We have had weeks of unrelenting heat; thick, humid days that hit record temperatures and left every living thing limp and wilted. On the hottest day, a brush fire burned just north of my neighborhood. It was too hot to close the windows against the smoke, and I kept thinking how appropriate it all was. It made so much sense for the steaming, heavy evening air to smell like fire. I bathed the girls in cool water that night and put them to bed with wet hair and damp cloths laid across their chests. Everyone I know had been complaining about the weather for days, but I loved it. Even on that hot, burning night I loved it. It felt like being inside of something.

It seems like that is the great journey of my life, this search for someplace warm and safe. Not even my memories will do. I seem to only remember the sad things. Everything has always been so terribly frightening. I remember reading A Wrinkle In Time when I was very young, and being much too scared to sleep. I also knew that I couldn’t get up and find my parents because they would be angry that I had gotten out of bed. I remember laying stiffly in my bed for hours, too frightened to stay there and too frightened to leave, my heart pounding in the darkness until I finally fell asleep. Sometimes life feels like that: an endless stretch of lonely, black night. I used to conjure up images of things that would comfort me, beings who loved me very much and would make me feel safe, like the fairy in The Velveteen Rabbit who finally made the sawdust bunny Real. I still do that sometimes. I imagine my grandmother (who died shortly after Babs was born) watching me from wherever she is now, sending me waves of softness and love. It amazes me sometimes how separate we all are from each other, each of us wanting so much to be loved and each of us trying so hard to do it all on our own.

The clouds are back now, and the air outside is cool and clean. We spent the day at home yesterday with a fire in the fireplace and applesauce muffins baking in the oven; lovely long hours of dozing on the couch with fat cats and little girls. Pamela was with us, and Zibbit crawled into her lap and buried her face in my friend’s neck. “Pamby,” Zibbit said, “you smell just like Mommy.” I wanted to cry just then. I wanted to hold my daughter’s face in my hands and explain to her how very, very lucky she is to have so many people that she loves, who love her so completely in return. But she’ll understand when she’s older.

My friend Pamela and I went to see 500 Days of Summer last night (an absolute gem- see it if you can). We didn’t get home until very late, so she crashed at my place and I drove her to work this morning. My gas tank had been empty since yesterday afternoon so we were on our way to the gas station, expecting the car to sputter and die at any moment, when the light at the intersection in front of us turned yellow. I had enough time to stop- I should have stopped- but I also knew that if I waited at a red light the chances of us making it to the gas station would go from slim to none. So I accelerated, flying through the intersection like a bat out of hell, pushing breakneck speeds of 15 or 20 miles an hour. The light turned red as I drove through the intersection and I glanced to my right just as my car passed in front of a cop. He flicked on his lights and swung around behind me. If I had been prepared and filled my car up yesterday, I may have tried to outrun him and with Thelma in the seat beside me make a desperate run for the border, but I wouldn’t have made it a mile before the gas tank was completely drained and then I would have had to call my mother and tell her I was in jail. So instead I turned onto a side street and parked my car, found my license and registration, and quickly hid the parking ticket that was on my windshield last night after we got out of the movie.

A slight, sweet-looking man in his early fifties walked up to my car, peered in the window and told me I had been pulled over for accelerating as the light was turning red. I handed him all of my documents (”Ma’am, I don’t need to see your emissions report.”) and hoped he would forget to ask me for proof of insurance, since it’s still sitting in an envelope on the kitchen counter. He didn’t forget, and I sat in the front seat of my car drowning in shame, anxiety, and resignation as he walked back to his patrol car to look up my records. Pamela and I waited nervously, joking about what he would say when he came back to the car. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” we imagined him saying, “but it says here that your marriage failed and you never pay your electric bill on time. The state of Washington has issued a warrant for your arrest, claiming you are a Grandiose Failure at Life and a Menace to Society.” Ha ha ha, we said. Wouldn’t that be rich.

Instead, something very strange happened. He came back to my window with an open booklet in his hands and proceeded to run through a list of fines. Driving without proof of insurance, $550. Failure to update my drivers license with my new address, $124. Running a red light, $140. $814. Eight hundred and fourteen dollars. But he didn’t have a ticket in his hand.

“The reason I am only going to give you a warning this time, Ms. Larson, is because you have an excellent driving record. No infractions in the last five years. Frankly, I was surprised. I was expecting to find some. But you’re going to need to take care of these issues immediately. Are you her sister?” He asked, looking at Pamela.

“Practically,” she replied, and laughed (we’re often made fun of for being joined at the hip).

