Home.

The other evening I looked at the lake and saw it churning so I pulled over to pay attention. I ran from the curb straight down to the water, each step breaking through the snow crust to thunk on the hardpacked sand. At the shoreline my work pants turned to gauze and then nothing and the frigid air found the space between each stitch of my woolen mittens. The sand shattered under my feet and the spray off the waves hit my face like needles. I found myself panting from the cold, my cheeks frozen into a grin, my teeth aching from exposure. The winter lake is all drama and force. It holds nothing back and I adore it, I adore it, I adore it. Frozen to the ground and stunned, I looked over at the skyline and felt fondness for it, my city. The thought blew through me with the wind and at the last moment I reached out and grabbed it, tucked it in a pocket, and claimed it as truth. Milwaukee has become my home.

I didn’t fall in love with this city quickly, though I tried. It’s taken hundreds of hours of local radio and countless trips to the lake to ignite that spark. Good people and night herons on the river have fanned the flame. Time has done its bit too. It is a great relief to be able to navigate parts of the city without a map, the streets and buildings fading into a familiar landscape much less demanding than that initial parade of newness. I have such gratitude about being here, now. When life gets upended it’s a great boon to at least know where to get groceries and which beach can contain your whoops and howls without startling the neighbors.

I’m never sure how much of my life to share in these letters- of course I share a lot because I’m a chatty little bird, but there is a curtain and there is a world behind it too. Still, I feel the need to say that this past year my marriage ended and in navigating that I became very quiet. I still feel very quiet. In the past many months grief has threaded itself through everything and I have found my days hard to look at and my experiences impossible to write about in a way that feels good to share. Initiating a queer divorce while marriage equality stands on shaky ground is a mental contortion that I wish on exactly no one. Navigating the loss of community in a time when community is everything has been a little panic inducing. I’ve leaned heavily on long distance friends with whom I talk almost daily, grateful for the steadfastness that we have been passing back and forth for years. I’ve admitted my heartache to near strangers and in that vulnerability found comfort- a brusque hug from my weaving instructor after weeks of watching me stare at the half warped loom, boxes of flower bulbs handed over at the neighborhood hardware store after signing up for a solo customer account, my landlord on a stepstool helping me with the two person jobs around the house. I’ve succumbed to these moments of kindness and let them build me back up. Six months out I can feel the sun beginning to peek around the clouds.

It is no small thing to have an art practice to fall back on when everything falls apart. Stitches, however small and demanding, can be uncomplicated when needed. In the last months I’ve sewn pillowcases and knit miles of stockinet. After my last great heartbreak I ate saltines and drank High Life and drew with black ink until I could stomach color and texture again. At 36 I’m finding my appetite changed (see: sweet potatoes) and that, too, extends into the studio. In the first months on my own I ruthlessly ripped out half finished socks and brought armloads of abandoned projects to the textiles compost pile that is my job. I moved the studio into the old bedroom and tried my best to keep the dust down with bursts of productivity. I made piles of color all around me. When all else failed I left the house with my chaos in it and entered the city I live in, letting this unexpected home encompass me with its salt crusted linoleum floors and low hanging clouds and wind buffeted gulls.

-Grace