Presence

The warm weird weather, a walk with the dog, whose health is precarious lately, but for the moment, she’s trotting along, tail wagging, stopping every now and then to sniff a tree. What information is she picking up about the world? Speaking of the world, 

it’s bad. In this moment, though, here, standing with the dog in front of a yard with an inflatable Santa faceplanted on the grass, it’s pretty good. Back home, my visiting daughter is doing a puzzle, and in a few minutes, I’ll join her. My husband will heat up leftovers from the amazing meal our son-in-law made on Christmas. But first, we’ll grab some crackers and scarf down more of his pimento cheese dip. I have to tell you about this pimento cheese dip. 

Our son-in-law is a chef at a gourmet sandwich shop, and last year he created a sandwich that featured pimento cheese, and it was such a hit that the restaurant has started selling it in little tubs. Of course we wanted to try this recipe, thinking he’d bring along a little tub with him, but he did one better. He whipped up a vat in our kitchen, which is good, because we’re all addicted to it. I can’t say enough about this cheese dip. It renews my faith in the world. And I say this as a person, who until five days ago, did not have an opinion one way or another about pimento cheese dip. 

But right now, I'm existing in the moment with the dog as she completes her sniffs, the sun reflecting off the face-planted Santa, the neighborhood kids riding past us on their bikes, shouting back and forth at each other. 

They’re wearing shorts, which I know has got to be a sign of something bad, but the kids look happy. Maybe this is it. The end of the world, but with happy kids in shorts and a trotting dog, 

family and cheese dip waiting for me at home.    

 

On Darkness, On Light

I have been using the light all wrong. 

The winter. The cold. The gray-dark. I have that Seasonal Affective Disorder thing where the energy leaks out of me, despite all my best efforts—the walks outside (no matter what the weather), the daily yoga, the cozying up of the house. A few years ago, my daughter introduced me to Danish Hygge, where you burn candles and toss cushy throw pillows around the room and sip hot tea and set a pot of steaming orange peels and cinnamon sticks on the stove until it turns to mush. It helps. It doesn’t help. 

My husband got me one of those light therapy lamps, and I blast it in the afternoons after I get home from work at the library, what feels like the peak grayness of the day. Under the glare, I sit at my desk and try to write, but mostly I’m blinking at the window, the gloomy backyard, the flopped over brown flowers, the frozen birdbath, the clutter of dead leaves on the dead lawn. My thoughts are muddled 

a story I read in the news about a young woman who lives in a homeless camp and how she went into labor and a police officer ticketed her for sitting under an overpass, and now I can’t get the picture out of my mind, her sprawled legs, her flip flops, one hand lifted helplessly, 

and the other day at the library, the old man who wandered into the youth department, lost, and I cheerfully led him out, chattering about how confusing the library layout is, the large space and all of the various hallways, and who wouldn’t get lost. But now I’m thinking of him out in the parking lot, shuffling between the cars. Should I have followed him out there? Asked him if he needed help? What do we owe one another and why doesn’t this stupid light work?

Because you’ve been using it wrong, says a friend. 

We’re at a Winter Solstice Party, and the talk has turned to the weather (the clouds, the dreariness, the GRAAAAAYYYYY), commiserating about our mutual SAD-ness. The trick, he tells me, is to turn the light on first thing in the morning to mimic the sun rising. 

Huh, I say. Can it be this easy? 

I vow to try it the next morning, but the next morning I forget, a quiet, bleary-eyed moment with my coffee, the dog curled beside me, the orange peels and cinnamon sticks simmering on the stove. The sun surprises me before I can mimic it, the pinkening sky

the growing blue, so real and bright you can almost believe the young woman was given a blanket and lifted gently into an ambulance, 

and the lost man made it home. 

A Conversation

Driving up a busy street in our neighborhood, my husband and I are accosted at each intersection by people asking for money. It’s an annual charity thing, not sure which one, but basically, it seems to involve groups of volunteers, everyone wearing white and holding money buckets and weaving between cars. It is causing my husband immense anxiety.

Someone is going to get run over, he says, as we roll through the first intersection, narrowly skimming past one of the white-wearing, money-bucket-holders. 

Who thought this was a good idea? he says, at the next intersection, a volunteer darting out in front of us to accept a gift from a nearby car. 

I try to change the subject. It’s a story I just heard on the Family Secrets podcast about a woman living in India in the early 2000s, and how every few months violence would flare up, but mostly, she could sort of forget about it and go on with her life until the next flare-up would remind her again how much danger she was in. 

If someone gets run over, my husband says, wouldn’t that bankrupt the charity? 

Yeah, I say. But I can see it, though, how you could forget about it. I mean, look at us during Covid, how fast we got used to working from home and not going out to restaurants and flinching every time you heard a person cough. 

I don’t want to think about it, my husband says, but I can’t help thinking about it. A car slamming into someone, the guy flying up in the air.  

And then there’s now, I say. Like, what’s going to happen in January when they start rounding up immigrant families and outlaw polio vaccines and get rid of the Affordable Care Act? 

There’s gotta be a better way to ask for money, my husband says. 

Maybe this is what people want? I say. 

We’re at a red light, and the white-suited bucket-swingers surround our car, but, realizing we are a dead end, quickly disperse. 

I don’t know why it bothers me so much, my husband says. 

Because you care, I tell him. And we continue our drive up the street, our dueling conversations, our disparate anxieties, each inside our own head, each with our eyes worriedly on the road ahead.  

Musings on HROBs

My husband is reading a book about retirement, and it's got me thinking a lot about retirement. Mostly, I'm thinking about how I'm not old enough to retire. But apparently, I am, because I'm married to someone who is the same age, and he's been working at the same company for thirty-five years, and lately, he's been pondering the eventual, inevitable future, peppering our conversation with things like

HROBs (Happiest Retirees on the Block) 

and 

What are your Core Pursuits? 

which are topics that come up in the book he's been reading, What the Happiest Retirees Know: 10 Habits for a Healthy, Secure, and Joyful Life by Wes Moss. In the book Wes Moss did a survey of 2000 retirees and distilled their answers down to a specific formula for what makes an HROB, such as You should be married and have 2.5 kids and live close to 50% of them. Also, make sure you have two to six Close Connections (friends) and 3.6 Core Pursuits (hobbies). 

Side note: Your average HROB is in good health and has a lot of money, but Wes sorta glosses over this part.

Meanwhile, my husband has gotten fixated on the hobbies, worrying that because he only has one, woodworking, he needs to up his game and find 2.6 more.  

Maybe one is enough, I tell him, pointing out that woodworking is a time-consuming hobby. I mean, he singlehandedly remodeled our kitchen and has a list of orders from friends who'd like him to build something for them (his specialties are bookcases, tables and Little Free Libraries) and anyway, without having read the book, I think Wes would agree that it's not the number of hobbies you have, but that they are enjoyable and interesting and meaningful. 

Like, gardening is for me. And reading. And working at the library. But is that a hobby if I'm getting paid? (Side note #2: I don't get paid a living wage, and I just recently learned that over 70% of my co-workers, some of whom work full-time and would NOT call their job at the library a hobby, also do not get paid a living wage.)

