Rebecca Denison, Writer

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Slam… Slam… Slam…

They say ten-foot waves are manageable… if they don’t hit too fast. But they’re every 8 seconds. I check the weather constantly. My daughter (26) and three female teammates are rowing from California to Hawaii.

“Breathe,” I tell myself. “She’s living her dream. It’s her choice.”

If the boat gets overturned, it’s supposed to right itself. But will it? They re-balance the load to rock, not roll.

The boat stays up. Their rights get overturned.

They say the hardest thing is the nausea, but they don’t let it stop them. This is their mantra:

“Puke and Rally.”

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1990: “Please…?” the reporter said. “People think it’s just San Francisco and New York.”

Trembling, I said, “OK.”

Why? Because…we existed. Everywhere.

2021: “Let the Record Show” — a 736-page oral history of ACT UP NY — has 188 interviews with former members, and zero HIV+ women.

The author acknowledges it. Reviewers don’t. Like we never existed.

We did. We do.

I started an A-Z list of long-term survivors: Alice, Beatrice, Cecilia, Dawn, Elaine, Fiona, Gina, Hulda… Then another: Alejandra, Billie, Claire… Antigone, Betsy, Carrie…

Then allies: Allie, Barb, Chris, Dan…

I stop. Remember other lists. Breathe.

Surviving is beautiful, but bittersweet.

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“She probably won’t make it,” the doctor said, when I was born. “If she does, she might not be ‘quite right’.”

According to my mother, she told him, “Then don’t take any extraordinary measures.”

Four strangers—who did take extraordinary measures—saved my life. What was it like? Watching their blood flow into a newborn in an incubator, knowing she could still die? I don’t even know their names. To pay it forward, my dad donated blood the rest of his life.

Never forget: The world is full of anonymous heroes. The darker it gets, the more candles they light.

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“Whose choice?”

“Our choice!”

Oakland’s chanting swells to a roar. 

“WHOSE choice??”

“OUR choice!!”

The rage feels… reverent… protective… maternal. 

A gray-haired woman speaks: “I was 17… friends collected money… abortion was illegal… I was blindfolded … a lock clicked… somebody said, ‘You’re a sinner’…” 

A young woman trembles: “I’ve never told anyone… He raped me… demanded I keep it… it was legal… they were kind… I told him I miscarried… he went ballistic…”

A child in a tutu shows me her sign—“Don’t be mean!”—dotted with unicorns.

I smile back. “I love unicorns, too.” 

We’re here for her.

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Long ago, I was the fish, meandering currents of knowing and unknowing. Knowing her rhythms: lub-dub, lub-dub, rocking, rest. Knowing her voice. Not yet knowing how much joy and sorrow would pass between us. 

Now she’s the fish, being swept along. Knowing she’s Margo. Not knowing our names. Not knowing she’s 94. 

She drinks water, sits and thinks, then brings the empty glass to her lips: “Thanks for calling. It was nice to talk to you.” 

Later, her gnarled hands glide up and down the piano, remembering things her mind cannot. She stares at “Edelweiss,” and plays “Climb Every Mountain.”

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“Marriage is hot,” I tell my husband. “Sex is super hot.”

“How about balls?”

“Sorry,” I say. “Balls are frigid.”

I’m addicted to Pimantle (and Wordle, Quordle, Octordle, Semantle, and Scrabble). It’s like playing Marco Polo, only with words (like “ghost” or “furniture”). The warmer you get, the closer you are to guessing. I dismissed the Reddit reviewer’s warning: “Hate this game. Pretty sure I’ll play it every day.” Now I’m hooked, too.

Is it “queer”? Three flames means I’m 8 words away! How about “gay”?

The app rejoices: “You did it! Flameo, Hotman!”

Dopamine! So sweet. Until it’s gone.

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On Easter morning, as breakfast wound down and the kids fidgeted in their booster seats admiring their as-yet-empty baskets, my Catholic mother-in-law decided it was time to teach them about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. It took a while, but she’s a great storyteller. They hung on every word.

