Strangers On A Blog

There was a blog I followed last year written by a woman in New York City who was laid off from her job. The only work she was able to find was part-time at a gym over an hour and 1/2 away from her home, and she wrote about her commute, the patrons who would frequent the gym, the employees, the members, and her continuous work search. But over time the posts became more personal and she was writing about fights with her boyfriend and feelings of despair. Then one day her blog was gone. Deleted. I don't know what happened to her, but a year later I still think about this unfinished story. I think about how strange the world of blogging can be, how for a moment in time I was privileged to read the daily thoughts of a stranger whose face I didn't know. How there is a woman I could pass on the streets of New York, or share a ride with on a train, who I know so much and yet so little about.

In my own little blogging world, I write surprisingly very little about my daily life and self. The more personal posts come months after the fact, but yet you still read me, and I thank you for it. Because, You and I? We are not strangers. Not really. Here is my face, my hands, my words. Pass me on the street and stop to tell me your dreams. Stop to tell me the taste of the green apples of your childhood, of the small torn hole in your coat that lets your skin feel the bitter pleasure of the cold rainy afternoon. Let's not be strangers. I'll start.

Here is my day: It is quiet in the house. My husband is working from home today and when he does, I tend to stay sedentary, silent as not to disturb, nesting in piles of blankets and cups of tea. (On days when I am alone, I am a raucous One-Woman Broadway Show.) Two writers living in one house, we often retreat into our own spaces and worlds and greet each other in the evening hours as if it were a pleasant surprise; "Oh, hello! You're here too! I missed you today." We are only one wall apart.

Last week, I pulled all of our joint Christmas decorations and bits-n-bobs out of the hidden corners of storage to make the house shine. Matt calls the image on my matching set of Christmas mugs my Mentally Challenged Moose. Not all outcast reindeer were born with red noses, poor fellow. He keeps me company in my nesting.

In the late morning hours I am awake in bed and lost in thought. I write elaborate lists titled, "NATALIE. GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER." Fail at the application when the day starts in full. To check off one thing on the list is an accomplishment worth celebrating. In the quiet of this morning I managed two.

I write long-winded sentences and delete them.  I have everything and nothing to say. I think of my father, my half-sister. The house smells of laundry, my sweaters drying over the stair banister. It is the first cold day in weeks. Have I forgotten how lovely the cold could be?

Later, I will commandeer the kitchen and crush long candy canes in Ziploc bags to make Peppermint Bark for my mother. It'll be the fifth or sixth batch made this month, the only Christmas treat I've conquered to perfection.

Later, Matt and I will share our bed, and talk about the ocean, the way sand crabs blink, and the small spaces between us will dissolve. If we are lucky the rain will be our lullaby, and if not, the distant sound of lone train whistles will lull us to sleep. In North Carolina, I have never lived in any place where I could not hear the sound of a lonely night train.

If I am lucky, sleep will come undisturbed. The things I do not want to write to you now, the things you may not know, become tide pools in my mind. It happened like this; my half-sister's child, a young man in his twenties, stepped into the ocean in November and never returned. We are not strangers on a cold beach, and the train we share rolls on into the night.

Here is my day, then; I wake and think of you; stranger, friend, reader, and wonder if you know that though this world is hard and rough to walk, it is worth the walk. I want to keep walking it. I want you to keep walking. There is still so much to see.