And where does writing fit in? It's not a job (very little pay; and regardless, I would never retire from it.) And yet, it's not a hobby, because it's just something I do, like brushing my teeth or breathing. It's how I make sense of the world, or rather, how I make my peace with the senselessness of it. How I work through what puzzles me, like why we don't value our public servants enough to pay them a living wage. Or how I grapple with the reality that my husband is reading books about retirement, when once upon a time

we were just starting out, consumed each moment by the stuff of the future, all of it tomorrow or some day or next year, until suddenly, everything we'd planned for and saved for, the future, 

is here. Or, almost here. We're not Rs yet. But we do live on a B, and most of the time, we're H. And for today, that is E. (enough)

Beautiful Things

After the election my friend and I said we would share a picture with each other each day of one beautiful thing. 

The first day, all I could find was a tree with yellow leaves, and my friend, who was on vacation in Utah, sent me a picture of her hotel breakfast. I was walking

the dog around the block, and the sky was gray, and everything was misty like the world had sunk into a dark cloud. A woman was out raking leaves, and I had the suspicious feeling that she was a stranger, and maybe she was one of the people who glossed over injustice for the sake of cheaper groceries. Hi, she said, and I said, Hi, how are you? and she said, Well, not great, and I said, Me neither,

and we both let out the kind of long, relieved sigh you feel when you recognize a friend. Maybe we are going to be okay, or okay-ish. Either that, or fall into despair. The next day I saw a bald eagle flying in front of my house, 

and my friend hiked a trail in Utah, and my daughter and her friend finished crocheting a blanket, and my son climbed a mountain and watched the sun coming up, and in the picture he shared, you could see his little house down below, a patchwork of fields, the lake, the distant mountains.  

A few miles away from my neighborhood a group of men waved nazi flags and marched down the street yelling slurs and I had to turn off the news because I couldn't bear to hear anymore about the incoming administration’s cabinet picks, the sexual abusers, the criminals, the crackpots. The sun didn’t come out most days, 

but my husband set out bird seed in front of the bird camera and it caught the most amazing-looking bird, mid-flight, and later, I found a frilly white iris growing randomly near the garage. 

I don't know why everything feels different, why, at the same time, it feels the same. And how is it that every day I wake up in surprise to the brokenness and the beauty?

Encounter

The cardinal has shown up again on the back porch. I find him early mornings in cold weather, and it always startles me. The black, unblinking eyes. How still he is. Is he dead? is what I always think. But no. He’s just perched there, half scary looking and half comical. He watches me let the dog out and watches me letting the dog back in. I wonder what he is thinking. Am I an enemy to him? 

This the kind of question I have at five o’clock in the morning. I want to say, no, because, why not? Isn’t it kinder to give each other the benefit of the doubt? Yes. 

Although sometimes suspicion and dark feelings win out. For example, mornings driving to work when the Starbucks drive thru line winds into the street and keeps me from making the green light. The other day this happened when I was chatting with my daughter, and I am embarrassed to say how long I slammed my hand down on the car horn. The string of bad words coming out of my mouth. You wouldn’t believe it. 

Mom! she said. Oh my God, calm down. 

And I laughed and vowed to forgive all the idiots in the world. Except, for this one guy in the gift shop at the art museum downtown. Listen to this:

A couple of months ago my husband and I went to the museum and at the end of our visit browsed the gift shop, pausing by a display of Charley Harper merch. Colorful prints and notecards, a set of drinking glasses, each featuring a cardinal, $15.95 a piece. Pricey for a glass, but these were so cool-looking and reminded us of the cardinal on the back porch. 

We bought two and the clerk charged us 18.95 for them. These are 15.95, my husband whispered (to me), and I relayed that info to the clerk. 

Nope, he said in a hoity-toity tone. They’re 18.95.  

Okay, I said. But as soon as we were out the door, my husband was pulling the glasses out of the bag and unwrapping them. They’re 15.95, he said. Look!

I looked. Sure enough. 15.95. Do you want to go back in and show the guy? I said. 

No, he said, resigned. I could feel his resignation and wanted to cheer him up. The glasses are fun and it’s only 6 dollars difference. Who cares. He agreed, but when we got home, he peeled the 15.95 price sticker off and stuck it to the wall in the kitchen. A reminder of righteous outrage, I guess, and the things we let go.

The story does not end there. 

A few weeks later my husband was out of town, and I had the bright idea to go back to the art museum and buy four more glasses. I went straight to the gift shop, found the glasses, turned each one over to look at the price sticker (15.95), brought them over to the counter and greeted the same clerk, who rang them up as 18.95. 

These are 15.95, I said, politely. 

No, they’re 18.95, he said, not politely.

Yes, they are, I said. I was starting to sweat. I held a glass toward him and pointed out the price tag. 

Hmph, the clerk said. Well, those are marked incorrectly. They’re 18.95. 

Except, they're not.

They are. 

I laughed. Are you really going to charge me 18.95? I said.

He didn’t answer. He rang them up and wrapped each one so slowly, I thought I might die. I had to take off my coat I was sweating so much. When he handed me the receipt, I saw the price. He’d gone with 15.95, but apparently didn't want to admit it. I had a wild thought that I could push him. Tell him he owed me 6 bucks from the last time, but I decided against it. Sometimes I can be the bigger person. 

I left the shop and immediately burst out laughing. I felt like I’d gotten away with something, but I don’t know what. A funny story. A set of silly glasses that never stop making me smile. 

This morning I sipped water out of one as the dog went out, came in. I peeked at the bird perched on the back porch and raised the glass. 

Cheers to you, friend.  

 

Why Are You Here?

the little girl asks me. She's a regular at the library where I work, but that branch is closed for renovations, and now I'm at the main branch and feeling out of place and a smidge useless at the moment. Why AM I here? 

Because the other library is closed, says the little girl's mother. 

Why? says the little girl. 

Because they need to fix it.

Why?

Because it's broken. 

Why?

I used to have my own three-year-olds, so I know this can go on all day. I give the little girl a sticker. It's a bear wearing sunglasses. Why? the little girl asks me, and I want to say, I don't know. I don't know about anything anymore. We are living in strange times, where one moment you're feeling hope-y and change-y, and the next, you're googling How to Live under an Authoritarian Regime (Don't submit in advance) or scrolling around on Zillow searching for houses for sale in Blue States (Vermont looks nice). 

Instead, I say, Because he's a silly bear. 

Which seems to satisfy her because she goes off to play at the train table, and I head over to the story time area to sign in patrons for Baby Tummy Time. We didn't have this program at my old branch, and I am curious. Picture a circle of baby-sized yoga mats. Picture me flopping onto one of them. 

Okay, I would never do that, but the thought pings in my head. The world leaking in again. The weather. What one of my co-workers calls Wuthering Heights weather. Think gray. Think cold. Think emotionally immature vengeful lovers bellowing for each other across the moors.

The babies and their caregivers gather, and I try to sign them in, but the sign-in software doesn't make sense to me, and I resort to scribbling numbers on a post-it note. 22. Why would anyone want to have a baby right now? These babies, though. I wish you could see them. 

