Springing Forward

Spring forward and half the day is over, and meanwhile, I am still slumming it in my pajamas. The dog hasn’t gone out for her morning pee yet, and I haven’t had my second cup of coffee, and I just saw my husband put something in the microwave that wasn’t food. It was a notebook.

What are you doing? I said. 

Erasing my notes, he said. 

What?

My notes, he said. I erased them. Now I can reuse the notebook. 

I had been slipping into an anxiety spiral moments before. It was the war, the old dog, (who, by the way, now that she’s being injected by magic medicine is acting like she’s a puppy, jumping on the furniture and flying down the stairs and tugging me around the block. Which is good. Sort of. I guess? Except, she’s NOT a puppy, and isn’t this going to hurt her in the long run?) did I mention our country is at war? Except it doesn’t feel like we’re at war, although I’m sure it does for the people we’re killing and the families of the servicepeople who have been killed. And I have a weird growth on my scalp that I had to have scraped off. And an old friend died and I didn’t know she was dying. I thought she was sick. I sent her soup. I texted her pictures from a fun trip we went on a million years ago, and she wrote: Oh yeah! What a fun memory! I’ll focus on that for a while to chase away the gloomies. And I thought, at the time, what a funny way to put it, “the gloomies,” and it was so like this lovely person to respond like that, and it made me smile, and then a few days later, she died, and those were the last words I had of hers, and I cried as the dog tugged me around the block, and I was feeling sorry for myself, thinking about how everyone is getting old except my friend. She’s not getting old, and why did this happen to her? But then it’s coming for all of us, and I know that. I know that. 

I could keep going with this spiral. But I stopped because now I was caught up wondering about my husband’s microwaved notebook.  

I have so many questions. You can erase notes from a notebook by microwaving it? You’re doing this so you can reuse the notebook instead of buying another notebook? How many times have you microwaved a notebook? What were the notes? Does microwaving notes work on any kind of notebook or is this a special notebook?

I could go on. I did go on. My husband patiently answered each of my questions, all while flipping through the microwaved, now-empty notebook pages. 

Stay with me for a minute, but I just finished a chapter in the book I’m reading about anxiety where it says that one proven way to counteract anxiety is curiosity. Curiosity is the opposite of anxiety, and here’s why: Anxiety is focused on the future and the past, what you’re afraid might happen, or a rumination over what crappy things have happened. But curiosity is only focused on now. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. Any small moment of wondering, What’s that? will do it, interrupt your anxiety and take you down a different path. 

Blah-biddy-blah blah, I was thinking when I read that, until I saw my husband take a notebook out of the microwave. 

For the record, it’s not a special kind of notebook, but it’s a special kind of pen, and he’s been microwaving this notebook for years. I don’t know how I am just now learning this about him. 

I’m still in my robe. 

The dog is still sleeping. I finished my second cup of coffee. I wrote something that chased away the gloomies. I miss my friend. 

One day on the fun trip with my friend

Story Time

The dog had an injection, and like a miracle, she’s her old herself again. Wagging her tail, sniffing happily on walks, bounding around the room with her toys. We had a warm spring-like day, and she sat out on the porch, perched on her pillow like the good old days and barked at the mailman. What’s in this injection? I don’t know. And no idea how long it will last, but meanwhile, I am grateful for it. 

The other day I led the story time at work. The children’s librarian was on vacation, and she asked me to step in. I know what you are imagining. Kids gathered around and here’s me sitting in a chair, placidly reading a picture book to them. But no. This story time is a full-blown production. Music. A slide show. Props. Toys. Bubbles shooting out of the bubble machine. 

It all culminates in a dance party. I was sweating before it even started. It took me a full forty-five minutes to set it all up. I used to do presentations at schools and writing conferences. I spoke in auditoriums to 500 people. But this story time for a small group of two and three-year-olds was on a whole other level. When it was over (in thirty minutes) my watch thought I’d done an aerobic workout. It clocked me as walking 5000 steps. 

I was still a little out of breath when I was cleaning and putting away all the toys. I couldn’t stop singing one of the songs, Stomp Stomp Elephants Stomp. I kept singing it even when my shift was over, and later, when I was home and sacked out on the couch. The dog scampered around me, begging for another walk. 

I took her. It was another weirdly warm day, all the previous snow melted, the birds back, and I swear I saw a flower. The dog trotted ahead of me like a puppy. I was singing another head-banger of song from the story time under my breath, I Know a Chicken. Somehow, I missed this song from when my own kids were little. 

Back then a friend told me “the days are long and the years are short,” and I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. It was so true. The days were never ending. The years flashed past. The kids grew up. We had a puppy. We had an old dog. The world went crazy. The world was always crazy. How do other people do this, make sense of it? 