“Well, make sure she takes care of everything right away, OK?” Pamela said she would, then I thanked him and drove away, hands shaking and stomach twisted into knots. We drove in silence for a moment or two and then both burst out laughing, because what else can you do at a time like that.

“He said I have an ‘excellent driving record!’” I gasped, clutching my belly as I giggled. “I think that’s the nicest compliment I have ever been given.”

After I dropped Pamela off at work I drove to my favorite coffee shop and sat there for an hour, nursing my quad caramel sauce Americano and trying to make sense of the morning. It wasn’t even 9 am yet. I don’t think it’s fair to be thrust into such an overwhelming situation before one has had the chance to really wake up yet, or at least have their coffee. I have felt overwhelmed a lot lately, a feeling Pamela and I describe to be like that famous black and white photo of the men on a girder, casually eating lunch while their feet dangle 69 floors above the streets of New York. Everything seems so strangely suspended in mid air; each day feels like a held breath. I think I am supposed to be learning something, following some sort of guidance, but I’m having a hard time figuring out what it is. It seems as though someone is holding a giant road sign directly in front of my face, and I can see that there are names and directions and exact mileages printed there, it probably references this morning’s policeman somehow, but the problem is everything is written in Russian. And I don’t know how to read Russian.

My friend Daniel sent me a message last night that said, “‘Be determined, be stubborn, endure, hang on, hold fast, keep at it, stick to it, pursue, persist, press on’ reads the back of the shirt in front of me.” I asked him if he thought it was some sort of sign. “I had to translate it from Russian,” Daniel said. “I almost missed it.”

I definitely just met the most fantastic kid on the planet. His name is Eliot, and he is nine years old.

Eliot (looking at all the hair on the floor): Wouldn’t it be weird if you pulled the hair that you cut off and I could still feel it?
Me: Kind of like Phantom Limb syndrome?
Eliot: What’s that?
Me: It’s something that can happen if you lose your leg in a car accident or something. Even though the leg isn’t there anymore people can sometimes still feel it hurting or itching.
Eliot: If I had to lose any of my senses it would definitely be pain.
Me: But pain is useful! How would you know if you accidentally touched a hot stove or something? By the time you figured it out it would be too late and your hand would have burned off.
Eliot: Who cares? I have another one.

*

Me: So, when you grow up and become a famous soccer player, will you still let me cut your hair?
Eliot: Probably. If you’re still alive.

*

Me: Will you come hang out with me every day?
Eliot: I don’t think that would work with my schedule.
Me: That’s unfortunate.
Eliot: Isn’t it?

*

Me: Where did you come from, kid?
Eliot: California.

People in recovery (of the alcoholic variety) like to talk about how God has a “great” sense of humor. They say this with teeth clenched and faces flushed, fingers rapidly turning a Styrofoam cup into a lap full of confetti. They say it with anger and confusion and resignation, and you can see it in the way they sit: oh, how they want to run and scream and throw plates into walls but they are instead going to sit there and surrender every cell of their being if it kills them. It usually goes something like this:

“It turns out it is so difficult to feel life without using alcohol to help numb me out a bit. Even the little things feel like big things and I nearly cried in the bathroom this morning because I thought I lost my toothbrush. I can barely take how much I feel the little things. And then today, someone rear ended my car and now it’s in the shop for a week and I have no idea how I’m going to get to work in the meantime. Oh ho ho, God, aren’t you funny.”

It’s kind of a beautiful thing to witness, watching these lumpy, gnarled bits of humans start to turn into people again. It’s like a rebirth of sorts. Listening to them talk in meetings gives me the same feeling as when my kids were babies and starting to do something important for the first time, like walking or holding a spoon. It’s an overwhelming sense of awe, realizing that you are in the presence of some huge evolution. In my experience, the only thing that really changes as you start accumulating years of sobriety is being able to sort of master a sense of objectivity. The little things still feel like big things most of the time, and the big things still feel like they will most likely kill you in your sleep, but you have experienced enough healing to realize that at some point things will feel different. Not better, necessarily, but different. I worry that I come across as bitterly cynical when I say things like that; to those of you who didn’t nod your heads as you read that last sentence, just understand that for some of us, life is heavy. It’s not bad, it’s just heavy, like trying to carry a giant box of your most precious belongings up a long flight of stairs. You want to be doing what you’re doing, you like doing it, but damn the box is heavy.

I spoke with my friend Lauren last night. We talked about how weird it is to feel things all the time, and how most people probably don’t talk about things like this, and how it’s not fair for things to be so hard so often because honestly, we’re really very nice girls. Lauren was telling me how frustrating it is to be so aware of everything, and what it feels like to have this awareness about your own imperfect self. Then she said something that makes my top-ten list of favorite statements of all time.

