Once I started writing and processing and dissecting my mountain of sadness, I realized it made no sense to be smart and practical if I was miserable. I knew now that I could die at any point, in an instant. Everyone knows that, but you don’t really know that until you see it up close in your own backyard. And it made me want to tear the walls down and build something new, to do something with my time that made me feel inspired and inspired others.
So, I quit my job. And it felt good. For the first time in my life, I didn’t second-guess my decision.
Around the same time, I partnered up with a friend who I’d sat down with ten years earlier to daydream about opening an arts space in Houston. It made little sense at the time since we were both basically children with no money. But right around the time I quit my job, he found the perfect space, and we decided to take the risk, to turn this dream into a reality. It’s important to note that it still made little sense since both of us are theater people with no prior experience either opening or running a business, but we did it anyway because nothing matters, remember? I understood it could be a disaster but truly didn’t give a shit. What’s the worst thing that happens? It fails? So what. That’s not the worst thing that could happen. I survived the worst thing that could happen. I can survive anything. I’m a fucking champion.
So, I invested a portion of the money Harris left me in a space for comedians, musicians, dancers, actors, directors, podcasters, renegades, and artists of every kind to incubate, create, and work. In June 2016, we opened the doors to Rec Room, a multidisciplinary performance space and bar in downtown Houston. Six months later, we launched a nonprofit arts organization called Rec Room Arts that continues to support and provide space for both established and up-and-coming artists.
The name is an intentional nod to Parks and Rec; the space, an homage to Harris. Without him, it wouldn’t exist. At the risk of crossing the line into hypersentimentality, Harris was my hero. Fear wasn’t part of his genetic makeup. He was a bona fide risk-taker who always followed his dreams. What better way to honor him than to follow my own?
On Harris’s birthday, April 20, we partnered with 8th Wonder Brewery, owned and operated by Harris’s three childhood best friends, to launch the 1st Annual Harris Phest. Hundreds of people showed up. A Phish cover band played. Stand-up comedians performed. We ate a white sheet cake with white icing from the grocery store.
Today, a framed needlepoint portrait of Harris with the caption We’re All Horrible and Wonderful and Figuring It Out hangs on the wall of the bar.
He’s always with me there.
Some other cool notable things happened too:
After six exhausting months and literally fifty steps in the Texas Legislature, including committee hearings and nearly unanimous votes in both the House and Senate, the governor of Texas finally signed H.B. 490 into law on June 15, 2017. Effective September 1, 2017, hearing aids and cochlear implants for children under eighteen will be covered by insurance. In total, it took six years and three legislative sessions to make this happen. Like I said, fuel. Lots of fuel.
I started a weekly parenting podcast called Hands Off Parents.
I edited and edited and edited and finally finished this book.
I put on eyeliner.
I ate a salad.
I went on vacation with my two favorite people, Mike and Iris, and we drove through the mountains with the windows rolled down, enveloped by the pine-scented air. I thought of my brother. I held him in my cells. I felt the vulnerability of the altitude and the winding road and the walls of rocks towering above us. I noted how small I was compared to the sky. I saw that the world is beautiful. I heard my daughter say, “Wow.” And I felt grateful.
• • •
Granted, I still have bad days. Sometimes I have really bad days. I often stand at the kitchen counter and shovel cold spaghetti down my throat. Because I still miss my brother. That never fades. And there are days when I’m teleported right back into the rubble, and it takes me hours, days, sometimes weeks, to climb back out. Also, as if I were a video game, opening a new business with no prior experience has unlocked a whole new level of stress and anxiety that feels impossible to beat. Quitting my job felt great initially, but businesses take time to grow, and now we worry about money, health insurance, and retirement constantly. I also worry about climate change and gun control and women’s rights and police brutality and political doom and nuclear war. I still worry about Iris’s hearing loss, albeit far more infrequently than I used to, but it’s still a frequency in my mind. And as the saying goes, raising an empowered woman means you have to deal with an empowered woman. My sweet child is now an empowered “threenager” who refuses to listen most of the time and tantrums her way through 50 percent of her life. And I miss the mark on responding to her in a positive way 50 percent of the time. Parenting is hard.
But I’m doing the best that I can. We’re all doing the best we can. And while I can’t say the ending is a happy one that fits nicely in a gift-wrapped box, I can say that I’ve
