out by the brook, and followed along the pools and little falls, shin-deep in cold clear water, I also thought how beautiful it was and how grateful I was to Moses for bringing me there, after fifteen years of living on the hill without fully seeing what is here. Following Moses, I saw so much beauty.

We got a call this week from a man who was walking down Dowsville Brook and found his body, and then Sam went and brought him home. I picked Quinn up from the bus and told her the news. She turned her head to the window and cried without making a sound. We are sad but also relieved to have him home, and to know he will rest here, near Boone and the garden, with a view of the house, and the hill on the other side of the valley, and the sun and the moon when they rise, and the distant peaks that Sam knew we’d see, back when Moses was a puppy and the life ahead of us was still unknown.

Moses  ~   March 2007-September 2022