A tree grows in Belgium

In Boom, Belgium, we lived for a short time with a woman named Gusta. She lived on a narrow street, paved with bricks, or maybe it was just that the narrow brick houses were so close together that I've remembered everything as brick.

The children in that town would ride their bikes to school in a pack, and at midday they would ride home to eat a hot lunch. I watched them from the window and thought about how one day that would be me, flying down the street on my bicycle.

Meanwhile in Gusta's house, we were learning Flemish, Dutch, playing "Who's Who," learning how to say "red hair" or "mustache" or "wears glasses."

Gusta had a lovely soap called Fa, in a blue bottle. There were hot water pipes in her bathroom that doubled as a drying rack for towels. I remember falling asleep with a saucer of stinky crushed Vitamin B on the nightstand, it was supposed to ward off mosquitoes.

My parents had another friend in that town, her name was Agnes. Her husband had been killed in a crash in a motocross race. They used to say all the time that I reminded them of her, and perhaps they meant my glasses and my hair, how it was parted, or the way I stood or spoke, I don't know for sure, but what I took from it was that I was destined to be widowed.

Agnes had a son. We stayed in her house while they were away, and I organized her son's toy cars and cards and other toys. There was a foosball table there, perhaps a foreshadowing of my own husband.

In a nook on the stairwell landing, there was a bronze sculpture of a grasshopper. I believed a bug would be drawn to a representation of a bug, so I gave it wide berth.

*

I recently watched Oprah, of all things: a conversation about estrangement, about adult children going "no contact" with their parents, and vice versa.

When I was a kid my mother mixed up opera with Oprah, thought the school was taking fifth graders to see Oprah, when they were taking us to a dress rehearsal performance of The Magic Flute at Lincoln Center. Or maybe it's me who mixed up the two words.

Anyway, in this Oprah episode, a psychologist talked about how children have different temperaments, and will develop certain notes, certain convictions.

Another twelve-year-old might have brushed off "You remind us of Agnes," whereas I made the leap to widowhood.

I was ruled by my imagination. I understood that the immaculate conception was just a story, and also allowed for the possibility that it was real but just that one time – and also I hoped it might turn out to be true for me.

Thank you so, so much to everyone who has subscribed in recent weeks. All subscriptions through year-end support my upcoming residency at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). As of today: I've raised $1100 of the $1500 cost. Just $400 to go!

If money is tight, please DM me for a comp'd subscription. If you're a writer/artist, let's do a subscription trade. XO