Author: Kathie

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

So last week Thursday, I had a new author photo taken. For many, including me, this feels like a necessary evil. People like to know what you look like when they read your books. I remember flipping to Wally Lamb’s photo a thousand times as I read She’s Come Undone, because I simply couldn’t believe that a man could write a woman’s point of view so very well. Each time, I nodded at him and said, “Good job,” as if he could hear me. I find myself smiling at a lot of author photos, because they make me feel like I can now picture a new and very good friend.

But photos of me – blech.

I was born with strabismus, which causes my eyes to cross. I had five surgeries to correct it as much as it could be – one at 16 months, 2 when I was 8 years old, and 2 when I was fifteen. The nights before school photos were torture. My mother would sit me on a footstool before her and we’d practice how I should hold my head just so, so that my eyes would look straight. Tilt here, tilt there, turn your chin, and so on. But when I sat down on the school’s stool, the photographer took the photo before I even had a chance to recite the directions to myself. My mother refused to buy my 7^th grade photo. I bought it myself, so I would have record of who I was then.

So photos are not my favorite thing. I was in my early 30s before I could look anyone in the eye.

Body image is also another bugaboo. We talk a good game in this country about not body shaming, yet plus-sized models get slammed for being “unhealthy”, and thin models beam from multitudes of magazines. And don’t even get me started on how we deal with women and their breasts. We talk the talk, but we don’t walk the walk.

For me and my own self-image, I started with the crossed eyes. Don’t look at people, and then they won’t notice your eyes. I remember my father arguing with my mother, who wanted to get me braces. “Just don’t,” he said. “She gets teased enough about her looks already.” My weight has gone up and down so many times, I no longer know where I feel my best. I used to work as a weight loss consultant. At that point, I was a size 6, I worked out at the gym for at least three hours every day, and I had an eating disorder that outweighed my weight. I’ve had four babies, five, if you count the one I miscarried, and I do. And then there’s the breast cancer, which brings me right back to breasts again. My right breast has, with all good intentions, the ultimate one being to keep me alive, been mutilated.

It’s hard, sometimes, to look in the mirror and smile.

A few weeks ago, I bought a lovely soft sweatshirt. It’s blue, and in silver letters, it says, “Strong Women Come In All Shapes”. I saw that shirt in the store, teared up, and bought it.

And so now, we come to last week’s photo shoot.

My photographer, who has been with me for years now, is a lovely man who refuses to let me frown. Or even look brooding. He makes me smile. And when he takes my photo, he makes me feel the way I imagine supermodels must feel. Or the way they should feel, no matter their size.

For this shoot, I really wanted a photo by a weeping willow tree. This photo is for my novel, Hope Always Rises, which comes out on March 7. A willow tree features very strongly, and so does the Fox River. And so Ron and I trudged across the grass in Frame Park in Waukesha, heading to a weeping willow tree I love and always pat when I pass by. It didn’t take long to get the photos.

The next day, Ron sent me the digital image gallery. And I admit, the first thing I thought when I scrolled through them was, Oh, no.

I could hear my mother’s voice. “You should have tilted your head that way! Turned your chin! Look at your eyes!”

I heard my father’s voice. “She gets teased enough about her looks already.”

But mostly, I zeroed in on my breasts. I have a prosthesis, but I rarely wear it. It’s not that it’s uncomfortable. It’s that it’s a reminder. Plus, I honestly thought that the difference in breast size between my left and right really wasn’t all that noticeable.

In these photos, oh, yes, it was.

I sat with these photos for a few days. I showed them to my husband and my daughters. When I said something to my husband about not realizing that one breast is noticeably smaller than the other and why didn’t anyone ever tell me, he didn’t say a word. He just looked away. I didn’t say anything to my daughters. I let them pick out their favorites.

And then, reluctantly, when Ron called me to get my decision, I made up my mind. I actually went with his favorite.

The next day, I wore my “Strong Women Come In All Shapes” sweatshirt. I let it hug me.

Just a short while ago, Ron sent me the finished image. I sighed and opened it.

And you know what? My photo smiled at me. Strong. Confident. And you know what else?

I smiled back.

Because it was me. I shoved aside all the voices and just saw myself. I looked into my own eyes, I looked at my smile, I looked at my body, which, despite many battles, has served me well. I gave a nod to my mind, which fuels all of me, and has served me even better.

I smiled back.

Strong Women Come In All Shapes.

And I’m one of them.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

 

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

This week’s moment started with a not-so-great moment. I looked out into what is a writer’s almost worst nightmare.

A practically empty room. (Not a worst nightmare because it wasn’t completely empty.)

One of the most challenging parts of being a writer is having to get out there and speak in front of groups. Due to changes in the publishing industry, writers, the vast majority of whom are introverts, have had to work hard to fashion themselves into extroverts, at least for as long as it takes to get up in front of a group, read from your work, talk about your work, and then return to home or hotel room and sit in the dark for a bit. Gone are the days of J.D. Salinger, where a writer could be, not only an introvert, but a hermit.

Over the years, I’ve fought with my own sense of introversion to get out there and speak, and I’ve gotten myself to a point where I actually enjoy it. I’m terrified right before, but as soon as I step into the room where I am to appear, an alternate personality takes over and I’m comfortable. I’ve been told that when I enter a room, I own it. Trust me, that is an ability that took years to hone.

