Her Hands His Eyes is a journal written in real time about writing my book. Every week I open the box a little further. A memory. A photograph. A recipe. This is Entry 10. Start from the beginning with Entry 1. You are reading this as I write it. When the book is ready you will be the first to know. Open The Box.
This chapter was never going to be in the book.
I had decided that early. Before I wrote a single word of it. I knew what was in it. I knew what it would cost me. And I decided it was not going in.
And then I wrote the other chapters.
And something shifted.
This morning I sat at my desk and stared out the window for a long time.
I asked myself the question I had been avoiding for weeks.
Should it be in the book.
I took a deep breath.
I exhaled.
Let’s do it.
That moment. That exhale. That is what this week has been about. Not the writing of the chapter yet. The decision to write it at all. The same kind of decision as opening the box. You know what is inside. You know what it will cost you. You open it anyway because it is time.
The Hesitation
I have been circling this chapter for weeks.
Writing around it. Getting close and pulling back. Telling myself it was not necessary. That the book was complete without it. That some things do not need to be said out loud.
I was not protecting the reader.
I was protecting myself.
That is what I realized this morning staring out the window. The hesitation was not about whether this chapter belonged in the book. It was about whether I was ready to go back to that place on the page.
“Some chapters you write. Some chapters you survive.”
What This Decision Cost Me
The delayed grief that came up this week was not just about the chapter.
It was about Kun Yai.
She was my rock. She would travel hours and hours on that train to bring me back to Kamphaeng Phet. Not because anyone asked her to. Because that is who she was. The woman who made the journey without making it a thing. Who just came and got you and brought you home.
I sat at my desk this week and thought about that train.
And I thought about going back to the farm at twelve and understanding for the first time what it meant that she was gone. The delayed grief of it. Six years of carrying something without knowing I was carrying it. And then the farm. And then it was real.
That is what this chapter holds.
That is why I almost did not write it.
That is why I have to.
I took a breath this morning.
I exhaled.
And I opened the chapter the same way I opened the box.
Not because I was ready.
Because it was time.
“Nothing is just one thing. It never has been.“
What I Know Now
Some chapters find you before you are ready for them.
This one has been waiting since I was twelve years old standing on a farm in Kamphaeng Phet feeling the full weight of delayed grief for the first time.
I was not ready to write it when I started this book.
I am ready now.
This morning I stared out the window. I took the breath. I exhaled.
And I began.
I am writing it all down.
For Remi, Samantha, Jackson, Brook, Stetson, and Charlotte.
So they know about Kun Yai.
So they know about the train.
So they know that delayed grief is not weakness. It is just grief waiting until you are strong enough to carry it.
And so they know that sometimes the most important chapters are the ones you almost did not write.
What Comes Next
This is Entry 10 of Her Hands His Eyes, a memoir written in real time as I open the box.
In Entry 11 the photographs from that trip. There are not many. But the ones that exist stopped me cold.