At the story time there was a little girl who kept toddling up to me while I was rhyming and clapping and chanting and dancing. I was waving a stuffed dog puppet around, and I lowered it, so she could pet it. Instead, she surprised me by pulling it out of my hands and taking off with it, laughing. 

I laughed too. There is no making sense. Another day begins. Another day ends. 

What can we do, but be here, grateful? 

A Fun Night Out

The only reason I did it was for the shampoo. 

I have a confession to make about this shampoo. It's expensive. I mean, it's embarrassingly absurd how much it costs, and I can only buy it from the salon where I get my hair cut. In my defense it smells really nice. Hints of rosemary and thyme that make me feel like I’m out digging around in my garden on a sunny day. Also, if you buy the big bottle, it lasts for a year, and every once in a while, the salon has a sale, and the big bottles are 25% off. So, practically a bargain.

Anyway, my big bottle was running out, and when I went to get my hair cut, I asked about buying another discounted bottle, and the hair stylist said there was a special sale coming up as part of their upcoming “Gal’s Night Out” party. Bring your friends, she said. We’re having champagne and snacks and eye treatments and hand massages. 

She gave me a flyer which promised that my “inner glam girl would thank me.”

I don’t have an inner glam girl, and I didn’t have a friend that I could imagine wanting to go with me to a thing like this, but I really wanted the 25% off shampoo. I shared the flyer with my daughter, and she urged me to go. Pamper yourself, she said. And look, they’re doing tattoos. And permanent jewelry! 

What’s permanent jewelry? I said. 

They put it on you and it’s permanent. I want one! You should get one, Mom. Oh! What if I fly into Columbus this weekend? I’ll be your gal friend! She started looking up flights. The flights were five hundred dollars, and I was seriously considering it. 

But then, my daughter laughed. Wait, she said. This is turning out to be a very expensive bottle of shampoo.

Good point. I decided to go alone. 

The next thing I know I am heading out into the night even though I don’t like to drive at night, and it’s snowing and I don’t like to drive in snow. But the salon is only fifteen minutes away and I am committed. At my daughter’s urging, I’m doing it all. Champagne and snacks and eye treatment and a hand massage. Maybe I’ll get the permanent jewelry. Maybe I’ll get another tattoo. This is me, pushing out of my comfort zone, releasing my inner glam girl, going out on a Saturday night at 7pm like a normal person and not an old fuddy duddy. 

Maybe I’ll run into someone I know! Maybe I’ll make a new friend! I’m sort of dressed up in my swingy jeans and a crisp white shirt. I’m wearing earrings. Will that interfere with my eye treatment? Let’s find out! 

I stride inside. The place is crowded, mostly people chatting it up with their gal pals, but that’s okay. I can do this! Someone offers me a glass of champagne or mock champagne, and I take the mock version because I’m thinking about driving home in the snow. The hostess waves tongs at me. Would you like me to add some cotton candy balls to your drink? she says. 

(Cotton candy balls? is this a thing? What is this thing?) Sure! 

She drops what looks like colorful cotton balls into my cup, and I move around the room looking for where I can get my eye treatment or my hand massage. Come to find out there is no eye treatment or hand massage. What you get is a free tube of eye treatment or hand massage cream. I take the tube of eye treatment. 

I sip my cotton ball drink and chat it up with the people standing in line for a tattoo (Me: Are you getting a tattoo? Person: I don’t know, you? Me: Probably not.) And then I chat it up with the people standing in line to get the permanent jewelry. (Me: What is permanent jewelry? Person: It doesn’t have a clasp. Me: And it stays on forever? Person: Probably not.)

I take another stroll around the room. I nod and sip my poofball drink and realize I’ve dribbled some of it on my white shirt. It’s 7:15 pm. I buy a bottle of 25% off shampoo and I burst out alone into the cold snowy night. 

What's the moral of this story? Nothing. But it was a fun night out. 

Glimmers

In the middle of the night the dog toppled off the bed. Her body thunked on the floor, and I sprang out of bed and tried to pick her up. It’s the pain meds she’s on. They make her wobbly and confused. She scrambled away from me and headed toward the stairs, tumbling two or three steps down before I could stop her. 

