xoxo

Someone on Facebook, not a friend, just a someone, private messaged me about my use of xoxo when responding to a Facebook post about a woman’s loss of her beloved to this epidemic. I don’t know the grieving woman. I’m a fan. I’m also a fellow human. I don’t know what else I wrote to her—probably I am so sorry.

The someone did not like me speaking in this way to a famous author. I, he said, as a writer, should have known better than to write xoxo to someone like her, at this time.

I’ve been thinking about this. Before I understood what he was talking about—I thought maybe I had written xoxo in response to something he had written to me on Facebook—I told him that I felt xoxo was better than the middle finger. What I really meant was that xoxo to me, is like om. Aum. It’s the sound the universe makes when we get out of the way.

Xoxo (interchangeable with xo or xoxoxo, etc.) feels more real to me than goodbye (ask any adoptee why) or sincerely (what’s the opposite of sincerely? Fakely?) or a blank sign-off. Xoxo is mine. It’s my language.

It’s also, of course, yours.

I have a friend who told me only women end their texts and messages to him xoxo. He wasn’t judging, just observing. Having conversations that divide the sexes these days is 1. not fun 2. often pointless 3. more often wrong, so let’s just let it suffice that I feel like a walking heart when I write xo (or xoxo) (or, to my daughter, a secret pattern that’s just for us).

I feel I have risked something when I write it.

I care about you.

Really what I mean is hugs, not a bunch of kisses on your face that maybe I have not even seen in real life, but writing hugs to me feels like oooof. And the way it would look! Like the oooof without the f ! Like I’m trying to be a ghost!

It’s the idea. The idea of a hug, the idea of a kiss. This idea means I see you. I want to reach out to you. But I also want you to feel safe.

I told the someone that I can see how using xo can seem juvenile, but that I mean it when I write it. It’s my heart speaking: Here’s a gift.

He responded: Some heart. Some gift.

This is what I have come to think after going for a bike ride to mull it over. The language I choose helps to support and create the person I intend to be out in the world. I would rather be messy and come from my heart than correct and come from my anus.

This, it appears, is measuring up to be a year of unprecedented global loss and suffering. What language do we have to address the mourners, the living, those in love, those who were happy to find toilet paper and some yeast at the market? What can we say to those who can’t work, who can’t pay their bills, who can’t attend the bedside of the dying or the funeral of the dead?

I don’t know.

It makes me cry to think about it.

I am so lucky here in this little farm where I get to learn how to make things grow. I wish growth for all of us, love, safety, bread, toilet paper, a restful night of sleep, enough masks to go around, sanitizer, hope, vaccines, doctors who get to rest.

May you be happy 
May you be healthy 
May you be safe 
May you live with ease.

xoxo.