One of the events I always picture as I’m preparing for an event, and it’s a memory I wish I could purge, is a time early on in my career when I was asked to present at a bookstore in Green Bay. I walked in, owned the room…and absolutely no one showed up. No one even came into the store during the two hours I was there. It was like someone took out a billboard, saying, “Kathie Giorgio is at the bookstore…Don’t Go!” It was just me, the bookstore owner, and her two cats. I returned to my hotel room, devastated. Since then, I’ve presented to groups of many sizes, from a dozen to hundreds. But that image always haunts me…and always dissipates when I face my newest group.

Until last Thursday.

I was set to present my novel, All Told, at a local library. When I arrived, there was only one person – a lovely student who showed up to hear me speak. He and I talked while I set things up, and then we settled down to wait. And we waited. And no one else showed up. Fifteen minutes in, I packed up, thanked my student for showing, and then went home. Devastated.

Facing a fully packed room is a scary thing. Facing a room you thought was going to be fully packed, but has one lone person…abysmal.

But there was an up-side.

Since the start of the pandemic, I’ve read every night to my granddaughter, Maya Mae, who is now nine years old, soon to be ten. We meet on Zoom, and our time is 8:30. On this night, I thought I wasn’t going to be able to see her, as the event was supposed to go until 8:30. But instead, there I was, home.

So instead of reading to a filled room, I read to my computer screen, filled with the expectant face of my granddaughter. Who listened to every word.

Now granted, I wasn’t reading from my work. Maya and I recently read, and fell in love with, Katherine Applegate’s book, Crenshaw. It was so good that even Michael made sure he was nearby, so he could hear me read the next installment. On this night, we were starting a new Applegate book, Wishtree. I let Maya’s parents know I was unexpectedly available, and then, whoosh, there she was, grinning at me, on my computer screen.

That smile alone is enough to brighten my day.

We talked about her school day, and then I asked her if she was ready to read the book. She said yes, but then said, “Guess what, Grandma Kathie?”

I miss being Gamma Kaffee, but love anything this little girl will call me. “What?”

“My school library has Crenshaw!”

Her excitement let me know that this book, Crenshaw, is likely to become the book she remembers the most from her childhood. For me, it’s A Candle In Her Room, by Ruth M. Arthur. Maya is in the fourth grade now; I was in the fourth grade when I discovered A Candle In Her Room. I checked it out so many times, the public librarian gave it to me. It sits with all the other books in my classroom.

I’m not a librarian, but I gave Crenshaw to Maya. I remember who I was at that age whenever I look at my copy of A Candle In Her Room. I hope, in the future, Maya remembers herself. And me.

I cracked open the cover of Wishtree and began to read. The book began with an amazing description of a northern red oak tree named Red. Red told us that all red oak trees are named Red.

Maya began to wave her hand like the eager student she is. “There’s a tree like that near my playground at school!” she said.

“Maybe it’s Red,” I said.

She agreed.

When we finished our chapter, she sat back and sighed. “This is going to be a good book,” she said.

Looking at that bright face, eyes filled with visions of oak trees named Red, a cat named Crenshaw, and sassy little girls named Junie B. Jones, Ramona Quimby, and Gooney Bird Greene, I sighed with her, filled with satisfaction myself. It was going to be a good book.

And I have a granddaughter, a sassy little girl named (Grandbaby) Maya Mae, who is going to be a reader. She already is.

It almost made up for the nearly empty room at the library. Almost. It surely helped.

Thank you, Tony, for showing up on that night.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

Several members of my family work in customer service. My husband, one of my sons, one of my daughters, and my daughter-in-law all deal directly with people and have been trained to smile cheerfully and respond politely to whatever is thrown their way. The stories of what is thrown their way often leaves me with a dropped jaw and a sense of horror.

I was equally amazed during the early times of Covid, when everyone who could hunkered down at home. Most who worked customer service jobs could not work from home – they had to be where the items were that people continued to need, pandemic or not.

And pandemic or not, I think customer service people are heroes.

I had an experience this week with a customer service worker that left me comforted, laughing, and happy.

Over the weekend, I had to return a package to Amazon. At least here, Kohls department stores serve as a place to hand over returns to Amazon. So I went, but of course, I couldn’t just leave the store without poking around. That’s just not physically possible, especially since they put the booth for Amazon returns at the far back corner and you have to walk through the entire store to get to it. Smart. I found a style of leggings that I just loved, and on sale, which is my call to action. All of the colors weren’t available at the store, so when I went home, I hopped online to kohls.com. There were the leggings and there were the colors the brick and mortar store didn’t have…and for a dollar less! Ohmygod, I heard the trumpet call! I made my purchase and signed off.

The next day, I received an email that said my items shipped. Fast! But as I scrolled through the email, I found that my leggings were shipped to an Audrey Thomas in Michigan. What? As fast as that trumpet call sounded the day before, it now turned into a wailing siren. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod! Was I hacked? Was this Audrey even now charging up my Kohls account to its max? I ran, if you can run to a website, to kohls.com and swiftly changed my password. Then I started scouring the account to see how I could stop the shipment…and there didn’t seem any way to do that.

Bear in mind this is around midnight on Monday. And it was a Monday that had been very, very, very long.