We groped together down the remaining stairs and into the living room where I settled her on the couch. But I could not settle myself on the couch. It was three o’clock in the morning, and I was full-blown awake, heart banging, mind racing, spinning through future fears, 

the dog growing older and I’m growing older and what does that mean for both of us, never mind the world and its daily insanity. And what if I couldn’t fall back to sleep? What if the dog broke a bone? What if she lost the ability to climb stairs and we’d have to sleep down here every night for the rest of our lives? The room was dark,

and only a hint of streetlight coming in between the blinds, the glint of grubby snow outside that will never melt. The cold, and the only blanket down here smells like dog. It was three-fifteen. It was three-thirty. I tried my four-count breathing trick but kept losing track of the counts. It was three-forty-five. 

It was four o’clock. My anxiety spiral kept spiraling. 

I remembered another trick. A thing I just read in a book about anxiety where you list what the author calls glimmers. It’s like triggers, except the opposite. Glimmers are all the things around you that give you a little charge of happiness. I read this and immediately thought it was stupid and would never work. It was four-thirty. I sat up on the couch. 

The dog was curled next to me, and I could hear her soft breathing in and out. The dog, I listed. This blanket. It smells like dog, but I love the dog, so that’s okay. My fuzzy socks and how soft they are. That plant over by the window, a gift from my father in-law and how he told me that it will flower one day when I least expect it, and that hasn’t happened yet, but I believe him. 

I slid onto my side on the couch, twisting around the dog, and went on with my list. The pile of library books near my head. The other plant by the window that I nurtured from seeds and now it’s so perky and glossy and always stretching toward the light. My orange purse. A cloth napkin I bought at a shop in France that will forever remind me of strolling through Monet’s garden. 

Somewhere along the way I fell asleep. 

In the morning, I wasn’t as bleary-eyed as I’d feared. The room was bright from sun and the sparkle of all that snow. And wedged up beside me, the snoozing dog. Fine for now, but for now is all we have, and I am grateful for it. 

Touch the Grass

The news is a firehose, and I was drowning in it. I tried to turn it off, but it kept gushing at me. I paced around the house like the dog. I was thinking about how I’d just watched a video of an ICE officer kicking a little dog. The kick broke the dog’s ribs. How do I go back in time and not watch this video? I promise I wasn’t searching for it. IT PLAYED AT ME. It made me want to crawl out of my own skin. It made me hate the world. 

There’s a thing I read, online, that says when you feel like you’re too much online, you should go outside and touch the grass. But I couldn’t go outside and touch the grass because there’s a foot of snow piled on top of it. 

More snow came on Friday. My husband had taken the day off from work, and he drove me in to the library. A side note about the library: it is my happy place. First, there is the daily, meditative checking-in of books, the gentle shushing of the shelving and straightening. Also, I love my co-workers. It was my turn to bring the donuts, and we ate the donuts and told funny stories about the things patrons leave inside books. 

Macaroni noodles, for example. Or the time someone returned a book with one thousand post-it notes sticking out of it. And then, we opened the doors, and the kids toddled in. It was a slow day because of the icy roads, but I got to see some of my favorites. The little girl who wears the sparkly boots. The little boy and his mom who do the scavenger hunt together, and when I say, Do you want a clue? They say, No, we’re doing it clean. 

Clean?

The mom tells me it’s how she does the New York Times Spelling Bee. No clues until you get to the Genius level. She says she and her friends call it “doing it clean.” 

I don't know why but I love this. I watched the mom and her son wander past one of the pictures they were trying to find. (Shhh! It’s on the ceiling!) They walked under it several times before the little boy looked up and pointed. I gave them both a sticker. By the time my husband picked me up, I was feeling much better. Let’s go on a date, he said. 

The date started in a strip mall for lunch, a new restaurant he’d read about and wanted to try. I opened the menu and everything was unfamiliar, but unfamiliar in a good way. Cheesy yuca fries? Sure. Arepas, why not? What’s an arepa? A type of bread, the waitress explained. Like a sandwich. I ordered one layered with a slab of cheese and hunks of steak. And oh my god, the yuca fries. They tasted like potato fries, but even better, when you dipped them in the sour-creamy, cheese-chunk sauce that came with the dish.  

How had we never eaten at this amazing place before? The date could’ve ended there, but we kept going. Browsed a used bookshop, poked around a thrift store, headed over to the big international market so my husband could buy the chili sauce he likes. 

The store wasn’t hopping how it usually is. ICE is trolling around Columbus, and the international markets are a target. I can so easily slip back into hating the world. 

But I won’t this time. 

This time I roam with my husband through the aisles in the international market, marveling at all the food we haven’t tried yet, the mound of yucas piled in a bin. We buy one to cook at home. 

It really does help, you know, to touch something real. 

In place of grass, try yucas or bread, books and stickers. 

Buy the Boots

The dog doesn’t like the weather. The foot of snow. The freezing cold, most days barely above zero. Each day she gives us a stunned glance back when we open the door. We bundle her up, of course, in her black jacket with the popped collar that gives her a vampire vibe. 

