Author: Kathie

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

I guess I’ve always considered myself a scavenger. I prefer old things over new, and I especially enjoy finding treasure. When I was a little kid living in northern Minnesota, there was a big field across the gravel road from my house. It was a baseball field, or at least, it had one of those high fences surrounding where a batter and a catcher would be. Kids played there during recess at school. But mostly, it was a big empty field.

At a far corner, behind a bunch of brush, there was a secret spot, or at least I called it a secret. There were large rocks in a strange sea of gravel. As an adult, I know now that this was likely where construction workers put all of the rocks excavated when the homes in this area were built, but for me at that time, it was like a secret circle. I spent hours there, sifting through the rocks, looking for ones with sparkle or unique shapes, that I brought home and kept in buckets in the garage. I never went there with friends. If someone happened to walk through, I’d hide behind a rock until he or she left. This was my secret spot, my magic circle, my treasure trove. Toys were fun too, but these old rocks, dug up and left behind, were my treasure.

When we moved to Wisconsin, we lived in a neighborhood right next to a country club with a golf course. On summer evenings that went on for hours before dark, I wandered the course and the bushes and trees around it, scavenging for whole golf tees and lost golf balls. I collected broken tees too, of particularly bright colors and patterns, and they were kept hidden away in an old cigar box that I bought for a nickel at a rummage sale. But the whole tees and golf balls that were still in good shape, I sold at a lemonade stand I set up on the 9^th hole. I offered two different drinks, usually pink lemonade and then some other Kool Aid flavor, and I set up displays of the tees and golf balls. Found treasure to the golfers, and found treasure to me, with the bright colors I would admire inside my cigar box, a relic from another time.

I clearly remember my first “big find” at a garage sale, which I started frequenting when I was still in elementary school. But here, it was the summer before my junior year in high school, and someone down the road had an old typewriter for sale at their rummage sale. It was five dollars. I was with my mother when I saw it, and she thought I was ridiculous for wanting it, so I went home without buying it. But then I returned two more times. Each time, it was still there, waiting for me. The last time, I handed over the five dollars. That typewriter still sits in my classroom. I can’t explain the feeling it gave me then and now, when I hold it and think about all the fingers that have pounded out words on it. It’s history.

After years of scrounging through rummage sales every week and weekend, primarily for clothes and toys for my growing kids, I discovered Goodwill and St. Vincent de Paul and the Salvation Army. I abandoned rummage sales for what was essentially a rummage sale of all things under a roof that kept me safe from the weather. When I divorced my first husband, I made the awful mistake of believing him when he said he would cover all the kids’ expenses if I didn’t go for child support in the courts. Of course he didn’t follow through, and so I had to dress my kids, in the throes of fragile adolescence when the world becomes about who is looking at you, on my very, very limited budget. My kids wore clothes from Goodwill and the Target clearance racks, and they looked darn good. My daughter might tell you differently, as I could never find the exact style jeans she wanted and the other girls wore, but she looked great.

And now, years later, when scavenging has returned to being a source of pleasure and not necessity, it continues. All of Olivia’s prom and homecoming dresses came from Goodwill. She’s never shown up to an event in a duplicate dress from a mall store. She’s worn designer dresses to her orchestra concerts, and the dresses never cost more than a few dollars. Right now, she’s toting a Vera Bradley purse, mega-pricey in the stores, that we picked out last weekend at a St. Vinnie’s. She loves it, and she learned that good quality doesn’t have to come with an inflated price.

Through all of this, I hoped I was teaching my kids that they could have what they most treasured, whether it was an old typewriter or a designer handbag, without giving in to vast commercialism and consumerism and overpricing. The treasure isn’t in how much you pay. It’s in what you love.

But there was a new treasure yet for me to find.

My son Andy is going to be 36 years old this Saturday. Throughout our years together, I would call him from Goodwill or wherever I happened to be, telling him I found this video game or that comic book or this t-shirt with that superhero on it – his treasures. When he responded enthusiastically, I bought it for him. But lately, he’s begun hanging out in Goodwills himself. He shows me his finds.

Two weeks ago, I took him with me to a St. Vincent de Paul in Pewaukee, a huge store that is housed in an old Pick’N’Save grocery store. Last weekend, when Olivia wanted to go to see it, I took her, and Andy came again. We had a ball.

As we were driving home, I told Andy that on the next weekend, for his birthday, he could pick wherever he wanted to go to dinner, and I would take him.

“Oh!” he said. “And maybe…maybe we could go to another Goodwill too. Together.”