“Three days later,” she said dramatically, “his friends went to the cave and discovered that big rock had been moved out of the way and… Guess what? He wasn’t there!”

They scrunched up their faces, thinking intently. Then one said, “So… is that cave where the bunny hid the eggs?”

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My friend and I were hiking, talking about life and taking pictures of wildflowers, when we saw a frayed rope dangling from a tree.

I smiled. She didn’t. 

I saw a swing. She saw a noose. 

I’m white. She’s Black. This is our America. Everyone should get to feel safe, but I understand why she doesn’t.

In 232 years, 108 of 115 Supreme Court justices have been white men. How did that lack of diversity impact their decisions? 

My friend’s mother never got to see a Black woman on the Supreme Court, but she will. It’s progress we both welcome.

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Zhoom… zhoom… zhoom… zhoom…

Next door, my 24-year old neighbor has been erging since 4 AM—2 hours on, 2 hours off—training to row a 4-woman boat (with my daughter) from SF to Honolulu.

She’ll stop after 14 hours (@100,000 meters). In June, when Title IX turns 50, they’ll row like that 24/7.

Their extensive preparations remind me of parenthood: imagine, commit, prepare, get support, manage what’s controllable, and accept what’s not.

• Controllable: fitness; team-building; learning about safety, navigation, communications, rescue operations, desalinators; and organizing support (coaches, nutritionist, a weather navigator).
• Uncontrollable: weather, waves, life.

Stay tuned.

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Sometimes, when the world feels too heavy — prickly, erratic, unsafe, and infinitely inhumane — I retreat and hunker down in my cave, reading, writing, doomscrolling, and wishing things were different. Other times, I heed the call to venture out, to participate in the flow of life. That’s when I follow Mr. Rogers’ advice: “Look for the helpers.” Often, I discover that people I don’t even know have already scratched a passage through the thicket, so others can keep moving forward along their own, messy paths. I stop. Look. Breathe. Listen. There’s light up ahead, and all around are signs of spring. 

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Backpacking for the first time at 19, I collapsed in a snowbank, soaked and exhausted, curled into a ball, and closed my eyes: I just need a little nap.

Drifting asleep, I pictured my ex-boyfriend smirking. He’d told my friend: “She’ll never make it.”

Asshole.

I forced myself awake, struggled to my feet, heaved on my pack, and kept going. 

The next morning, I watched a glorious sunrise from a mountaintop and gave thanks for the snarky comment that probably kept me from freezing to death. There’s nothing like being told, “You can’t,” to make someone say, “Really? Watch me.”

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Friend: Where do you go to church?

Me: Here.

Friend: No, I mean, where do you go to talk to God?

Me: Right here. I rarely talk to God…but God sometimes talks to me.

Friend: Why don’t you go to church?

Me: When I went to church, people told me I’d burn in hell. I was 5. When I’m here, God tells a different story.

Friend: What story does God tell you?

Me: God tells me to keep on loving everyone I can. The people focused on Hell — when there is so much loving to be done — are already there.

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Prompt: 100 words about “kissing.” I struggled. I’m sorry.

2/28/22: “Kateryna Suharokova kisses her newborn son Makar in the basement of a maternity hospital converted into a medical ward and used as a bomb shelter in Mariupol, Ukraine.” (AP)

3/3/22: “A refugee kisses her daughter inside a tent at the Romanian-Ukrainian border.” (AP)

3/5/22: “I kissed the kids goodbye… I was the only one going the other way.” — Sergiy Stakhovsky (Sky News)

3/6/22: “His mother unfolds the blanket, gently touches her [18 month old] dead son’s cheek and kisses him.” (Sky News)

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I was 11 when we moved into an aging farmhouse in the woods. That day, my brother climbed an apple tree onto the roof with his violin, and played the first two lines — lively, yet melancholy — from Fiddler on a Roof.

To our amazement, the next two lines echoed off the mountainside. Downstream, a stranger with a trumpet was welcoming us to the neighborhood. 

Let’s get to know THAT neighbor, I thought. (And we did.)