Some are so teeny tiny that when their grown-ups set them on the yoga mats, they immediately curl up like little pillbugs. An older baby rolls off her mat and keeps rolling across the carpet. The babies nurse. The babies cry. The babies sleep. One of the little pillbugs wakes up and lifts his head to look around. What does he make of this place? 

And what's with the old library lady cooing and sing-songing "Hello! Aren't you a cutie!" into his little face? Tummy-time's over and I'm back at the desk, the three-year-old patron at the train table, taking notice, skipping over sporting her sticker. 

You're here! she says. 

I nod and smile. I'm here. 

This Is Not a Drill

I am a teacher, and we are learning, in the elementary school where I work, about lockdowns. Say, a gunman enters the school. What do we do? The teachers in the room around me are taking notes, nodding solemnly to this presentation. I am thinking about my own children at a school only a few miles away, my son in third grade, my little daughter, just starting kindergarten. Oh my God. What do we do?

Don’t panic, says the presenter. 

When the alarm sounds, go to your classroom doorways, quickly. Step into the hallway and sweep inside everyone who is close by. The little boy on his way back from the drinking fountain. The little girl heading toward the restroom. Pull them into your room and lock the doors until the danger passes.

But I am still stuck in the doorway. What will happen to the kid inside the restroom? The housekeeper, pushing her mop at the other end of the hallway? The child late to school and just now bounding up the stairs? How wide can our arms sweep? 

And the gunman. Who is he? A teenager crying out for help from his distracted parents, ignored? (They bought him the gun.) A man angry about something or other. What he believes he is owed or a personal grievance or revenge or some warped desire for chaos, a need to burn it all down. 

I don’t have the mental energy for these people right now. First, my own doorway, my own classroom. And please, please, please, in the place where my children might be this moment, skipping down the hall, let a kind somebody sweep them inside  

where the room is warm and filled with books. Colorful art on the walls, plants on the windowsills. Where we sit, cross-legged on the floor together and rest up, ready ourselves to fight if we have to,

singing softly in the dark, telling each other stories. 

Over the Edge

Last night I didn’t want to look at the election results. I put my phone away. I was thinking, this is the Schrödinger's cat point of the timeline, where good things can still happen and I want to live in that space for a little while longer. 

My husband woke me up in the middle of the night. He said, He won. I couldn’t go back to sleep. I had to do my four-count breathing. I woke from a dream that all of the Harris signs in the neighborhood were flipped upside down. I realized, This is reality. Why am I fighting against it? 

It's what many people want. The name calling and the wrestlemania-like spectacle. The fear of Other, whoever Other happens to be. They want RFK Jr with his brain worm in charge of Health and Human Services and Elon Musk to tank the economy how he tanked Twitter. How do you argue with that?  

After the 2016 election, I walked around in a daze, worrying about abortion access and the hatred stirred up about Muslim people and Black people and Mexican people and disabled people. The newly elected president had proudly bragged that he could grab women anytime he wanted and they would let him. I tunneled back to an old traumatized childhood self and thought I might be losing my mind. 

But then I rallied. I threw myself into every resistance group I could find. I called congresspeople and went to protests. At the Women's March in DC I saw John Kerry walking down the sidewalk in his long dark coat. He was so tall and somber looking. It made me think of Abraham Lincoln. Kerry had been the Secretary of State and I imagined him thinking, Great, now all my work’s going to shit.  

The most important difference between the two candidates: she will accept the loss; he would never. Are people really okay with this? 

At the library we put up a display of cozy books. What will our patrons want to see on Wednesday when they walk in, looking for some sign that the world we live in is the same world we lived in yesterday. Books about knitting and making soup. Light mysteries and sentimental stories. I won't be there. 

My husband had a medical procedure yesterday, and I'm here with him at home. He’s fine. But there was a moment in the hospital while I was waiting for the news, and it could have gone either way. It can always go either way. I was looking at the other people waiting around me, some on their phones, some flipping through magazines. Over the intercom an urgent voice said, Code Blue Code Blue. We all looked up at the ceiling and we knew.

Someone was being lost or someone was being saved. Saved, I pray. Saved.

On Edge

The library where I work is closing next week for renovations. The renovations were going to take six weeks, and then they were going to take three months, and now they are going to take six months. Every day when I’m sitting at the desk, patrons look around and see the mostly emptied out book shelves, the boxes, the bare wall where we used to hang a lovely quilt, and say, What’s happening?  

Next to the desk, there's an eight feet tall sign that gives all the details of the closing and the renovation, but for some reason no one sees this sign. 

No one reads signs, Jody, my old circ manager used to say. I argued with her until I witnessed it firsthand. This was maybe five years ago when the library changed the traffic pattern in the parking lot. The city put up a giant flashing sign, the kind you see on the highway to alert drivers that there’s construction ahead. The sign was comically enormous, blazing lights on the library lawn. 

But the day they changed the traffic pattern, there were fender benders and near misses in the parking lot, patrons running into the library, breathless, freaked out, shouting, You should put up a sign! I could hear the circ manager sighing in my head. 

What is it about signs that we can’t seem to see them? The impeding library closure is getting me down. That, and the election. To get away from it all, my husband and I head out to one of our county’s metro parks. 

This is a goal we have, to visit each of the twenty metro parks. Today, we’re on number three, Blacklick Woods. The place is known for its three-story tree canopy walk, a wooden structure that looks like the base of a roller coaster. We huff it up the stairs and trek around the path, and it really does seem like we’re up in the tree canopy. 

Another fun feature: a rope bridge. There’s a long line to cross, and I join it. I don’t know why. Normally, I am afraid of heights. A sign hangs overheard. Only four on the bridge at a time. Maybe we’re all a little afraid of heights or maybe waiting in line gives you plenty of time to read, because everyone does the right thing and takes their turn. 

When it’s mine, I only hesitate for a second. My library branch will close and then it will reopen. The election will happen and someone will win and we will help each other through whatever happens next. I set my foot down on the ropes, a whir in my ears as I peer down to the ground. 

Another step, and the wooden poles keeping all of us aloft, sway. 

Hold. 

Costume Party

At the Halloween party we are all masked and wearing black. When my friend and I walk through the door, the hosts greet us and tape a name on our backs. It’s a literary character or a famous person, someone scary or someone who wears a mask. We’re supposed to mingle around the room and ask questions until we guess who we are. 

My friend is Captain Ahab. Am I a man? she says. 

Yes. 

Am I in a book? 

Yes. 

Is it a horror novel? 

No, but maybe, psychologically. My friend is stumped. My mask is lacy and blocks out my peripheral vision. The light in the room is orange and the black shapes of the guests drift around me. Am I a woman? I ask Dr Frank-n-furter from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

Yes, he says. 

Am I in a book? 

Yes. 

Is it a children’s book? 

Yes. 

Hmm. 

The hosts are a writer and a professor. Pretty much everyone at the party is a writer or a professor. The Wicked Witch of the West asks me how my writing's going lately, and I am stumped. Not great, I say, and I switch the subject. Is my character the main character? 

No, the Wicked Witch of the West says. 