Together.

And there’s my treasure.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

There have been quite a few times lately that I’ve begun to think of myself as old. Not “getting” old. But “old”. Already arrived. And yes, I know this will immediately be met with all my friends, students, clients, readers who are older than I am, saying in a unified shout, “You’re just a baby! Wait til you’re 70, 80, 90, 100, dead!” Be that as it may, I still found myself feeling old.

And tired. Well, maybe more worn. I think when the news that COVID was dissipating was followed immediately by the horrendous attack on the Ukraine, I felt like the title of William P. Barr’s newly released book, “One Damn Thing After Another”.

I’ve been fighting bouts of insomnia lately as well, and on Thursday night into Friday, I hit another one. On Friday evening, I was supposed to be going with my daughter Olivia to an Imagine Dragons concert. When I dragged myself out of bed on Friday, all I could think of was canceling. I was so tired. I was so old. I was so worn out.

If you’re not familiar with Imagine Dragons, please make yourself familiar. I heard them for the first time a couple years ago, when I was on retreat on the Oregon coast, where I was working on All Told, my novel that was just released. My rental car didn’t have a CD player, and as I was totally unfamiliar with things like Pandora and Spotify (see? I told you I’m old), I had to play the radio on my daily half-hour trek from Waldport to Newport, to have a coffee break and let my brain cool at Starbucks. The station I listened to seemed to be on a loop, and every day of my two weeks there, I heard this unfamiliar song, and every day, my head tilted toward the radio and I wondered who it was. I finally googled one of the lyrics and found that it was “Whatever It Takes” by Imagine Dragons. Another song, “Thunder”, was always played on my way back to Waldport, and I loved it too, but wouldn’t realize until several weeks later, after I bought the CD Evolve for “Whatever It Takes”, that “Thunder” was Imagine Dragons too. Since then, I’ve bought every CD they’ve made, and once I figured out Spotify after buying a new car that didn’t have a CD player either, I loaded them onto Spotify. They just amaze me. Months ago, when the news came out about the concert here in Milwaukee, I didn’t even wait five minutes before I bought tickets, and I crowed to Olivia that we were going, on a cold night in February, what seemed like a long way away.

But it was now. And it was on a night that was indeed cold, a day after a major snow dump, and I’d had next to no sleep. I was tired. Worn out. Old. What was someone like me doing going to a concert? I needed a cup of hot tea, and maybe some warm milk (both of which I hate), and head to bed by 8:00 (I’m never in bed before 3:00 in the morning).

When I told Olivia I was thinking about canceling, she protested. Loudly. I thought maybe Olivia could take one of her friends, but my tickets were only available on my phone (something I still don’t understand…I’m old), and I didn’t want to hand over my phone for several hours. So eventually, I yawned, drank a pot of coffee and had a Starbucks, and I went. Olivia, when she ran out from her dorm and jumped into my car, said, “I’m so glad it’s finally time!”

Right then, I did not match her enthusiasm.

I thought it was likely unusual that I was 61 years old and my daughter was 21 years old, and we were both going to a concert to see a band we loved. But the first thing I noticed when we found our seats was the incredible age span of the audience. Olivia and I sat together. There were teenagers a row in front of me. There were elementary school kids behind me. Everyone of every age was in that arena.

When Imagine Dragons came out, they did their first song, and then the lead singer, Dan Reynolds, addressed the audience. To paraphrase, he said, “It’s been a really rough couple of days for all of us. Let’s let it go. Let’s leave it at the door. Politics. Illness. War. For the next few hours, let’s let it go and just be here, together.” I was amazed that the sigh released by the audience didn’t blow the roof off the arena.

And then we rocked. We danced in our seats. We sang as loud as we could through our masks. I knew the words. My daughter knew the words. Everyone of every age knew the words.

And that music just lifted me up. Up, up, up. I felt a sense of connection with the band, with my daughter, with everyone in that audience, that I haven’t felt in a long, long time. I knew that in that arena, there were likely a million different beliefs, a million different reasons for believing, a million different patterns for living the life we’re living. But despite those differences, we were all there for the same reason. The love of this music. And because of that same reason, the differences no longer mattered.

I could have hugged the entire world that night. Well, except Putin. Even I can’t go that far. But I arrived at that concert tired and worn out and ready to start calling myself old. I came home, not young, not refreshed and energized, but fully me again. Just me.

And one thing I always am, despite everything, is hopeful.

Thank you, Imagine Dragons. And thank you, Olivia, for insisting that we go.

