Dearest and Closest,

I did. I said I wouldn’t fill up your inboxes with deathless prose and that I was done done done. And I sort of was…but then I started surreptitiously posting little bits to my blog site and then it seemed like I could, maybe, say some more…and today is such a beautiful day (at least here in Maine—the perfect leaf fluttering fall day with blue skies and warm sun and golden leaves of the sun all over the place) and you’ve got an extra hour anyways because of daylight savings, that I thought, why not tell you all these things I’m full up with and could almost not contain as I took Hopper for a run (our fourth this week) this morning.

The problem with the jogging (which if you saw Hopper and me you might consider to be more like funny looking high step power walking) despite the added emotional benefits and the fact that I might just be able to melt the last seven pounds or so of baby weight as I run, is that, these days, I wet my pants. No matter what I do. It’s embarrassing. I want to put a sign on both sides of my shirt, like one of those racing numbers people wear in marathons, that says “Post-Baby Leakage. Look away!” Because everyone is looking, or I think they are which makes me neurotic,  but what am I supposed to do? Not run? Short of putting one of M.’s diapers on I’m sort of stuck…and believe me I’m wearing black and today I tied Dan’s long sleeved t-shirt around my back, at least, but still: I had to run by a little klatch of thirty something guys who were standing around talking about girls and I felt really silly. Thank God I’m married and Dan is stuck with me, because otherwise, in an urban area, this would really be too much. Please don’t tell me about Kegels. I know. But has anyone ever tried to do a more ridiculous exercise?

Other than the trickle down effect of my running, our lives are, finally in some kind of zone that’s sort of wonderful. Don’t get wrong, I still have the Herculean task of writing an ENTIRE book in what is now four months and counting, but thanks to having an agent who forced me to write outline after outline after outline despite the fact that I kept saying “I have the blog, that’s an outline,” I sort of know what I’m doing in the sense that I’m appropriating Winston Churchill’s famous saying “When you’re going through hell, keeping going” and I’m just writing forward, typos and spelling errors bedamned. I’m on chapter eight about crazy Claire upstairs and how she thought Dan was Obama and then she started harassing me when I was alone and Dan was in Tucson and I was puking my brains out with pregnancy poisoning. So, other than the writing and the fact that I have not yet received the first installment of my advance so that we can, truly, set our lives up with some baby sitting help and pay a few more bills, we did borrow some money form some friends to close the gap here, so to speak, and Dan quit his bartending job at Caiolas. He told me he was sort of sad about it (not so sad he didn’t want to do it) because, he said, it was the most ideal bartending job he’d ever had. Can you really blame him for feeling this way? I mean many many people pay high prices to hang out and eat Abby Harmon’s food, and here he got to shoot the shit with her and eat her creations all evening long while hob nobbing with foodies about wine and food and getting paid to do so. Even so, Dan’s home much more when he’s not in school and there’s a calm that’s starting to come over our lives and our marriage as we carve out this structure of him making his work and going to school and me writing and our lives spinning around M. and Hopper who are truly the our centers of gravity.

This past Monday we went apple picking and M. picked his first apple and held it clutched in his fat little hand like it was a prize he’d won. Hopper ran around him like a mad man with the biggest Jack Nicholson grin and Dan hauled the apples. All the way home M. gummed his Prize winning Jonah Gold and twirled it like a hot potato in his hands and was apoplectic whenever it fell to the side of the car seat, invariably on Hopper’s head. We picked so many apples it was a bacchanal of the apple harvest, just us alone in the orchard an hour’s drive from here, in Turner, with the mountains surrounding us and the light golden shafts of honey. This week I made applesauce galore and canned it and then I made four apple pies, three of which went in the freezer and the fourth Dan and I polished off yesterday morning in bed as M. took his morning nap.

Apropos of cooking and canning for the long winter, I’m rereading the Little House on the Prairie books and writing about westward expansion and the American psyche. I’ve also been writing about Ellison. It’s so odd to write about her—I’m writing, my head down in my computer and I can almost touch her with my words, feel her, smell her, hear her, and then I look up and M.’s making wake up noises through the baby monitor and my heart literally breaks when I see she’s not here.