I bump into a man wearing a black cape. I sneak a peek at his back. Cruella de Vil. He’s talking about the upcoming election. It’s going to be close, he says. She’s going to win, but it will take a long time to count the votes and there will be conspiracy theories swirling around and potential chaos. 

Are you a political science professor? I ask him.

No, I’m a professor of German history. I’m teaching a class this semester on fascism in Germany in the 1930s. He tells me he has two students in his class who have turned him into the administration for being a communist. I’m going to try to ride it out, he says, until I can retire in a couple of years and then I’m going to move to Germany. 

I don’t know how to respond to this. Am I a scary person? I say, gesturing vaguely at my back. 

Yes, Cruella de Vil says. 

I help myself to crackers and cheese and swallow down a glass of red wine. Earlier in the day I went to the farmer’s market and bought apples and lettuce and two poblano peppers. I gave the rosemary bread lady a bouquet of rosemary sprigs that I’d just cut from my garden. The sky was bright blue and you could almost forget that fascism might be coming to America. 

Back at the party I’ve learned that the author of my character’s book is British and the book was written in the twentieth century. Is it Peter Pan? 

No. 

Is it Harry Potter? 

No. 

Something by Roald Dahl? 

Yes. 

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? 

No. 

Matilda? 

Yes. 

I’m stumped. The only character I know in Matilda is Matilda. 

It’s the teacher, Miss Trunchbull, my friend Captain Ahab tells me. This feels anti-climactic. We’re back to talking about politics and is it privileged to want to move somewhere safe? 

Yes. 

But where is safe? 

Berlin is really nice, says Cruella De Vil. I eat a slice of apple tart. I take a picture of myself and send it to my daughter. 

She texts back: Mom, your mask is upside down. 

I laugh and slip it off. The light in the room is a soft golden and the black shapes are lovely, ordinary people. I am thinking about how when I gave the rosemary bread lady the rosemary sprigs, she was so happy, she hugged me. 

Reminder

The pre-school kids on their class visit to the library are cute. They file down the stairs with their fingers against their lips. Shh shh, they say loudly to each other. When they troop past me, they tap their heads and make wide motions with their arms. You’re a library person, one of the little girls tells me, doing the wide arm motion thing again. This means, Library Person. 

Okay, I say. They dance around me as I help them pick out books. The easy ones. Dinosaurs. Princesses. Puppies. Dragons. The more difficult to find. A book about Aurora. A book in the Pig the Pug series. No, not that one. No, not that one either. The one with the orange cover? Yes! The girl who wants an Aurora book is still waiting. (Who is Aurora? I have to google it. Ah. It’s Sleeping Beauty. But we’re out of Sleeping Beauty books.) How about Cinderella? 

No.

Belle? 

No.

Elsa?

No.

One of my co-workers digs around in the back room and comes out with a Little Mermaid book and saves the day. Sorry she was being so picky, one of the teachers tells me, but I wave it off. She knows what she wants. 

Home in the afternoon, and I sit down at my desk to work on the book I’ve been trying to write, but nothing comes. The main character doesn’t know what she wants. This is a problem in a story because wanting is the whole shebang. It goes like this: 

What does the hero want? What is standing in her way? Which leads to conflict. Which keeps the reader turning pages. Think: Dorothy wanting to make it home to Kansas. Or Chief Brody wanting to catch the shark so it will stop eating people over Fourth of July weekend. 

Meanwhile, my character is schlumping around wanting nothing. The world she’s in won’t stop morphing and changing. The world I’m in won’t stop either. I used to be able to do this better. Fit my noise-cancelling headphones over my ears and muffle out the distractions. What if I have lost my writer self? 

Here is something I want. A library person to greet me at the door, welcome me in. Find the missing writerly pieces on the shelves and give them back. 

The pre-school kids finish their visit. They skip past me holding their books. One of them makes the wide armed sign again, and I laugh as I remember. It's me. I am the library person. 

 

Lucky Charm

My daughter is visiting for the weekend, and we browse the shops in my neighborhood. The place where she likes to get custard. The thrift store with the colorful glassware. The feminist gift shop that sells build-your-own charm necklaces. 

Let’s make a necklace, my daughter says.  

No, I think. It’s a reflex from an old self. The one who worries about money, the one who pooh-poohs silly trinkets. All week I’ve been on edge, crossing my fingers for friends in North Carolina who are cleaning up after a hurricane. Another hurricane that just barreled past an aunt who lives in Florida. And how did I end up so lucky, a beautiful fall day in Ohio, a daughter who wants to pal around with me and make a silly necklace?  

Yes, I say, and we spend a ridiculous amount of time pawing through the various charms. Mostly this is me. I forgot to bring my reading glasses, and I can’t see what I’m pawing through. A dog’s face or is that a mouse? Some kind of plant? A feather? 

My daughter laughs. It’s weed, Mom.  

Oh. Ha. Okay. When it’s time to pay, the clerk says I’ve won a chance to roll the dice to win up to fifty percent off my purchase. She hands me a beachball-sized die. I roll it on the floor and it lands on a picture of a cat. The clerk cheers. A cat is the fifty percent off symbol. I am over-the-top excited about my win, posing for pictures, holding the dice, grinning next to my daughter, the two of us festooned in our matching half-price necklaces.

Later, we gorge ourselves on custard and binge-watch a trainwreck of a reality TV show. The stars on the show keep talking about how they feel, but for some reason they pronounce it “fill.” The word echoes in my head, the heartbreak of it, the absurdity. How they fill. How I do. 

Why is it one person's turn for tragedy, another's turn for joy? And what a thin line separates the two. A senseless shift in the weather. A roll of a die. 

Transplanted

I have one goal today. Move the peony plant that’s slowly being strangled by the raspberry bush in the corner of the backyard. Peonies, if you don't know them, are big, brightly-colored flowers that bloom in spring. This one needs more room, more light. I’d meant to move it last fall and never got around to it, and here we are again. But this time I'm making the effort. 

The shovel is out, the new sunny spot scoped out, but I keep getting distracted. Weeds that need to be pulled. A mass of prickly raspberry branches to pick through. I’m listening to a podcast called Family Secrets. Each week the interviewer introduces the program by saying it's about "the lies we tell each other; the lies we tell ourselves." And then she asks, "Do you have a family secret you'd like to share?" 

I laugh as I lope around with my shovel. Oh lady, you wouldn’t believe how many I'd like to share. Here is half of one. I am 12 years old, 13, 14, and I am practically living at my best friend's house. The word practically might be the wrong word. But what is the word for spend every weekend with her family. Follow them along to church. Go on vacation with them. Have a place in their bathroom to put my toothbrush. 

After school I take the bus home with my friend and spend the afternoons with her, praying praying praying as dinnertime looms closer that her mom will invite me to eat with them, a cruel voice in my head whispering, They don’t really want you here. You’re overstaying your welcome. But each night here comes the lovely mother, poking her head into my friend's bedroom, saying, Should I set a place for you tonight, Jody? 

And no hint at all that I am a burden. In my memory she is always wearing an apron. When she hugs me, I can almost pretend that I am one of her daughters. Do the people who save our lives know that they have saved us? 

