CARRIE, January 2017:

I get down this time of year.

Not because of new presidents but because it’s closing in on the anniversary of my friend Lin’s death.

My best friend from high school, who chose to inject enough cocaine into her veins to stop her heart.

That was back in 2000. Where does time go, when you are having fun?

How about … it just passes?

It is now seventeen years later, and we have our delayed New Year’s dinner with Ernesto and Elena and watch Obama’s farewell speech on TV.

Yes, time passes. Into a new kind of normality. Stranger than the old kind.

Later there is a press conference. Obama looks tired.

Time for change.

Jon says it’s all going to be okay, even though he doesn’t like Trump either. Jon’s a Reagan Republican, which drives my father-in-law crazy.

The old man’s still out there in his motorhome, chasing new horizons and socialist causes, ranting about them on Facebook. At least he finally discovered social media—I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.

Jon keeps insisting everything will be fine.

The economy will improve because Trump’s a businessman, he says.

Maybe someone experienced with bankruptcies is exactly what we need, since the U.S. keeps flirting with debt default.

It’s evening now, and Ernesto and Elena are getting a little tipsy.

So am I …

We don’t talk about politics, or about Ernesto’s son who just got out of juvie, or about his new radio business since leaving the Department of Public Safety.

Instead, we discuss safe topics: the weather, future barbecue plans, whether Emma still enjoys her dinghy sailing courses and new school (she does). So much that she didn’t have time to be here tonight, because she is with her new friend, Alice.

But even if it’s extra work, I’m just happy for her. At least there is that …

We skirt around mentioning my autistic son, except when I have to excuse myself to help with his rituals at the computer—pointing the cursor at specific YouTube videos in the right sequence, deleting URLs after videos start, making sure he drinks his milk and eats his bread to keep his blood sugar stable.

I return to our strangely stilted conversation while the TV runs silently.

Obama’s frowning face fills the screen as reporters question why his presidency became a lukewarm puddle of mostly unkept promises of “change.”

Ernesto chews his steak, and Elena compliments the new paintings on our walls—the only thing I’ve managed to change in the house this year. I bought them second-hand; their stylized landscapes remind me of the Bolivian altiplano, the high mountain plains.

One painting in particular takes me back to Lin’s room, to that afternoon after her funeral when I sat there staring at her walls in our old condo. I never went back to law school after that.

Somehow, this elaborate pretense helps—this careful avoidance of important issues while Jon talks about his new chief and the new patrol cars.

But it makes me think about Lin, about who she might have been.

It’s strange how, in trying to avoid thinking about worrying things—politics I pretend not to care about, my son whom I worry about constantly—I end up dwelling on death.

Or rather, absence.

I imagine Lin at this table, maybe with her own partner. He or her …

I never did figure out that part of her life.

Yesterday brought a package from her mom, retired English Lit Professor Julia Stephen Kouris, who’s apparently a semi-permant retreat these days in some monastery on Lindisfarne now. Rediscovering her Christian roots … or Celtic.

She moved to the U.S. for Lin’s Greek IT-genius father, started the most dysfunctional family in Cleveland, and has now found peace in Celtic Christianity.

Or whatever it is.

I envy her.

Religion never brought peace to my family.

My French grandmother ping-ponged between Mormonism and Catholicism, and now sits in a nursing home in Honfleur across the Atlantic.

My mother and Marcus, my stepfather – they visit Granma sometimes. Using Marcus’ private jets, I think. But it’s not the same as being there myself.

I wonder about that path not taken—I haven’t been to Salt Lake City in ages, not since my mother’s break with the church in the ’70s.

They all feel like strangers now, my grandfather’s side of the family.

But I envy their sense of community, their certainty. The same certainty I imagine on Lindisfarne.

Here’s my religion, though:

Here’s what I do with all my worries—about my son’s future and his skin conditions, about Donald Trump, about my own dependencies on Xanax and whiskey instead of cocaine:

I try to contain them within this sphere of non-conversation

… this pretense of normalcy at a dinner table where we don’t mention pain …

… because we all need a break.

I don’t tell Elena what that picture really means to me.

She doesn’t tell me the truth about Jorge.

Jon downplays his police work so Ernesto won’t feel jealous.

And Ernesto brags about selling lots of radios in his first month—

Because people really want radios in 2017.

But we all want to hope for a better tomorrow.

Is that really so bad?

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88B – 21012025

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Cover Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova on Unsplash

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Soundtrack: Queen – “Radio Ga Ga”

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We watch the shows, we watch the stars
On videos for hours and hours
We hardly need to use our ears
How music changes through the years

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