Sometimes I Am Worried That We Are Raising Our Daughter Without Any Religion

On belief and sobriety, a letter from a self imposed writing retreat, before I begin the actual writing

On Easter I find myself in a new home drinking weak coffee and looking out at the bay. Pulling an old yellow sweater on over my nightgown. Stepping out on the cool wood deck. The tide pulling the water north. Yesterday there was sunshine and the locals say that orcas come through the passage right here, but I don’t know which direction. I spot a bald eagle and I pick up a quartz on the beach, and a stone so blue it reminds me of my husband’s eyes. How did you sleep? My husband writes. A robin waking me at 6 am, pecking at the window pulling me up and from my dreams filled with the rain and the night, and the water dripping from your hat brim down to the wood, a bright light, an unmade bed.

I am currently reading a novel my friend

Josh Raab

suggested, and then told me not to bring on my trip if I wanted to get any writing done, so of course I’ve brought it. It is

Sophie Strand

’s The Madonna Secret, and it makes me want to read the bible. Realizing only that I missed Passover this year because friends were posting their meals, and I was still thinking we were in early March. Sometimes I am worried that we are raising our daughter without any religion, her father an atheist, her mother a seeker, who sometimes identifies as Buddhist, a beautiful sculpture of Ganesha at our door. That when I am asked about God, it is the prairie, or the ocean, or Neil Young stoned at 27 in Topanga Canyon playing Out On The Weekend for the first time, that sly smile, is what I believe in, I say, the way Alice Rohrwacher makes images, and of course, that I have lived enough life to know that God is only a pause, and only of my understanding, and I am not interested in forcing my understanding on anyone, but still I marvel that I am unable to eat a radish without thinking of the past, having also been born with no religion but what I gathered of my history from my grandmother, a devout Presbyterian and the tables of our friends, all relaxed in their Judaism - where we honored ours - but only at Passover, here were traditions, and here were prayers. My father, who is the Jewish one, but also not raised with religion, rarely joining us.

There was a time when I was first considering sobriety, before I even knew I was considering sobriety, I found myself in a beautiful church that I didn’t even know existed on my college campus, going one morning with a girlfriend who dressed each Sunday and went without fanfare, and it was still winter, and the heat wasn’t working, so we kept our coats and scarves and hats on, while the priest led his sermon, and I knew then there could be something cheeky about God. Something playful. My second year at college I began meditating in a basement at middle campus, following Andreas’ long body heel to toe heel to toe trying to empty my mind. Frustrated and flustered. And always, when I mention God, I want to make it clear that I don’t believe in God, but - that I am a poet. And I am sober.

I am away from my daughter for the 4th time in our almost 3 years together, and I am away to remember how to write, or to remember why I write. A project finally needing more attention than I was able to give it in Los Angeles. My focus split between motherhood and chores. A project, that quite frankly might need more attention than I am willing to give it. More attention than 5 days with limited internet and nothing but the page, and the Pacific Ocean just down 100 steps of rickety stairs. And yet, I must get to the other side of it. My husband once writing me before we were married when I was in a similar script position, there is nothing there now but soon there will be. A belief in the word, its own religion, a belief in mine, something I am once again trying to learn.

Rock from the bay the color of my husband’s eyes