Grand Plans

I had grand plans after posting about Greece and Italy.

I wanted to write about Montauk, specifically the scene at Ditch Plains at four o’clock on a hot Friday. About how I bought a surfer and meal and refused his offer to repay me on Venmo because—like many other people who look like me—I didn’t want him to think I was the stereotypical broke-black-woman. About how I always left that part out when I retold the story. How it was too hard to explain.

I wanted to talk about the funeral we attended in Boston, about the morning I saw people digging for clams. I was looking at Essex bay in high tide. People were walking in the waist-deep water to a sandbar exposed in the center of the stream. Twenty minutes later the tide was low and the bottom of the stream exposed. People were collecting clams by digging into the river floor and dropping them in buckets. About how beautiful it was on a sad day.

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And as I tried to make those memories into posts and conclusions, time passed. I blamed my creative block on my medication—it actually has a name, ”emotional blunting”, yeah, I haven’t cried in a year. Then I blamed it on my typical battles: logic versus risky passions; community needs versus the of the self puzzles and reading versus passive entertainment.

I knew I could count on the holidays for the time and space, but then good news came to us in November. We had been trying to adopt a Pembroke Welsh Corgi, my favorite breed, since the summer. Because of the pandemic, puppies were in high demand, and my favorite breeders had long wait lists. We decided to look into rescue dogs and finally, we were picked to adopt a beautiful two-year old rescue named Luna who was living with her foster parents in South Korea. I’ve wanted a dog my whole life—forget writing! I’ve spent everyday petting her velvet-soft ears, giving her slices of my apples and carrots, and listening to the tippy-tap of her feet when she follows me down the hall. Joy personified.

Now it is January of 2022. The new year’s resolutions of others remind me of everything I did not do. Would it jinx things to promise to write more? Let’s try it.