It snowed at the Fiddler’s Convention, and at one point my mother tried to skip a page in Snow White. I was three, but I knew Snow White, and there was no skipping a page on me. It was the first camping trip I remember. I don’t know how true memory can be at that age. In my mind we are in lines of cars along dirt, camped out in tents. Looking back, the tents had to have been somewhere else, and we must have hung out in the parking lot where the action was.

And action there was. Would you imagine lazy days at a Fiddler’s Convention? I have seen one picture so many times that the image is ingrained in my memory as if I experienced it – a man dancing down the lane – hands clapping, feet stomping, Afro waving – full Jimi Hendrix glory in a Canadian tuxedo.

We left because it started snowing, and as my mom tells it, I was sorely disappointed. I really liking bedtime stories in the tent. When you read the whole thing and didn’t try to cheat me out of a page full of Bashful and Doc, for goodness sake.

We camped a lot, state parks and the like, but the main place I remember is Stumpy Pond, which sounds like an ideal location for a Dr. Seuss book. The Kersnaggles would live there. One arrived at the boat launch at Stumpy Pond and, ideally, launched one’s boat with all gear and set out to find an island. Any island. There were many. The Edwards clan launched a canoe, complete with Doberman.

One might say it’s a labor of love to carry one’s family across a pond in a canoe to locate a deserted island.

One might also say it’s fucking crazy.

We launched in a mist, on the trip that is the most memorable to me, gear and me and my dad and my sister and Rascal the Doberman. I was at the bow and I remember singing “All I Need is a Miracle” in my head for the entire trip. The sides of the boat damn near leveled with the water. We found an island and pulled up to rocks, and a cottonmouth sunning. I jumped the cottonmouth and helped pull the canoe in, and so began our adventure. 

Everywhere we went we had a crew. I don’t remember doing things as a family of four when I was a kid – I always remember groups of us. On this trip I remember Jeff and Marie, my cousin Ariel, and a girl named Shannon. Now Shannon must have been attached to someone, and I’m assuming that two adults came with her.

I assume this because single parents were so rare in my world back then. I think I had just finished third grade. I think it would have stood out to me if Shannon’s parents were divorced. Instead, the thing that stands out is that Shannon asked me what grade I had just finished, as it was summer, and then asked me the craziest question. 

“Did you pass?” she asked.

Did I pass? Did I pass! The question was more like did I get all A’s or A+’s. I was completely clueless that other children didn’t learn the way I did. I was dumbfounded. But I recovered.

“Yes,” I said, “did you?”

And I don’t have the first clue what she said. This was the first time I had, to my knowledge, come into contact with someone who was different from me academically. With all the hullabaloo today about keeping kids’ performance levels private, I’m here to tell you I was nobody to worry about. While I remember differences being obvious in first grade, it’s clear that in third grade I was clueless. I regarded Shannon, with her wide-set, almost Fetal Alcohol Syndrome looking blue eyes, and straw straight blonde hair as a bit of a curiosity for the rest of the trip.

My parents’ other friends were present for a lot of our travels. My dad loved Jeff, and my mom loved Marie. Jeff ate chicken bones every time we barbecued, and would drink until he fell down. Marie was soft and sweet and kind, a natural mother for her husband. She gave me and my sister our first diamonds – tiny twinkling stud earrings that we wore for years.

Ariel was there. He was often along with us. I don’t remember Joan being along, just him. He loved to lead me on adventures around the island, back up the hills and into the woods. Then – poof! – he’d disappear. Right when I reached the point of hysteria that occurs when a little kid is lost in the woods, he’d jump out at me. I remember relief flooding through me.

“Why’re you crying, jerk? I’m right here.”

It was always important to man up in front of Ariel. “I was just kidding,” I’d sniffle.

I was fishing on afternoon off the banks and got a snag. I can still picture my fishing pole, it was short and silver and black, with a compact silver reel.

“I’m snagged!” I yelled back toward camp.

Nothing.

“Hello? I’m snagged!” I didn’t know how to work the line free like the adults did. But this was a time when I was invisible. I set the pole down and walked back to camp.