I wish I had told this person. I meant to but never got around to it and now here we are, too late. But not too late to move this damn peony. My gardening book warns me not to bury it too deep, be careful with the roots. 

I don't. I do. 

A Toast to an Apocalyptic World

There was a story in the newspaper this morning that made me cry. A group of friends in the 1970’s gathering together to eat a fancy breakfast in front of the reflecting pool in Washington DC to bring some joy to a friend who’d just been diagnosed with cancer. A photographer snapped a picture and it appeared in the newspaper, but no one ever knew the story behind it. The photographer’s daughter found the picture after he died, tracked the original friends down, and they recreated the photo, but now, all of them older and with missing people, empty chairs. 

I don’t know why the story made me cry. The beauty in the original photo, the young people dressed up and clinking glasses across the table. The waiters with their serving trays. The pool shimmering in the background. All of the lovely ways people come through for each other. 

Sometimes we forget this. I forget this. 

The news is terrible and it’s always terrible. I’m driving home from work under a gray, menacing sky, the hurricane that touched down nearly one thousand miles away tearing the branches off the trees in my neighborhood. While I sleep, people I know have been flooded out of their homes. Another storm is gathering strength and heading our way. 

But just this week a neighbor dropped off a bag of freshly picked pears. Another neighbor gave us a jar of honey. The woman we always buy homemade rosemary bread from at the farmers market threw in a couple of bonus rolls, “just because.” Two friends invited me out for dinner. Another friend who visited us recently sent us a gift card for the gourmet ice cream shop up the street, and honestly, it’s like she sent us a million dollars. This ice cream! I could eat a scoop every day for the rest of my life. 

Last Sunday I wrote about the unrelenting heat, the drought, a dead deer rotting on the sidewalk. Today, I sit at my desk looking out at the rain, a squirrel hopping across the backyard, the fall flowers along the fence coming into bloom. I don’t know what I am trying to say. 

I want to set a fancy table and gather all of my loved ones close. I want to freeze the moment as we clink our glasses, cherish the world we are given.  

Neighborhood Drama

It’s fall, but the summer keeps going. 

Ninety-five-degree day after 95-degree day, the garden barely holding on, browning, burning. I’m worried about the toad in the crunchy oregano patch, the birds listlessly flitting around the powerlines. Does everyone have enough water? Last week something died in our neighbors’ backyard. The smell was so bad it was hard to be outside without pulling your shirt up over your nose. 

Later in the week, there was a deer carcass rotting on the side of the road. I think it was the mother of fawn triplets. We’d often see the family roaming around the neighborhood, munching on what’s left of everyone’s hostas. Now I can add Orphaned Fawn Triplets to my list of things to feel vaguely uneasy about. 

On the neighborhood social media page everyone takes a side. What to do about the deer, the plants, the weather, the city, the country, the world. Meanwhile, there’s a mystery unfolding outside the apartment complex up the street. (This is me, spinning out stories on my walks with the dog, but hear me out.)   

Scene: A suburban lawn. A strip of sunflowers eight or nine feet high overlooking the sidewalk. A metal bowl filled with water, set out for dogs. 

A middle-aged woman saunters by with a dog and thinks, How nice.  

Next day: The water bowl's missing. In its place is a sign in angry marker: “F OFF TO WHOEVER STOLE THE WATER BOWL”

Well, that escalated quickly, thinks the middle-aged woman. She ponders buying a new bowl, leaving it in front of the sign, a reminder that not everyone’s a thief and our dogs appreciate the gift of water on another sweltering day. But she forgets about it. There’s dead deer and orphaned fawn triplets to worry about. 

Flash forward several days. Now there’s a large cement block with a water bowl screwed into it. A new sign: GOOD LUCK STEALING THIS, ASSHOLE!

The End.

But I have so many questions. Who lives in the apartment building? Who planted the sunflowers? Who stole the water bowl? DID someone steal the water bowl? Is the person who planted the sunflowers the same person who has such strong feelings about missing water bowls? 

The dog drinks the water, and we continue around the block. The deer carcass is gone, finally picked up by the city. And in our front yard, the fawn triplets. They munch my dying plants, seemingly unfazed, silent witnesses to our strange burning world.  

 

So Many Stars

Every morning my job is to make the coffee. Here’s how to make the coffee: push the ON button. The trick is it takes an hour for the water to heat up and the coffee to brew. (This is an enormous coffeemaker. It makes 60 cups of coffee. So I have to get down there early.) 

Down there is the dining hall. Where I am is a kids’ camp somewhere in Maine. My son and daughter-in-law are hosting a big party over Labor Day weekend. They’ve invited all of their family and friends and organized what basically amounts to a Camp for Adults. We’re assigned cabins and bunks. There’s a daily schedule with activities. Hikes. Swimming. Meals in the dining hall. A sign up sheet for volunteer help. 

My big contribution: Push the coffee button. I’m supposed to do it by 5:30 am. Day one, I’m forty-five minutes late. A miscommunication with alarms. When I realize it, I’m tearing out of my sleeping bag and half running down the dirt road toward the dining hall. No big deal, Mom, my son tells me later. Turns out my son-in-law had beat me to it on the button-pushing, and anyway, the rest of the cabins didn’t wake up and get moving until after seven. Whew. 

Day two, I’m a pro. A quick walk under the trees in the growing light, past the lake, the docks jutting out onto the water for the kids. I am having flashbacks to Girl Scout summer camp. I only went twice. One week when I was eleven, a week when I was twelve. But the two weeks take up an outsized space in my memory. For example, I still remember the lyrics to the songs we sang around the campfire. The names of the girls in my cabin and the camp counselors. The recipe for a dessert we were taught to make called Peach Yum Yums. 

The funny thing is I hated camping. An accumulation of crappy and occasionally traumatic experiences on so many ill-fated family camping trips. But Girl Scout camp, I loved. It suddenly occurs to me that it wasn’t camping that bothered me. Night at the Adult Camp, we have a bonfire and toast marshmallows for s’mores. The sun has just gone down and it’s hard to believe how many stars there really are in the sky. All this time and every night. Family and friends around me, I have never felt so comfortable in my life. 

Last morning off to push the coffee button, I walk slowly down the road, past the lake. I am not afraid of the dark anymore, and I am making progress on my fear of the woods. If everyone wasn’t still sleeping, I would belt out the happy song that is playing in my head. 

 

Trail Thoughts

Hiking, and I can’t take my eyes off the ground. This is supposed to be a birding walk, but I am having a hard time listening for birds. I am watching my feet. 

The tree roots, the loose stones, a mucky area on the path. The other day I was on a different hike and the trail turned straight up. You had to climb over rocks, crawling in places, to reach the top. My husband and I were laughing. This was listed in the guidebook as "moderate" in its degree of difficulty. What’s the hard trail? we wondered.

Listen, the birder guide says. Do you hear the loon? She describes it as a scream. You might think you’re caught in a slasher movie, but no, it’s a loon. Someone in our group points out a bird, far away across the lake. I can’t see it. What I see is on the ground, mushrooms. Perfectly mushroom-shaped and bright orange. Now that I’ve found one, I'm finding them all over the place. The entire woods is suddenly filled with orange mushrooms.