Pop in a CD, everyone. Open up Spotify. SING.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

To hear my favorite Imagine Dragons song, go to:

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

Four years ago today, we adopted our dog, Ursula. Her official name: Ursula Le Guin Giorgio. She was originally from Alabama, and she’d been shipped up to Wisconsin with four other dogs to a humane society here. We were told that shelters in the south were overrun with dogs and cats, and in order to stop so many from being killed due to overcrowding, there was a movement underway to send animals up to other states with room in their shelters. I chose Ursula’s name, and I named her after the writer Ursula Le Guin, because I figured, with everything Ursula had already been through, she needed to be a strong woman to survive. She did, and I didn’t yet know the half of it.

We’d been through a lot ourselves. Our beagles, Donnie and Blossom, died three weeks prior to our adopting Ursula. They passed away together, side by side on the vet’s table, with all three of us resting a hand on each dog, and with two veterinarians injecting that fatal shot into each dog at the same time. It was a wonderful, horrible experience. Blossom was fifteen years old and had advanced kidney disease. She’d been diagnosed years before, and we’d been told she’d die within that first year. Talk about a tough woman. She struggled, but she remained. She went from a 35 pound beagle/coonhound mix to twenty pounds at the end. Donnie was thirteen years old, and diagnosed just weeks before with a form of cancer in his bones that we were told would take years to take his life. Instead, those few weeks later, he was doing things like standing in his food dish and looking at me, as if he was saying, “I know this isn’t right, but…” They’d both lost any sense of being housebroken. We were heartbroken, but we made their passing as gentle as it could be for them.

It was horribly hard on us.

I said no more dogs. But three weeks later, the empty couch, the lack of sound (jingling collars, ticking toenails, wagging tails hitting everything in sight, and beagle-speak) did me in. I saw a dog called Mama on the humane society’s website, and I pulled Michael and Olivia in with me.

What we saw was a quiet, sweet-faced dog. She wasn’t bothered by all the kennel noises around her. She was gentle. And partway through our meeting, she lay that big concrete head on my thigh for the first time. Those eyes.

She came home.

Where we learned fairly quickly that the calm dog was a façade. Ursula was afraid of everything. Literally. The tv. The microwave. The coffeemaker. The icemaker. The buses going by. The flags waving on our walks, which, four years later, we no longer take and haven’t since about six months in, because she became an anxious pile of goo. She’s scared of the outside. She doesn’t like grass. The wind is terrifying. Don’t even ask about thunder and lightning. And, to our great surprise, one of her biggest fears is when a gospel-type choir rocks out on a television commercial or a show. She flies up the stairs and hides in her crate.

The closest we can figure is that Ursula was a kennel dog, used for breeding. She was called Mama because she’d clearly been a mother. Four years later, she still prefers to “do her business” on the parking lot, not in the grass.

So Ursula is totally different from Donnie and Blossom. Blossom was scared of thunderstorms, but that’s about the only fear there was, except for Donnie’s being perpetually paranoid that he would never be fed again. I had to put childproof locks on all my cabinets, because he learned to break in and eat whatever he could find. One of his most famous eat-capades was when he ate a bag of 25 “greenies”, special treats for dogs to clean their teeth, meant to be given only one a day, and he did so in 20 minutes. That earned him a trip to the vet, where they wanted to keep him overnight. I said no and brought him home after he was given subcutaneous fluid. Donnie burped and farted a few times, rolled over, went to sleep, and was just fine.

And now we have Ursula.

Besides the extreme fear, Ursula went into cardiac arrest after being treated for heartworms. She was at the emergency vet’s for a week. Now, she has some weird autoimmune condition that causes her toenails to grow in strange shapes and to be extremely fragile. She takes daily doses of doxycycline, Vitamin E, and Niacin. With peanut butter. She has more good days than bad, but the bad days are still events, when she spends most of the day in Olivia’s bathroom, in the dark.

Even so, her good and bad days are all good days for us. She has learned to romp and play in her own way, and even to make noises when there are french fries in the house. She wasn’t scared of the Christmas tree at all this year, even sticking that big concrete head into its branches. She loves our cats. She still won’t go for walks, and the only way to get her out on our deck is to drag her by a leash. The beagles used to spend long hound dog hours out there, basking in the sun. Ursula just stands at the doorway and looks. She sighs sometimes.

But even with those sighs, she knows she’s loved. Wherever we are, she is. Those sighs are also sighs of contentment and happiness. There are many belly rubs. There are what we call “eeeeeeee’s”, where she smiles at us, and her lips part, showing us shiny healthy teeth. There is always that clunky head on my thigh. There are french fries.