I was surprised to see the little icon for being able to talk to someone at Kohls via text. Expecting it to say that the system was closed for the night, I clicked it. And I was connected to someone named Anna. She greeted me as cheerfully as text can greet. I explained my problem and she set about seeing if there was any way to stop the delivery in Michigan. As she left me on pause to do that, my husband Michael wandered by. I explained what was happening.

“Wait,” he said. “Don’t you have a grand-niece named Audrey Thomas who lives in Michigan?”

Oh. My. God. I do. She is soon to be ten years old. She’s a very sweet munchkin.

When Anna came back, she explained that the last time I used kohls.com for an order, I sent a package to Audrey Thomas in Michigan. This was when Audrey was two years old, and was experiencing the joy of receiving not one brother, but two. Little baby twins. I sent the boys a package from another store, and then bought Audrey something special too, from Kohls, so she would also have something to open, just for her.

Eight years ago. I hadn’t ordered anything else from Kohls in eight years.

“Ohmygod,” I typed to Anna. “Can you stop stopping the delivery? I just realized that Audrey is my grand-niece. She lives in Michigan. Can the delivery still happen and I’ll just ask my nephew and niece-in-law to send it on to me?”

She answered, “LOL! And sure!”

“I’m so, so sorry,” I said. “I am so embarrassed!” And truly, though she couldn’t see it, my face was as red as could be, and tears were welling in my eyes.

“It’s okay!” she typed. “With all that’s happening in the world today, it’s easy to get lost in all the details. You’re fine! It’s all taken care of. And,” she added, “you gave us both a good laugh.”

I did. And I’m sure I gave my nephew and niece-in-law a good laugh too. Good grief.

“I’ll take care of it,” Anna said. Those are the sweetest five words ever spoken.

“Thank you,” I said. I wished we were in person, so she could see that gratitude on my face and hear it in my voice. But black and white texting would have to do.

“You’re more than welcome,” she said. “We had fun tonight! Thank you right back!”

And we signed off.

That extra warmth from a faceless, voiceless woman named Anna from who knows where allowed me to go to bed that night with a sigh of contentment. All the sirens were quieted. Everything was well. She could have handled it with just flat text, with no personality whatsoever. But she didn’t. She reached out with her words and provided comfort.

Thank you, Anna, wherever you are.

And Audrey, your great aunt Kathie did not forget you. I thought it was an incredibly odd coincidence that whoever this person was had my grand-niece’s name. I just never connected you with ordering grown-up leggings from Kohls, especially at a time of night when you were likely sound asleep.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

It seems I’ve been thinking about parenting a lot lately, and in particular, what it means to be an older parent, with adult kids. This became pretty clear to me last week, on retreat in Valton, Wisconsin, when I sat down to work on what I thought might be a book, not entirely sure what it was to be about, and ended up writing the first chapters of a novel about a woman working through letting her children go.

Oh, I thought. I guess you’re thinking about this more than you thought you were.

Over the last few years, there’ve been a lot of changes. I’ve had to adjust to having a child move to another state farther away than a car ride, and apparently, that move is permanent, and so I have to settle myself to seeing that child maybe only once a year or so. Her move occurred just before Covid hit, and so I went 2 years and 10 months without seeing her, which was excruciating.

I also had to adjust to my youngest getting older and older, and being more and more on her own. Soon after Olivia started college, I watched an episode of the television show Atypical, about an autistic boy as he graduates from high school and moves on to college. In this particular episode, the mom realizes her son left some required paperwork behind. She brings it in to the college office and is told she can’t drop the papers off, because she’s not the son. She tells a friend, “It’s like I’m suddenly not allowed to be his mother anymore.”

Oh, I felt that.

In the one case, with my daughter who moved, she didn’t seem all that affected by not seeing me for more than two years. I no longer had a role in her life, except as visitor. And in the other case, because of my daughter reaching a certain age, I wasn’t allowed to be her mom anymore, despite my being her advocate for all of her years.

I’ve been feeling like I’ve been fired.

And yet…there were two instances this week where I felt like a parent again, but in a slightly different role. Or posture, really.

First, my son asked me to come with him to pick out new glasses. I agreed, because I know what it’s like to try to pick out glasses when the frames still just have fake glass in them and you need your glasses to see, so you can’t really see what you look like. That seems like a simple thing.

But I also fully remember the story of this son when he got his first pair of glasses. He was the first of my then-three children to need them. He was four years old. His preschool teacher told me he’d flunked a vision test they’d given at school, so off we went to the eye doctor. The doctor did all of the usual things and said words like “astigmatism” and “near-sighted” and he eventually fashioned a pair of glasses for my son to try. “Here,” he said, “put these on.”

And Andy was awestruck. Behind the lenses, I saw his eyes widen. His jaw dropped. He put a hand up on each side of his head, holding the glasses on, and his gaze swept the entire room, up, down, left and right. “Oh!” he kept saying. “Oh!” And when the doctor took the glasses off and Andy’s world fell back to what it had been, his whole face fell. The doctor explained we had to have his glasses made, just for him.

“Mommy,” he said, turning to me, “when can I have them?”

Thank goodness for the optical stores that make your glasses in an hour.

And it was such a stop-in-your-tracks parenting moment. I don’t think I slept for a week, wondering how I could have missed the fact that my son was having such difficulty seeing.

Then today, I stood next to my thirty-six year old son and helped him pick out new frames.

No one knows that face better than me.