The other trail, the one that went straight up, reached a peak. When we finally made it to the top, the view was mountains, lakes, trees. Someone had erected a cross on the ledge. A stone marker said that in 1864 a twelve-year-old girl fell to her death when the wind blew her hat off and she leapt to snatch it back. I was sad thinking about this girl. A hat. Who cares? But I have done dumber things in my life and I have definitely taken stupider risks.  

Back on the birding trail, we are talking about the mushrooms, how most of their growth is underground. This is like my ferns. I tell the birding group the story about how I tried to move all of my ferns from an open area in my yard, where they were continually burning up under the sun, over to a shadier place. It was a lot of work and it ended up being for nothing because all of the ferns I moved died, and later, new ones sprouted in the original sunny patch and predictably got scorched.   

There is a lesson in this story. Dig deeper. 

In my old life I trampled the mushrooms. I wouldn’t even have seen them. In this one, I pause to take a picture. Beyond the trees someone screams. It’s the loon. But what I hear is a girl reaching for a wind tossed hat. This time she catches it. 

Gratitude

Up on the summit it was cool and breezy. From there you could see the little town where we were staying on this vacation, the harbor, the island that we walked out to during low tide. Now, the path was gone, underwater, and a sailboat glided by over the same place where we'd picked stones. I was looking for heart shaped stones and I found them everywhere. 

Who lives in the big houses overlooking the harbor? How do you get to be one of those people? This was the conversation we were having as we were looking for stones. We continued the conversation as we drove up to the summit. 

The point you kept coming back to was why can’t WE be one of those people? Lucky, you meant. On the summit we walked along the ledge. A stranger offered to take our picture. The light is so nice behind you both, he said. I looked at the picture on my phone later. He was right.  

The next day we rode e-bikes along trails through the woods. We coasted past a pond splotched with lily pads. Around a bend, an old stone bridge. More ponds. More stone bridges. Had we ever visited a place so quiet, so still? We ate lunch in a picnic area and watched the other tourists coming in. The young families. The older couples like us. And some much older. See, that can be us, you said. And I could picture it, the two of us roaming around in our retirement through National Parks.  

Biking back, we got lost, looping around the wrong way and having to loop back. The road signs made no sense. And then your tire went flat. We had to abandon the bikes and take a bus back to the visitor center, but we felt lucky. There was a bus. There was a visitor center. 

This is another conversation we had: how can we be grateful for what we have? Well, we’re on vacation, was number one on the list. We were walking along a shoreline and watching our shadows flicker in the water. I used to feel unlucky. And then I grew up and felt like the luckiest person in the world, but there would be a kernel of fear lurking, a What if it all went away and I was back where I started. Wait, you said, look. 

We stopped by the water’s edge and took a picture.  

 

Vacation Mode

This beach is like every beach and I immediately love it. The expanse of ocean. The sand. What’s different are the perfectly smooth black stones. They’re everywhere. I want to take all of them, but I limit myself to two. It’s only the first day of vacation. I should pace myself. 

It’s the same at dinner. The restaurant is known for its blueberry pie, but I pass on it. I can’t eat a piece of blueberry pie! I just ate a lobster roll! My husband is flipping through the guidebook, and we’re both overwhelmed by all the things to see and do. We’re still in travel mode, the packing and cleaning, the last-minute odds and ends you have to take care of before you go out of town, such as water the houseplants and buy dogfood, and speaking of the dog, will she be okay with the dog sitter?  

Also, I’m still stuck at the airport where the woman in front of us in the security line got flagged because she didn’t have an ID with her. She seemed genuinely confused that she needed one. Do you have anything with your name on it, the security guard asked. A credit card? A medication bottle? No, the woman said. See, her traveling companion pointed out to her. I told you! 

I was half laughing as my husband and I were waved past them. Feeling smug, I took off my shoes and belt like a pro, expertly set up my basket with my carry-on bag and laptop. Two minutes later, I was flagged by security for walking through the scanner with my cell phone in my back pocket. Someone had to pat me down. She was really nice about it.

I promise I will never judge anyone ever again. 

Back on the beach with the smooth black stones, it is warm and you can smell the ocean. My husband and I walk along the shore for a few minutes. We have a whole plan in our heads of how this week will go, the hotels picked out, the little towns we’ll stop in along the way. But I already know we’ll veer off the plan. A few days in and fully in vacation mode, we’ll take a third stone. I’ll eat the blueberry pie. 

To Do

My husband is out of town for the week, and I make a list of things to do. I want to be productive while he’s gone. Grow something, is one of the things on the list. Cook something. Throw something out. I check the items off dutifully. Pick the tomatoes that are finally ripening in the garden and turn them into a spaghetti sauce. Pull out the spent cucumber vine. (That counts as throwing out, I decide.) 

I add more things to do. Paint the kitchen trim and finish reading the book I’m reading for my book club. Write every day for at least one hour. Clean the house. I am a Crossing-Items-Off-My-List machine, powering through the week like an Olympian sprinting across the finish line, arms raised and barely out of breath. 

What else can I grow, clean, cook, paint, read, write? Wait, am I running from something? The quiet house, my strange, random thoughts in the middle of the night, the dog draped over my feet. One night the power flickers. The fan clicks on, the doorbell rings (this is a thing with our doorbell, the ding-dong after a power outage. It’s funny during the day, but a little scary at three o’clock in the morning.) 

The dog sleeps through it, but I stay up for a while, wide awake and squinting at the ceiling, relieved that I am no longer afraid of the dark. The old me would’ve tripped down the stairs to check the front door, done a frantic whirl around the house to test all of the locks. It is a gift to lie in bed alone and know that you are safe. 

End of the week and there are more things to do. (There are always more things to do.) Instead, I spend hours writing this post. Mostly, I am staring out the window at the squirrels running across the powerlines, how the sky darkens, and one white moth flutters over the yellow flowers along the fence. 

The other day when I was out there pulling weeds, I lifted a stone and found a dead toad, its body shriveled up and stiff, but before I dropped the stone back over it, a fluid-like substance squirted out of its rear end, and as I watched, the body inflated and the toad came back to life. I am not lying. It blinked at me and hopped away. 

I immediately looked this up online and learned that some toads go into a kind of hibernation during droughts to conserve energy. Cool. But now, I'm worried that I’ve interrupted this process and must add another item to my list: Leave water for the freshly rehydrated toad. 

This morning, I set a dish out. A gift for the toad, a gift for me. We have done enough for today. 

Quiet Walk

I used to listen to music or audiobooks or a podcast (interviews with authors and artists on NPR or Pod Save America or Behind the Bastards, which alternately make me laugh and get my blood boiling. SO many bastards you wouldn't believe it), but lately I’ve been walking alone with my thoughts, 

letting the dog do her sniffs while my mind wanders, trying to think of the next line in the book I’ve been trying to write for two years or the topic for today's blog post 

Five Good Books I read in the past few weeks (Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, Consent, Grief Is for People, Between Two Kingdoms, and Idaho.) 

