Am I safe here? the woman whispered.
She was tall and blonde and classically northern midwestern looking, and had come from just over the Wisconsin border to attend a memoir class I was teaching at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis.
Am I safe?
Her voice quavered; strangers — all of us — shook our heads.
Yes.
It was early in November 2016, the day after an epic, divisive moment in time. We were in a beautiful classroom at a remarkable literary center in a lovely city filled with people of every color, religion, and political persuasion. On this morning, sustained by strong coffee and ensconced in a building that at its core is devoted to writers and books and the written word, a small handful of us who had never before set eyes on each other assured this woman that yes, she was safe.
If not here, I said, then where.
The Loft Literary Center, 2016, photo courtesy the author
I recognized the telltale signs of trauma and anxiety that I know so well: for me, it comes from the unshakable certainty that one is unsafe wherever one goes. The nervous shifting, the eyes darting, the foot tapping, the frantic water drinking, the shallow breathing, the coat thrown on and off and on and off. Anything to keep moving, to keep running. For the traumatized and the anxious, for those of us who live with complex PTSD, stillness and quiet can be as unhinging as a night terror.
We write to uncoil our stories, to know our truths, to understand who we are through the specter of who we, and the people around us, once were.
Add to this the fact that memoir — the teaching of it, the talking about it, the writing it: the permission, the memories, the emotional fortitude that it takes to plunge deep — is a gnarly bit of business; at best, it’s fraught. At worst, it can make the strongest of us feel ungrounded and unmoored and like our limbs are made of jello. Those of us who write it — who come back to the form over and over again — do so because we can’t not. It’s not because, as one famous writer of fiction once publicly said, memoirists suffer from narcissistic tendencies. We do it to uncoil our stories, to know our truths, to understand who we are through the specter of who we, and the people around us, once were. To make order from chaos.
Am I safe here.
Yes, we said. In my classroom, in my space, you are safe. All of you. But step outside into the wide world, and who knows about any of us, at any time; allies will turn on a dime.
I didn’t mention that to my students.
There had been an election, and by the time I arrived in Iowa for my next book event, I was depleted; I felt like an IV bag that had its contents forcibly squeezed out of it. I was shaky and nervous and unsure and exhausted. My writer/chef/restaurateur/publisher/county supervisor/devoted Unitarian friend Kurt picked me up in Cedar Rapids and dropped me off at my hotel, where I tried to nap; I met my friend Lyz for lunch. Me, Kurt, Lyz: no three people could come from more opposing histories, with more divergent views on everything from politics to religion; in fact, we had more in common than we knew. We talked about safety and writing, about division and how to move forward into the unknown in a way that is sustaining and nurturing for all of us, not just some of us. We talked about being ferocious and fierce and kind and devoted to community and family — that those qualities aren’t mutually exclusive — and sitting opposite Lyz, my hands shook as I ate my carrot ginger soup at a lovely little cafe in Iowa City; I couldn’t manage anything more substantial than that.
Humans are a beautiful, broken, feeble, complicated lot; our minds overtake our bodies.
Look for the helpers, Kurt said to me that night, quoting the late Fred Rogers; it was Kurt’s wife’s birthday and he had cold-smoked a pork shoulder for ten hours, and braised it in lamb stock into which he had sliced a few local Iowa apples. It was an earthy dinner, rooted in place and ground. Another couple — they were much older; we’ve seen it all, they said — came over to join us for Kim’s celebration, and to drink to friendship and safety and sustenance.
Look for the helpers, Kurt kept saying over bottle after bottle. Remember that.
That night, I had far too much wine; we all did.
I returned home from my book tour in early December. A few days later, just as I was beginning to unpack and start work on my next book, Motherland, my mother fell in her apartment. Surgeries. Rehab. The discovery that she had terrible insurance. A move to traditional Medicare. A move to Medicaid. A treacherous, bottom line-driven healthcare system designed to fail the people who need it most: its seniors, its children, its poor. What Dickens called, in A Christmas Carol, the surplus population.
What are we going to do, I cried to Susan after sixteen hours in the emergency room, and thirty without sleep. My mother never planned for a catastrophic event; my mother has always assumed it would happen to someone else.
Look for the helpers.
I did, and they were there: phonecalls, emails, advice from people I’ve known from my childhood in sleepaway camp, from my social worker yoga friends, from my neighbors, from a lawyer-turned-food-writer friend with a penchant for spreadsheets and information gathering. Facebook messages flew back and forth, and good wishes and prayers came from places I would have never thought would send them.
Weeks later, Susan and I tried to assemble a Christmas of sorts, with cousins around our table, and simple food; it was a quiet time. The morning after Christmas, we were back in the emergency room, this time with Susan and a kidney stone. Sitting next to her, holding her hand, this person I’ve now spent twenty-three years with, and watching her in such excruciating, withering pain, it felt like it was just us and the world and a universe that was hitting us, repeatedly, with what one of my friends calls the shit stick. Humans are a beautiful, broken, feeble, complicated lot; our minds overtake our bodies. Our bodies overtake our minds. In the year before my mother’s accident, I had three healthy friends younger than I suffer heart attacks; they all survived, one barely. When it came, in 2018, my friend Kurt from Iowa did not survive his. One of my dearest friends had brain surgery after collapsing in an exercise class. Another friend had a hiking accident that easily could have killed her. My cousin was diagnosed with cancer. A friend’s brother was nearly lost in a car accident. That year, we had to put Addie, our sweet old yellow Lab to sleep, the day before Susan’s birthday. Our dog, Pete, had been diagnosed with cancer; our cat stopped eating. We were living in what Anne Lamott once referred to as the waiting room of the emergency ward.
Seven years later, we are here again. The world is on fire. There is absolutely no talking to anyone who won’t come out swinging. In her conversation with Dan Harris, Krista Tippett talks about how humans use words as weapons. How to break bread with people who have told me that I should be exterminated? Do I show them the cancelled checks for their favored relief organizations that I’ve supported for years, just to prove my human worth — my value — to them? How can I possibly cook? How can I nourish myself and the people I love and my community?
How can I possibly eat?
The world spins forward. Together, we lurch into the future, into that place where, now more than ever, we need the nurturing and the sustenance.
At 3:08 am each morning, I am catapulted awake; I hear Susan breathing softly next to me and Pete snoring on the floor. This is my home, the place that grounds me, that tethers me. This is my family.
The alarm will ring in two hours.
My student’s words still careen around my Monkey Mind like a broken record.
Am I safe here?
I lay in the silence; I listen to the quiet.
I try to assure myself as I assured her.
You are safe here.
I doze until the sun comes up, and I begin again.
This post was originally published on Elissa Altman’s blog Poor Man’s Feast, The James Beard Award-winning journal about the intersection of food, spirit, and the families that drive you crazy. Read more on her Substack, or keep up with her archives here.
Photo by Fernando Venzano on Unsplash.