Last week I left M. alone with Dan for a night—the first time I’d been away from him for so long—and went to Connecticut for Vanessa’s fortieth birthday party. Taking the train down New England to Westport, having had my first real cup of caffeinated coffee in almost ten months, I was elated and it felt so good to be alone, on the train, reading and writing and just…well, I was hopped up on caffeine so I felt amazing, kind of like what I imagine the first hit of cocaine might be like. The night before I left, M. appeared to have said his first word, “Dada” and have connected it with the tall skinny blond guy kicking around our apartment. But, of course, I was skeptical. When I came home, “Dada” was indeed the word of the hour. Luckily, though, two days ago, M. had the sense to say his second word and he said “Mama.” So. We’re even. Sort of. He’s got two teeth, a third coming in which kept him up all night last night until he finally slept on my chest and a fourth, fifth and sixth ready to pop. It’s all or nothing in the teeth department, poor chap.

In other news, despite the fact that I wrote a teary post that our spider, Charlotte, outside our kitchen window had died that freezing weekend in the middle of October when it seemed more like late November, she seems to have been resurrected (who says fall is all about death?) and is spinning new webs daily and eating bugs. She’s our Teflon spider. More news is that my dear friend Craig Pospisil did the amazing gesture of dedicating his newest collection of plays to me (Check it out, it’s called “Choosing Sides” and many of them were commissioned, edited, staged and directed by me) which was such an honor I still get giddy every time I pat the cover, which I do often. Even bigger news in the Craig world is that he asked his partner Alix to marry him and she said yes (smart woman). Also, M. was baptized on the most beautiful fall day and we truly celebrated his birth with Aran and Margot here all the way from Mexico, Vanessa from Connecticut and Craig and Alix from Manhattan. Rob McCall, who married us, did the service out in the field where we were married with a little clutch of family and friends standing by. This year,  I’m actually looking forward to the holidays, which never ever happens, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m so glad to be home in New England on terra firma and I can’t wait to see snow or, if, and this is more likely, it’s because of my child with whom every event, every tradition, every new moment is like the best Christmas present ever, only every single day.

So, all that is what I wanted to say. Also I wanted to say to Sarah in Kansas thank you so much for writing in and staying with me on this journey—I almost feel like I know you by now!-- and I tried to write you back, but the email was returned.

Love to everyone. Caitlin, Dan, M. and Hop.

*   *   *

Some of you may notice that this blog has become...much more bloggy. I just don't have the head space while writing the book to write those long essay like pieces--I hope to come back to that soon, and, in fact have mapped out a whole concept for a new blog I want to start once the book is done.  I really believe in putting real WRITING in these things. But now, instead, I'm writing my thoughts as they come, sharing the world as it hits me. Bear with me.

Love, Caitlin.

We hung most of our artwork tonight and set up more of the apartment. Finally, we're starting to carve out a home. The walls feel charged with art and the place seems to pulsate with our things, some of which have been packed away for almost two years now. Tomorrow our friends from LA, Andrea and Harlan are coming from Boston. We can't wait to see them on footing so much more stable then when we left them in LA last April.

This morning I finished a chapter which was about our road trip west--in my writing Ellison was so close I could almost touch her, except...when I looked up from the computer she was nowhere to be found.

Good night. Sleep tight. Open your windows, the air is so fresh and full of dreams.

Caitlin.

I've started re-reading the Little House books. One, because I am writing about reading them as a child and also again as we went west. BUT, also, because, as I write my own book I can't handle much else. I was struck last night as I started Little House in the Big Woods, all the killing that is involved in homesteading and how removed from the death of the things we eat we are now, thankfully. Also, it's interesting how Laura sets Pa up to be someone we like but are also a little frightened of--he has an aggressive edge. Later, we love him for his heroism and how big his dreams are. But in this story, in the beginning, he's a little scary.

