30th Year

On January 5th, my tio dies. 6 days later I turn 30. I have a party because I know he wants me to dance.

My best friend goes through a break up. In the kitchen at 1am over tea, I tell him a Bukowski quote that helped me escape years earlier.

“I sometimes dream of a less stressful kind of love — it can and should be so easy, like falling asleep in a chair or like a church full of windows.”

It’s so hot in Austin at SXSW. I curse myself for having to wear a skirt on stage.

In June, I quit my 9-5 job and fly to Paris by myself.

The last time I was in Paris, I was 20 and studying James Baldwin. I cried on my 21st birthday in a restaurant because my boyfriend, who was there with me, didn’t care much about me at all. The waiter frowned at me in French.

The last time I was in Paris, I was so unhappy. 10 years later, I am back.

I drink abundant Aperol Spritzs and spend as much time as I want at Musée d’Orsay, and I do not cry this time. I do not write at all.

I want to tell someone who is dead that I’m okay now.

I meet Spencer in London. He is a shining boy on the steps of our hotel, in sunglasses and jeans. Our room in Paddington is hot. We prop the window open with drumsticks and sleep in our underwear.

I talk with a reporter in a pub in Notting Hill. He asks if releasing an album about my teenage years and early adulthood is cathartic. I think about it later in the Lyft. I sweat out a memory.

I am home. I have a medical procedure done and my dad comes to town to take care of me. He lays on my bed and reads me Buzzfeed quizzes from his phone and crosses his legs in the air like a teenage girl. I answer each question thoroughly.

My sister has her baby early. I stare at his impossibly tiny fingernails on my iPhone screen. A marvel.

Spencer proposes to me on a perfect July morning in Michigan. There are blueberry muffins in the oven. Right before, I note that the room smells like farts instead of blueberries. I am surprised, and I laugh and kiss him. We FaceTime our families.

We drink whiskey with our closest friends to celebrate. The outdoor seating gives us splinters, but we stay outside anyway, wrapped in towels. I sit on the kitchen floor with Ellie and Kerry and we talk about our mothers and when we first learned to shave our legs.

There is a baked potato truck at Newport Folk Fest. The same one that was at Solid Sound a couple of years back. I eat 3 baked potatoes.

In August, at Avrom Farm, we sit inside while a giant thunderstorm hits. We holler and grip onto each other with each lightning strike. And laugh so much.

The week my record comes out, I completely lose my voice on the road to our New York show. I think maybe it is karmic retribution. I get a steroid shot in my butt.

I cry on stage at the Hideout at our release show. I am so overcome with joy and grief, I can’t handle it. But then again, I cry a lot.

I start learning what it is to see your art reflected back at you once it’s out in the world. It somehow helps me process the things that happened to me at 15. 18. 21.

I keep trying to write about Paris. About the record. But there isn’t much to say that isn’t on the record.

Girl grows up. Girl goes through abusive relationship in early adulthood. Girl gets what girls get.

In September, I try running.

We leave for tour and stop at Lamberts Cafe for throwed rolls. I laugh so hard at a roll hitting Max on the head and exploding, I can barely eat.

I smile every day while driving in the van. Henry puts on records that we listened to when we were teenagers.

Driving through the Rockies, my body starts shaking. We get out of the car at a cold, blowy rest stop and I sob into Max’s arms.

I say, “the body do be remembering,” and we laugh. Max says it’s full circle to be touring this album and be trekking the same route that I wrote about.

At our show that night in Salt Lake City, I tell the audience about my sob, and how the last time I drove through the Rockies, my boyfriend who did not care about me at all, was having a mental break. I told them I was scared.

We played Kentucky Cave and someone shouted, “You got through it!”

In November I lay on my sister’s leather couch in my pajamas and stare into my nephew’s face. He looks like my tio.

I try again to write about the record but instead write about my 2004 Ford Escape that broke down in 2019.

I try braiding my hair before bed every night.

At Christmas, my mom, my aunties, and I sing “Box of Rain” together at the grave site.

I want to dance so hard that everything finally shakes free. I’m almost there.