Ukee, our now fifteen-week-old goldendoodle that we knowingly brought to live with us over a month ago, sleeps only three or four hours in total during the day, and otherwise, he leaps around the temporary house, all four paws pushing off the engineered hardwood, a blond ball of joy.
As he approaches his sixteenth week, his gums are reddening, pale mounds of teeth beginning to push their way through the skin. He gnaws at a plant I have carefully nurtured from a cutting my mother gave me — split from a hoya she has kept green for over thirty years.
If we lived in our actual home, this beloved plant would be high on a bookshelf, out of reach of a puppy’s aching jaw, his slim, needle teeth.
J worries that Ukee will not mellow. I worry that Ukee will not mellow. We worry we will never step over the threshold of our home again. Neither of us knows what to say to the other. There aren’t any guarantees. Every day, something new breaks in the temporary housing, and J and I look at each other in bafflement. One day, the dishwasher. Another, the toilet. Even yet this morning, a handle loses its grip on a cupboard and clatters at my toes.
Ukee rushes over to inspect the handle with great intensity, his small black eyes quivering with intelligence.
It was working yesterday, we say. It was just fine. What happened?
*
I am about to dismantle a novel draft I have spent almost two years creating. The manuscript is already in its fifth iteration, but I have yet to actually write the first real draft. Each iteration feels like pulling a mask back only to reveal another mask. Beautiful, at times, but intent on concealing the true face of the work.
It is deeply discouraging and emotional to be setting out on draft six with the intention to tear all the masks to pieces and start entirely over. I am terrified of the blankness once again.
One of my most trusted readers tells me gently but wisely: This is what you have to do to get where you are going.
But what is it that I will do to get there?
*
James Hollis writes:
An ability to tolerate the anxiety generated by ambiguity is what allows us to respect, engage, and grow from our repeated, daily encounters with the essential mysteries of life. But the payoff goes even further. Certainty begets stagnation, but ambiguity pulls us deeper into life. Unchallenged conviction begets rigidity, which begets regression; but ambiguity opens us to discovery, complexity, and therefore growth.
Hollis’ words here were discovered through Ava’s always-provoking bookbear.
*
Truthfully, I’m weary of life’s essential mysteries. I feel like if Hollis is right, then I must be so deep into life that I am one of those strange creatures strangely formed by the crushing darkness of the abyssal zone. But when I consider it, honestly consider the mysteries, it is so clear that so many of the abundances of my life have always been borne to me by the dark, opaque waters of abyssal ambiguity.
It’s difficult to admit that because of what it means, but it is true.
I’m thinking here of the first days with Kurtis — of the night in our first month that I drove from a late dinner with a friend right to his house and knocked. I had no idea if he was home or if he would be glad to see me. I just showed up and waited for whatever was beyond his door.
I’m thinking of the year I moved to an entirely different country without a single person who knew me on the other side.
Of months sitting on the couch with J, asking him questions because I did not yet know him, but I wanted to. I was drawn to whatever unknown he was offering.
Of the house that burned. Of that first time I saw it — empty, walls painted three different colors. A place entirely strange to me. Of walking through the different rooms, tears slipping down my cheeks, and not knowing why I was weeping.
I’ve never had an idea, not really. I’ve always just had all this longing, all this desire to get here. To land.
I’m Wondering is a monthly column where I ask and then answer a question. More than anything, I hope that as I continue to wonder, it will open all of us up to paths we can’t imagine now but feel called to by a question that won’t let us go.
Amy Lin lives in Calgary, Canada where there are two seasons: winter and road construction. She completed her MFA at Warren Wilson College and holds BAs in English Literature and Education. Her work has been published in places such as Ploughshares and she has been awarded residencies from Yaddo and Casa Comala. She writes the Substack At The Bottom Of Everything where she wonders: how do we live with anything? HERE AFTER is her first book.
Header image courtesy of the author.
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