I’m thinking of Tevye today: “You may ask, ‘Why do we stay up there if it’s so dangerous?’ We stay because Anatevka is our home.”

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“Fuck!”

I ran outside in my socks.

“I can’t take it anymore!” she screamed, hurling her phone at the pavement, then punching a telephone pole. 

“Excuse me, Ma’am. Can I help you?”

“I don’t know. Can you?”

She screamed about trees dying, gun violence, homelessness, her landlord, her mother… “I’m a worthless piece of shit.”

“You’re not.”

“What would you know about rejection?”

“I’m HIV-positive.” 

She stopped screaming. I quoted Desiderata: 

“You are a child of the universe

no less than the trees and the stars;

you have a right to be here.”

Then we held each other and wept.

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I love watching wild clouds of shorebirds, a tumbling, swirling murmuration, as they disappear over there, then reappear unexpectedly nearby as undulating ribbons: a double helix.

I wish people could twist and turn, transform, that nimbly. Cars, too. But a zygote waits 30 hours before it splits in two. And yesterday, when that car appeared out of nowhere, we couldn’t move fast enough, and it couldn’t stop. 

I’m OK. Dan hit his head, but the ER doc says he’s ok, too. Our car is not. 

I’d rather watch a murmuration than be one…

Rather be a murmuration than be nothing.

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Vacations are hard for gardeners. How could Dan leave Basil, at such a tender age? 

Gently cradling the tiny bambino, Dan said, “He’s coming with us.” 

We took turns driving 1,000 miles to Arches National Park. Seated on the dashboard, Basil was good company. He never fussed. Never said, “Are we there yet?” When Dan swerved to miss a jackrabbit, I caught Basil. When I slammed on the breaks, Dan lunged to protect him from the windshield. 

Basil survived the trip, and returned home two inches taller. 

After all that, I felt a little remorseful when we ate him.

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My father-in-law Bob parented his 11 children, and dozens more. A loving advisor, he’d say, “Don’t burn your bridges” (before you screwed up), and “Oh, well” (after).

He defied mortality until, without warning, he accepted fate, soul packed, ready to go. When I spoon fed him ice chips, he smiled. “More?”

“No,” he whispered. “Gin and tonic.”

His family surrounded his bed, saying “I love you”, telling stories, and singing “Amen” (substituting “Oh Well”). Before his eyes shut, they twinkled. The sun does that too, a shimmer of color as it sets: “I’m not gone. Just on the other side.”

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Broken. Hearts. Budgets. Families. Bodies. Promises. Dreams.

Walking by The Bay, my friend and I admire art born of broken things: mosaics, tree chandeliers, a 20-foot goddess sculpture, arms outstretched, offering a hug. Or praying.

In a thicket, we discover a House for Secrets and read:

I never told anyone …

People think …, but I’m really …

How can I go on?

My friend’s brain is broken. (Fucking tumor.) Heart too.

She says, “Let’s paint affirmation cards — like you send me — for here. That people can keep.”

You can be broken and be a healer.

Both can be true.

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Sixty reasons to wake tomorrow: Sunrise. Gotta pee. Husband. Kids. Partners. Grandkids. Mom. Brothers. In-laws. Old Friends. New Friends. Kids’ Friends. Neighbors. Colleagues. Activists. Celebrations. Memorials. Support Groups. Writing Salons. All dogs. Some cats. Fuzzy socks. Sunshine. Chocolate. Voting. Hot showers. Poetry. Painting. Biscuits. PJs. Books. Music. Nature walks. Plumbing. Rainbows. Refrigeration. Apples. Trees. Radio. Sunsets. Laughter. Tears. Redwoods. Waterfalls. Writing. Listening. Learning. Affirmations. Butterflies. Movies. Maps. Podcasts. Daydreams. Lightening. Surviving birth. Reading Mom’s old stories. Hugs. (If vaxed. And tested.) Reaching 30, then 50 (sick, but kicking). Birthdays. (I’m Turning 60 tomorrow.) Another chance to say, “I love you.”