I grabbed Jeff and walked him back down to the bank, where he picked up the rod, worked it for a second, and began reeling it in. And I looked up, and I saw tension at the tip of the rod.

“Did, did I catch something?” I asked.

“You sure did, little girl.”

“A bream?” I knew all about bream. I caught them in the lake and we fried them up and they were bony and so not worth it

“Bigger. I think you caught yourself a large mouth bass.”

A loud mouth bass? I started jumping up and down. I’d caught a real fish! I couldn’t wait to tell my dad. He’d be so proud!

Later in the trip we had a storm. I don’t mean that it rained. I mean a storm. We were all in three person tents except for Jeff and Marie, who had a big five-person for themselves and their dog. I remember someone trying to put the fire out with an industrial sized can of baked beans when the wind kicked up. And then our tents started blowing over. Minus Shannon and her assumed family, the rest of the party ended up in the Marr tent.

The tent was for five, and even they would have been packed in Jenga-style. We managed four adults, two of whom were snoring off liquor, one tween, two girls, two dogs, and a turtle Ariel snuck in. We were most cautious about the turtle, and what bothered me most was the snoring, not the lightning. The air stank of feet and wet dog. 

We packed up to leave the next day, and I remember walking in the woods back on the mainland with Ariel and my sister and Shannon, just hiking up rocks and through underbrush, climbing a hill like the country kids that we were. Then all of the sudden Ariel grabbed my arm and shushed me. He pointed, and my eyes followed the trajectory of his finger. 

It was an owl, a huge gray and white owl about three stories up in the branches of a tree. And he was staring at us. I don’t know how I could tell, but his head was turned backwards to watch us. Just then, he turned his head away and came back around to face us on the other side. It was one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen.

“We’ve got to get the fuck out of here,” Ariel whispered. “They’re mean.”

Here I’d been watching the ground for snakes. It was hard to imagine that this thing of beauty could be a danger to me. I suppose that’s one of life’s most difficult lessons to learn.

Our society is based on so many constructs, on the collective belief that things mean something…money, laws, religion, ethics. In many ways right now we are governing ourselves. I thought about this as I was driving to work yesterday.

There was no one on the road. Usually I have twenty cars in my line of sight. Yesterday I had three. We were all going seventy in a fifty-five, which is standard for route 9. There’s usually that one jackass who flies by at 80, in a Camry or Tercel clearly not made for that purpose. That person didn’t show up yesterday. And I thought to myself, “we could all be that person today”. Who’s going to pull us over at a time like this? The cops don’t have PPE. Is speeding really a priority?

And just then I passed a cop parked in the median. And we all flew by at 70, instinctively braking too late and insultingly, like we were going to fool Dad when we got home late reeking like rum. And do you know what the cop did? He flashed his headlights at us. To warn us about him. Like we all do about him as well. I laughed out loud in my car. We had gotten the “don’t do this again – I’m very disappointed” from Dad.

And it made me think about the spirit that I’m seeing for the most part these days, that we’re all in this together. We are separate, we are isolated, but we are sharing and supporting – in stores and on mom’s pages and on the phone. In any way we can. For the most part we are banding together against a common enemy. It’s heartening, especially considering how very heartbreakingly divided we’ve been. I’ve been sharing it with my children. Finn is most touched by this. He is my sensitive child – the one who once said that he believes that there aren’t bad people, just good people doing bad things because they’re trying to survive.

It also made me think of a line from a sign by Jesse Malin, that references “a town called “resume speed””. I grew up in that town. Lake Wylie got a fast food restaurant when I was in high school. It got a stop light when I went to college. It never got its own postal code, sharing it always with the larger and older nearby town of Clover – “the town with “love” in the middle”.

