When my friend’s mom was in the hospital, I prayed to whatever higher beings are out there, asking them to guide her gently into the afterlife. I prayed for my friend, for her grief to be manageable, for her to find some peace in the transition, and for her family, her father, her children. I pictured her mother in my mind being greeted by her loved ones and held. I pictured her watching over her grandchildren from beyond. It wasn’t something I’ve done before but it felt absolutely necessary.

On the day of the funeral, I make the 30-minute trek to the place where it all began, where we met, my friends and I—us—and by default, where we met each other’s parents. I couldn’t think of what to listen to in the car. What soundtrack befits the occasion of watching your best friend grieve? I drive through the city that carries one thousand memories. Each road is akin to entering a haunted house, the ghosts of adolescence peeking around every street corner.

The service is in a Catholic church. It is behind the high school where we did donuts in my friend’s blue Volvo, Marlboro Lights hanging out the window as we shrieked in delight. The main road to get there takes me past an old boyfriend’s neighborhood and I wonder what he might be doing now. Is he still living in that house, smoking his bong and playing video games into the wee hours? I can see the specters of Honda Civics and Acuras and Jeeps, the cars our parents or waitressing or drug dealing money bought us, following each other ten cars deep to wherever the next house party might be that night. I suddenly crave a cigarette for the first time in years.

An onyx hearse is pulled in front of the chapel. I park the car and don’t bother checking my makeup, it will be gone soon. Why did I wear it? I realize I forgot tissues. I take my time walking through the parking lot and look up to see one of us coming out. She heads toward me looking distraught. I’m relieved to see her, that I don’t have to enter that giant coffin alone. We hug. This really sucks, she says, her voice breaking. I know, I say.

I haven’t seen my friend in person since her mom died. I dropped flowers and a bag of random edible items on her doorstep a few days after, all of it feeling trite in the face of such a gargantuan loss, unsure of how to tread, not wanting to disturb her grief. Our group text chain is quiet. The rest of us talk on the side, wondering how we can show up for her. We haven’t been through this before. What would she want? None of us know. How can we not know? We get intermittent updates and hang on to every word, decyphering how she might be feeling and if it’s safe to show up unannounced with dinner for her family. Is she even home or is she with her dad? The helplessness feels awful. We give her space. We check in. We give her space. We check in. And now we are here, at the funeral.

I see her before she sees me. She is standing bravely near the doorway dressed in black, greeting guests, handing out programs for the service. Her husband stands solemnly beside her; a movie scene, everything happening in slow motion. The moment I’ve been dreading and longing for is here. I can finally touch her, embrace her, cry with her. I try not to linger over her too long even though I don’t want to let her go for a million years. I shuffle aside.

Within the vast chapel, the rest of us sit together, my other friends’ parents in attendance as well. It is sobering. They will die someday too; these parents who cared for us wayward teens. The parents who let us raid their pantries, who let us play music too loud as we danced around their living rooms, the parents who caught us smoking cigarettes on the sides of their houses and stealing liquor from their cabinets, the parents who watched us graduate, passing the tassels from right to left, sighing with relief that we actually did it. We don’t like to think about losing them. Now we are confronted head-on.

As far as Catholic masses go, it is a lovely service. The ritual of it all is comforting. Incense wafts through the pews. We stand, we sit, we stand, we sit. We whisper to each other about whether we can take the eucharist. How Catholic do you have to be? I am not baptized. I stay seated.

I hold the funeral program in my hand, their family portrait, the one I took at a nearby park when I was newly pregnant, printed on the back page. I keep my dark glasses on for the entirety, partially because they are prescription, partially because of how vulnerable it feels to have tears stream steadily amongst all of these people. I watch my friend as she sits next to her grieving father, rubbing the back of his wool suit jacket. I watch her daughters, still young, unsure and confused, one clutching her stuffed rabbit to self-soothe. I watch her nephews carry the coffin. I weep.

Standing in this room, witnessing my friend and her family in the tangles of their sorrow, I am enveloped by a heightened awareness—to be here is a privilege. I am overcome by the sacredness of this moment. What a privilege it is, to know someone so well, to be invited into their life, to witness their grief, such a vulnerable thing. A thing that most of us have no words for. A thing most of us avoid talking about. A thing most of us avoid showing to others. And here I am watching, participating, sharing in one of the most tender moments in my friend’s life. A song of farewell carries us out of the chapel. As we spill into the daylight, I am humbled.

My husband’s vasectomy cost $150. Well, $115 if you count the $35 refund check that showed up in the mail this week because our insurance overpaid a portion of the original bill.

The entire procedure took less than an hour and he was sent away with a parting gift, a small pocket knife, and told not to do anything strenuous for a week. I was given no parting gift after my birth, besides our child of course, and cautioned not to lift anything over 8 to 10 pounds. My son was just a few ounces shy of eleven. Hmpf.

