25 years later, from a hotel balcony in Palm Springs
I feel far from New York City, which is a strange thing to write on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. I am in Palm Springs at the Sober Sis retreat. For anyone new here, Sober Sis is Jenn Kautsch’s community of women who have taken alcohol out of their lives, some for a few weeks before choosing to moderate, some for years. It is a community of those who have discovered that the removing is the short part of the story and the living afterward is the rest of it. They are my tribe. On November first, I mark two years of sober-minded living, and most of what I understand about those two years I learned in rooms like this one, from women who traded the wine witch for clear mornings and an honest face in the mirror.
Jenn asked me to speak about that very day at the conference. As the resident New Yorker, I am honored. Truly. A chance to read from Camera Dark, the book I’m writing about what comes into focus when the drink goes, from the morning it happened and from the morning after, when Rob and I found out we were pregnant with our daughter Ella. Amidst all of that. All of it.
The talk was mine to give, but the room gave it back. One deep breath together, a room of women who already know one another’s darkest secret, and me at the front saying the line I built the whole thing around: it was already there. The courage. The clarity. The child. None of it arrived with sobriety; rather, sobriety cleared the glass so I could see it. Take the alcohol out, and a lot of things you didn’t know were soft come into focus. 25 years is a long exposure. You cannot rush it. I am only now seeing the print come up.
Here I sit on the hotel sofa in the dark; the 4:30 AM hour wakes me, finally rested and hungry for time to let my mind swirl through these past few days. Hard to write. Hard to summarize. Hard to capture. And as always, I’m scared I’m going to lose so much good, so many ideas, so many things to write about, because I didn’t take a moment to scribble them down, to make them real, even in a few words, so I can come back later and blow on their embers until they catch and turn into a beautiful blaze of words and experience. Not only to enjoy again, but this time to hit post and share, with even one other person. So, they, too, can feel that sense of awe, and joy, and pain, and brutiful, and all of it. Fragments of conversations, funny jokes, tales of adventures, and stories of past pain and shame that, when brought into the light with the women here, make you feel strong. Not only did you survive that day, but you are here, right here, sitting and talking about it without a stutter in your voice, the way a mother tells a child that what happened is okay; it happens; you are on the other side of it. Compassion. Release. All of it.
Out on the balcony now, I stare at the stars in the Palm Springs sky, tiny jewels set above the palm trees. The desert air swirls around me, wanting to be captured, the memory of right now mixing with the ones from my many trips here with my parents as a child growing up in Los Angeles. Something about the air, and probably the temperature, lets me reach out and touch those days. Playing in the pool with my dad. Walking down the street eating ice cream, incredulous at a hotel room and the luxury of it all. Setting up a 1990s “selfie” of all of us on the hotel balcony in the perfect California desert sunset light, the one that lives on in our phones and is framed on the wall. One glimpse of that image and I can time travel. All of it.
Yesterday’s gathering with Sober Sis coaches was about stewardship and guardianship. Tending to ourselves. Yet another way to consider life, and why, and how. The words blossom, soil, and seeds, while tender, never quite settled into me. But something about tending to my soul, which is not actually mine but given to me to guard and protect, did. I never really thought about protecting myself. Self-care, yes, of course. Meditation, exercise, nutrition, a laundry list of shared advice affirmed daily. But tend?
Tend takes out the instruction, the command, the order to stand in line and check the rituals off the list. Tend brings to mind dandelion seeds flying in the wind. Gentle, white, carried by the breeze yet still allowed the freedom to go where they wish. Not commanded to a row in the garden. Not told where to plant or how to grow. They soar, they dance in the light, and when they settle into the soil, they know they will be tended to, and the cycle begins again: new ground, new flight, more tending. It feels a little cliché to write, but I can’t deny my heart swelling at the picture. Perhaps the tending of my imagination in the dark of a hotel room is what I needed this morning. As a parent, I’m opening that door and letting the seeds fly where they may. My little muses. On to my next chapters. All of it.
And then the other kind of tending. The kind we do for each other. Little quirky Palm Springs boutiques, still owned and run by the people behind the counter with wonderful tales to share. Marie’s of Palm Springs, where we outfitted Moira, whose luggage never arrived with her and may or may not show up before we leave, and who wanted to feel light and beautiful anyway. A polka dot dress full of colors that embody the flair of Palm Springs. Her quiet “what do you think?” as she holds it up, spurring the only reply possible from a group of friends fully in support and love mode: go try it on. And she did. And it was perfect, along with the glimmer of women pulling the perfect accessories and bejeweled sandals, which were, of course, exactly her petite size seven. I think that’s what happens when friends like this converge. A zone where anything is possible and everything is meant to be. That’s what happens with a group of women who already know one of your deepest, darkest secrets. The drinking. The shame, the regret, the morning after, and one of the reasons we ended up right here and right now. No filters needed, and look what happens.
Moira looked “fancy,” as we like to say, for that day’s celebrations, and we all giggled and hugged and felt the way we did at ten, piled on one another at the weekend sleepover. Oh, how I love that feeling. How grateful I am. I capture it here because it’s one I don’t want to let slip away. If I write it down, lasso that moment, perhaps I can put it in my pocket for later, when New York gets challenging, and pull it out to remind me that this is the why. And I capture it for you, the reader who trusted me with your focus and time to get to this very sentence, because these moments are there waiting for us. It may take work, and years, and falling down a few (or many) times, but after these few days in Palm Springs, I can tell you it’s worth it.
I think that’s why I keep coming back to it: all of it. Because old me would read that phrase with gluttony in mind. The martinis and the red wine and ohhhh yes, port with the post dinner coffee too. All of it. But that’s not what I mean. Not gluttony. Not the gluttony troll. Not overconsumption. Not trying to fill an empty, bottomless hole. I’m leaning into accepting all of it. The beauty. The brutality. The brutiful. Because you need all of it to get to right here. Right now.
25 years, and the print is finally up.
It was already there. All of it.
Music for this one: Eric Whitacre’s “Sleep,” sung by his Virtual Choir. Two thousand people, each alone in a bedroom or a dorm or a kitchen, recorded one at a time and stitched into a single breath. Eric is an old friend of our stages, and I chose it for the 4:30 hour and for what it proves: that a room can be made of people who have never met, and still sound like one voice. Play it in the dark.
This essay first appeared on Camera Dark Notes, my Substack. Its companion piece, written for the runners, is Developed, Not Built.
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