Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino.

“A new lease on life.” First of all, why a lease? I can’t own my life? Still, the phrase entered my head yesterday. All it took was ten days of being quarantined, living for a week in my office, being sequestered whenever I entered the house, or moving about it, masked. I didn’t leave but to walk the dog up the block. My energy level, such as it was, allowed me to do the bare minimum—my share of chores, animal care, and lots of tv and reading. I’m caught up with Alien: Earth (though I keep getting stuck on the premise that there is something incredibly disturbing about a “boy genius” adult male trillionaire who makes a game of taking the brains, with their consciousness and memories intact, from children and putting them into the bodies of young adults—it feels too potentially prescient and sickening); I started a rewatch of The Sopranos (it played in the background as I read this essay); I felt compelled to watch The Forever Purge, because I can satisfy my sometime completist tendencies by doing so, even if I never plan to finish the tv series, and because I enjoy reading Jude Doyle’s reviews of The Purge franchise).

I also started several ebooks, borrowed from the library, and chucked them right back. One stuck, a book that’s a couple years old that I hadn’t expected to like because of all the rave reviews (all the ones I returned also had rave reviews), and my e-reader is currently in airplane mode so I can finish reading it (it’s a 7 day loan and I’m halfway through it).

During all this recovery time I felt like I had a chance to process the trips I took this summer. I honestly don’t know if or when I’d process the trips if I was busy doing regular life.

People kept saying to me, “Are you done with your book tour?” and I kept thinking, What book tour. I mean, yes, I went to Chicago (May), New York (July), and Portland (July). That is a sort-of tour, I guess. But the trip to New York felt less like book tour, more like an experiment in that it was my first solo, long-distance trip with my kid (success). The trip to Portland was a family trip, and the first time leaving our dog in the care of our petsitter, so I was somewhat preoccupied in a few directions. I remember feeling relieved to be on the other side of the trips. Before I got covid, I was grateful for my self-imposed boundaries around not committing to any book-related events (except for this one, if you’re in Los Angeles on September 28th, come out for Hannah Eko’s The Lit Club, where Bruja will be featured). My family’s birthdays come in quick succession starting in mid-September through the fall (me, a spring baby amid all these Virgo, Libra, and Scorpio birthdays), and my kid starting high school has also been A Thing.

But yesterday, all I could think about was how THRILLED I was to rejoin the world after testing negative. I went to the pool and rejoined my Saturday aquafit buds as the sun shone and dragonflies skirted the water. We resumed our weekend drive to the Valley to help my mother with groceries. Everyone looked interesting to me. I wanted to go dancing. It’s not too late to change my way of being! I licked a peanut butter and chocolate ice cream cone in ninety degrees of dry heat and felt fucking RENEWED. I want to go to the desert sometime this fall. What does my partner want for her birthday? What does our kid want for hers? Can we finally have a backyard party or do we have to first fix it up? When can I fill my front porch with ferns and trees? Can I take my kid to Europe next summer? What about another road trip in the spring? Should I see if M. wants to meet me for lunch again? When can J. and I walk at the beach again? When can I go to the beach by myself again, let me look at this calendar. When can I hike in Griffith Park again. I will try to make it to that book event, and do I want to go see Psychedelic Furs or LCD Soundsystem, because they’re the same week and that would be too much, financially and energetically. And TV on the Radio in October? It’s still summer. Let me sign up for another aquafit class next week. Yes, yes, yeeeeeeeessssss.

The news sucks. I read a lot of news while I was down, too. And I also want, need, and have things to look forward to.

Love to you, Chicago. Solidarity.

Love to you, reading this newsletter. It’s bad out there. I hope you have good things to look forward to.

my books are waiting to be read by you