Then, last night, at the launch of my poetry book, Olivia In Five, Seven, Five; Autism In Haiku, I stood next to my soon-to-be 22-year old daughter and listened as she read her contribution to the book, a poem called “She Holds The Infinite World”, written about her experience with autism. I listened as she answered questions from the audience. She was calm, confident, well-spoken.

Brilliant.

And I realized, standing there, that parenting is just different now. Instead of standing behind them, hoping and praying that they won’t fall, but ready to catch them when they did, I now stand beside them. Still hoping and praying, but knowing they’ll be able to pick themselves up on their own. If they need help, I’m there.

If they don’t need help, I’m still there. Standing with them.

And I have to say, I glow just as much with pride now as I did with their first words, first steps, first everythings. And second, third, fourth everythings, and on into infinity, or at least as long as I live.

Beside them. All four of them. Always.

(Know one of the things I love most about Olivia? She still calls me Mama.)

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

I’ve been on retreat this week, thanks to winning runner-up in the Zona Gale Short Fiction Award, and so I’ve been isolated in the middle of nowhere, which in and of itself is a moment(s) of happiness. I am a city girl at heart, and so hearing coyotes, a rooster which insists on crowing in the afternoon rather than the morning (I like him!), the gentle baaing of sheep and goats, and the clip-clop of horses pulling Amish carriages aren’t high on my list of must-haves. But they’ve been a balm this week.

At my home in downtown Waukesha, I’ve been surrounded for months by the sounds of interminable construction. Sewer pipes are going in, and the major streets to the left and right of our one-block street are being changed from one-way to two-way. The noise is non-stop. There are cranes everywhere, the trucks beep whenever they back up, and the construction workers shout to be heard over the noise. One morning last week, I was awakened way too early by the construction noise, by every truck that delivers something to Walgreens showing up (Walgreens is literally my back yard), and our garbage being picked up. Every one of my nerves has been standing on end for weeks now. I’ve had the a/c on even though I hate a/c, and even on days when a/c isn’t necessary, just to have the windows closed and to cover some of the noise.

Out here, in Valton, Wisconsin, an unincorporated village that has, by its own description, “no businesses and no amenities”, the quiet has been wonderful. Though at night, I run a sound machine, because I can no longer sleep in absolute quiet.

But the sounds in this silence! We all know I don’t like birds, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like birdsong. I’ve heard more unfamiliar birdcalls here than I’ve ever heard in my life, and the majority of them are pleasant. I laugh every day at 3:00 in the afternoon when the rooster crows. One afternoon, I was taking a break on the lovely front porch, and a man who lives in the house across the street, hidden by trees, was chopping wood. I read to the whack of the axe, and then the thock as the chopped limbs were tossed into a pile. The rhythm was irregular, I couldn’t tap my foot to it, but it was such a nice accompaniment to the reading of a wonderful book while drinking strong coffee and eating Orange Oreos. And every time one of the carriages goes by, I hear the clip clop of the horse long before I see the carriage, and I look up. Even if I’m in mid-sentence, I look up. It’s just such a joy to see. And hear.

Yesterday, I was on the front porch again, coffee, Orange Oreos and book in hand. It had been a rough day. At 3:00 in the morning (why is it always 3:00?), I needed to use the bathroom. The bedroom is in a loft here, and you have to walk down the stairs to the main floor to reach the bathroom. The stairs are steep and smooth, smooth wood, with no runner for a better grip. There is a banister, but just on one side. My head was full of words, the ones I’d just read (yes, I was still awake – I’m a night owl) and the ones I’d written that day and was excited about, and when I glanced down, I thought I was on the last step. I wasn’t. I was three up. And so I fell. The pain was phenomenal. I got up and leaned against the wall. I could not put weight on my left leg. I wasn’t sure what hurt worse, my foot or my knee. Eventually, I got as far as the couch. Then the bathroom. Then back upstairs, which was excruciating, and probably really stupid. All I knew was I wanted to be in bed. So I was in bed where I shivered and shook. I called Michael, we debated my attempting to go to the ER (no businesses or amenities, remember. Closest hospital was a 20-minute drive away in bright sunlight. This was middle of the night dark and we had a heavy fog, and the roads are twisty and curvy with steep drop-offs.), decided against it, and he stayed on the phone with me until I stopped shaking.

The next day brought more pain. But I pushed through, then brought myself out to the porch and drank my coffee, ate my Oreos, and read my book…and heard a meow. Looking up, there was a tuxedo cat, sitting at the end of the front walk. “Hi,” I said.

He meowed and blinked.

“How are you?” I asked.

He tilted his head.

“Me? I’m okay. Lots of pain. I should probably go home. But you know…I think I need the silence more. And the chance to work.”

I swear he nodded.

“Do you want to come here? For a visit?” I’d been missing the pets at home. Ursula’s concrete head on my thigh while I wrote. Edgar smiling at me from his chair. Muse getting in the way.

He stood, twitched his tail at me, bowed his head, and left, disappearing through the trees toward the home where the chopping man lives.

And so I finished my snack and went back in to continue writing.

On the way here this past Sunday, I drove by many Amish carriages. But at one point, on the side of the road, a group of maybe 30 Amish folks walked toward me. They walked singly or in groups of two. As I drove slowly by, every one, every single one, smiled and flashed the two-fingered peace sign at me.