I am grateful to say that I loved growing up there. I didn’t actively appreciate it, but I loved the beauty and adventure of hiking King’s Mountain, I loved that I could build forts in my own woods if I avoided the chiggers, I loved that my backyard had its own four-wheeler track. In middle and junior high school I loved the Rescue Squad dances, where they’d pull all of the ambulances out of the bay and set up a dee-jay and disco ball and let loose a bunch of ten to thirteen year olds to learn how to dance like the Holy Spirit was no longer between them and decide that French kissing was no longer disgusting. We’d spend or our quarters on soda and eat Little Debbie’s with reckless abandon. Though this was the South in the eighties. People did that anyway.

I loved cruising the railroad tracks in downtown Clover in high school (there wasn’t much to do). I loved hanging out at a place that was, and we literally called it, “The End of the Road”, at the end of a gravel road that my friend Jennifer lived on. See above – there wasn’t much to do. I loved parties at the guy Chris’s house in Charlotte who was older, and bought us alcohol, and we once played a round of liquor golf with a different drink in every room. That ended badly.

I loved my job at Harris Teeter, the local grocery store. I made $4.25 and I couldn’t believe they paid me. I remember trying to get the highest items per minute on the scanner and knowing the codes for produce and the things that often wouldn’t scan. I still know bananas are 4011. I still know the ten digit code for the store brand two percent milk. I have a friend who remembered my mom’s phone number four years later from when you had to write it on your check if it wasn’t included. That was thirty years ago, when we still had some expectation of privacy.

I loved skipping school for Lollapalooza in the second week of senior year. Do they still do that? I think it’s been replaced by much cooler festivals where they burn things and take ayahuasca. I remember eating popcorn chicken with my friends at the KFC in the late morning hours before we went, basking in a parent-approved day off, prepping to see Eddie Vedder under the sun and, later, Anthony Keidis’s voice break out through the darkness. The Jesus and Mary Chain was the angst that all of us felt, pent up teenage emotions that conflicted and wouldn’t learn to live peacefully for years, if ever. Ice Cube voiced something that a bunch of white kids from South Carolina could never understand, but that didn’t stop us from fumbling the words and trying.

I had dark times, and I had times when I grew up on fire with life. I have a somewhat eidetic memory, a blessing and a curse, and I can still feel the emotions of all of those days.

I wonder what our children will feel about this time. We didn’t know anything like this. We are the free-range generation, the latchkey kids, the children of the Challenger. Our children will have COVID, global warming, a political divisiveness rarely seen before. We are a day late and a dollar short on many things for them. Let’s show them in this crisis that we can stand together while apart. Let’s stay connected while not physically connecting. Let’s hold each other up without hugging. Let’s touch each other’s hearts, even while we cannot touch. Let’s show them we’re unstoppable.

Welcome back to the world’s most vacant blog. I haven’t written anything on here in years. But, I just thought to myself, now is the ideal time to start writing. With time and kids on hand, I should be chock full of thoughts and anecdotes. Ella just told us riddles while sitting on top of the Pilot. My neighbors just waved at me while they passed in their car. They’ve never waved. We’ve lived here three and a half years. I am constantly writing and re-writing my own eulogy. That’s what I’ve got going on.

Also, since I haven’t done this in years, you’re going to have to forgive me if it looks wonky. I can’t tell if I just started a new paragraph or a new page. It’s going to look very dramatic if I started a new page. Here’s hoping it was a paragraph.

Oh, good. I hit return and it’s a paragraph. Anyway, I’ve always been convinced I would die young. I guess that’s not right. I’ve always been convinced I would never really live. I grew up thinking I didn’t deserve to fall in love, get married, buy a home, have kids. A lot of this had to do with being ostracized when I was in eighth grade. Live a year where you’re alternately hated or invisible and see if it’s possible to believe in the future.

I did get married, albeit to the wrong person. I did buy a home, albeit in the wrong town. I did have two children, and that I nailed. I have two dynamic, beatific children. The Avett Brothers put it best – “I love you, and I’m proud of you both, in so many different ways”.

And I did fall in love, albeit when I was forty and long thought that chance had passed. I fell in love like falling asleep, slowly and at the same time all at once. It took a decade and a half. It took a sideways glance.

