I See In Words
Caroline Beidler Tells Us Something Beautiful
This piece is by
and is a feature for winning the first ever Tell Me Something Beautiful.Caroline is a mother, dreamer, writer, builder, and believes that communities of deep inner healing (recovery) is made of what Timothy Williard calls "heaven culture.”
Her next book, When You Love Someone in Recovery: A Hopeful Guide for Understanding Addiction, is coming Spring 2026 with Nelson Books.
Please enjoy.
Back when there was a smoking section and writing meant on the page and reading meant with a stack of books in a quiet room beside you and loving meant less than forever…
There was more time (was there more time?) for noticing how the leaves dancing on the tips of the foothills sound like waves.
“It’s my favorite sound,” I tell my kids now as we look up and marvel together.
The varieties of verdant experience.
Back then, I would have written something like that. And loved it. Pressing my upper teeth into my bottom lip. A little alliteration.
“Tell us about your favorite sound, mommy,” their heads little balls of blondish-white.
I look at them and sometimes find myself stretching time, holding the sleeves. Pulling, pulling, so that it fits me now.
Does it fit me now?
Who I was: Wonder Waiting.
Who I am: Here.
Who I will be?
Memories can be spacious things.
My fingers smell like ash as I smear away the mascara stains on my skin. I can taste the acidic too. Another morning, something I can’t erase. Flashes like strobe lights. It’s better to forget.
“Words have weight.”
I read this somewhere and want to say it was Kerouac or Hesse or Nabokov or one of the other authors whose books mark this moment in time when every day feels like I am just waiting for my life to start.
Every morning tastes the same.
Preparing.
Smoking.
Dreaming.
Love, desperate.
Everywhere.
In the college library downtown, I make my way up the narrow stairwell to the secret stacks. They are not secret but I imagine they are. Sometimes, I sit down between the shelves, my heavy pack like a pillow, and I lean back.
Scratching into my notebook, I stay until the lights go dark. Time here is a bird.
The security guard eyes me. But I don’t want to let go of this lonely. It is the kind of alone that makes you feel like a planet.
“Are you forever?” my brown eyes ask, as I stare at the myriads of spines on my way back down the familiar staircase. I think about the ache behind each cover.
“Will this last?” I forget to ask myself as I find my ledge outside. Dangling my Converse sneakers and taking a long drag and staring into the stars.
“I see in words.”
I told you this once, hoping you understood what it was like. The bus stop, the black smudge on the seat, the grooves in his hands holding the bottle, the deep breaths, the woman holding her breath. Freckles in the shape of a triangle on her right shoulder, adjacent to the purse strap.
Everything in words.
My first pages still have your red pen and comments in the margins.
How indulgent.
How self-aggrandizing.
How presumptuous.
How full of hope you are.
You said this in not so many lines, with your thoughtful marks. Or at least, this is what I heard:
“Why don’t you wait a while? Live a little?”
So, I did. I waited.
And kept writing.
Coffee shops and more chocolate than coffee and more smoke than air. Cursive like the lake waves stretching out. Wrists aching to freestyle.
I did not know then, but over twenty years later, I’d read these lines and wonder:
“I’ve learned that stories hold us together. Stories teach us what is important about life, why we are here and how it is best to behave, and that inside us we have access to treasure, in memories and observations, in imagination.”
And when you said that “Something beautiful is what we make of these words,” I believed you. Or at least I wanted to.
Perhaps, something beautiful is behind the stories. Take a nail and scrape at the letters and there it is. My life. Yours. Everything. Logos.
“Tell us about your favorite sound, mommy,” they ask again and I tell them about how the leaves dancing on the tips of the foothills sound like waves.
Man. What a great piece.
Be sure to follow
And also — we will be running another one of these sometime in the near(ish) future.
And also also — thanks for the support in running this.
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So beautiful! Thank you for sharing, Josh, and thank you for writing, Caroline.
Stunning!