She says, “Living in a car seems cool.” She’s right, but i am about to break a commitment to her, and i wonder how cool she’ll consider that to be.

Being on the road means knowing when to hit it. There is significance in heeding the call when it’s time to move on. i have learned this while traveling before: it is very easy to overstay one’s welcome, both within and without.

As i settled into my life in Asia forever ago, one of the first lessons i learned is that loved ones leave and that’s okay, because they’re doing what’s good for them. From the veteran expats i learned that to feel an inkling to depart means one should begin planning. They told me the seed of this transition grows whether you pay it attention or not, and it is dangerous to ignore. To linger beyond an expiration date—whether rooted in time or, more likely, one’s emotional boundaries—is to court discomfort the likes of which does no one any good. i got to witness this in people who denied their own homesickness, delayed their departure to satiate others, or stayed longer for work. People who know they should have left already are uncomfortable all the time, and unmanageable even to themselves.

So i will tell her: this is the difficult part of living in my car. Sometimes i have to leave new friends, break commitments, say goodbye. There is no better time to say goodbye than when things are still good. Still, sometimes things go sour outside of yourself instead of within. Sometimes you receive a push to depart, rather than a pull. In every situation, the call of the road is not to be ignored.

If she asks, i might tell her about being left as well as leaving. About the fluidity of the life i’ve been cultivating slowly these many years. Lovers leave me and i let them, just as i leave my lovers. We figure out how to tend our gardens, whether long distance or right in front of us. Many of my platonic and familial loves are rooted in their homes, ready to offer me welcome. Some will not offer it a second time, and that is okay too.

These relationships play out with the complexity of an epic symphony: hearts overlap in care, friendships wax and wane, and i could be the rhythm, moving through as much of it as possible. The conductor is unknown, the rests few. Once in a while a solo bursts through to bring new energy to the score. Other times it’s the entire orchestra.

It is my responsibility to keep the show going. Avoidance or denial of the obvious next steps is simply asking for trouble, within and without. Living in my car is cool as hell! Much better still when i am able to face the music.

i watch the kid go up the slide. Not the stairs to the slide. i watch her go up the steep, flat slide as if it were as natural as stairs. i watch her and i wonder at all of the adult breath wasted on the idea that there’s only one way to go up, or down, a slide.

This has been on my mind a lot: the decision so many adults seem to make that because they are in a position of authority, there is only their singular way of doing a thing. There are a great many ways to do most things, even effectively.

Play is the primary mode of learning socialization and cultural norms. i have a lot of questions about the unnecessary policing of play. (Of course i have a lot of questions about policing in general but y’know, not now.) i have a lot of questions about how we might treat kids more fairly; how we can offer the safety to foster their most brilliant, truest selves. It’s definitely not by telling them to be themselves and then criticizing.

i have these questions because i was a playful, nonbinary, mixed race, queer child, forced into the tiny box that my elders saw as “girlhood”. This erased almost all of me but my physical body, which i have almost always preferred to clothe from the boys’ section. As i write now, i can casually recall some well-meant but generally awful corrections of the way my foot fell when i walked, my skin, my hair, my emotions, my ideas, and somehow the most painful of all, my laugh. i remember my repeated, maybe violent, protests against being forced to wear shirts instead of going topless although i was years and years away from having breasts. Being taken off the baseball team as a pre-teen and shoved into softball, where the clique was already solidly formed. i remember my protests with pride. i also remember being bullied, disbelieved, and undefended but by my mother until i made new friends in Taiwan around my twenty-second birthday (the reigning champion among birthday celebrations until my thirtieth). In recent years Viv reflected solemnly that yeah, Kiah was pretty angry growing up.

i’m nauseous. i hate that we do this to children, never mind each other. i hate that it happened to me; that i was forced to allow an emotionally abusive aunt with no physical boundaries access to me until i was well into my twenties.

i promise i’m not just whining. i mostly really need to get this down, and out for good. For several years now i have been excavating this pain. For most of my adulthood, actually, but several years with determination. i half-assed the last steps once or twice. It’s done now though, and i am proud to write that there will be many fewer triggers in my future.

i watch the kid swing as high as she can so she can leap. So the fuck what if she hurts herself? i watch her figure it out. i let her make both of us awkward in public. i ask her opinion on most things while we’re together. i text to tell her i’m watching her favorite show. i treat her exactly the same way i do everyone else.

A lot of people i love are parents now. i’ve adopted the moniker Uncle Kiah because it sounds cool and also fuck everyone who wanna tell me what to do. i want the very first thing these kids know about me to be that i am ready to break useless rules. i want them to know this so they will feel free, and safe, with me. Indeed, that’s what i want to give everyone.

As i finished editing this, my brilliant charge was mediating a complaint among two others with whom she has become playmates this past half hour. i showed my trust in her when i caught her eye to mouth the question, “Okay?” She nodded with authority, and a confidence i cannot recall from my own childhood. Childcare is not a job, i recognize now, it’s my life’s work.

i no longer chase or cajole attachment. i dig reciprocal situations. i want us both to feel awake. i like when we laugh together, and when we’re proud of each other. i want to keep standing up for and challenging each other. i want us to meet high expectations. It is this i court in all attachments anymore.

Selfishly, i want access to your life. i want to watch you grow. i want to see you create. i want to continue to be inspired by you. i dig your brain. i appreciate your advice. i especially feel heartened when you trust me with your feelings.