And so here I am, writing because I am wondering if COVID will kill me. Those of you who know me know I smoked for many years. I can’t have the sturdiest lungs. One thing I have going for me is luck. I am the most fortunate person I know. I have walked through hell and kept walking, I have dropped my basket and picked it up, I have lived when I should have died. I am here.

And I’ll be back soon.

Have you ever had someone just totally come along and do your work for you? A writer for the New Yorker just did exactly that, and I’ve got to give a serious shout-out to my friend Basia for passing it on to me.

Rachel Monroe, in the October 9th issue of the New Yorker, wrote an article called “How Essential Oils Became the Cure for Our Age of Anxiety”. While I think I may have to argue the title, the article has everything I was looking to know about the essential oil industry, a lot of which are conclusions I had reached on my own that it was reassuring to have confirmed.

I’ve been diffusing essential oils for about a month now. My kids hate them. I can’t stand patchouli and eucalyptus smells like a cold. Cinnamon reminds me of stores that sell wicker and musty fake wreaths. Other than those, I’m pretty open. I have noticed that peppermint perks me up in the same way that chewing gum and toothpaste kind of wake up your mouth.

But I didn’t seek out essential oils to find a cure for anything, and I think that may be key. The quote that stands out to me from the article is from the husband of a woman who sells oils. He talks about how research into what essential oils do is not necessarily important or understood, because with his wife, and with most people, “what’s real to them is the experience they’re having”. The valid research out there is minimal, and the proven results marginal, but that’s not what you’ll hear from representatives from the two main essential oil companies. I’ll get to them. What I think is important is that there are different kinds of people in this world – and two very distinct kinds are those who continually seek and those who find.

EO (God, I didn’t want to use that but “essential oils” is a lot of typing) advocates are finders. The belief that something will work is sometimes as powerful as the actually mechanics of it that cause change – the old mind-over-matter. I happen to not believe that rubbing a few drops of grapefruit oil on my stomach is going to make my cramps go away, so, you know what? It’s not. There may be some truth to it – but I guarantee it’s not scientifically proven. What I’ll also guarantee is that if you concentrate on grapefruit oil really hard you’ll pay less attention to your cramps, and that, eventually, believe it or not, cramps go away. You can thank the grapefruit oil if you want, but these weren’t the same cramps you had in junior high, right? Separate set of cramps? See? They come and go independently of grapefruit.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m fascinated by natural remedies. When Ayla left the Clan of the Cave Bear and grew up to become a medicine woman/hunter/hero for all mankind, I was enthralled by her use of plants and herbs. But I don’t think they’re the be-all and end-all, and I don’t think we should imbue them with qualities they don’t possess. Please don’t tell people that EO’s are going to cure their cancer. That’s just fucking mean. I’ll buy that they may mitigate some of the symptoms of cancer. But the minute someone who markets an unregulated product as a cure or a treatment they are crossing a line.

Because we are living in an age of anxiety. And I would posit that EO’s are dealing with anxiety in the same way that they deal with cancer – by addressing symptoms instead of the disease. Sure, I can breathe some rosemary if I’m blue, and maybe every now and then that’s fine, but if I’m blue every day then I ought to figure out why I’m blue. I can diffuse lavender to help myself sleep, or I can address what’s keeping me up at night. I can rub bergamot on my stomach for indigestion – or I can change my damn diet.

In some ways, EO’s may perpetuate anxiety. I have a friend who has been suggesting that I purchase EO’s from her, and she wrote me a letter explaining why I needed to do this. Did you know that 95% of cancers are caused by environmental factors? Like products in our homes? Of course I care about my children and myself – why would I expose us to these things? I should start making these products out of essential oils. I need these oils!

What I don’t need is one more thing in this world telling me I’m inadequate. We face enough pressure and scrutiny as moms, as women, as people, without an added stressor, without another bar against which to measure ourselves. And this brings me back to the husband’s point – that the only thing that is real is one’s own experience. We all have different needs and notions, and we should all be allowed to seek and find on our own. My issue with EO’s is not the oils. It’s the companies. It’s something or someone telling us what we need or what we should experience. For something that’s supposed to be all natural, it seems pretty fucking contrived.