In Florida, at the beginning of February, I spent a week with paternal family and manatees. My cousin Sarah, her mom Claire and daughter Veda (nicknamed vedaGator) live in Safety Harbor not far from Clearwater. I visited about a month after my Uncle Michael’s unexpected paragliding death on January 26th 2020 in Columbia South America.
From the moment I walked across the white tiled front patio, Sarah and Claire opened their home to me unconditionally. They both said over and over to make myself comfortable. Their space was mine. I had use of my uncle’s old bike and while my family heeded their everyday routine, I was free to play and write and gawk at wildlife.
I spent most of my time next to the ocean. A smooth, long, seaside bike path stretched from their neighborhood to Phillippe State Park. Indian mounds make the park a popular spot alongside 150 year old live oak trees with branches that curve to the ground like cupped hands.
There’s a warm spring that flows under the main pier off Safety Harbor. Manatees claim this water as their feeding grounds for a three-month chunk of time at the beginning of the year. They graze the ocean floor and then slowly bob to the surface enchanting human beings willing to stand above, watch, wait, engage stillness, smile egregiously.
Another spectacular part of the trip was talking, grieving and laughing with Sarah every morning and night. We started the days with, “Hello Cousin!” and finished with, “Goodnight Cousin. I love you!”. As three year old VedaGator lent light to the week, Sarah and I became even more comfortable being real with each other. Part of that realness was sharing how signs and communication (messages from my uncle?!) made the world seem even more alive for us both.
This is what I call ‘the secret commonwealth” (also the title of Phillip Pullman’s most recent book). A practice of allowing moments to offer “hidden” connections and encouraging myself to think everything means something. If I’m willing to read it, the cry of an owl or a pod of dolphins is blazing with significance.
On the last day of my birth state visit, I lathered myself in sunscreen, grabbed letter writing materials and a book and headed to the park near the pier. I sprawled pleasurably in the grass twenty-five feet from the waterside pavilion and main path on a very windy day. Folx consistently flowed by on bikes and foot. I paused thinking of a next sentence to pen in a locally crafted card I purchased the day before. A slim athletic person strolled in front of me with a board of some kind tucked underarm and large, black pack slung across both shoulders. Suddenly, a piece of gear fell out of the rucksack onto the ground. Unaware, they kept walking.
I made an instant decision about the individual’s gender and yelled, “Excuse me sir, you dropped something.”
I guessed right. He turned around, spotted the black plastic hose and nozzle splayed across the white, hot cement and said, “Thank you. Would have been a much longer trip if I’d had to come back.”
“Are you paddle boarding?”
“No, I’m a kite surfer,” he said pointing to the four-foot long toy under his left arm.
As our conversation continued, I found myself spellbound by how much he looked like my Uncle Michael. Long thin face and limbs, full head of salt and pepper hair. Dapper, high-end athletic clothing. We finished our short conversation and he thanked me again for shouting at him.
I went back to writing the note to my friend Danielle in Texas. The next time I looked up a giant, bright red and blue sail touched the sky. My Uncle Michael look-a-like stood in the middle of the park pulling at six cords connected to the fabric.
Tears spilled from my eyes. The similarities between the colorful fiber full of wind in front of me and the pictures I’d seen of Michael flying all over the world, following his heart and passion to play in spectacular places like Switzerland and South America, brought me back to my family’s very recent loss.
Sadly, the paternal side of my family never established a routine of congregating regularly while I was young leaving us barely aware of each other’s day to day as adults. It took my Dad turning 75 and his beloved partner Princess Wanda to make an O’Daniel gathering happen. At the end of April 2019, we convened in Ft Myers Florida surprise arrival after surprise arrival. I landed first late on April 24th, my sister on the 25th, and Michael, my cousin Sarah, VedaGator and Michael’s wife Maria on the 26th -the day before my dad’s April 27th birthday.
Our time together now is even more special with the loss of my uncle just nine months after the reunion. Watching the kiteboarding Michael-look-alike lend everything to the fun in that moment, I shed more tears of joy and sadness. He shifted the “wing” in the sky then used wind and water to propel his own body over the ocean. He catapulted 50 yards east then west, would flip, twirl, fall, frolic in the wake of onlookers on the pier who shouted, screamed, laughed with awe and glee.
I tuned into every sign that the love and magic my family uncovered together in April 2019 was alive around me. All the imputed meaning normally clogging thoughts and senses had been stripped away the day my uncle died. Grief is a Gemini and sears into us how important every moment is while illuminating the senselessness in trying to make anything concrete.
I wanted that short week my family had together in 2019 to last forever. I felt it then and looking back I deeply desire the same now. The togetherness and possibility of healing, friendship, and fun sat front and center with us. Instead though, with this incomprehensible death, I choose to see secret commonwealth “signs”. I’m learning my family, especially Sarah and my Dad, have the habit of doing the same. Since January, I’ve coined the acronym MuMM. Magical uncle Michael Moments.
I believe these instances, now regularly shared between us when they happen, allow me to tune into the aliveness Michael leaned into while flying. In March, for the first time since moving in five years ago, I sat in my third-floor apartment and watched a paraglider whiz above Lake Superior. And last weekend on the three-month anniversary of Michael’s death, I spent time with white pelicans that migrate through northern Minnesota every spring. Standing under their nine-foot glowing white wingspan, I stopped and felt a heart rumble in my chest. Love of Michael reverberated inside and out as I watched the pelicans soar up over white pine, birch, cedar on the St Louis River’s edge.
My dad’s birthday, our reunion, and my uncle’s death created opportunities for connection. As if suspended by string and rip-stop nylon, I now see whole other realities. From family to manatees to pelicans to sports enthusiasts, I’m aware of the wing-span of everything alive around me.
While Michael is gone, the secret commonwealth continues to offer generous gifts. Like Claire and Sarah asking me to make myself at home, these signs invite me to tune in and feel a different connection with the world. I’ve put on a wider lens to view family and home. I believe Michael experienced something similar every time he let the wind lift him off the earth and into the sky. He let go. He gave himself over to currents, gusts, glorious perspectives of our planet, and possible final, fleeting minutes. Signs are reminders I’m a constant member of the secret commonwealth. You are too.