Peace. It was exactly what I needed. And the tuxedo cat agreed with me.

This whole week has been a moment of happiness. I’ve written, starting a new book, and a book I finally recognize. I’ve read and admired the words of others. I’ve slept. And yes, I took a tumble down the stairs, which is likely going to have some consequences.

But sometimes, the peace-filled sounds of silence in the middle of nowhere trumps everything else.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

My family and I have set up a chat amongst ourselves on Facebook Messenger. Populated by my husband, my sons, my daughters, my daughter-cuz-I-like-her-and-she’s-been-around-forever, and me, the chat was primarily set up to discuss the game Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Switch, which we all play. But every now and then, or actually, more than every now and then, we drift off topic. One day last week, the topic got a bit heated.

My daughter Olivia loves Halloween. She started talking in the chat about what she might dress up as this year, and how she’d like to decorate her room, and eventually, she made the exclamation, “I think Halloween should last for four months!”

Most of us were disgruntled by the fact that Halloween stuff was appearing in the stores in August. My son Andy called it a capitalist Hellscape. I said that if you’re so focused on a holiday that is so far away, you’re missing what’s happening right now. Rayne, my daughter-cuz-I-like-her, told Olivia the world is her oyster and she should do whatever makes her happy. Andy eventually declared The End, and we went on to other subjects.

I have to admit, I’ve never understood the phrase, “The world is your oyster.” I don’t want an oyster. Unless they are oyster crackers. I like oyster crackers.

But this conversation popped back into my mind a few days later, when my husband came home from grocery shopping. “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” he said. “The new harvest of Orange Oreos is in.”

“No!” I said. “It’s too early! They’re likely not ripe yet!”

“I looked them all over,” he said. “I made sure none of them were yellowy. Only the most orange ones came home.”

I gave a cheer and ran to the snack cabinet.

So what is this then?

It’s Orange Oreo season. But I have to be clear – for me, it has nothing to do with Halloween. It has everything to do with the orange.

A week or so ago, I saw a conversation under a post on Facebook about how someone refused to eat some mint ice cream because it wasn’t green. “Mint ice cream has to be green,” this someone said. There were quite a few SMHs (which I just learned what that means last week too) and disparaging comments. I stayed quiet. I think mint ice cream should be green too. Speckled with brown chocolate chips.

Color means a lot.

I don’t remember exactly when Orange Oreos first came out, but I do clearly remember standing enamored in the cookie aisle of the grocery store. I brought them home and a love affair was born. In many of my short stories and almost all of my novels, Orange Oreos appear. The first story I wrote which had Orange Oreos in it actually featured the cookie in a major way. It is called Marriage In Orange, and I wrote it in 2007, so I assume the cookie came out around then. I rarely eat any other kind of Oreo. And there are a bajillion kinds of Oreos now, a far cry from the original white stuffed cookie I used to eat accompanied by milk when I was a kid. I was very much an adult when Orange Oreos came out. And I have been known to buy many packages and put them in the freezer so that I can have them long after they disappear from the shelves.

What makes them so special? I have no idea. I have to repeat, since we just had the raucous discussion in Facebook Messenger, that this has nothing to do with Halloween. I ate these cookies for years before I realized there were Halloween shapes stamped into the cookie parts. The packages often come with a Halloween word, like “Booooo!” on the cellophane wrapper. That all goes right over my head.

It’s all about the orange.

Do they taste like orange? Not in the citrus sense, no. But they taste like the color orange should taste. Many argue that they taste just like the regular original Oreo. I disagree. They taste BETTER. They taste ORANGE.

Some would say that it’s no accident that they come out at the end of summer, because of Halloween on the horizon. Again, I disagree. They come out at the end of summer, when we’re on the cusp of fall and cooler weather and leaves turning all different colors, including…orange. There will soon be frost on the pumpkin, and pumpkins are…orange. The Orange Oreo, with its black cookie and orange stuffing, is perfect to sit down with on an afternoon, the wind chimes singing with a breeze smelling of fall. You can put on a sweater and sit outside, joining the cookie with a hot, hot, hot cup of coffee. And you can feel not too hot and not too cold, there is no snow, there are no mosquitos, the sun is bright, the sky is blue, and, like a child with an after-school snack, you can relax in perfection of temperature and taste and comfort.

So.

Olivia loves Halloween.

I love Orange Oreos.

Her Halloween can last for three months, since it starts in August.

My Orange Oreos can last for a huge part of the year, if I gather enough packages and don’t overstuff my freezer.

Hm.

I guess the world is our o(reo)yster.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

My 62^nd birthday is almost a month gone now. As of this last weekend, I still hadn’t had a celebration with my family. It was difficult this year. On my actual birthday, I was gone, off to La Crosse, Wisconsin, to visit a book club, present at a bookstore, and teach a class called The Labyrinth & The Creative Spirit at the loveliest of sculpture gardens. Since coming home, I’ve been busy, my kids have been busy, we’ve all been busy, and I came to a realization.

I guess I’m at an age and my kids are at an age now where getting together for Mom’s birthday is a thing of the past.

It made me sad.

At one point, when I asked my oldest son, Christopher, if he and his wife and my granddaughter, Grandbaby Maya Mae, were available last weekend to come over for a cookout for my birthday, he told me they were going to be in Chicago. I begrudgingly muttered something like, “I’m finally going to make my own birthday celebration because no one else seems to be.”

