Page 26 of Gracie Harris Is Under Construction

“The only time I feel truly calm is when I’m writing,” I share. “It’s like I can disappear into my mind and nothing else matters. I need to figure out how to harness that power into my day-to-day life, that’s for sure.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” he says.

“A distraction or conversation usually works,” I say. The only hope of stopping this stupid leg shake is if we convince my brain to focus on something else. “Maybe an early preview of your interview questions for tomorrow?”

“Let’s try something else. Tell me about Benji,” he says. “What’s he like when he’s not causing the camp to call and stress you out?”

I smile and launch into a long-winded response, telling Josh that Benji sometimes feels like two different kids. He’s incredibly responsible and a good listener. He’s always the first one up and you usually don’t have to ask him more than once to do something, unlike Ava, who needs constant reminders. He’s also a ten-year-old boy, so when he goes outside or gets around friends, he is adventurous and open to anything. If you dare him to do something, he’ll shrug his shoulders like it’s no big deal and give it a try. He’s as happy to fish quietly in a lake off the side of a boat as he is to longboard down a big hill and crash and burn. Perfectly adaptable to the conditions in which he finds himself. As I talk, Josh interjects to ask questions or make jokes, and before I know it, fifteen minutes have passed of him just listening to me babble on about Benji.

“Maybe all little boys are the same on some level, but he sounds a lot like me as a kid,” he says. “I drove my parents nutty.”

He glances down at my leg and smiles. “Hey, look,” he says, pointing. “No more shake.”

That was fast. Usually, it takes an hour for things to really calm down, but sitting here talking about Benji did the trick.

“See? I told you it would help,” I say confidently, even though I didn’t think it would actually work so quickly. How about that?

I’ve likely made Josh late for whatever lunch meeting he was trying to get to, but he doesn’t rush to leave. I thank him again and walk across the hall to the writing room to collect my thoughts.

Josh is the first person to successfully talk me through a stress tic. Jenny, my mom, Dr. Lisa—they’re all almost always focused on trying to get to the root of the problem or downplay my mental spiral that they don’t take time to just talk me through it. Frankly, I didn’t know a calming conversation was an option. Josh was surprisingly adept at de-escalating the situation and acting like it wasn’t a big deal.

I sit down at the desk and think about an essay from five months ago. Over wine and a late-night phone call, Jenny and I basically cowrote the equally loved and maligned essay called “Rules for Dating a Despondent Widow.” It was a mostly tongue-in-cheek look at what it means to date someone who is both very sad and very new to the realities of dating in the modern era. It included tips likeDon’t mention anything to make them cry(spoiler alert: you won’t know what those things are until they start crying). It was all based on real experiences of mine in the first month I got back into dating. It was a sensation. People shared it with comments like “Also goes for divorcées” and “Literally peed my pants reading this.”

Some readers without a sense of humor declared that I was a terrible person and mom for attempting to date within the firstyear after Ben’s death. I have no doubt that the horrible woman at the restaurant was one of them. Meanwhile, Ava read it and laughed so hard she snorted. “Wow, Mom—I didn’t know you could be so funny,” she said with so much preteen honesty that I didn’t know whether to be offended or honored.

That piece is on my mind because now I’m thinking of new rules—rules for distracting a despondent friend. I reach for a pen and notebook and jot down three things that Josh did really well.

Rule #1: Don’t make it about you.

Rule #2: Engage them on a topic that always brings them joy.

Rule #3: Let them decide when they feel better.

I like where this is going. I reach across the desk for my laptop and open a fresh document. I type for long enough that I see the mailman drive up one side of Wilson Street and come back down two hours later to my driveway. That means he’s done most of downtown; I’m at the end of the central route. A true creative flow. The pull quote for this one is easy:

Perhaps the most important rule of all is this: don’t try to solve the problem. The problem is a bigger and more tangled mess than you can imagine. Be there, be present, be aware. That’s what we need when we’re down.

Aside from Ben and the kids, the only other people who have inspired essays for me are Dr. Lisa and Jenny. I take this as a sign that this is a genuine friendship blooming. Something about this summer in Canopy really, truly matters. I won’t tell Josh, though; itmight go to his head. I also conveniently leave mention of my leg shake out of the essay. That isn’t something I’m ready to share with the world just yet.

—

I expected thatyesterday’s minor freak-out on my part might’ve scared Josh away for a day, but we’re back to the normal routine like nothing out of the ordinary happened at all.

“What’s your biggest fear?” he asks me over today’s kitchen-island lunch. I’m nibbling on toast with almond butter (which Josh claims isn’t even a real meal) and he’s got a turkey sandwich.

“Do you mean like a very in-the-moment fear that camp calls me about another injury, or, like, I’m afraid of heights?”

“Probably aiming for something in between those two,” he begins. “But glad to know I shouldn’t take you on any hikes with tall peaks.”

“Definitely not,” I say playfully before turning serious. “Honestly, Josh, my biggest fear right now is dying—and not in the sense that I’m afraid of deathfor meor have issues with mortality. I’m desperately afraid of leaving my kids orphaned. There were many days, weeks probably, after Ben died when I stayed up at night just panicked at the thought. Suddenly it’s just you standing between some semblance of happiness and total childhood devastation.”

“How do you work through that?”

“You know me well enough now. There’s a practical answer and a more philosophical one. Practically speaking, I got my will rewritten within the first month of Ben’s death. I talked to designated caretakers instead of just writing it down and assuming it wouldnever matter. I made sure beneficiaries were listed on literally every insurance policy and retirement account. Just tons of stuff like that, so at least if it happened, they would be taken care of in the legal and financial sense.”

“What about the nonpractical stuff?”

“I try to decrease risk as much as possible in my life. I used to love traveling around not just the state, but the country, for work. Now I try not to be far from them. The few trips I’ve done to New York City for book stuff, I’m there and back in thirty-six hours or less. I turned down an amazing writing residency in Italy this summer in part because my kids didn’t want me so far away.”

---