Broken glass. So much broken glass. Wet basement. Leaking roof. Piles of lumber to de-nail and repurpose. Piles of brick. Dumpster after dumpster after dumpster.

And yet.

In spite of my lack of diligence, grass has seeded and is growing in place of much of the massive former church parking lot. Pathways are re-bricked. The pews have left the church. Convent rooms are reframed and rough electrical is tucked cozily in boxes awaiting nearby drywall. New windows replace the broken ones, the broken glass of eviction. 

A neighbor from Sicily by way of Staten Island (and periodically Wellsville) brings us home cooking. A new friend shows me a Mennonite market with the freshest of eggs. A patron of the town says we are a bit of oxygen for the village. The fire department has offered G a home away from home.

The river works. The trains deliver. Mary stands.

Almost five months into this project, most workweeks are seven days, sunrise to sunset, growing ever more cold and short. G has been known to work deep into the night or to start when it is still dark. The former rectory—the house directly on the river—is her primary focus and its sculpture is taking form. It is gaining height and linearity. It has lost its antebellum influence as a crispness is emerging. Steel beams now open spans once held tightly confined by lath, plaster, many doors and undoubted secrets. All roof skirts and concrete gingerbread are gone. The interior is spacious and vast. Mid-to-late afternoon, a shaft of light can be seen traveling from one end of the building to the other. Weight is now defined in terms of steel rather than studs and 2x6s. 

Energies ebb and flow as ideas and timelines evolve. G remains happier and more grounded than she has ever been. If anything, she wishes she had picked up these tools sooner. She wants everything to feel more native. Baked in her college-prep oven, she still sees life as filled with things for which she hasn’t done enough preparation; I see her hungrily preparing now for now.

Of course, all of our baggage has traveled with us, if by freight rather than air. “We are not a family” G said. Despite my best efforts to keep a semblance of one throughout our almost decade-long divorce, there is strain on the system. It is odd how we try to function as a threesome. I buy X the same berries he insisted on keeping stocked for his breakfast years ago, but his recipe for granola seems to have changed.

I think my energy disturbs him, but how I am not sure. There is an increasing awareness that he does not want to be here, doing this. At least not this long. Not this indefinite. Not this wide-open sense of discovery. Not this level of ceding control. 

*

Something about the Ohio Project makes me feel like I’m in basic training. I am being forced to see and feel more than my New England life illustrated. There I learned to parent (which, of course, forever changes as the child does), and then I learned to manage on my own. It was a supportive place to do both, and I encountered respect in most corners for my choices and my work. 

Then it was bravery of life on the road in an RV, followed by the weeds of adolescence for many years. I emerge from all of these with almost a chuckle. This feels harder.

Loss feels like my bedfellow. I wonder more frequently than ever what it would have been like to have another voice at the table: my son’s. I admit to you shyly that I spoke to a psychic medium.

I am told by G that I “come on too strong” that a burst of my positive energy can sometimes feel like a “brick wall” to them. I am not sure what this means (there is so much I do not get right now), but I understand this is the gentlest explanation she could muster for why either or both of them sometimes do not acknowledge me when I walk on site with a joyful hello.

Almost as if when I re-assumed my maiden name it was an act of deliberate severance rather than an effort to reclaim my rightful heritage, I find myself on the outside of my own former family even in their midst. G and X get along, they create, they are building out G’s ideas and making them manifest. I am only sometimes spoken to or seen. 

Then there is a shift. X grows less patient even with G. She responds with hesitation and steps back. She sleeps more during the day and less at night, responding to old, imbedded habits. 

As I am seen less, something happens within me. I speak with a wise person about some of my childhood hauntings triggered by G coming home late either from the worksite next door or the firehouse two blocks away. Unsubstantiated fears, I realize, and as I am given space to free them, other territory opens. I pick up pieces of ideas off the ground that I have left mid-sentence. I think about wanting to use all of this experience for purpose. Wanting to have meaning outside of parenting. About having completed my ministry work yet still feeling so separate from traditional faith. And wondering: am I ready? Am I willing? Could I start now?

These thoughts happen on the day of a blue moon. I answer myself: yes, I am willing to try. I think of names and colors and spaces and grounding my ideas into something, and within minutes it is: orange and Presence and I don’t need a space, because Covid. 

It can be home. 

I don’t let myself have wine that night, I play with WIX, designing my heart out until my eyes are burning with tiredness. I tell myself that I will launch at the new moon which gives me about two weeks. I work every night and some afternoons. I force myself to find the time to do this before I lose my bravery or the window of opportunity. Or both.

And I do not tell G or X. This feels important. 

In fact, I tell no one except the people I ask for testimonials, “as a favor, would you send me a few short words about me as a counselor/advisor/spiritual person?” 

Keeping the deal I made with myself, as the new moon emerges, I post the site to Facebook offering a few free sessions. I write today having completed nine extraordinary meetings: each different, each rich, and each reiterating to me that this is exactly where I am supposed to be. I haven’t felt something quite like this in a long time, maybe ever.

*

A number of years ago, I launched this blog: “Where I End and She Begins.” When I wrote the title line in a few verses of poetry, I finally had ended a childless life. 

It is said that in every ending there is a beginning, and I am beginning to feel the embodiment of this powerfully. If I hadn’t felt the pain in not being seen by others, I may not have found the energy in already busy days to build out this idea, and I may not have responded at all to a growing inner desperation to broaden the reach of my joyful hello. 

*

Epilogue: 

This missive has been written in fits and starts over many weeks. A few days ago, X left to return to his life. G and I are starting to find a new rhythm working on the property with a few helpers. It is a new and an old adjustment. One that is familiar yet always fresh; as Heraclitus is quoted as saying, “no one ever steps in the same river twice.” Neither we, nor the river, are ever the same from moment to moment. But this time around, we know from experience we can handle it.

Presence Advising is still a tiny baby, but I am beyond grateful that I found the time and motivation to breathe life into it because I feel really good in that space. I leave the construction site, hold a Zoom session, and marvel at how it feels to connect on this level: solid, true, linked to my reason for being. 

I still have not told X about this new venture, but a few days before Thanksgiving I showed G the site. (www.presenceadvising.com)

She was quiet for a few minutes as she scrolled around it.

“You did this?” 

“It looks good, Mom.”

“I am proud of you.”

The seasons change and yet they re-turn. 

Each time, anew.