There are those that say Ursula is lucky, that not many would stick beside her with all of her challenges. But we believe we’re lucky too. The beagles were wonderful. Ursula is wonderful.

And don’t forget the cats.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

This week, I am on retreat, trying to get through a final draft of my new novel. Being on retreat means that I am not teaching or meeting with clients. I am instead totally focused on my own work. It’s also a time that I go to bed when I’m ready to sleep, and I wake up when I’m ready to wake up. And I read, read, read. Not student manuscripts, but books from the stack of wanna-reads next to my desk. During a typical work week, I only read during lunch. Breakfast is spent in front of the computer, opening emails. Dinner is spent in front of the computer, reading manuscripts. But during retreat, I read at a kitchen table at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then again at coffee break in the middle of the day. I read in bed, usually poetry, before I go to sleep. It’s WONDERFUL. And I write, all day long and into the night.

Usually, I take my retreats away from home, typically on the Oregon coast, which is where I will be in October of this year. For this retreat, I was also supposed to be away, at a retreat center in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. But a circumstance intervened and I was unable to get away. So I spent this week, in retreat, at home.

For the most part, it’s been okay. I’m writing and reading. I’m still able to get to the gym and swim (there was no gym in Mineral Point). But today, the second to last day of my retreat, well…

First, my husband fell on the ice, landed on his face, and broke a tooth. In order to still fulfill all of his hours at work, he needed me to pick him up at the last minute possible to make his dentist appointment. Okay.

Then my granddaughter, Grandbaby Maya Mae, had early release from school. There was no one to pick her up. So I agreed to do so – I was going to be out anyway, dropping Grandpa off at the dentist – and then I also agreed to keep her with me from 1:40 to 4:00. We made these arrangements over Zoom, and I was just about to sigh when it was interrupted by my granddaughter flinging both hands in the air, grinning with her entire body, and then she shouted, “And I’ll get to see you IN PERSON!”

My sigh was hiccupped off by laughter. And absolute joy.

A few weeks ago, I gave my granddaughter her 9^th birthday present. She had hair down almost to her waist. Like my hair, like my two daughters’, her hair was fine, but there was a lot of it, which made for snarl after snarl. One night, on Zoom, Maya showed me a photo of herself from when her hair was chin length. “Oh, Grandma,” she sighed. “I miss my short hair. And I want bangs.”

After a quick consult with her parents, Maya’s birthday present was created. A trip to a salon that specialized in kids. A haircut, style, and a pedicure. Then a trip to a fancy-schmancy store, where she could pick out an outfit all of her own. Finally, dinner out, after she changed into her new outfit, and we kept her hidden until her parents arrived and they got to see the new Maya Mae.

Maya is now 9 years old. Her little speech impediment is gone – gone are the srees which are now trees, gone is my title which used to be Gamma Kaffee, and is now Grandma Kathie. She speaks with long sentences and even longer words. She reads to me on Zoom, before I read to her. And she writes stories.

She writes stories!

At the haircut appointment, I watched as hair flew and fell to the floor. At one point, I couldn’t even see her face. And then…and then…

Ever see a child start to grow up right before your eyes?

There she was. Her hair curved around that face I have loved since I was privileged to see her on ultrasound and privileged again to see her emerge into this world. New bangs provided a frame. Her nails glistened pink. And her smile. Oh, that smile.

Then she looked over my shoulder into the mirror behind me. “Oh, Grandma Kathie,” she breathed. “I love it!”

I realized, watching her grow up like that, right there in that salon chair, how fast the years are going by. She’s nine. Srees are gone. Gamma Kaffee is gone. Her own version of Uptown Funk, sung from my backseat when she was three and with the word “Funk” changed into something else entirely that nearly made me drive off the road, is gone.

Time is passing.

And this is why, on my second to last day of retreat, when I should be writing, I instead had Grandbaby Maya Mae in my backseat, telling me about her school day. It’s why she’s downstairs as I write this, watching Encanto, her favorite ever movie (I took her to see it), and she’s shouting up every single line as she’s memorized the entire damn movie, including, as she says, “the words I don’t understand.”  And it’s why, as soon as I’m done posting this, I will be running down to watch it with her in the time I have left before we have to go pick up her mother.

There will still be time to write. But time with her as a little girl is fast running out.

“Nobody talks about Bruno!”

