I meet a friend for coffee on a Friday morning at The Hive, one of a handful of coffee shops in Fort Wayne that has a play area for children. At one end of the seating area, they have a play kitchen, a table, a shelf full of books and a little egg chair, all in varying sepia tones.
The aesthetic is not what I’ve chosen for my own home – thinking that children deserve fun and colour, and shouldn’t suffer as the result of my tedious adherence to Instagram trends, I’ve always gone for bright, primary shades, but now my house looks like s**t so I guess the joke’s on me – but the effect is adorable, and my four-year-old would happily spend a full day here, running back and forth to my table to show me some new toy he’s discovered, or to ask if he can have a cake pop, or a muffin, or to stand on the table (no, he cannot).
My friend, L., is running late, but I am running uncharacteristically early. When I take both boys out of the house – Atlas doesn’t have school on Fridays, and Roman’s babysitter only works Monday-Thursday – I’m either very early or egregiously late (there’s no in between). Today, Atlas began to whine that he wanted to watch TV and, knowing that, once it went on, getting him out the door would be a struggle, I decided we’d get our bits together and leave the house to take him away from temptation.
At The Hive, I order a Starlit Dirty Chai from their seasonal festive menu, and a breakfast bagel. I plan to share it with Roman, who’s not quite eating enough to warrant his own order (but getting close), but I forget all about him when they ask what I’d like on my bagel, and I choose chipotle ranch, which turns out to be quite spicy.
Despite the fact that I think to myself, several times a week, that Indian and Japanese and Middle Eastern babies eat spicy food and survive, I’m not brave enough to risk it today, so I order him his own bagel, with cream cheese, then carefully dissect it when he has trouble chewing the outside. I give him small pieces of bagel inner, slathered in cream cheese, and he seems satisfied.
Anchor Baby is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
When L. arrives, she orders a Candy Cane Cold Brew. It’s below zero outside and has been threatening to snow for days. I don’t know whether to feel admiring or judgmental about her choice, although, as I write this down, maybe the lesson is not to feel anything about it. It’s her choice, after all.
I would never drink a Candy Cane coffee of any variety, because I firmly believe that mint belongs in toothpaste, chewing gum and Mint Aeros only. No coffee, no (non-mint-Aero) chocolate. Definitely no cheesecake. Yuck.
Atlas, having eaten three mini croissants before we left the house, doesn’t seem to warrant a food order, but when he spots the cake pops on the counter, all bets are off, so I go back up to order him one, which he eats in two bites ($1.60 per mouthful).
It’s while I’m at the counter ordering his cake pop (would you like to add a tip? 10%? 15%? 20%? I always tap 20%, but for this cake pop, from a glass case, which I carry over to the table myself, I opt for 15% and later feel cheap) that I bump into another woman I know, K., a friend I met through my Wednesday morning farm work.
We see one another and smile, say hello, how are you? I missed you at the farm this week. We talk about the weather, which makes me feel very at home; when it comes to meteorology, all Irish people are excellent conversationalists.
I sit back down at the table with the cake pop, which Atlas disappears in seconds, and tell L. I just met a friend from the farm. “It’s so nice,” I tell her. “I love bumping into people I know – it makes me feel like I actually live here.”
I do, of course, actually live here; I have actually lived here since March of 2020, and I have known that I will actually live here for a long time since January of 2021, when I got pregnant with Atlas. Three months later, I would get married; three years later, I would give birth to my second son, Roman, who turns one later this month. I have, as they say, put down roots.
But there’s something about moving to a new place, and knowing no one but a small number of people – in my case, my sister, her husband, and a handful of her friends, all of whom I knew only really in the context of her and her house and her kids’ parties – that makes you feel weirdly invisible.
I’m reminded of an early episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer – there really is, as I told Brandin the other day, an episode of Buffy for everything – in which a Sunnydale High student, Marcie Ross (played by Clea Duvall), becomes invisible as a consequence of being ignored, talked over and disregarded by everyone at school. The school’s location on a hellmouth – a powerful site of demonic energy, don’t you know – turns perception into reality.
I felt a bit like that, throughout my first few years in Fort Wayne. Before I’d found friends, and the farm, formed a book club with women I’d met once or twice and thought, I think I’d like to be their friend, I could go days on end without seeing anyone I knew, or, and this felt more significant, without being seen by anyone else.
This could be a distinctly Irish way of identifying this state of being, I will admit; I’d say a lot of New Yorkers could also go days without bumping into anyone they know, although I guess it depends on where they work and how they get there and how connected they are to the area they live in and their neighbours (and so on and so forth).
It’s not quite loneliness, this. It’s not quite isolation, either. It’s the feeling of being newly of somewhere, but not from there. It’s the feeling of being home, but not quite feeling at home. It’s living an existence that is out of society and time and culture and context, and never quite knowing how to get in.
Of course, there is no clear “how to” but, if there was – and here I channel my inner Brené Brown, someone whose books I have not read, but whose cartoon on empathy I have sent to all of my nearest and dearest at least once, and many of whose interviews I have listened to and absorbed and been moved by (so why haven’t I read her books?!) – it would be about connection. It would be about people. It would be about community, which you can’t quite force yourself to be a part of, but you can, I suppose, make inroads into. Slowly, slowly.
I met L. – the friend with the bad taste in coffee, although, as I said, we’re not judging – through our children’s babysitter. Her daughter goes there too, and we connected through Instagram with a, “I hope this isn’t weird… my child goes there too”. It wasn’t weird. It was great.
We meet for coffee and chats and we do a weird amalgamation of catching up on what we’ve been up to but also learning about who each other is, on a fundamental level.
