In the rare moments I remember to be grateful for my life, I’ll sometimes text Kathy thanks.
And then I’ll go dark for another 8 months.
The way God only exists when you’re eating a peach, Kathy mostly occurred to me in the moments you tuck away to convince aliens that humanity is worth sparing.
She was my favorite kind of person. Low on bullshit, no patience for platitudes, and so embarrassingly loving. Kathy could never leave it at “I love you,” she’d always have to top it off with some harebrained grand gesture.
1. After trying to get me a job at Wieden with little success, Kathy decided to switch tactics: It was hard to get people in the door, but VERY easy to get dogs in. So she bought me a dog costume and led me around the office, introducing me to everyone as her talented new dog. No one laughed, or really even got the joke, and I was grateful she’d opted for a dog costume that so fully obscured my face.
2. Kathy wanted to go to Susan Hoffman’s birthday party dressed as each other. She put on a brown wig and spent the entire cab ride trying to perfect my look by letting her face go completely slack. When I asked how to “be Kathy,” she handed me a blonde wig and a novel, and told me to just stomp around reading from it & telling people I was the second coming of Christ.
3. She named a character in Book of Polly after me, using my full name. She was practically giddy when I told her how much it was fucking up my Google results.
I always worried that if I asked too many questions, the spell might break. I liked Kathy’s version of me so much better than the reality of me, and I didn’t want to give her any reason to revise hers. I can’t tell you how good it felt to be in her orbit. What a difference it made to have a not-self to practice self love on. But if you knew Kathy at all, you probably did know how it felt. Because she only seemed to see the best version of everyone she loved. “… when I find out something new about them, or something old that is new to me, it’s like some shining penny I discover in a pile of old coins I thought I already counted. And I reach for it, not for its earthly value, but its magical and glorious value to me.”
Engaged to the only person who wasn’t afraid to tell me that my phone number was the least intuitive set of numbers he’d ever seen, that my area code alone was “a huge cognitive load,” “a mentally taxing sequence,” and “a joke of a number.” Thank you @scottywoodhouse for loving me in spite of my many flaws, all of which were given to me by AT&T.
34 today, so here are 10 photos of 33-year-old me and a note from my phone mislabeled GROCERIES:
Rice. Yogurt. A fire and a mushroom should be the same amount of alive. The first CD you bought is your Meyers Briggs. Outfits inspired by objects. Are you really helping? The number of bugs I’ve escorted outside should factor into any decisions on my afterlife. Daddy Daughter Dance a name for something? “Like a moth to a safe distance from a flame.” Life is a gift I hold onto for sentimental reasons. My keys are a jingling collar, why’s there no proxy for the soft dent between a dog’s eyes? Clarity is bleak. My Own Private Idunno. The flowers smell like perfume made to smell like flowers. Lying is the ultimate privacy. Why do the concrete pillars in the Taco Bell drive-thru feel more nostalgic than any of my actual memories? The problem with naming a houseplant after your mother is houseplants also die. Anything you can draw eyes on can have a soul. LingeREI: Goose down negligee, all-weather thong. The moon is not iPhone compatible. There is nothing I can’t imagine licking. At the center of this onion is just more onion. Doggy paddling through every conversation. I’m still the oldest I’ve ever been. How can you possibly choose the right washcloth for a bird to die on?
My grandpa wasn’t much for sentimentality. He wrote his final wishes on the back of an ad for a crematorium and handed it to my aunt: “Jody –– The gold in my teeth should pretty well cover the cost of cremation. Dump me with Lorena on Sunrise Mountain!”
I remember when I left for college, I decided to try out an “I love you, Grandpa,” and his response was “Okay.” Growing up, I never really understood if he lived with us or if we lived with him — we took up more space, but he’s the one who built the house. In fact, he built every house on our block. The only one he DIDN’T build mysteriously “burned down during construction.”
But Grandpa was sweet in his own way. Always showing up with a box of donuts on Sundays or bringing back little gifts from his travels or prying open an animal’s mouth to show you its teeth (why?), not to mention providing silent, life-changing financial support for his family. He took me on a plane for the first time. He paid for me to study abroad in Russia. He’d hand out money on Christmas like a hundred dollar bill was a half-eaten sandwich he might otherwise throw away. He taught me what it feels like to hug someone standing rigidly with their arms at their sides (a gift I have passed on to all who know me) and proved that not all love can fold neatly into a greeting card.
There is no matching envelope for the time my cousin and I were playing in the street while my grandpa watched from the porch. We lived at the edge of town on a dead-end road, so traffic was never a worry, but on that day a shiny sports car (child brain, idk) came tearing up the hill. My cousin and I scattered, and when the car came back down (like I said — dead end), my grandpa was waiting for it. When the car stopped, he raised a golf club over his head and slammed it down on the hood. I’m not even sure if any words were exchanged, I just remember the car driving away, and Grandpa going back to the porch.
He never asked if we were okay. He just always made sure that we were.
And this morning he died peacefully in his sleep with his dog at his side, at the age of 96.
I love him.
Happy 2nd birthday to my beautiful, judgmental, and staunchly Republican dog Birdie. Thank you for all your tail wags and forehead presses and protection from skateboards. I love you so much, and I can’t wait til you’re old enough to pay me back for all that you have destroyed ❤️