I have had three surgeries for endometriosis, the symptoms of which began at puberty and weren’t diagnosed until after my second surgery at the age of 35. They had to suspend my ovaries to prevent additional scar tissue and because my surgery was done out of state, the external stitches were removed at home. As my husband pulled them out, I turned green and nearly passed out from the sensation. I have also had one unplanned c-section (see above, re 11 lb baby). The cost of those surgeries, though supplemented by insurance, totaled somewhere in the tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket. If we’d had no insurance, forget it. I’d currently have a GoFundMe page trying to raise $200k to get us out of bankruptcy.

I had to listen to my husband complain about his aching balls for two whole weeks. It took every ounce of patience to find compassion for him. I think I did okay. After all, I do know what it’s like to have your reproductive organs poked and prodded. He would probably disagree…

Each of my surgeries required, at minimum, a month of recovery, massive hormonal interruptions, a lifetime of chronic pain caused by scar tissue and bodily overcompensation, and years of physical and psychological therapy to combat said chronic pain along with the emotional toll of it all.

The other day, my friend was looking at bulletproof backpacks for her daughters. Actually considering them. I wondered if it’s safe to take my son to the local parade this summer. You know, because of all the madmen with guns in this country. My husband and I opted to enroll him in a private school we can’t afford, partially because the odds of him being shot and killed there seem like they would be lower.

People ask when we are having another baby. To have a healthy child and to have survived childbirth in a country with the highest maternal death rate in the developed world (amplify that by three times if you are a Black mother), these things alone feel like a divine miracle. When I look at my beautiful son through exhausted eyes, I can’t imagine sharing myself with another person the way I do with him. Having one already feels like a stretch—spiritually, physically, financially, and emotionally (see above, re madmen with guns). Besides, to me, he is 38 pounds of perfection. His giggle sends me into a cosmic realm of happiness I never knew existed. Why, exactly, would I need another?

Today is Mother’s Day. Before we go to the beach, I will dig around for a bathing suit that doesn’t accentuate the shelf of my c-section scar. I will lovingly load up the car full of sand toys and beach chairs and sunscreen and water and snacks and towels while my husband straps our son into his car seat and fiddles with the radio. We will buy him a large chocolate ice cream cone, plus a couple of fancy beers for ourselves, thanks to the $35 vasectomy refund check. It will be perfect.

This past summer, I applied for an artist residency, something I’ve never seriously considered before. Calling myself an artist, a writer, or a photographer when I haven’t shown anyone outside of my inner circle my work felt like a stretch; an icky, gooey mush of extreme vulnerability. The audacity! I submitted my application anyway.

After birthing a child and losing my cushy arts job in 2020, I was unmoored. It seemed that everything tying my identity to my previous self had washed away. As I meditated on the next chapter, the call to storytelling consumed me. Since becoming a mother, I am more creatively inspired than ever before, but with the least amount of time to myself to date. Turns out that raising a human is an-all consuming role. Who knew?

A particular story has been asking to be told for a few years now. I longed for the space to write and think and create with no distractions; no one pulling on my leg, no one asking me what’s for dinner, or fighting tooth and nail to avoid naptime. I saw the open call for applications and that a) they accepted emerging, mid-career, and established artists (definitely emerging category), and b) it was just a quick ferry ride across the Salish Sea from my home. If I really missed my son, I wouldn’t be too far. What did I have to lose? The worst they could say was “No.”

And this is exactly what they said when I opened my email a month later, “Thank you for your application to Vashon Artist Residency. Our 2023 selection panel reviewed all applications and made their recommendations. Unfortunately, we will not be awarding you a residency at this time.”

I was disappointed but not surprised. I didn’t have an extensive CV or website displaying much of my own content. The work I’d sent along was one chapter from the “shitty first draft” (current official title) of my novel. I carried on, squeezing in an hour of writing here or an hour there, between contract work, childcare drop-off, laundry, and dinner. Sometimes I wrote in the evenings after my son fell asleep but yearned for the space to dive in for more than an hour or two at a time.

On a Friday morning in February, I received a text from a name that didn’t immediately ring a bell, telling me there was a time-sensitive email in my inbox that I should check and respond to. I opened my Gmail to see a message from Vashon Artist Residency. One of the artists who had been selected for the upcoming cohort had fallen out last minute and they were looking to fill the space. Did I think I could join the cohort for 3.5 weeks? The residency started in three weeks.

I began composing my reply, something along the lines of, “Thank you but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it work with a toddler and full-time job on such short notice but I appreciate you thinking of me!” I stopped before I hit send. Maybe I could make it work? What if they can’t find anyone else and they let me come for just part of the time? Or maybe on long weekends? I couldn’t just let this go so easily but the logistics felt impossible. I called my husband, “This is crazy, we can’t make this work, right?”

“No, wait. You have to do this. We’ll figure it out. Let’s call my mom and see if she can come help,” he told me. That’s why we’re married.

We have a three-year-old toddler that I haven’t been away from for more than two nights. I have two jobs and people who are dependent on me. It felt selfish to take time away for myself, for my writing. I emailed the residency back, “If you’re open to me coming for the last two weeks, I think I may be able to cobble together childcare and get enough of my work done in advance to take vacation time. What do you think?”

