hi you. thanks for your patience as always in this time of transition. how is the colder weather feeling in your heart and your bones? are you creaky? are you cozy? i’m quaking in my boots thinking about maine winter. thanks for being here with me. feel free to sign up for a subscription ($5/mo) or venmo me anything @rubys-ego. xo
when there’s a plate of food in front of me, i’m the kind of person who likes to flit around from food to food, tasting one after the other, tasting combinations of different flavors and textures. i am especially concerned with the last bite of food that i will have, what i want to taste the last before the meal is done. this is usually my favorite taste, my favorite texture. when i’m eating a cone of ice cream, i use my tongue to push all the ice cream down to the bottom of the cone so the last bite i have will be cold and sweet and crunchy.
lasts sometimes freak me out. when i went to the old crow bakery a couple days ago, i saw a sign that said they’d be on vacation the next day until mid-november. that meant the wood-fired sourdough cinnamon roll i was eating would be the last one i ate before moving an hour north - perhaps the last one i’d ever eat. even though i could technically come back anytime, that moving didn’t mean i could never go to the bakery, it would be the last time i went while working on the farm and going there on the way to a hike after work. i did cry about it. i’ve been crying about most things lately.
last week i went to the farmer’s market for the last time. it was a cold, brilliantly sunny day, and i was parked next to someone selling all kinds of apples. the vendor told me, with a grin, that it was technically illegal to sell cider if it wasn’t refrigerated. i won’t tell if you don’t, i told her, and gave her a half gallon on the house. i couldn’t stop telling everyone at the market that it was my last time there. they’d all scan my face as i told them, trying to gauge if they should apologize or congratulate me. i gave mixed signals. “that’s sad,” the bread baker said, slowly handing me a seven-grain loaf. “it’s a lot of things,” i said, gazing pointedly at the chocolate croissants. i bought one and ate it, a few tears rolling easily down my cheeks behind the table. at this point crying doesn’t feel associated with sadness, just an overflowing of experience. i was happy to have a little cry at the farmer’s market, the kind of cry where you can wipe away the tears and help the regulars who come every week without them asking what’s wrong.
i kept thinking, they have no idea this is my last time i’ll probably ever speak to them. they have no idea that me telling them our beets are all done is the last thing they’ll hear me say. i’m a very sentimental person. i can still remember laying on the floor of my mother’s room in the house i lived in until i was 10, feeling the carpet under my fingertips, saying thank you thank you thank you to the house on the last night we slept there before moving. every time i know something is the last time, i try to take it all in, to take it to heart, even if the experience was weird and hard or painful or i don’t want to remember it very much at all.
there’s also those moments that you don’t know will be the last time when it’s happening, don’t realize it was the last time until you do. i started writing this week’s piece last weekend, and it’s now the weekend of halloween. in between, my childhood cat died, and i stopped working on the farm and moved to a new part of maine. i had no idea that the last time i pet roo would be the last time i ever would. i can still feel his fur, still hear his purr, and i can’t help but smile when i think about our cuddle sessions and gazing into his goddamn beautiful green eyes. my soulmate.
some lasts feel okay. i feel securely attached to them. i feel okay that i won’t work on the farm anymore, that i won’t do the walk in the town where i lived anymore, that i will probably never go to that grocery store or swim off that dock again. other lasts feel intolerable. thinking about the last time i left my dad’s house when i was 16, the last time i went on a walk with a friend who i don’t speak with anymore, the last time i kissed that chaotic lover against my van at the bottom of the trail. i time-travel into the future and already feel grief about the last time i hold my mother, the last time i laugh with my brother.
thich nhat hanh writes in “no death no fear” about how the impermanence of all things is what brings us beauty and the driving force of life. a flame exists in a moment in time - we might light the match that sparks the wick of the candle, but the flame was waiting there, in that moment in time, for us to meet it. and when the flame goes out, the candle is changed, the air is changed, the light is changed, we are changed. the flame’s mark can never be taken back, even when the flame itself is “gone.” have i written about this before? forgive me.
there’s a lot to do in the new house. a lot to unpack, a lot of unknowns and void space. the first time i put the dented cans of beans and tomatoes away will be the last time i do that for the first time. this will be the last time i ever write this specific sentence in this paragraph in this letter to you. this will be the last time you ever read this for the first time. this is getting out of hand.
the last taste for this moment will be this: a little dark roast coffee mixed with a cup of earl grey tea, heavy cream and honey.
yum