You Are Here

Last week, I was trying to push through the routines I had created for myself, and noticed sadness had settled in my chest. I didn’t quite know how much it weighed, let alone how to remove it. Out the window it was both raining and snowing, adding to the heavy texture of the day. I took a picture of the raindrops sliding down the glass, opened up a new window on my laptop, and typed out this poem: 

As the rain trickles, I 

am also reaching

down to where I am grounded.

I ache for the slow journey downward to be 

smooth and effortless 

like the raindrops gliding 

down cool glass. 

And I exhaled, feeling content with the way my creative practices can bring me home. 

This past weekend, my sister and I took a trip to New York City. After settling into her friend’s apartment on the upper west side, we set out to go for a walk in Morningside Park. The sun was shining, it was 55 degrees and just so serene all I could do was turn to Gretchen and say “this feels like heaven right now.” To experience the sun on my face - and a sun from a different part of the country - moved things within me in just the right way. 

That night Gretchen and I put on our dresses and drank sparkling glasses of sangria and rode the subway to Radio City to see Josh Groban perform. We had been waiting two years for this concert since the pandemic had put all of our lives on hold. We giggled that we were by far the youngest people there, and confidently climbed the grand stairs to our seats. 

Josh was grand and joyous and funny and made us feel like we’d been friends with him for years. Whenever he introduced a new song, Gretchen and I looked at each other over our masks, eyes wide, waiting in anticipation to hear a song we both loved. In the middle of the show Josh said, “I never felt I could truly perform a cover of this next song, because I felt I couldn’t fully relate to the lyrics. The lyrics are about perspective and seeing things from both sides, and I feel like after these past couple years I have been able to fully experience the messages within this song.” Gretchen and I started excitedly hitting each other’s arms as he began to sing his beautiful cover of “Both Sides Now.” 

They rain and they snow on everyone

So many things I would have done

But clouds got in my way

…

Oh, but now old friends they're acting strange

And they shake their heads and they tell me that I've changed

Well something's lost, but something's gained

In living every day

The next day, we waited in line at Times Square, laughing under the umbrella in the rain as we people watched and solved riddles to pass the time. Eventually, Gretchen and I secured tickets to an evening show of “Come From Away,” a musical about the week following the September 11th attacks, telling the true story of what transpired when 38 planes were ordered to unexpectedly land at Gander in the province of Newfoundland, Canada. 

The show begins and ends with the same song about being an islander in Newfoundland and the routines and community that gives them their identity. By the end of the show, the community now includes all those who stayed with the Newfoundlanders the week of 9/11. The characters wrestle with balancing feelings of grief for the events of 9/11, but also immense gratitude and joy for the time they shared with the Newfoundlanders in an otherwise frightful and uncertain time. I felt all their emotions swell in the room through the melodies and it overwhelmed my eyes with tears.

On the plane ride home, I was overwhelmed by all I just experienced. Being in grad school, while it is for a profession I am extremely passionate about, I have been aching for creative outlets, conversations and inspirations. This weekend I was surrounded with enough creativity to last me through the spring season. To see an artist I admire pour out his music and love for everyone after being in isolation for two years, and to experience a Broadway show with people who are also passionate about story-telling and music and human connection filled me with so much hope and goodness. And not to mention just walking down the streets of the city and dreaming what life would be like if I was a writer living in New York City… it was just what I needed. 

As we flew back to Minnesota, I closed my eyes and listened to the entire “Come From Away” soundtrack, reliving the whole show again in my head. Chills pricked down my spine as they sang about flying, about being suspended in place and time and not knowing where they were supposed to feel at home. There is a part in the first and last song that goes,

You are here 

At the start of a moment

On the edge of the world

Where the river meets the sea. 

When I finished listening to the soundtrack, I tapped over to the playlist of songs Gretchen and I had made of Josh’s concert. I tapped one that he had performed that I didn’t know as well called “The Fullest.” As I’m above the clouds listening and thinking back on such a lovely weekend, the lyrics hit me and the chills spread in their usual pattern down on my spine: 

But how much this could mean to me

I can only imagine 

Just how deeply we perceive 

All the colors that we found

Would you follow me out on the thin branches? 

Going blind, trying to soak up the sun

I believe, I believe that the space in between 

Is what we become. 

I close my eyes and picture the budding trees I had seen at Morningside Park and how the sun had shown through them. I think about all that my sister and I had gone through in these past two years, how we have been through hell and back. I wonder about if we had gone to this concert two years ago, how our lives would have been so different. How would the music have resonated with us then? Would it reach inside my soul as strongly and deeply? I am not sure. 

Despite enjoying a break from my grad school work this weekend, I found myself thinking of the body structures and body functions we discuss when working with clients. One of them is the client’s sense of proprioception, or the body’s ability to detect where they are in space. I found myself thinking of this a lot this weekend - as I almost lost my footing as we propelled ahead beneath the city on the subway, as I pushed through a crowd of people in Times Square, and then as I was sitting there on the plane, in awe that my body felt completely normal when I was actually suspended above the clouds. 

To know where we are in space is to also simply trust the unknown and that if something feels off balance, our body will let us know that. I feel there has been a lot of imbalance lately, but it is here, in the space in between - in the clouds, in the rain, in the spaces of a melody - that we sometimes find the perfect place to land, and it feels like home, somehow. 

"The Fullest" by Josh Groban 

"Both Sides Now (feat. Sarah Barellies)" by Josh Groban 

"Welcome to the Rock" by 'Come From Away' Company