But it’s her bare paws that are killing her. I know. There is such a thing as boots for dogs. But she’s not the type of dog who would wear them. Several years ago, she had a sore on her chest near one of her front legs, and the vet gave us an ointment for it. Home, we dabbed the ointment on, and she immediately licked it off. We put a cone on her head, but we couldn’t bear the pained, humiliated expression on her face. 

Still, we had to do something about the sore. One of us got the idea to try fitting her with an old, oversized T-shirt. That was almost worse than the cone. She stopped speaking to us. Most days she wouldn’t even look at us. 

It was weirdly warm that week, and we were outside cleaning up the yard, the dog moping around us in her T-shirt. This was early March 2020, and soon the pandemic was going to shut it all down, but we didn’t know that yet. Our biggest worry was our dog’s armpit wound and whether or not she’d ever forgive us for forcing her into a T-shirt. 

I wish we could explain it to her, I kept saying to my husband. But this would be like explaining a global pandemic when we learned that if push comes to shove, many of us don't want to do hard things. Or why right this moment, the federal government is about to descend on Springfield, Ohio, forty-five minutes from where we live, to round up Haitian refugees, people who are here legally, but now, suddenly, they’re not here legally, because our country can do that, change a law to fit whatever they want it to be. 

So many things are not explainable. 

Anyway, the dog is hard of hearing, so I can’t explain the existence of dog boots to her even if I wanted to. And she wouldn't wear them. I promise you. It would be a battle and I don't have the energy to fight it! Instead, I head outside with her and pray she will do her business fast. 

But first there are sniffs to sniff and other dogs’ pee painted on the snowdrifts to investigate. A squirrel to chase off. The neighbor's yard to explore. By the time she’s done with all that, the cold has caught up with her, and her legs give way, her body slipping, her paws painfully angled to keep them off the ice. 

I huddle over her, trying to lift her, trying to warm her frozen paws, but I’m struggling too, my bulky coat, my hat falling over my eyes, my still-recovering hand throbbing under my mitten. We can do this, I tell her, and I half carry/half heave her home. 

When we make it, I am in tears, knowing I am complicit. 

Ashamed, finally, I do the right thing. 

I buy the boots. 

If you would like to help the people of Springfield, Ohio, here are some options:

Write a letter to Governor Mike DeWine.

Donate to the United Way Springfield Unity Fund. 

Give to the Central Christian Church in Springfield and select G92 from the option list (donations to G92 support refugees in the area). 

Donate to the Haitian Support Center. 

Thank you. 

Cold

It’s cold and I walk out into it. Four degrees, but it feels like negative twelve. What does negative twelve feel like? Cold is cold. Okay, I am wrong. This is colder than cold. I bundle myself up. Leggings under pants. Boots. A T-shirt, sweatshirt, my long coat. A scarf wrapped around and around my hood so that only my eyes touch the air. 

The air hurts my eyes.  

Head lowered, I march up the street. Videos play in my head. Executions. A blond woman smiling through her car window. A thin bearded man holding a phone. The woman could be my daughter. The man could be my son. A little boy weighted down by a backpack, the darling ears knitted on his cap. He could be any of the little boys who play around the train table at my library. I am imagining scooping him up and running away with him. But where would we go? 

Let me tell you a story. 

Once, when I was a little girl, I went with my stepfather to an old barn. It was a hot day and the barn smelled like rotting wood and dust and maybe there used to be cows here, but now it was overstuffed with junk and broken machinery and old-fashioned furniture. I made my way over to an old desk, the kind with a top that rolled back and many drawers and secret-looking compartments. I opened one of the drawers, and something squealed inside. 

It was a nest of mice. Babies squirming in dust and bits of paper. Their twitching paws and twirly tails. Their teeny eyes flickering open. Disturbed. Afraid. Afraid of me, probably, for opening their drawer. But they had nothing to be afraid of. I was a little girl, and instantly in love. How small these baby mice were. How adorable. I cooed at them. I smiled. I wanted to take them home with me. Dress them in my doll clothes. Arrange them on the little beds in my dollhouse. Look! 

Mice! I said to my stepfather. 

And he yanked out the drawer and snatched up the mice in one fist and threw them against the barn wall. I learned everything I needed to know about evil people when I was eight years old. 

The rest of it, the part about the good people, would take me longer to learn. Sometimes, you close your eyes and hear the mouse bodies hitting the wall, and it's easy to forget. But I am here to tell you, don’t forget. 

We are cold today, even in all of our many layers, but we will keep walking.