Ok. Thems my thoughts. Our apartment is STILL after two months not set up--with Dan in school 3 days in Boston and bartending 2 days and my focus on work...I never thought I would exist in such chaos. Here I go to do some dishes....

Love, Caitlin.

Lots of Love, Caitlin.

Please check back for updates on the book and I hope to meet you all soon in person.

Warmly,

Caitlin.

Dearest and Closest,

Three days ago, I wrote this:

This has been the most beautiful September in Maine I can ever remember. It’s been warm—sometimes close to eighty degrees, the sun cascading out of the sky with a je m’en foutisme which makes you smile and shake your head. The leaves are already turning, the water at the beach is still bearable to swim in and so blue and clean in that way that only happens under the intense blue of a fall sky and the sand is hot and massaging on the feet. The strawberries have reseeded and so we’ve got apples and tomatoes and strawberries all at the same time at the market. The basil is lush and feathery, the lettuces dark and crisp. There have been moments since we moved into our apartment almost a month ago, now, when, my son sitting in his highchair eating little pieces of apple or late summer peach, some mashed egg yolk or tahini mixed with rice and blue berries, the sun going down through the window over his shoulder in purpley pink streaks and his face as bright as a Halloween pumpkin,  that I’ve felt the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. I don’t know if it’s my son and his wonderful, open, honest face, or the grateful joy I feel that our lives are coming back into some recognizable form, or that I’m home again, home again and despite all my big city dreams I’m back somewhere where I know who I am, what I’m made of. Maybe some combination.

We’ve been broke and eating a lot of vegetables, hummus and pretzels, bread from the local market and eggs in every way you can imagine (hard boiled, fried, baked, scrambled, etc). But, strangely, it doesn’t feel like the broke we were when everything collapsed in LA. Something about LA is so totally alienating when you have no money. The whole culture costs money and is about consuming in a way that it’s hard not to feel totally left out. I remember when we were so scared, going to Ralph’s, the local chain, and trying to shop for three days with twenty dollars. I remember how depressing it felt and the compromises in nutrition and taste we were totally willing to make to survive and take care of our son, but that when we walked out into the shopping plaza and everyone around us seemed to be piling their Lexus and Mercedes cars with groceries and clothes, holding Starbucks and Peaberry yogurts, their hands manicured and their clothes immaculate, it felt like, is it just us?  No one seemed to feel anything we felt. Sometimes it felt enraging, like the whole culture was leaving us behind and letting us fall apart on our own.

Dan is gone a lot. He gets up at 4:30 AM on Tuesdays and bikes on Frank’s bike to the bus station and then goes to Boston. He gets home around 4. Then the whole thing repeats on Wednesday and Thursday, except those days he leaves in the mid-morning and comes home at night. Sometimes, he says, he misses us so much he can hardly stand it. Every night I make him the same lunch and put it in a bag in the fridge: two crunchy peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches with a tiny sprinkle of salt, often on rye bread (toasted), a jar of hummus (I make A LOT of hummus these days, it’s cheap and filling and I roast peppers and garlic and throw it in with some lemon, parsley, black pepper, olive oil and tahini), a bag of pretzels, three apples, and a thermos of coffee (cold, sadly).  He eats it all on the bus rides while he does his reading. He’s now gotten a new bartending job closer to home at an amazing restaurant we’ve always loved. So, he’s, at least, not traveling to Brunswick, too. But he’s there on Friday nights and Sunday days. With Dan gone so much M. and Hopper and I go everywhere together. We go to the beach, to the supermarket, we go for walks, we eat dinner together—the three of us are inseparable. Ever since we’ve moved here and since Ellison died, Hopper hates being alone. The two times I’ve left him while I went of with M., I’ve heard him scratching the door and whining—things he’s never done before. I understand. No one likes to be left behind, especially when our lives have been so tenuous seeming and full of such constant upheaval. So, I take him with me.