On that note, i could really go for some honest disclosure.

That you are forthcoming now will help me settle into realistic expectations: What is it you’d like to share with me, if anything? Be honest and perhaps be surprised—it could seem to you i can settle for quite little. But you don’t see you like i do.

i do not chase, after this. You can show up, or tell me why you can’t show up. We, or you and i, go from there.

i didn’t mean to see the sunrise, but the dark became less so as i lay thinking, fresh from dreams, cozily ensconced. One by one the stars bowed out, black fading into deep blue to backlight the trees where the birds began stirring. i heard the ocean constant, all through the night invisibly crashing against the solid shore. i thought of a festival drum circle: relentless, gradually enveloping new rhythms, still there in the morning.

The sun peeked and snuck over the mountains, tickling my face, then the ocean. You and i talked of dawn often, yet didn’t see any together. Light creeped across the sky, grey now. i wondered if any kind of together will happen again for us. i felt the warmth of morning sinking into my skin as i continued wondering: do i care, either way? Our most beloved star, introduced by her preceding light, rose to make a grand entrance into my visible sky. A memory is only as valuable as the emotions of its owner. i find in myself no strong feelings, only a detached appreciation of a shared joy passed. Of laughing and learning and your heavenly body. The way you shine. Nearly fully risen then the yellow-white orb triumphantly burst through the trees and lit the whole sky, glittering on the surf.

The clamor of the birds faded gradually as they set off toward breakfast and their flocks. So much shoreline, so little time. i dozed then, and dreamed that Cleo cried nearby. In waking i recognized a crow’s repeated call. As i became fully conscious, remembering that Cleo is no longer of this world (was she ever?) could have been devastating. Somehow i simply, naturally smiled. In her later years that cat would cry all morning for attention and food, beginning around dawn, and i would grumpily ignore her. A week since her passing and a few minutes past dawn, so clearly she cried in my hearing. At this i woke gently, nothing in my heart but warmth for what i can only imagine was Cleo’s goodbye.

i hadn’t planned to be up for dawn but i saw the whole damn thing. And then some. Everything dies, every day the sun rises. How much more can i ask for? To remain in the unknowing is a gift, a practice, and all i can do anymore.

Remember that period after isolation began and you would start waking up in the morning like, “Why?” A lot of people had that time, maybe still do, maybe didn’t. It was strange how the base levels of our Maslow’s Pyramid took weird hits. We seemed to have all somehow become more grounded in reality.

Lots of days i wouldn’t sleep well. i’d get up before dawn and fuss about the cat who’d pooped on the stairs again. She hadn’t gone inside the box consistently in years. Those mornings it was the promise of purpose, in cleaning her messes and feeding her, that helped me move. i’d do all of the chores then hang out a while, taking my nap after the sun was way up.

Cleo is my mom’s old ass black cat with the crooked tail. Every year until recently, Viv would spend some wintertime in Puerto Rico while Cleo visited human friends in their homes. She is a great roommate—i’ve seen her convince even the most allergic to give her lap space. Cleo has lived all over the East Coast since a rough start in her first life at a trailer park. She is always talking; a noisy, sweet kitty. If you leave her alone too long she can get an attitude about it, though that has lessened as she ages. Increasingly too, she’ll yell for seemingly no reason. i try to convince people that Cleo is a singing cat—we don’t discourage her based on quality of sound.

Being kept alive by our animal companions is a rite of passage, probably no more universally shared than in the difficult days of a pandemic. Cleo took good care of me; we’d talk a lot. After a while she showed me a part of her hind leg that had been ailing her. She slowly taught me how to give her the tiniest massages. i was rewarded with big purrs when i got it right.

This was my third or fourth live-in situation with Cleo throughout her life. It was epic, to be certain, but when she joined our family i was still a teenager, in the midst of my first relationship, and managed to get fired from a summer job (in hindsight i would likely now feel some kinda way if i hadn’t been fired at some point, but at the time this was A Thing). Another time she had to move houses with me while i was sitting her in DC—long story. She pooped all over the floor, but my roommates didn’t care. She even helped me put out a fire once. i had inadvertently lit it, and she remained calm as i doused the growing flames.

Cleo is a gem, as most cats seem to eventually become to their families. We can learn from her too: this cat has lived beyond her given nine lives. She survived poison, y’all. Then traveled far and wide, charming everyone she could. Tonight she is sleeping on a blanket on a pillow next to the radiator in my mom’s Maine bedroom. Tomorrow she will leave us. The leg i used to coddle has finally given up, and Cleo’s quality of life is in peril. That little shit would be down to her last toe bean before she left this life, were it up to her. Instead, Viv made a difficult, wise decision.

In every way now i am also in that bedroom. i want to encourage Cleo to simply let go. She won’t, so i’ll be joining on the trip to the veterinarian as well. i will not be leaving their sides. i cry harder where i actually am because of the energy it takes to be there of soul but not body. i sob for the way i crave my mother’s grief to prop against my own. i want to feel Cleo’s breath on my hand and hear her snores in first person. Crying in these moments helps me reconcile the distance.

Thus, at the end of probably her twentieth life, we say goodbye to Cleo: a true confidant, righteous friend, courageous hero, and poopy baby. A survivor and inspiration. Muchas gracias por todo, hermanita. i too will live as many lives as i can.