Peyton

What She Taught Me Without Trying

I met Peyton the year I moved here. A mutual friend convened a monthly artists group, and we all assembled at her house for our first meeting. The theme was dove.

I showed up with an essay about a classmate who couldn’t swim. He bellyflopped off the high dive, and my mom—fully clothed—jumped in and dragged him out. He went on to briefly play in the NFL, and every time he was on TV, she’d yell, “Remember that time I saved his life.”

I was still processing her death and felt tender about sharing this story, and what I made of it, with a group of strangers.

Peyton had made a dove out of old magazines. A fat, beautiful thing staring out at all of us.

We laughed about how we’d read the word differently. But it didn’t matter. Eventually, we all ended up in her back yard—thigh-deep in snow, ripping pages out of our journals and burning them. Preferring to live out the prompt instead of discussing it.

Peyton screamed about not even having a journal of her own. Said she couldn’t have a single page to herself. Mothering had swallowed her whole.

Our little group only met a few times after that. Each of us retreating back into our lives. Peyton, the hustle of small children. Me, a brand-new, all-consuming love. Another, a substance use disorder. A few others happy to let our gatherings fade into skiing, and hiking, and seeing each other on the trail.

Several years later, she reached out to me as a professional. She wanted my advice about something before she got another, more formal opinion.

I was honored she trusted me with her most precious suspicions. This woman who so rawly opened herself to me the very first time I met her.

I made her a journal that year we all burned ours. But it took me until she got sick to give it to her. Nine miles between us and I could never manage to make the drive.

She gave so much of herself to everyone—her family, her friends, her whole community—I wanted her to finally have a room of her own. Something no one else could touch.

Something she didn’t have to share even though I knew she would.

I didn’t stay as close to her as I’d wanted to during that night in the snow. Pulled into my own issues with motherhood and marriage. The warnings she shouted over the flames starting to burn around my own edges.

I know I could have told her. Could have reached out to her and she would have taken me in. But my own shame kept me silent.

I saw her a few months before she died. We were in the grocery store. She came over and gave me a big hug and smile. Told me how beautiful I was and what good work I was doing.

That’s the Peyton I always remember. Never afraid, never hiding when so many of us are.

Last weekend, I moved my desk out of the spare room—a place our child has commandeered.

Now, when I sit down to write, I see Peyton’s face as she holds up her sketchbook. Bright, messy scribbles on every page. And I say a silent prayer, thanking her for showing me how to make space. How to live. Even though I didn’t know that’s what she was doing at the time.