“Making new friends is really… wild,” L. says to me over scones (I made them but they didn’t turn out great) and coffee at my house. “You kind of end up trauma dumping everything at once, don’t you?”
You do. I don’t talk about my “trauma”, for want of a better term, with my oldest friends very often, because they were all there. They lived through them with me. We processed a lot of it together, and it informs the way we think of and interact with and love one another – but with new friends, there’s none of that background, none of that context. We learn as we go.
What’s most important, though, I’m learning – always learning – with new friends is to actually show up. Not that I don’t show up for my old friends, but I know that, if I can’t make it to x event or y event, they won’t care; I’ll see them next weekend, for the concert we bought tickets to, or I’ll drop over on Wednesday on my way home from town. It’s casual, but it’s also assured. We won’t fall out over it, is the attitude.
It’s not that I’m worried about falling out with my new friends. We haven’t quite got there yet; the real worry is that, if I don’t make it to x or y event, there won’t be another invitation. There’s no concert we’re planning on going to together, and we’re not at the stage where we’d drop in on one another, more or less unannounced. And if I don’t make the effort to show up, to have those conversations over coffee where we trauma dump and get to know one another, how will we ever get to that stage?
There are things that feel obvious, once you do them, but that which, when people tell you to do them in order to get the desired result, feel absolutely enraging and also stupid, like there’s no way that will work, that’s such a cliche, give me a break etc.
You can add to this list: improve your mood by going for a walk; sleep better by getting some fresh air before bed; meet people and make friends by starting a new hobby.
Truly, who reads these pieces of advice and thinks, what a sound recommendation – I shall try that immediately! Not I! I just think eyeroll and then I think f**k right off you insufferably smug b******s.
But as someone who’s been depressed since her early twenties (and probably before although who am I to say really), I’m here to tell you that going for a walk really can improve your mood. It’s a treatment, not a cure, though – I highly recommend speaking to a professional, going to therapy and taking mood-altering drugs (only as prescribed obviously) – but as a short-term remedy for what ails you, it’s a great option.
Similarly, fresh air really does help you sleep – it cools you down, for one thing, mimicking the natural lowering of your core temperature that happens in sleep – and finally, yes, finding and embracing a new hobby or interest will, in fact, place you in the path of people who like similar things to you (or, at the very least, one similar thing).
At the farm, I have long conversations with B., a woman who spent her childhood summers in Europe; discuss therapy and AI with E., a psychotherapist who specialises in working with immigrants; practice being late and canceling plans and not apologising with KJ., who’s teaching me a lot about radical self-acceptance and love and community.
Back at the café, L. asks how I know the woman I bumped into; I tell her it’s through the farm, through KJ, through this newly shared interest I have in… well, not farming (because the more I farm, the more I realise I could never actually farm), but growing food and engaging with shared agriculture.
As I tell her this – the conversations I’ve had with K. about poetry and work and creativity – she looks up. “Oh, hi!” she says and, as I look up too, I realise that she, too, knows K. “We met through our exes,” L. tells me, and they exchange a knowing, slightly shamefaced look. Ain’t no shame in that game, I feel like saying (but don’t).
This feels very Irish to me, too, bumping into someone and realising they know someone else in your orbit, or more than one someone; K. knows KJ, too, as does L, but separately. It feels like a circle (a hoop that never ends). Several degrees of Kevin Bacon, but instead of Kevin Bacon, it’s KJ or, I suppose, from her point of view, it’s me. I’m Kevin Bacon.
It makes sense that I’m starting to feel at home, that I’m coming out of ghostly hiding and regaining corporeal form. I have, after all, been here for half a decade. I have roots here: a husband, yes, but also children, a part-time job (ish?) at the farm, links to a community that, in some small ways, now includes me.
There’s a cafe where the owner recognises me and says hello. Granted, he calls me “Ireland” (I’m not sure he knows my real name), but I’ll take it.
I know the owner of the indie bookshop downtown (to say hello to, at least), as well as Britta, the artist who works there.
I have a friend I’d text if I want to take a yoga class; I can think of someone to call if I’m dying to go for lunch and don’t want to go alone; I know who I can drop the boys into for an hour in case of emergency.
If I started out the story as a ghost, it feels like I’m on my way to gaining full form. Not quite there yet – I’m still not sure I have anyone I’d just drop into, unannounced, for a cup of tea (I’m not sure I know anyone who keeps tea in stock, honestly) – but halfway. So, you know, we’re getting there.
If you haven’t already, please listen to this episode of Louise McSharry’s podcast (or all episodes of Louise McSharry’s podcast, honestly, because it’s very good – she’s very good). It’s really honest and vulnerable in all the best ways.
I don’t ever really listen to Call Her Daddy, but I listened to this episode because for whatever reason I really, really love Whitney Leavitt (I think you can tell I’m old because I’m linking to her Instagram and not her TikTok) from Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (and I hope she leaves that show behind and never returns).
I found the conversation she and her Dancing With the Stars partner Mark Ballashad about the hate they received during the show really confronting and if, like me, you’ve ever indulged in online snark, you might find the same.
You’ve probably already seen this – how could you not have? – but this interview with Lily Allen about her new album, her experience of and on the internet, and how she feels about going back on tour in her forties, with teenage children, is great.
Finally, I turned to Etsy for my Christmas cards this year. I ordered them yesterday, so I may end up – once again – sending cards that arrive in mid-January, but I’m excited to send out these little cuties once they get here.
I love sending Christmas cards; it’s the one bit of snail mail I truly enjoy sending (don’t even talk to me about the sheer volume of cheques I end up posting in this backwards country), and a festive habit I won’t ever give up.
