One reason I brought my daughter to the Vineyard with me this weekend was to see if I could find a moment I’d been looking for most of my life.

I wrote about this in my book, the desire to have had my mother hold me in the field by our Menemsha rental house so we could both cry about the fact that I was adopted. I wanted a clear wipe of space between us where love could settle in more fully after finally acknowledging my confused and unaddressed feelings and, I am guessing, my mother’s, also, for I was the child she had in place of the child her body did not have the chance to create. I wanted to know what it was like to have a completely honest relationship with the person I adored most in the world.

Relationships are confusing to me. I don’t know exactly what attachment disorder is, but I do know that I am more of a loner than most of my friends, and if that is a disorder, then, well, whatever. There’s a movie I love, Broken Circle Breakdown, and the final scene has a group of musicians playing bluegrass around the deathbed of one of the characters. The scene tears me apart. The musicians love this dying women so much, but there is joy in their faces as the play even though their hearts are broken.

I want that in my final hour. I want people gathered, playing music, celebrating even while they are crying. But in order to have that, I need to have people around me while I am alive who care enough to be there while I am dying.

A good place to start is with the one person I know in my immediate circle who is related to me by blood. The person I adore most in the world. I thought I’d bring her to the Vineyard and see what happens.

Nothing happened. We had a really nice visit, but it was like it always is. She was in her bubble, mostly, and I was in mine, and we did our stuff. It snowed. We ate a lot of food. Sat at the Rosewater for hours, reading, writing, staring out the window.

When our time to leave was getting close, we went into Vineyard Haven to rent a car and drive around the snowy island so Keats could see the whole place, not just one end of it. The only thing was that there were no cars to rent. It was cold and wet out and we had to wait for the bus back to Edgartown, shivering. When we got back to the hotel, we were glad to be there. It was warm. There was a bed. A couch. It didn’t matter that it was snowy and slushy outside; we were inside, warm.

I was reading on the couch while Keats read on the bed, and I fell half asleep. I could hear the sounds of cars driving slowly down the snowy road. I could hear the snowplow, the call of people walking in and out of the market next door. In my dreamy brain, I was back to being a child, back to being inside during a cold winter day (this is my first winter back in New England in over 25 years!), and yet, even though I was a child in my parents’ house in my thoughts, I knew Keats was in the room. I could hear her turning the pages of her book, clearing her throat.

I was a child and an adult at the same time. She was there.

I rested in a way I haven’t in years. I fell asleep.

It happened. The moment occurred. I don’t even know what it was, I just know that something in my brain finally clicked and settled.

When the body eases after years and years of standing on the edge, so much clean joy flows into the bones. It’s like all your life you have stood on tip toes until, suddenly, you realize you don’t have to do that. You can let go, stand flat-footed on the earth and sing.