Or 

Things I Love about Working at the Library (Over 2000 people participated in the summer reading program at our small branch, and we're giving away free school supplies, and every Friday Ted brings donuts.)

Or

Notes from the Garden, and how the cucumbers are finally petering out, but now we’re overrun with tomatoes, and look, there’s a random moonflower popping up in the corner, which always makes me think of my father-in-law (he gave me the seeds and I scattered them around without knowing what I was scattering. He told me they were pretty, "purty" was how he pronounced it, and he was right, and every year when they come up, I am surprised and grateful

and 

Speaking of Grateful

the unexpectedly pleasant weather, the sun warming my face, okay, I am getting old and sometimes I am sad or cynical or stressed out or pissed off, but all of this leaks away in the silence that isn't really silence with my sneakers slapping the ground, the cicadas rattling, the kids whooping it up as they ride past on their bikes, the dog prancing along beside me. Listen

remember how I told you she lost her hearing and how sad I was about it--no more coming when I call her to come or wagging her tail when I gush at her what a good girl she is, no more playing with the squeaker toy because she can't hear it anymore so why bother--well, 

I taught her two hand signals! (Come, with my hand curled, and Sit, with my palm faced down.) It only took two days of gesturing and effusive petting and treats, and now she is a pro, an old dog learning new tricks, 

like me. 

Thirty-Four Things about Us

Two kids

Five houses (plus, 

Two apartment rentals, the first with the mattress on cinderblocks, the hand-me-down furniture, the green shag carpet, a scraggly plant) (the house we live in now with the real beds and the furniture you made, the hardwood floors and multiple gardens overtaking the yard)

Two dogs

Two cats

Three fish (two orange, one blue) 

Eleven vehicles (one stolen, but that was before we were married) (three of the cars, generous gifts from loved ones) (I am not counting the kids’ cars.)

Speaking of the kids. They are not kids anymore, but sometimes, when they tilt their heads a certain way, you can see the baby in them, the fat red cheeks, the chattery toddler, the school aged body weighted down by a backpack, the slouch of a teenager, the swing of long hair, the wave goodbye at the airport, the graduation caps, the weddings, the gathering into our family

a second daughter, a second son 

add another dog

Have you been counting? We are up to 30. Okay, I’ll wait while you check the math (Two dogs?—you’re forgetting Handy the greyhound. Three fish?—remember our son had the two orange ones, Goldie and Fishie. Our daughter had the blue.) For richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, and we haven’t even gotten to the sickness and health part yet, 

the Three scary hospital stays, the divvying out of pills, the chicken soup, the cups of tea; the bad times (we lived through a global pandemic! and mourned lost family members and put beloved pets to sleep and fought over money, screaming at each other and stalking off to sulk, how stubborn we were and how silly), the good times 

because aren't there so many more that are good? Not only the vacations and celebrations, the school concerts (why do we still own three violas?) the hikes through the woods and walks along beaches, the fancy dinners, 

but also, the everyday meals, hundreds of them, thousands? (the chocolate chip pancakes and the spaghetti sauce, the lunches packed, the hotdogs on the grill), the walks around the block, the long car trips, the nights curled up in front of the TV. 

Thirty-four years ago, could we ever have imagined now? Could we have known how lucky we were at age twenty-two and twenty-three, when we promised to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, 

when we said, I do.

The Other Side

When I take the dog for a walk, she stops to sniff at everything, sometimes yanking me backwards to follow a scent we’ve already passed. Leave it, I say. She can’t hear me anymore so I am basically talking to myself. Today I give up and let her smell to her heart’s content. While she’s smelling, I’m thinking about the book I just read, Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley. It’s a memoir about loss and how to get past it. 

It comes to the conclusion that you can’t get past it. 

But eventually, you learn to live with it. In the book the author’s good friend commits suicide. A few weeks before her apartment had been broken into. The two things have nothing to do with each other, but in her grieving state, they muddle up in her head. She becomes obsessed with solving the mystery of the burglary, and she’s torn up about her missing jewelry, gifts from her grandmother. She looks for a grief support group for victims of stolen jewelry, but there are no support groups for that. 

Grief isn’t for things, she writes. Grief is for people.

Of course, what she is really struggling with is why her friend killed himself. You are never going to know, I want to tell her. Fifty years ago, my father killed himself. Why? I don’t know. The dog is yanking my arm again, pulling me around a lamp post, halfway into someone’s front yard and back out again, rounding a corner toward the house with the backyard chickens. How extensive is this scent trail? 

Okay, he was suffering from depression. He had a drinking problem and a gambling addiction. He’d recently filed for bankruptcy. His marriage was falling apart. Are these valid reasons? If they are, factor in this: he was thirty-four years old. He was the father of three children under the age of seven. 

I was the seven-year-old. Don’t write about this, says a voice in my head. But I have stopped listening to the voices in my head. 

Here is how you live with it: You just do. 

And after a while you find yourself somewhere on the other side. I wish I could’ve said this to my father. That, and the other side isn’t perfect, but it has its good points. Flowers, for example, and a comical number of cucumbers in the garden. Good books and good friends. People who love you despite all of your weirdness. Dogs. You knew I was coming back to the dog. 

I love how she leads me along, doubles me back, finds an interesting trail for us to follow whenever I let her go.  

Small Talk

The lady in front of us in line at the grocery store is having a love fest with the cashier. While my husband unpacks our cart, I watch the two of them gushing on each other. I love you, the cashier says. I love YOU, the lady says. They hug each other over the grocery bags. You have a good day! YOU have a good day! When the transaction is complete, they’re still saying I love yous. 

I want in on some of this love, I say, and the cashier immediately lights up. You got it! I love you! She tells us it’s her and her husband’s 38th anniversary today. 

That’s great! I say. Happy anniversary! And then we start talking kids and grandkids as she weighs our grapes, wrangles our toilet paper. I can hear my husband chuckling behind me. We recently had a conversation about social interactions, and I know he’s studying this one. 

What happened is it has occurred to him that he's had very little live human contact with people outside our house (me), since March 2020, when he was sent home to work remotely, and now small interactions feel like big ones. So, for example, he will go to the gym, and a stranger will say, Are you using that machine? And my husband will say, No. 

And even that feels like it's a little too much. 

Meanwhile, I’m out every day at the library talking up a storm with pretty much everyone who walks in the door, and this includes six-month-olds. Okay, I have to tell you about this six-month-old. The mom has been coming in with the three-year-old big sister (Daisy) to story-time, first as pregnant person and then as a person hauling around a baby carrier, until it seemed like one second went by, and Boom! there was a baby in her arms while I chatted it up with Daisy, the usual small talk you have with a three-year-old.

Me: Ooh, I bet you’re a good big sister!

Daisy: Yes.

Me: What’s your little sister’s name?

Daisy: Evelyn.

Me: Hi Evelyn!

Evelyn: _____.

This went on for maybe three months, until one day last week Daisy came up to my desk to get her sticker, followed by Mom holding Evelyn, and I said Hi to Evelyn how I always do, but this time Evelyn said Hi back. I almost fell out of my chair. The mom said that Evelyn just learned how to say it, and now she’s practicing on everyone. And she was. The whole time the family was down in the Youth Department, I’d lock eyes with Evelyn wherever she was in the room, and she’d say, Hi and give me a wave. 

