March 8th is International Women’s Day. It’s also the anniversary of my dad’s death. I remember so clearly the day he died. He’d been sick for a long time. He died after a long, slow, painful process early in the morning, on March 8th in 1997.
I’d fallen asleep in my little brother’s bed upstairs the night before. He was young, only twelve and I found comfort in his presence. I woke up suddenly, before dawn, with a sharp awareness that something had changed, and ran downstairs. My stepmother looked at me through the dark of my father’s room and quietly nodded. He was gone.
A few hours later, two men from the funeral home came and lifted his body onto a collapsible gurney. They covered him with a heavy maroon drape and weaved his body through the dining room and kitchen. My sisters and brothers and I watched from the bottom landing of the stairs to the second floor as they made their final passage through the narrow front hallway out the front door. I could see the calendar behind the men as they pushed his body. March 8th. International Women’s Day.
Every year I ‘celebrate’ my dad on March 8th. I remember him, honor him, spend time thinking about him. This year, it just so happened that March 8th was a Friday and I had the weekend free. I booked a stay at a hermitage in southern California. My plan was to go there and be in the sun and silence for the weekend and then come home.
Over the last several months I’ve become increasingly busy and scatterbrained. I have too many emails and texts, I’m on my phone or in meetings all the time. My creative life has dwindled to squeezed-in-pockets of time.
I crave space and calm all the time. I reasoned that getting away from the everyday routines, clearing the chatter by literally being alone and quiet, would be an ideal reset. It happened to be that I’d start this weekend on the twenty-seventh anniversary of my dad’s death.
On March 7th I checked into my flight, reviewed my rental car contract, and tied up last-minute details at work. I searched through my emails to find the instructions for getting to the hermitage. I knew cell phone coverage would be spotty there and I wanted to print out directions so I’d be prepared if I got lost.
I searched by the name of the hermitage and an email from February 20th popped up that said, “We regret to inform you that we’ve had to cancel your booking. Due to a rock slide, the hermitage is indefinitely closed.”
How did I miss this? This email had come through my inbox almost three weeks ago and I was just now seeing it. I called to confirm that indeed the hermitage was closed from all directions. I was informed that the hermitage is indefinitely closed.
My heart sank. My weekend of silence was dashed. I had been counting on this. I needed this. I was half-packed and filled with anticipation about how this retreat would replenish my dwindling coffers of focus and creativity.
I spent my last few hours at work searching for retreat centers in Washington and Oregon. I could salvage this. I could drive somewhere. Everywhere I called sent me to voicemail so I wrote email after email asking if there was space for two days starting the next day. As a backup plan, I searched Airbnb for tiny cabins and made a list of favorites.
After happy hour plans and my painting class, I finally got home at 8:30 pm. There was an email waiting for me from a retreat center, a spiritual artists community, two hours east of me. They said they were mostly closed but could rent me their tiny cabin. I was elated. I quickly wrote back and made an official booking by filling out their online retreat application and giving them my credit card information.
The next morning, I unpacked my sandals and shorts and replaced them with wool socks and winter boots. I gathered a bag full of dry goods, fruits and veggies from the fridge, and threw together my favorite poetry books, writing journals, and painting supplies.
As I drove, I listened to an audiobook — Forgone by Russell Banks — about a man on his deathbed confessing his life secrets in front of a movie crew. The protagonist moves in and out of consciousness and presence, remembering mixtures of memories as he makes his final passage out of this life.
About an hour into my drive, the air and light changed. It got mountainous and snowy. I watched the thermometer on my car go from 55 to 45 to 35 Fahrenheit. I arrived at my destination in the early afternoon and parked near where my GPS said, “You have arrived.”
But I couldn’t see a house. I walked up and over a snowbank but could only see a large structure that looked abandoned. I got back in my car and drove towards a footbridge crossing a rushing river so I could make a U-turn and try to find the cabin.
I drove twenty yards towards the river and there it was. My tiny cabin. It was perfect. I took a deep breath, a combination of joy, relief, delight, and awe. “There you are,” I said out loud, “you’re perfect.”
I parked my car in the gravel driveway. As instructed, the front door was open. There was a queen bed in the corner across from a big stone fireplace. To the right was a couch and an armchair facing the river below and just beyond the living room, a tiny kitchen with an eating table, also facing the river. The cabin was surrounded by snowbanks and Douglas firs and there was absolutely no one around. This is where my weekend of silence began.
The first thing I did after unloading my car was take a walk. I walked across the footbridge and around the snowy roads to orient myself. As I wandered, I breathed in the mountain air and stretched my legs, stiff from the long drive.
When I got home I made a fire and cooked pasta. I sat at my little table and ate while watching the sky darken over the river. It was the longest period of time I’d gone without looking at my laptop or iPhone in months, maybe years.
I climbed into bed early. I read my book and fell asleep to the sound of the river. So far. So good. I liked this quiet; it suited me.
I woke early, the sun just rising and got out of bed, happy to be here, in this place, cold floor beneath my bare feet, full view of the river, more quiet ahead of me. I made coffee and settled into the armchair in the tiny living room.
As I do every morning, I opened my poetry book to read a poem. But unlike most mornings, this time I indulged myself and read two poems. After each one, I gave myself some time to settle into the words, noticing how this felt different with the river in view and no plans ahead for the day. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go. No one to become.
After the poems, I took out my notebook and began to write. This is also something I do regularly, but this time, today, I wouldn’t give myself a time limit. The day stretched open and free in front of me and I could do this as long as I wanted. As I wrote, I heard a voice in the back of my head saying, “You should start your day.”
‘Start your day,’ I wrote in my journal. What does this even mean? Hadn’t I started my day by getting out of bed, putting my feet on the floor, feeling the cold concrete on my skin? And, I contemplated as I wrote, what differentiates the importance of the hours in the day? Isn’t the hour I finally lay my head on my pillow at the end of a long day as important as the moment I open my eyes and ‘start my day?’
This is my day, I thought to myself as I continued to write. I recognized how programmed I was to get on with it, to finish one thing and move on to the next. But there was no one around. My computer was at home. My cell phone was off. The distractions were wholly my own. They lived inside of me, clamoring around inside my head, looking for a way out.
I noticed and I acknowledged this very familiar urge to ‘start my day.’ I sat through it, reminding myself that I had no looming engagements. I looked at my watch for some kind of direction but conveniently, as if by divine intervention, the day before, (March 8th) something had happened to my Fitbit.
It spontaneously stopped syncing with my phone so the time and date were completely wrong. I wondered if my dad was trying to tell me something, “Laura,” he’d messaged me from beyond, “you need to chill out.”
At some point in the late morning, I got up and put my snow boots on, and went for a walk. Later in the afternoon I ate a sandwich, drank hot chocolate and painted. I read. I painted again. I made a fire. I took a nap. I went for another walk and collected more kindling. I found some scraps of yarn in the cabin and made god’s eyes out of sticks. Hour after hour went by in silence. I read again and went to bed.
I never did start my day. My day just was. And the next day was the same. I woke up and painted. And then I read poetry and then I went for a walk and then I wrote. The events of my day happened in no particular order. The hours just unfolded until it was time to go. I hadn’t seen anyone or spoken for more than two days and I felt ready to come home. I can come back here, I thought to myself, there’s no reason I can’t do this again. I backed out of the driveway and drove up the road, the river slowly receding in my rearview mirror.
.