“Wait…” he said. “We were supposed to do something?”

Well, yeah. Honestly, I do everyone else’s birthday celebrations, I didn’t really think I should be responsible for doing my own.

And there was something about this birthday. For my generation and those before it, 62 was a pretty heavy number. It was the expected age of retirement, and often, over the previous generations, retirement was forced on people who didn’t necessarily feel ready to retire. Now, it’s not uncommon to see people working well into their sixties, seventies, eighties, and so on. So maybe that’s why 62 didn’t ring any big bells for my children. Life would go on as usual for their mother.

One of my students, a retired ER doctor who is ten years older than I am, said to me this week, “You’re going to work until you drop dead.”

Well, as someone who is self-employed, yes, that is likely. There is no pension for me. But yikes.

I’ve been very introspective since turning 62 on July 29^th. It’s been one of those self-assessment times. And while my overall conclusion is that I’m very happy where I am, I’m very happy with what I’ve done, I’d still have to admit that I’m not where I thought I’d be at 62. That’s a sobering thought when you obviously have less years to go than what you’ve already lived through. Some goals that I’ve held in front of me like a carrot in front of a donkey are likely to be unattainable. And somehow, at this age, you have to learn, or I have to learn, to accept that and be okay with it, or else settle into life as a bitter grumpy snarly person. Which, generally, isn’t who I am. But I don’t like carrots and the thought of swallowing this one is hard.

So back to my birthday. Despite busy schedules, I do have to cut my kids some slack. All four of them yelled a happy birthday to me in one form or another from across the miles while I was in La Crosse. When I got home, Olivia practically met me at the door, demanding that I open my present. It was a starfish Squishmallow (I love starfish – they are a part of my Oregon experience) and a new lovely pen in a blue the color of the ocean.

And then I had this cookout. I planned my favorite summer meal, because my birthday is a summer birthday and I totally love summer. I could live perpetually in summer. I drive a convertible for a reason. So I made brat patties and hot dogs and fresh corn on the cob from the farmer’s market. I made deviled eggs. My middle son Andy brought a peach pie, which is my absolute favorite. No cake for me, thank you, it’s always about the pie, and peach pie ranks at the top. There were only two of my kids in attendance, as one was off in Chicago with his family and one lives in Louisiana now.

But when Andy came in, he didn’t just carry a peach pie. He plunked a plant on my kitchen island. “This is for you,” he said. “It was on clearance.”

Which made me laugh. But what he brought me was a peace lily.

Which ultimately was what I was looking for, I think. Peace. Peace over turning 62. Peace over experiencing joy over the goals attained and not focusing so much on what hasn’t come to light. Peace over experiencing a different form of family, now that my kids are grown. Well, almost. The youngest is about to start her senior year in college, so she will be off on her own soon too. Peace over no longer hearing the news reported, but instead, it’s shouted, and it’s shouted over enemy lines where each side thinks of the other as the enemy even though we all live in the same place and so there is no meeting in the middle. There is no discussion. There is only noise.

Well…just some peace. And it was sitting on my kitchen counter, all green leaves and the beginnings of buds.

I brought it up to my office after dinner was done. It’s sitting on a shelf where I can see it every time I look up from my computer. If I look to my left, I see my deck garden, including the two hibiscus, Carla and Sydney, who are both blooming their hearts out.

During this week, the peace lily joined them and bloomed and bloomed. And I thought, well, that’s really it, isn’t it. Despite age, despite changes, despite it all, there are always blooms. And in this case, there is a very literal peace sitting right in front of me.

Thank you, Andy.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

Wednesdays are a particularly busy day of the week for me. I have clients in the morning at 9:00, 10:00, and 11:00, I teach a class from 1:00 – 3:00, and then I have evening clients at 4:30, 5:30, 7:00 and 8:00. In that 3:00 to 4:30 break time yesterday, I quickly grabbed some books I needed to mail and headed off for the post office.

An online book club is discussing my novel, If You Tame Me, on October 4^th, and I’ve agreed to Zoom in to the meeting. Several of the members requested signed books, which, of course, I was more than happy to provide. I wanted to give them as much time as possible to read, so while a trip to the post office would have been easier on another day, I kept my eye on the clock and zoomed off to the post office.

I rarely ever go all the way inside the post office anymore. They have a do-it-yourself machine in the lobby and I’ve become quite proficient. So I was tapping away at the screen when I heard someone behind me call my name, her voice lilting up into a question.

“Kathie?”

I turned and found Brenda, someone I’d gone to middle school and high school with!

Now school always requires a trip through my mental Rolodex. I went to three different high schools. Because my father worked for the Small Business Administration, he was transferred frequently as he traveled up the government ladder. I went to kindergarten in Berkeley, Missouri. Grades 1 – 5 were in Esko, Minnesota, way up north between Duluth and Cloquet. Grades 6 – sophomore year were in Stoughton, Wisconsin, a town outside of Madison. First semester junior year was in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Second semester junior year through my senior year were here, in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Amazingly, thanks to the miracle that is the internet, I am actually still in contact with people from each school, with the exception of my kindergarten class. And that’s mainly because I only remember my teacher, an awful woman named Miss Wise who was anything but. She yelled at me once for coloring a tree blue instead of green. I responded by poking the corner of my crayon box into her eye.

I doubt that she was very fond of me either.

