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I was also scared shitless about heading to Minnesota without Madeline. It would be my first trip back since last Christmas with Liz, and I knew I’d be confronting a lifetime of memories by returning to our childhood homes. What I needed most was not friends, family, music, or booze. I needed my security blanket. I needed my baby. But faced with the very real prospect of jeopardizing the well-being of my otherwise healthy preemie, I had to heed the doctor’s advice and leave her in Los Angeles. I asked my friends Ben and Dana if Madeline could stay at their house while I was gone. Their first baby had been premature, too, so they would best know how to attend to Madeline’s needs.

When it was time to send Maddy home with Dana for the three days I would be in Minnesota, I did my best to keep from crying. I wasn’t ashamed to let my tears flow in front of anyone anymore, especially a friend, but I’d recently started to notice how my crying affected those around me, and so I began attempting to hold it in. My success rate wasn’t 100 percent yet, but I had become rather good at it. I took it as a challenge, and better still, a way to get my mind off of the reason I felt like crying in the first place.

And oddly enough, I had even started to enjoy it. There was a strange sensation that came along with holding in tears, and it became more and more intense the longer I held them in. As they welled up in my eyes, the bridge of my nose started to tingle, the feeling slowly traveling down to its tip and finally sending pulses of numbness through the rest of my head. I became obsessed with trying to hold on to the feeling as long as possible; at one point I thought about carrying a stopwatch around so I could time myself and see if I could set a record each and every time I was about to cry. That seemed a little crazy, though, so I decided against it.

Dana’s voice brought me out of my game.

“Don’t worry, Matt. We’ll take good care of her.”

“I know you will. In fact, I’m pretty sure you guys will take better care of her than I do.” I’m just really going to miss her, I thought.

I buckled Maddy into her car seat (now in Dana’s car), gave her two kisses, and whispered, “I love you.” With my palm on the car window, I pushed the door closed. I left my hand there as the car started, still reaching out for my daughter. Even after they disappeared over the hill, I still held my hand out, frozen in place, my feet firmly planted in the grass below. Driving away from me was the only person left in the world who I actually cared about, and I couldn’t believe I was going to be without her for the next three days.

The tears were welling up again, but this time I didn’t want to play the game. I just let them flow; I knew it would be impossible to stop them. I felt myself sinking into the wet ground outside my house, the moisture and mud soaking through my socks. Shit, I thought. Where the fuck are my shoes? I looked around, hoping that my neighbors weren’t watching. The last thing I needed was for them to know I’d lost my mind.

I walked up the stairs to my house, leaving wet footprints, and thought about how pissed Liz would have been that I had just ruined a pair of perfectly fine socks. I stood in the doorway removing the soggy things, thinking I shouldn’t make matters worse by tracking wet footprints into the house. I pulled them off and pushed the front door closed, slowly realizing that this was the first time I’d been completely alone in our house since Liz died. Though fewer than 1,200 square feet, it then possessed the kind of cavernous emptiness I imagined could only be felt in palatial structures. I melted into the couch and listened to the music I had left streaming into my living room. The words from “Last Tide” by Sun Kil Moon reached my ears and the torrent of tears continued to flow.

Every bird fall weak on lifeless ground

Every eye swelled from tears ever clear

Every seed broken in spring lived till fall

All your babies be around to see them growing up.

Will you be here with me, my love

When the warm