33. Let me let you let me go.
Yesterday, I took a long and blustery walk through and beyond my neighborhood, through and beyond other people’s neighborhoods, past other people’s trees and parks and bodegas and stone walls and outside cats while grey and purple clouds gathered in dramatic compositions across the sky.
I walked on, traversing the grounds of an old high school, and was delighted to stumble upon an ancient native persimmon tree. The alligator bark was profoundly thick; ripe, jewel-like, jammy persimmons fell all around the tree in a wide halo. I foraged a haul in my hoodie, excited to come home and bake my first persimmon bread.1
As I walked I thought about my Sunday writing practice, this ongoing exploration of belonging, and belonging’s opposite: exile; how to save ourselves from the pain of alienation and loss, how to live inside this keening desire to belong, to be embraced, to be wholly accepted.
I thought about an old friend, a friend whom I love dearly, who I don’t talk to anymore. Instead of the usual feelings (shame, pain, grief), I noticed I was actually feeling relief, and gratitude, and tenderness towards this person, a feeling of knowing that this arrangement was not just OK but correct, the order of things, that I can love them better from afar, I can better honor the spirit of the way we loved each other at this distance, and that continuing to engage together past our time will harm us, and that letting them go is a way to love them.
I walked on, towards the wide open bottomlands along what remains of the Wingohoking Creek, striding out from under a treeline just in time to see and hear the hundred or so people gathered at the old Quaker mansion at the top of the hill under string lights, just as a few scattered raindrops started to fall, just as the guitar riffs and sha-la-las of “Waterloo Sunset” by the Kinks carried over the fields, just as the gathered crowd turned to watch the bride and, presumably, her father, walk down the steps and down the aisle, a maple tree whorling flaming orange leaves over the whole scene.
A prayer rang in my mind: thank you for letting me go. Thank you for letting me let you go. Thank you for cutting me loose, thank you for setting me free. Thank you because I couldn’t do it myself. Thank you because I’m still learning how to move on. Thank you because I will hold on forever, jaws latched, drowning myself trying to save you, when you didn’t need saving, didn’t ask to be saved. Thank you thank you thank you.
What if letting go could be as simple and beautiful as a persimmon tree dropping fruit, a cloud dropping rain, a rose exuding scent, night yielding to day and back to night again? What would happen if, instead of recoiling in fear of loss and change and grief, I move towards it, welcome it, embrace it, love it as every other dear, bittersweet thing about life? What if I let loss and change and grief make me into a more beautiful, more humble, more hallowed shape?
I came home to a luxuriously thick letter in the mailbox, four big pages, front and back, densely handwritten in lovely script, a letter written in multiple sittings and various inks (turquoise, red, purple), smelling like roses, full of writing about roses, about magic, about about grief, about friendship, from a friend whom I have known a long time but not well, a new friend who has been there all along. What if connection and belonging is everywhere, just not always in the same place at the same time? What if it comes and it goes, like the tide, like breath?
The World
In the words of educator, singer/songwriter, activist, and Pew Fellow Samantha Rise (they/them):
If you're on the fence about raising your voice for Palestine, if you're afraid or unsure, or feeling isolated - today is the day. Show up and feel yourself bound in love and courage to the millions of people all over the world calling for Palestine's freedom. You are not alone: if you're confused, or conflicted, or being coerced into silence...we all have to start somewhere. I'm telling you: start today. Start now. You don't have to have the perfect words to intervene. If the violence we're seeing on these platforms was happening on the street in front of you… you wouldn't wait for the right words to save who you could. You don't have to be an expert in the history of this occupation to intervene. You know enough about the horrors of occupation, incarceration, racism, xenophobia and hatred to recognize history repeating itself, right now. You don't have to be Palestinian, or Jewish to intervene. These violent machinations are not new. They don't care who you are, and they won't protect you.
For more information, check out Jewish Voice for Peace and American Muslims for Palestine, and use this tool to email your congressional representatives to express your support for an immediate ceasefire, and an end to the brutal occupation.
I think me and
might actually be the same person, because her words and memories and truths are so deeply familiar to me that reading her is like remembering my own bones. Her latest nails it yet again:
I’m trying to model the self-compassion and self-acceptance it takes to build and furnish and decorate your own world, a sweet little greenhouse where you can cultivate love and acceptance for yourself and others, a sparkling temple where you can pray to the things that bring you joy and inspiration, a muddy paddock where you can savor the daily pleasure of being alive in this animal body of yours, a dark music studio where you can honor the melodies echoing through your brilliant head.
I was so moved by this essay in Guernica by Emily Fox Kaplan, “The protagonist is never in control,” about memory and narrative and abuse and who gets to decide what the truth is. All the trigger warnings. Such a beautiful essay.
A Card
From The Fountain Tarot: “The Star invites you to rest and heal.”
I’m so grateful to have drawn this card today. The Star is the card of spiritual renewal, the bright star at dawn after the dark night of the preceding card, The Tower, where chaos reigns and edifices fall. The Star invokes hope, but not the flimsy kind: not “thoughts and prayers” hope, but the ineffable, inevitable, indestructible spirit of art, possibility, potential future, the truth of healing, of focus and clarity. This card calls us to go quiet and seek the light of our own North Star, our purpose, our vision, our unwavering integrity and commitment. This card promises renewal, and nourishes our strength to carry on.
Home + The World is a weekly newsletter by Jodi Rhoden featuring personal essay, recipes, links and recommendations exploring the ways we become exiled: through trauma, addiction, oppression, grief, loss, and family estrangement; and the ways we create belonging: through food and cooking, through community care and recovery and harm reduction, through therapy and witchcraft and making art and telling stories and taking pictures and houseplants and unconditional love and nervous system co-regulation and cake. All content is free; the paid subscriber option is a tip jar. Thank you for being here and thank you for being you.
⚔️❤️ Jodi
I made the most common persimmon mistake, which is eating an unripe persimmon. To be fair, I really thought that all the persimmons I harvested were soft and gooey and ripe, but the window between underripe and overripe is so dangerously narrow that on my first taste I got a mouthful of astringent, puckering tannins so powerful that it was not only incredibly unpleasant, but it got into my sinuses and throat and made me feel actually sick for a good half hour.
After that, though, I had a ripe one, and the sweetness was so beautiful that I felt I could continue. I carefully sorted the remaining persimmons and composted any that were not completely jammy, and then milled them through a sieve with a citrus reamer. I tasted my precious pulp, but alas, the mix was still astringent. I didn’t want to risk making a whole batch of quickbread that was inedible, so sadly, I let them go.
Which is to say: I’m going back to the tree. Please send me your persimmon foraging tips and tricks!
thank you for your Words. i was struck by your image of the persimmon tree, and was reminded of this Labatut passage:
The night gardener once asked me if I knew how citrus trees died: when they reach old age, if they are not cut down and they manage to survive drought, disease and innumerable attacks of pests, fungi and plagues, they succumb from overabundance. When they come to the end of their life cycle, they put out a final, massive crop of lemons. In their last spring their flowers bud and blossom in enormous bunches and fill the air with a smell so sweet that it stings your nostrils from two blocks away; then their fruits ripen all at once, whole limbs break off due to their excessive weight, and after a few weeks the ground is covered with rotting lemons. It is a strange sight, he said, to see such exuberance before death.
Pop unripe persimmons in the freezer until frozen solid. Take out and let defrost. Then savor the jammy interior.