Brenda was from my time in Stoughton, and somehow, we’re both now in Waukesha. We also both have adult kids and a younger kid who is still in college, though Brenda, brave woman, went on to have younger kids yet. We’re also both grandparents.

But standing there, in the post office, we both became 12 years old again.

We talked about what we remembered. For me, there is one clear memory of Brenda, which includes a memory of a bruise that spanned my entire left thigh and was every color of the rainbow.

It was a winter day, and we were all outside for recess. Fifth and sixth grades were housed in a building called Central School, which is no longer there today. Across a large parking lot was the junior high, where we would go next year. Central was a sort of no-man’s land, a limbo, between elementary school and what was still called junior high then. We had a fabulous field to play in, surrounded by a low stone fence. There was an opening in that fence, and we could look down a steep hill to a river, if I remember right. We had a fresh snow that day, and ice as well. I don’t remember why a bunch of us were standing at that break in the fence, but Brenda took a step, and down, down, down she went. She couldn’t climb back up, it was too slippery, and the bell was about to ring.

Ignorant hero that I was, I shouted, “I’ll help you!” and then I slid down too, hitting every tree along the way. Hence the major bruise. Of course, this meant we were both stuck. But hey, she wasn’t alone anymore.

The bell rang.

Behind the school building was a set of stairs that led down to this lower area, and we decided to walk there to see if we could climb the stairs back up. But no, they were covered with snow and ice too.

Eventually, at the top of the hill, a few of the boys from our class stared down at us. Our teacher, informed of our predicament, sent out the boys to help. “Climb up!” they shouted.

Yes, that was oh so helpful.

We began the long climb up, grabbing onto tree limbs and trunks, slip-sliding the whole way. We did make it, obviously, since we were standing in the post office some 50 years later. The boys didn’t have anything to do with it, though. Neither did our teacher.

We did it.

In the post office, we laughed.

And then, as we were saying goodbye, Brenda said, “Your books really are amazing, Kathie.”

Spontaneous, unexpected comments about my work are rare. I’m pretty sure I glowed.

And then we parted, with promises to get together.

Like those comments, it’s also rare to have a moment where you get to catch a glimpse of who you once were, and a glimpse of who you are now. I was the girl who once leapt, without thinking, down an icy hill to help a friend. We were both girls who solved a tricky problem ourselves, without the help of boys or teachers. And now, we’re fully immersed in family, kids, grandkids, and on and on.

And I write really good books.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

On Monday afternoon, as I was driving home from the bank, my husband sent me a simple text message.

Olivia Newton John died.

So simple. Four words. The death of a celebrity.

Yet it took my breath away.

Olivia Newton John had been fighting breast cancer since 1992. Her death coming right after my celebration of five years out felt like a punch to my temples. Five years was huge. Yet five years could be nothing.

I danced and sang to Olivia Newton John as a teenager, like most everybody did. In high school, I worked as a kennelworker at the local humane society, and one of my clearest memories is dancing down the aisle between the dog kennels, pushing a cart filled with their dinners, and singing “You’re The One That I Want” at the top of my lungs. It was 1978, I was going to graduate high school, college at the University of Wisconsin – Madison was in my very near future, and I was balancing two boyfriends at once. Me! I was on top of the world and I rocked with Olivia and I swear the dogs danced with me. Though they might have just wanted me to feed them already.

As years passed, I didn’t think about Olivia Newton John much anymore. Not until June 26, 2017, when I sat in an examination room at the Breast Care center at my clinic. The week before, my mammogram tanked, and so did the immediate ultrasound, and now I was going to have a biopsy. The doctor was running late, and I was nervous, so I tried to distract myself by grabbing a magazine off the table next to my chair. It was People, the issue was from June 19, and on the cover was Olivia Newton John. It said that her breast cancer had returned after 25 years. It was located in her tailbone.

I threw the magazine across the room as if it scalded my fingers. Then, I carefully picked it up and put it in the trash can. I shoved it all the way down, past all the paper towels and whatever else might be there. I didn’t want anyone else to find it. Anyone else like me, who was waiting on a biopsy.

The next day, June 27, 2017, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

From that point on, Olivia Newton John and I were linked again. Me, just starting out. She, on this journey at that point for 25 years already. She was 68 years old at that time; I was soon to be 57.

I posted about this on Facebook, in her honor. To my surprise, I was contacted by a reporter from our local newspaper. She asked if she could talk to me about Olivia Newton John and my own experience, and I said sure.

We talked about the expected things. My diagnosis and prognosis. That day in the exam room. Where I am now. How I felt that Olivia Newton John was just a beacon of light for those experiencing breast cancer. She was diagnosed in 1992. It returned in 2017. She passed away in 2022. That’s a total of 30 years. And 25 of them were free, as far as anyone knew, of cancer. In that time, she did her best to help with breast cancer research, and to give hope and encouragement to those who were bound by the pink ribbon. She formed the Olivia Newton John Cancer Wellness & Research Center in Australia. On their website, she is quoted as saying:

“With more and more people affected by cancer every day, I believe we are in a world desperate for healing, and I’m committed to doing whatever I can to help. I also believe that when you go through something difficult, even something as dramatic as cancer, that something positive will come of it.”

For me, something positive has come from it. I’ve learned how to look for a moment of happiness every day. And I’ve learned that happiness is something you do have to look for in everything that is around you. You can’t wait for it to come to you. It’s already there.