My contact at the residency was agreeable and my mother-in-law gave us an enthusiastic response that yes, she would be happy to come. The last thing I needed to do was make sure my boss would okay taking leave on such short notice. Thankfully, I work with people whom I love and respect, who uplift artists, and who know me and see me; people who know I’ve been quietly writing on the side. I received another enthusiastic, “Yes! I’m so excited for you. We’ll make it work!” I was going to Vashon.

I scrambled to prepare for the time away and as I boarded the 20-minute ferry across Puget Sound, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was going to call me and tell me they’d made a mistake. Sorry! Wrong Hilary altogether. You don’t actually belong here. I was a fraud. When I arrived, everyone was going to see it on me, the scarlet letter “F” emblazoned on my forehead. My heartbeat sped up as I unpacked my luggage from the trunk of my car. Was it silly that I’d brought a box full of photos and journals and favorite books and crystals, things to set up on my writing desk? I wasn’t a writer, really. I’m not even supposed to be here.

Inside the skylit kitchen, I gazed onto Quartermaster Harbor, kayaks floating by, gulls sweeping into the sound, and breezy clouds painting the bright sky. A dream. The woman cleaning the house was there, and as she swept nearby I couldn’t help but sense that I knew her. She looked so familiar. “Hilary?” she looked up at me quizzically and then I placed her. She had been married to someone who’d been part of the group of friends that I grew up with. To see her in that space was completely unexpected, like a little wink from the universe. “Are you here for the residency? What kind of art do you make?”

“Oh, um.” Just say it, you are a writer, you take photos. “I’m a writer and a photographer.”

“Wow. That’s really cool. By the way, I think you have the best room in the house, it’s down in the cottage.”

I don’t know if it’s the best room but it had everything I have ever fantasized about for my ultimate writing space, a large desk long enough to spread out all my notebooks and papers and books and inspirational talismans; a gas fireplace for cozy ambiance; a comfortable bed with a small bedside table and lamp for late night reading; and french doors that open out onto the floating dock, water lapping up and down the shore throughout the day. I squealed like a schoolgirl. I’m not supposed to be here!

The other artists in residence, Rashelle, a singer and musician with a natural gift for playing any instrument she picks up and an endless bubbling of creative ideas and melodies flowing out of her; Alaina, a mixed-media visual artist whose intricate studies leave the viewer moved by the wonders of everyday life; Diane, a fellow writer and photographer on a mystic quest to capture her personal trials on the pages of a graphic novel. I loved them all. It took a week before I confessed to them that their names held deep significance to me and to the novel I was writing.

I got settled. I did some writing. I went to yoga in a barn owned by an 83-year-old qigong teacher. I went for a long walk on the beach with an enthusiastic geologist and his dog Sophie, who taught me about the formation of the island and the many variations of stones and sediment found on the shore. I went dancing at a bar that felt more like my grandmother’s living room if she owned a speakeasy during prohibition and listened to house music. But I’m not supposed to be here.

One morning, I woke up with a bout of anxiety. I missed my son. The writing was coming too slowly. I was lazing away the mornings, taking too many breaks. What if I came home with nothing to show for my greedy time away? I questioned everything. I decided to do what always helps clear my head, go for a walk. It was a beautiful morning with clear skies and birds chirping, the florescence of spring whispering through the air.

I headed to Point Robinson Lighthouse. I hadn’t visited yet and a lighthouse piqued my interest. I took a turn at the bottom of the short path to the south end of the park and sat down on a set of wooden steps leading to an old barn-like structure. Mount Rainier hugged the coastline across the water from where I settled. People were chatting excitedly and pointing in the same direction. A woman with a camera and telephoto lens snapped images. She looked familiar but I couldn’t immediately place her.

“What’s everyone looking at? Are there whales?” I asked her.

“Yes, a pod of orcas. They are hunting out by the point over there.” She nodded toward the water.

Off in the distance, I saw them, onyx fins rolling smoothly through the sea. They were far but still close enough that I could just make out the sounds of the water emerging from their spouts.

“Oh my gosh! Wow!” I tried to capture them by zooming the camera lens on my phone, wishing I had binoculars. They swam for a while and then dove under. When they didn’t come back up I figured they were deep down hunting, probably heading away. It had been magical just to see them from afar. I sat in satisfaction, staring at the mountain.

When I looked up from my heavy gaze, I noticed that my fellow beach-goers were scurrying across the sand and stones in the opposite direction. The orcas had resurfaced just near the shore of the point and were headed north. I jumped up and ran faster than I had in years, huffing and puffing but not allowing myself to lose steam. I arrived at the other side of the park just in time to catch the pod in full force as they cruised by. The sonic sounds of their movement filled the air, the spouting of their breath a mighty mist overhead as they moved on.

I sat on a log in stunned silence, eyes welling with tears. A beautiful and spontaneous gift, the mystical sighting I didn’t know I needed. It was then I placed the photographer from earlier, who was now camped out with her gear to my left. We had emailed a few times recently, as she was a guest on the finale of the podcast I work on. I introduced myself. “Do you live on the island?”

“No,” she said. “My internet went out and I’ve always wanted to catch the whales so I took an early ferry over. Do you live here?”

“No!” I replied incredulously. I started to tell her that I wasn’t supposed to be here but I stopped myself, smiling instead as I turned back toward the water.

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