The Names They Gave Us

And under the dreaming tree, I see a girl who can be okay and not okay all at once. So, I guess I’m just grateful to be here for all of it, for the mess and the ache and the unknowing.

After all, once there was a girl named Lucy who loved her family, old and new.

It is not the type of love that ends.

If I’m going to believe, it has to be in a God who would forgive my father for this word.

I have to believe in a God who knows how much my father loves my mother.

I have to believe in a God who would sit beside my father in that car, place His hand on my father’s back.

And maybe it took me until now—until this horrible moment—to realize, but I do.

I believe in nature, in science, in jazz, in dancing.

And I believe in people. In their resilience, in their goodness.

This is my credo; this is my hymn. Maybe it’s not enough for heaven, and maybe I’m even wrong. But if I can walk through the fire and, with blistered skin, still have faith in better days? I have to believe that’s good enough.

Because I’m me, and I’m trying, and I have a family of friends who wrap around me like clouds. Because there are surely other names for grace, and mine are Mom, Dad. Rachel. Henry. Anna. Keely. Mohan. Rhea. Bryan. Lukas. Our congregation and my swim team and, somewhere, a half sister who might someday become a whole one.

In them, my sense of holiness only grows

She raises a hand to her mouth. Blows us a kiss.

I manage to mime catching it.

And I watch as my father beats his hands against the steering wheel. He hits the roof of the car, slaps his palms at the windows—mouth open in wails I cannot hear.

I watch his teeth press fiercely against his lower lip and pull open into a swearword I can make out from here. He screams it, using all his air until his face turns red. His balled fists hit the dash again and then he leans over the wheel, shoulders heaving.

But I back away one step, then two. I won’t go comfort him. Because I know my dad, and he would never forgive himself for letting me see this

Please don’t take my mom from me. Please not yet. Please don’t let me be alone.

You’re not, a voice inside me whispers

My favorite. It’s simple, with a curl to it, freckled with cinnamon. I have really narcissistic taste in donuts, I guess.

It means that people may die but their energy doesn’t. It gets redistributed

We are on a dark, twisting road that she knows so well. Of course Keely, who believes people are made of stardust, would know how to light the path. If her astronomy is about divine unknowns, about pushing for more understanding, about hoping for new, hard-won revelations . . . can’t my faith be the same? About trying to enjoy the wondering.

So I pour out my heart in silent prayer

It’s a fair enough point. Hasn’t Daybreak shown me, day after day, that people can outlast unbelievable pain? That human hearts are like noble little ants, able to carry so much more weight than you’d expect. Hasn’t my mom shown me that, every day of my life?

“It changes you,” Keely says. “You can be okay again. Just a different kind of okay than before.”