And then the reporter asked me an unexpected question. “How else did Olivia Newton John affect you?”

I had to think on it, because it was a quality that was hard to put into words. Olivia Newton John remained herself. She didn’t become or embody the breast cancer experience.

I’ve known women who have basically taken on breast cancer as their personality. There was one in particular, who tried to create a one-woman show on stage, talking about her experience. Off stage, she wore pink sneakers with pink ribbons. She wore pink shirts emblazoned with breast cancer slogans, like “I saved the tatas!” She wore pants with more pink ribbons. Earrings and necklaces of pink ribbons. Everything, absolutely everything was breast cancer.

She became breast cancer. Whoever she was before, that person was gone.

Don’t get me wrong; I do wear breast cancer t-shirts from time to time, mostly when I’m working out. They remind me that if I was strong enough to get through breast cancer, then I’m strong enough to get through 60 freaking minutes on a treadmill.

But in general – I was me before I had breast cancer. And I’m still me now, although cancer is a part of my life experience. But it’s just that. A part. There’s just so much more.

Just like Olivia Newton John. All the way til the end.

You’re the one that I want, Olivia. Ooo-oo-oo, honey.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

Well, if you follow me on Facebook, there’s no doubt what my moment of happiness was. And there’s another one now too, tacked on.

Five years ago, on June 27, 2017, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

And this past Friday, on my 62^nd birthday, I took my final cancer med. A little yellow pill that caused major side effects for five years. And that was also a daily reminder of what I’d gone through.

YAY!

The little yellow pill, among other things, leeched my body of calcium, and so for the 5 years, I also had to take calcium, with Vitamin D3, twice a day. The little yellow pill was so small, I rarely felt it as I swallowed it down. But the calcium pill was large and sticky and I often gagged when I took it. So I contacted my oncologist to ask if I needed to continue to take the calcium, now that the little yellow pill was in my little yellow past.

“No,” he said. “If you take calcium when you don’t need it, it can cause kidney stones. Stop taking it right away.”

And so last night, for the first time in five years, I swallowed no pills before I went to bed. No gagging before bed. I brushed my teeth, climbed between the covers, meditated, and dropped off.

YAY!

This morning, I pulled the calcium pill out of my pill-a-day container and plunked it back into the bottle. No gagging this morning.

YAY!

And now, it remains to be seen if I will have to continue taking magnesium and potassium, which were also depleted by the little yellow pill. Blood tests will determine that.

There’s a commercial on television right now, for a skin condition. In it, people have shards of glass sticking out of their limbs, and burning pieces of charcoal, and heavy pieces of armor. They stand up, shake their bodies, and these pieces just fly off.

I feel like pieces are flying off of me right now. In such a good way. Not like the piece I lost when I went in for the partial mastectomy.

There’s been a lot of discussion about being in the “new normal” with Covid. I am now returning to the “new normal” after breast cancer. As piece by piece drops away, such as no more breast MRI’s, mammograms returning to once a year, the little yellow pill disappearing from my pill container, members of my medical team stepping away, the radiation oncologist first, the surgeon second, leaving only my oncologist who I now only see once a year, I am wiggling myself into that new normal.

I think, due mostly to the media, people think that once you’re declared cancer-free, you step out into the sunlight and resume your life as if cancer never happened. That is just so not true. No matter the diagnosis, the prognosis, and the end results, everyone I’ve met who has dealt with any kind of cancer still has that little bit of fear tucked into them. It goes like this: “Cancer snuck into me once. It could do so again.”

I know women who are over 20 years out of breast cancer. The day of their annual mammogram, they shake. And so I’m prepared for that too, and I don’t worry about the lingering fear. Like all of the flying-off pieces, the fear flies off too. I tend to think of it when I look in a mirror. Because there, the evidence of what happened remains. But then I step away and move into my day and I’m grateful to be here.

I had someone say to me once, the day after my surgery, “Now don’t ever say you have cancer or you had cancer ever again. That’s putting it out into the Universe, and then it can come back into you.”

Good lord. I bit my tongue, but I so wanted to say to this person, “Do not expect me to be superhuman. I was a cancer victim; I am a cancer survivor. That’s not a definition that can be taken away from me. That’s not a definition I can forget.”

I also had a small handful of students who fell away because they felt the cancer was distracting me from teaching. One even said to me, “I used to learn so much from you. Now I’m not.” And this was someone who worked with cancer patients! Again, I bit my tongue, though I wanted to say, “Do not expect me to be superhuman.” For heaven’s sake, during the whole treatment, I only missed three days of work. If she wasn’t learning from me, it was because she was not listening. Not hearing someone who managed, through a terrifying time, to still reach out, to still help, to still guide. I teach writing, but I’ve always taught more than that. Especially during that time.

Maybe it was good that some of these pieces fell away.

One of the best moments I had during this whole ordeal was a friend saying, “You don’t have to be so brave. You can be scared. You can be sad. It’s all right.”

And I was. I am.

But seeing the pieces fall away, one by one…priceless. Feeling lighter, feeling more like myself, feeling like I’m still here. I’ve brushed away so much. And now…no more little yellow pill. No more sticky white calcium.

The fear? I can fold it away and tuck it into my back pocket.

And I’m okay with that. I’m okay.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.