Rabbit, rabbit. A long-time folk tradition claims saying this first thing on the first day of a new month will give you good luck for the rest of the month. The trick is these must be the first words you speak, but apparently the same superstition allows that if you forget, you can say “tibbar, tibbar,” (rabbit spelled backwards), at the end of the first day as the last words you speak, and it will turn things around, earn you the same chance at luck.

When we were in Oregon, staying in the same beach cabin we had with Ringo two other summers before, we expected to see the same small dark brown rabbit that often ate lunch in the backyard, nibbling on the strawberry clover and beach daisy that grow there. However, almost two weeks in we still hadn’t seen any sign of the rabbit. One afternoon, walking up the road by the house where the edges are thick with salal, evergreen huckleberry, rhododendron, salmon berry, thimbleberry, fuchsia, escallonia, red clover and blackberry briars, we finally saw two tiny dark bunnies. They had moved up the road to a place more wild. The relocation may have been related to the cat we’d seen one afternoon running across the lawn or the coyote we saw right next to our yard one of the last mornings we were there, or even the bald eagles being harassed by a loud murder of crows that we saw at the corner of the yard on our very last morning, one eagle holding a dead rabbit.

Back in Colorado where the rabbits are bigger and the color of dry dirt and where their main predator, the red fox, has struggled to recover its previous numbers for almost the past ten years, the rabbit population is strong. No need to search or wait to see any as they are now almost as common as the squirrels. This morning, as Eric and I made our way back from our walk with Ringo he said, “oh, two rabbits, fighting!” I didn’t ask him what made him think they were fighting, but it was only then, after many words already spoken aloud, that I remembered it was the first day of July.

At this, the start of our second day back, I find myself still in that liminal space of traveling between. Eric said he woke up last night unsure of where he was, at first thinking he was still at the beach. Returning from time away always feels like this, the reentry and the landing slow and awkward, even uncomfortable. I feel confused and clumsy for days. This happens in particular when I come back from time spent in Oregon, in the Willamette Valley or on the central Oregon Coast. That landscape, that place is still home to me, even after 30+ years gone. I carry it with me when I’m not there, the roots running deep, and coming back fully to this other version of “home” is complicated.

Eric and I agreed that this trip was one of the best we’d had in a long time, but for me, it was also one of the hardest, for lots of reasons. My mom is continuing to decline, and that’s hard to see. I visited her for the first time in her new care home and while it is good, her last place was excellent. We are in the final stages of listing her house for sale. I went over to see it for one last time before that happens, to walk through it with my brother who has done so much of the work to get it ready. My parents lived there together for the last 18 years of my dad’s life and it was where he died and where we cared for Mom the last 1.5 years she was able to live there surrounded by all the stuff of their life together that earlier this year we worked so hard to recycle and rehome, so there’s a mix of sweet memories and some of the worst moments of my life that are all still there even though the house is now technically empty.

This was our first trip back together since Eric’s mom passed, since his parents’ house was cleaned up, cleared out and sold, and the first visit we made to his dad’s new home which isn’t a place big enough for us to stay overnight with him. When he spent a few days at the beach while we were there, he told Eric one night that being there with us was the happiest he’d been since she died. My aunt and godmother, who has lived at the beach for almost the past 30 years embodying the life I won’t ever live but can imagine so clearly, who we always visit when we are there, is selling her house and moving back to the valley to be closer to her healthcare providers and because the upkeep on her property became too much. And finally, seeing Ringo there this time was a stark contrast to him two years ago, and it became clear how he’s changed and aged, and I realized that this would be his last big trip with us, his last time at the beach, even if he keeps going for more years after.

The trip was fraught with loss and grief and anxiety, so much gone, so much shifting and in flux, so much forever altered and so much still in the process of changing. We made the first long road trip to Oregon from Colorado to stay at the beach with our dogs and visit family when our first dog was only 4.5 months old, the same year we bought this house that has been our home for 25 years now. All the versions of our past selves and all those moments, from the past 25 years and even further back, are all there together.

One day when I was there this time, four of my aunts were there visiting my mom and while I wouldn’t call any of them old, they are all widowed, just like my mom. “Now” turns into “the good old days” way too fast, and life may be long but it’s too short, goes by too fast. I try really hard to be in it, with it as it is happening, but it also can feel too big, too much. And this has been my life for the past six years, this ongoing series of complications, change and loss. Discomfort, suffering, and grief as a living, growing thing, constantly churning and gnashing its sharp teeth, holding me so tight and going so fast it can be hard to breathe.

And of course, love continues to pour honey all over it: the mornings lingering in bed cuddling with Eric and Ringo, how happy Ringo was hiking the Cumming’s Creek Trail that one morning, all the delicious food and good company, sitting watching the waves, those few sunsets, walking on the beach, how Ringo would lean on me in the car and fall asleep against my leg, how he has one stomp that means give me a treat and another that means pet me, the butterflies and birds and bees, the flowers, donuts and marionberries, sitting out on the deck in the sun, making each other laugh.

Tibbar, tibbar. Always the chance to start over, as many times as necessary, to begin again, to keep going, to let go and come back. An opportunity to try again, to turn your luck around, to come back to the very first day, to this very moment and find yourself home again. I’m so lucky, rabbit or no rabbit.