Cardinal crimson missing goodbye

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We never got to say goodbye. One day, he left. Angrily, violently, surprisingly, blindsidingly. There was confusion, worry, fear, rage, shock, numbness, open-heartedness, hope, hopelessness, willingess, shut down, tears, secrecy. And so many lies. But the hardest thing to reconcile is that we never got to say goodbye. We didn’t know it was goodbye. On so many levels. Gone. Ghosted. The kind of sudden absence that haunts your dreams, that wakes you up clutching your sheets, your hair, your t-shirt, trying to find purchase in reality. Anything real. Was any of it real? What even is real? Where is he? Where is she? What does any of it mean? And what is the meaning in that?

There is a cardinal, a male a husband an adult guy bird, who frequents my deck. He is resplendently cardinal red. Is that crimson? Or is it cardinal? I always thought of crimson as minimally maroon, but Harvard is the Crimson and all the merch is maroon even my diploma so I think crimson is actually a less vibrant red than I wish it were for its name. The word that connotes, denotes meaning. Crimson. Cardinal. But I guess when I think about the papacy which I don’t very often because I do not like organized religion and really have some deep and abiding concerns about Catholicism, amongst others, I think about cardinal red and how utterly magnificent the red that the Cardinals get to wear is. It pisses me off sometimes that so many fucking pedophiles and pedophile-adjacent-coveruppers-closeted men-just-go-be -gay proudly and openly please-the good amongst us love and support you-get to wear that utterly magnificent red that cardinal birds, the males of course, just grow into and pass on genetically.

Genetics is an interesting field. Biologically determined? Biologically destined? Nature. Nurture.

We never got to say goodbye, and I look back on years of nurture, nature, nurture, biology, choice, and I look at the cardinal on my deck and I love him. He is partnered, married, with a biologically female cardinal; those less vivid women with beaks like magnolia seeds, as if they put lipstick on to glow up a bit because brown is not the new- or old- and never-will-be cardinal red of their men. We have several cardinal pairs, but this man on my deck is my favorite because on his legs grow feathers that look like breeches or jodhpurs, I think of those as synonymous although they aren’t they connote denote different things. Anyway, this man cardinal has the most magnificent cardinal red capri pants that are not so dull as to just be cardinal red but also vibrant with lowlights and highlights and the point is that none of the other men have them and I wonder why he does. Biology? Genes? A mutation? A choice? Destiny? I don’t know but I feel daily that he is lucky and I am lucky that he likes Royal Canin cat food, subtype not important, and watches until Ruthie finishes eating never all she is too precious. So the mister approaches as she leaves and not long after but not always his lipsticked missus joins him, but she has no fun pants she’s pantsless which is maybe what she chooses to be but he is utter delight and looks rakish and rogue and just a bit street.

I suspect that he that she that they will leave one day and that I won’t get to say goodbye to them. I will be sad but it will not hurt like this not goodbye because probably some part of their genetic code is telling them to fly elsewhere. And maybe so is mine but why? That was not part of the bargain not on my bingo card and I am having some trouble adjusting.

Because when you should have a goodbye and you don’t get it, there’s a breach. And things go sideways and even though you try everything to reorient the north star isn’t north anymore or not quite so. And you sit and ponder crimson maroon cardinal and biology destiny choice nature nurture harm kindness and you wonder what you missed if you missed anything why how. And it can be hard. I love his pants so much and his nod of the head. Cardinals are supposed to denote connote visits from dead loved ones. But what if the dead loved one is my Nanny? She is a woman and red cardinal is a man does that work? And what if the loved one isn’t dead but just gone left missing migrated? Where does that leave the visited?

Berlin & now in the midst of a scorcher

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I’m in West Virginia right now, and today hit 104 degrees. Yesterday wasn’t far from that, and tomorrow promises to be warmer. As y’all know, I grew up in the Deep South, so you might think I’d be used to this, but this here is fire hot. I spent a good bit of the past two days scraping and sanding our deck despite it all, but this isn’t good or normal heat. My heart hurts for the goats and cats and all the other beings that make this place home. I have vats of water everywhere and am hoping for the best.