“I like to picture this section of my brain as though it has been ravaged by wolverines. Then you just shove everything back up under your skull and hope for the best.”

“I LOVE THAT,” I said.

“That’s what the wolverines said, baby.”

Another friend and I were talking once about insight, and how having the ability to read people well feels like a huge responsibility. When you are able to see who someone really is, behind their walls and masks, they suddenly become very vulnerable. You sometimes see things they don’t want anyone to see. Possessing a keen sense of intuition can be a wonderful gift, I told my friend, but only if it is paired with great, great compassion. When you see someone for who they truly are, the only good and right thing to do is to love them in all of their glorious imperfection. The same can be said for self-awareness. It’s so rough to be aware of your weaknesses, your fallibility, your soft spots. It’s hard to sit in traffic on a road that’s under construction and know that there isn’t any shortcut- the road isn’t finished yet. You just have to inch along, a string of cars ahead of you and a string of cars behind, with the understanding that this particular patch of roadwork is only temporary. If you are aware of these things as they are happening inside of you, the only good and right thing to do is to love yourself in all of your glorious imperfection. Pair the awareness with great compassion and great love, like a mother watching her child clumsily grasping the spoon in her fist.

If all else fails, kill the wolverines.

I have had some fairly rotten luck when it comes to dating. It is difficult and not fun, and it makes me wonder why the divorce rate is so high in America. Marriages failing- that I can comprehend. But what I don’t understand is how all of these people survived dating long enough to actually meet someone they wanted to marry in the first place. The thing is, there is so much fear. Everyone is so scared all the time. We are scared of being hurt, scared of being forgotten, scared of caring too much or not enough, scared of people seeing how scared we are. And that’s on a good day. On a bad day the fear transitions into warp drive, and it makes people do crazy things like walk away from someone they love or cease eating bread because he might love you more if your calves look smaller. Humans, as a general rule, are a stupid, clumsy, nearsighted species who (almost without exception) desperately want to be loved. It’s truly an unfortunate combination.

And everything is made so much harder when there are little ears and watchful eyes; small, precious people whose dials are tuned in to Channel Mom at all times. It’s hard to slog through confusion, dress up and feel sexy, or stumble your way through a heartbreak when your children’s faces mirror even your most secret, hidden emotions. They watch you stumble and fall and curse and cry and then, I imagine, they take all of this information and file it way back in their brains, in the ever-growing section labeled: To Be Brought Up In Therapy. The sucky-lame-awfulness of dating is hard enough to bear on its own, but with these constant witnesses to your failures, witnesses with quick and impressionable minds, the pressure to figure your shit out is incredibly intense. Being raised by a single mother must be a little bit like living on the set of The Bachelorette- only the torsos aren’t quite as chiseled and most of the bachelors don’t actually seem to be very interested. Which is terribly sad, really. Mothers are such wonderful people. We have been changed by our children, for the better in most cases. We are creatures of habit and compassion who will listen to you and kiss your face when you’re sad, and we hardly ever mind if you fart in the shower or leave nose hairs in the sink because we are comfortable being close to bodies that are not ours. We are soft and patient and funny and interesting, and yes, we are also stretched beyond our limits and tired most of the time. But if a mother is putting forth the effort to make space in her busy life and full heart for you, she must think you are pretty damn special. And it’s ok to feel proud about that one, guys.

When I became single, I made the decision never to bring a man into my childrens’ lives unless he showed great promise. So the past couple of years haven’t been as crazy and confusing for my daughters as they have been for me, because I have yet to be involved with someone who shows even a hint of promise (or at least they’ve kept it very well hidden). Anne Lamott wrote, “The world is filled with weak, shitty little men,” so try “not to take it too personally.” But on the same page she also wrote: “[Love is] hardly ever that clear, that black and white. So you get confused and your pride gets hurt, but that’s the risk, that’s the game. And sometimes it’s worth it.” I believe both of those things, in the abundance of shitty little men but that love is also sometimes worth the risk. So out of stubbornness or naivete or something else entirely, I have tried to remain open, even when that hurts. Sometimes this makes me feel very stupid, but most of the time it feels like the right thing to do.

I have received two very helpful pieces of advice that I repeat to myself often. One was from my dear friend Bob, who told me, “You will most likely find only one person who is good enough to keep. That’s why they call it ‘dating’ and not ‘relationshipping.’” The other was from a client, a gorgeous seventy-year-old writer/mother/divorcee who said, “Just do your life. If the right person shows up somewhere along the way, that’s great. But if not, you’ve still had a good life.” This life business is tough stuff, and love complicates things even more. But that’s the game. And it’s the only game we’ve got.