But something is starting to settle for all of us. It feels like a wide fisherman’s net, full of jellyfish and starfish and crabs and seaweed, has started to get pulled in from a long long distance. This net has been very far out in the water and it’s got some holes. The tide is working against us sometimes but it’s coming in, reeling towards us. The holes are losing little bits of carapace and old, dead seaweed, but what’s hanging on is this amazing catch of wonderful, mysterious creatures all brimming with life and light, each one with a story to tell, an experience to teach. And that’s how my life feels—like a jewel box made of an old ripped, net full of earthly and unearthly pleasures, all opening up and breathing and showing me how to live in the world. Or something like that.

The other night, when I was alone, my dear friends Ken and Kamalah invited M. and me over for pizza. Dan had the car, so Ken offered to pick us up. We sat in the late September air on their porch and ate his homemade mozzarella pizza and salad. Later, when we drove home, I reached into the back seat to touch M.’s knee as he bravely sat in a car he didn’t recognize, a car seat not his own and the thought, I’m sure, going through his head, “Wait, who’s that guy up front with Mom??? Where’s Dada?”  He reached out, and with a smile that was part bravery, part I need you, part I love you and I just want to hold you, he grabbed my hand and held it fast. My heart literally broke and expanded at the same time.

Later that night I emailed one of my best friends, Tim, and told him this and he said, “You know Caitlin, maybe it’s when we’re most broke that we expand—something like that.”

He is right on so many levels—Dan, M., Hopper—all of us—we have been given so much during this time so how could be begrudge the hard? It’s taught us to expand.

*    *    *

I had stopped there. I didn’t know where to go and how to end. I was tired and wanted to wait until the morning to see if I should end there or just delete the whole messy thing.

And then my life, our lives, my son’s life, changed in a few hours yesterday. And when I say changed, I mean our fates took a totally new turn.

Yesterday, at 5 PM, my book based on this blog, this very thing I’ve been pestering you all with for over a year now, these very words you probably sometimes want to, or even do, delete because as my OB and friend Dr. Ghozland once pointed out  “You’re the longest writer in the world!” was sold to be made into a book which will be released next winter. And, like that, with sixteen dollars in the bank account and no idea how we were going to pay next week’s bills, our lives totally changed.

There is a lot of work ahead. I have to deliver a whole book by early spring, Dan has to stay in school, we have a lot of putting back together of the disaster of our financial lives. But now we can do all that and we can do it carefully and well.

So, dear reader, dear family, dearest friends, here’s the thing: that missive I started three days ago was going to be my final one to this whole journey I’ve called “Passage West.” Why? Because I felt this journey out and back to California had come to a close and a new chapter had begun. And now, with this new start, this totally brave new world opening up to us, we really have been given a new beginning. And because of that I feel it is right to end this story here. 

 But, before I go, I want to say thank you. Thank you for reading me. Thank you for supporting me and us. You, here on this list, have given so much of yourselves to us—whether in helping us with money to get home across the country, helping us pack to go chase our dreams in California and, then, helping us unpack when we got home and felt so broken; you have helped us with kind words and places to stay and meals and encouragement, love and care and gifts and, more than anything, you kept believing in us when we weren’t sure we did anymore. You’ve kept us going. Without you, this would not have been possible—and I mean this because without you reading and writing back, I might never have continued and might never have had the guts to tell this story with all its corners of joy and fear. So, thank you. I hope I can repay in small and large ways as time goes by.

I also want to say thank you to the strangers who have reached out to me and us since they first heard us on NPR. Sarah, in Kansas, has sent prayers and love every step of our journey. Your words, Sarah, kept us going night after night on the road. Barrie, Gwen, Anne...many many people and names and voices, you reached out with the offers of places to stay and kind wishes and kept writing me and I thank you. You gave us back our belief in America.

And with that, I sign off for now with this blog. I may start another one sometime—and if I do I’ll let you all know so you can hit “delete” again and relish it. In the meantime, I’ll work to tell our story, and the story you’ve been a part of, the story that is all our stories about the recession, being an American and following dreams, the best that I can.

Much love,

Caitlin, Dan, Hopper and M.

For Ellison, who is with me still at every moment as I write this.

Love, Caitlin.