Last week I was in Berlin, and most days it was well above the average temp for June. Regardless, I really enjoyed my week in a place brand new to me. Oliver is attending in innovation program there so I flew him over on June 9 so that he could rest up before move in on the 12th and so that we could do a tour of the BMW motorcycle factory. That was absolutely fascinating. Think of every stereotype you have of incredible German engineering and precision, and you will see it all come to life in the factory. The warehouse part was a kinetic ordered chaos of millions of parts, robots, autonomous units, and highly trained people. That all feeds in seamlessly to the dynamic production lines which produce every BMW bike you see on the road anywhere in the world today. Many of the robots have such charming humanistic features; it was sort like encountering Star Wars droids in real life.

Berlin is not particularly pretty (I’m sure part of the reason is that 80-85% of its buildings were destroyed during WWII), though it has some very pretty elements, and it is huge, so I’d never recommend going there for a quick weekend unless you were revisiting. I was glad to have six full days and grateful for the extensive, easy, affordable, safe public transportation. My sister joined me for the weekend and we did two fantastic tours—one a Third Reich walking tour and the other a bike tour of “alternative” Berlin. Combined with excellent restaurant recommendations from our Airbnb host, I left feeling like I had a good sense of it as a vibrant, accepting, progressive city with a hell of a lot of history and a relatively new and burgeoning identity, knit together in admirably functional ways. Nowhere is remotely perfect, and unfortunately the right wing is attempting a comeback in Germany, but it was such a relief to be in a place that unapologetically values things like the environment, public transportation, and acceptance of all manner of identities while also celebrating music, the arts, and innovation. The environment and public transportation aren’t woke; they’re responsible and practical. It’s not normal for Berlin to have been in the mid-90s or WV to be near 105 right now nor is it reasonable to have to have a car to get literally anywhere.

Everywhere I met people from all over the world: Australia, Denmark, Georgia (the country), Turkey, the Netherlands. Every single one of them is appalled by trump and America; none are coming to visit anytime soon. The Australian couple had just canceled their two next trips to the U.S.- they have traveled in America more than many Americans have, they have made friends here, and they don’t feel at all safe coming. It’s just heartbreaking and totally understandable. The Dutch men clapped me on the shoulder and wished me luck ever getting rid of trump. The Danes were horrified and perplexed. “I didn’t vote for him,” I said over and over.

While standing atop Hitler’s Berlin bunker (now, delightfully, a shitty parking lot over the bunker which has been filled with cement), our Third Reich tour guide, a Frisian, told us about his grandfather who was a high ranking SS leader who committed suicide the day after Hitler did. His family has done its best to make peace with that history, most by moving out of Germany and to the U.S. Our tour guide’s father is the only one of the kids to have remained in Germany though he settled quietly and far away in Frisia. I wondered how his U.S.-based relatives feel right now. I didn’t have the heart to ask. I did feel openly thankful that many Germans have wrestled honestly with their past and have made very intentional societal pivots since. How mature! Our bike tour guide, when I said that Berliners seemed very relaxed and laissez-faire about stuff like thumping 24-7 nightclubs near parks, drugs/drinking, and all manner of sexual and gender identity, said “yes, you don’t get in my business, I won’t get in yours.” That attitude plus a largely functional state makes for a good quality of life. I felt, in Berlin, despite the vast diversity of everything, much more of a social contract than I almost ever do in the States. It can be done!

Today, during one of my cooling sessions inside, I peeked at my phone to find messages from friends:

This is shocking. It means ICE can send someone to a country not their own with no notice and no due process/no chance for the person to explain they might be killed if they are sent there. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/23/supreme-court-third-party-country-deporations-00419210

Wow. We are so fucked. (News.)

Everyone I know is near-tears and/or enraged pretty much all the time, myself included. I’m still reeling from the political assassinations in MN and am pretty freaked out by the daily onslaught of anti-liberty rules and regulations being handed down by anti-democratic jerks. Two days ago, I woke up to a text from Oliver (still in Berlin): “did you see that trump bombed Iran?” Everything feels upside down.

My sister and I did the Third Reich walking tour on the day of trump’s obscene military parade here, and I will tell you that we both felt we were reliving a terrifying, odious playbook.

Exciting news is that Tom and the kids are officially Italian citizens (as of last November), AND I recently found out that I passed my language exam for spousal citizenship. This exam was a four-hour monstrosity whose reading section was rather like the SAT but in Italian and also included lengthy written and listening sections plus a live oral assessment. I don’t think I’d studied that hard since grad school, but the six months and hundreds (thousands?) of hours paid off, and we will soon submit my enormous parcel of background checks (from state of birth on) and official documents, all translated and apostilled in the hopes that I, too, will become the Italian I am (my grandfather was Sicilian). Sono così orgogliosa!