Each chirpy Hi was a little charge zinging directly into my heart muscle. A person. A small connection. And who knows, flash forward fifty years and Evelyn will be holding up the line in the grocery store. 

That was weird, don’t you think, my husband says, as we walk out the door, the cashier calling out, It was so nice to talk to you! and me, laughing, saying, It was so nice to talk to YOU!

Oh, yeah, it was most definitely weird. 

But it's the kind of weird that makes you laugh. The kind that reminds you it’s not too late to jump in and how nice it is that there are still so many reasons to love the crazy world. 

When I Was Eight

I made up worlds 

because the one I was living in was intolerable, scary, crazy. You could only take so much of it before you’d go crazy yourself. For example, something really bad would happen, and you’d say, Hey, this bad thing happened, and the ones you told would say, No, this did not happen, 

or, 

Okay, it happened, but it wasn’t really that bad Why do you always have to make such a big deal out of things just shut up about it. When I was eight

I would not shut up about it. But then, after a while, I would let it go and mostly shut up about it. When I was eight 

I wrote stories about little girls who were broken, run over by cars or dying of exotic diseases and one was even mauled by a bear, but all of the little girls ultimately triumphed by healing. When I was eight 

I escaped into books. The books were all fantasies. Time travel and amazing other worlds and kids solving mysteries and what it’s like to live in a happy family. When I was eight

I played outside, swinging on swings and riding my bike and climbing the crabapple tree in the backyard before it was chopped down. Last night 

I woke up in the darkness, panicking. I was eight again and the world had gone crazy, the people in charge didn't know what they were doing and there was nothing I could do about it. In the morning

I played in the vegetable garden and read some of the book I’m reading, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride. Like all good books that seek to reflect our world, it’s about darkness and it's about love. I took a long, meandering walk with the dog, and we played together in the flower garden. 

And then I wrote some words, the truth, even though it is scary. And strangely, I felt better. Or maybe not so strangely, because ever since I was eight

the world was what it was, is what it is, and I have learned how to live in it. 

When I was eight

Today 

Notes from an Alternate Reality

First, I need to just get this out of the way: I don’t like the version of reality we all seemed to be trapped in, the one where the world is boiling over and the supreme court is off the rails and the presidential race is let’s just say it, cuckoo nuts. I don’t want to write about this. I don’t want to think about this. I suspect you don't want to read about this, at least not from me, so here we both are. 

A much more pleasant reality is the mini vacation I'm on with my husband in Washington DC where our daughter and son-in-law live. So far we have eaten many gourmet meals courtesy of our son-in-law, who is a chef, (a special shout out to his turkey burgers—so good!), taken early morning walks through their neighborhood’s impressive community garden, and played indoor mini golf. (I won! Okay, I tied for first place with my son-in-law. My strategy was "what the heck, just hit the ball and don't worry about it," and that seemed to work for me.)

We also went to a Washington Nationals baseball game. During the three innings we were there (it was 97 degrees with a heat index of 105 and we're lucky we lasted that long) we got to see two homeruns, snarfed down Dippin Dot ice cream before it melted, drank multiple bottles of water, and took many sweaty, red-faced pictures of ourselves. It was fun! 

And then we headed back to the apartment to do what we all really wanted to do, which is watch the Tour de France. I had never watched the Tour de France, and up to this point, knew nothing about it. I still don't really know that much about it, but the gist is every year teams of bikers bike around France for three weeks. Our son-in-law grew up in Paris and is a huge fan and was a big help explaining the finer points.

Like, why there are some bikers wearing different colored shirts. The yellow, for example, is worn by the fastest rider, but that can change throughout the race depending on your time. And white is worn by the best performing younger biker. And then there's a multi-colored polka-dotted shirt for the best sprinter? or is it the best climber? Never mind all that. 

What I like about the race is how mesmerizing it is to watch the group of bikers moving together as one. They look like a flock of birds, diving and soaring, as they swerve around sharp turns through quaint-looking French villages and climb up into the Alps and then it's back into the villages with the teeth-jarring cobblestone streets. 

While we were watching, we got to hear the dubbed backstories, the previous years' harrowing moments when bikers banged into each other or someone's bike broke and they skidded out and caused a pile-up and the time a biker had to have his face rebuilt. It's brutal when it isn't so beautiful.

Which is a good tagline for life these days, don't you think? with the extreme weather and the dismantling of human rights and so much depending on a contest between a bumbling elderly gentleman and a carnival barking wannabe dictator, and meanwhile, over here you have someone carefully tending their cucumber vines in the community garden and perfectly seasoning a gourmet turkey burger.

I know no one asked me, but I want to live in the place with the cucumbers and the burgers, the homeruns and the frothy minigolf waterfalls, the world where everyone I love piles on one enormous couch together and cheers as the bikers roll by.  

Surprised by Vegetables

I forgot what I planted in the vegetable garden. I mean, I have a vague idea but not the particulars. Usually, I keep a little booklet, detailed grids of all of the flower beds and garden plots in my yard. I used to go all in with it, drawing out pictures and coloring everything in. Now, it's just a scribble. Notes for next year. What worked and what didn't.

For example: Don't plant this doofy variety of tomatoes again because they vine all over the place and hardly produce anything worthwhile. Or, this kale is great, but give it more space. Or, move the peonies before they get overtaken by the raspberry bush.  

Anyway, this year, I never mapped out the vegetables. What happened was it was going to rain, and I was trying to get all the seedlings into the ground before it started. I did get everything done, but ran out of time for my note-taking. I'll remember! I'll write it down later! But then a rabbit ate half of the plants (which plants? the cucumbers? the peppers?)

So, I planted other plants in those spaces (intending to write that down soon, but first, I had to put the fence up to keep out the rabbit). And later, interestingly enough, some of the rabbit-chewed plants came back to life (the beans? a pepper, but what kind of pepper?)

Totally unrelated, I've hit upon a new way (for me) to write a book. For the record, other ways that I've written a book: 

1. Write a big messy draft with no plan at all and rewrite the whole thing multiple times. 

2. Write a detailed synopsis and veer away from it spectacularly.

3. Write a draft in a 30-day rush and spend three years reworking it.

4. Handwrite like a madwoman in a notebook and transcribe on my laptop. 

5. Dictate, via the voice feature on my phone, and email myself the blathery output to revise.

This "new" way is a combo of some of the others, but with a twist. The original plan was to dictate the next scene while I walked the dog each morning and fine tune it in the afternoons. Instead, what I found was that I got further ahead in the whooshing out of dictation and further behind in the fine-tuning, so now I'm a mix of treading water and swimming forward through uncharted waters, both so far ahead and so far behind, and somehow straddling the present and the past at the same time. 

It's a maddening mess. But it's fun! 

Meanwhile, outside in the garden, every day it's a new surprise, the mystery plants spilling over the fence and twining around each other. A cucumber plant that might be a melon? Not a pepper plant but a tomatillo plant? I stake and untwine the best I can, vow to write it all down as soon as I figure out what I've grown. 

Or not.