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

 

 

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

Every now and then, it’s like a certain place or thing in my home has a spotlight thrown on it from my own mind, and it looms in front of me and behind me and beside me, moaning, “Cleeeeeaaaan meeeeee! Cleeeeaaan meeeeee!” It becomes the Heart of Darkness in my home and psyche. The horror! The horror!

Lately, I’ve been haunted by the credenza in my office. The credenza itself, I love. I found it in an antique mall shortly after moving in here. One of its doors doesn’t quite close, so I have to bolster it with some folded cardboard, but I find it beautiful. I also find it as my personal black hole. If I don’t know where to put something, it goes in the credenza. My dream of having it hold all my office supplies has long since disappeared as it holds a lot more than that.

So I had a four-day weekend this last week, and I decided it would be the weekend that I cleaned the credenza. On Friday, I carried up several large garbage bags, to be sorted into the Goodwill bags and the throwaway bags. I brought up our little wooden stepstool to crouch on as my days of kneeling are long over. We have concrete floors, and my knees would have been demolished.

And so I set to work. After about fifteen minutes, my husband stopped yelling, “What was THAT?” at every crunch, bang, and belted-out curse word. And the bags filled. Picture frames. File folders too big for my file drawer. Those weird metal things you put on the side of reports after punching in two holes. Odd little knick-knacks purchased for gifts and then forgotten about. An even weirder cloth thing that said in bright green print, “Namaste In Bed!” I asked Michael about that one, and he said he gave it to me once when I was sick in bed, and I was into meditation. Couldn’t prove it by me.

But then I found treasure. Actually, lots of treasure. I’d started putting photographs in there, with the full intention of yanking them out someday and putting them into photo albums. Remember when we used to do that, instead of keeping them on our phones and computers? So many photos that I meandered over, and then carefully put into large stiff envelopes to keep them safe.

And then I found my big kids’ high school graduation pictures. Back then (back then…my kids are 38, almost 36 and almost 35 now. My big kids are “back then”. Yikes.), you could choose to have a selection of the photos put into these tri-fold folders, like the ones that were used to hold your diploma, and so even if you only chose to have a few of the photos enlarged and framed for your Wall of Fame, you could keep your favorites as well. I had three of these. One for each kid.

We don’t have these folders anymore. I don’t have one for Olivia.

So I sat there for a while, looking down at the faces of my three big kids. Christopher. Andy. Katie. Such young and open faces. Faces ready to go out into the world and become…whatever and whoever they chose to be.

As I looked at each picture, defining and treasured moments for each child rose to the surface.

For Christopher: the Easter that he was attending CCD classes for First Communion. He went on Wednesdays, and on the Wednesday before Good Friday, as I was tucking him into his upper bunk in the room he shared with his little brother, he sat back up. “Mommy,” he said, “I don’t want to rise on Friday!”

“What?” I said.

“The teacher said that on Friday, Jesus died and then he rose and we will too, because of what he did! And it will happen on Friday! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to rise!”

Ohboy.

I did my best to explain, and then I tucked him back in with his favorite stuffed animal, a little red devil named Hot Stuff he received on the day he was born. I loved the irony, but I hated the fear put into my little boy.

For Andy: He was in third grade when he came running home from school ahead of the other two and burst into the back door. “Mom!” he yelled. “Mom! I wrote a story in school and I wanna show you!”

I came out of the little office I had for writing and said, “That’s wonderful! Show me! Show me!”

He started digging in his backpack, but then he stopped. He looked up at me, frowning, and then he looked away. “But I think I spelled wizard wrong,” he said.

At that time, the school was actually grading on how many spelling errors there were in first drafts. I was horrified. When the other two straggled in, I got everyone their snacks and then I explained to Andy that writers don’t care how things are spelled in first drafts. Writers don’t care about punctuation in first drafts. Writers don’t even care if the story makes sense in the first draft. We do that later.

Beaming, he pulled the story out and we read it together. It was a wonderful story. And…wizard was spelled correctly. Again, I loved the irony, but hated the fear and self-criticism put into my little boy.

And then Katie. The kids used to come with me to the Y while I worked out. They stayed in the little daycare. One day, when I came to take them home, I found Katie standing right by the door. I thought she was waiting for me, but when I swept her up (she was three), she pointed to the door across the hall. “Mommy,” she said. “Show me.”

I walked her over and we looked through the little glass window into a dance class for teeny kids. Katie froze in my arms as she watched them twirl and bend and glide. Then she turned back to me, took my face in both of her hands, and said, “Mommy. I want that.”

I signed her up for dance class that day. Her teacher’s name was Miss Faye. On the first observation day, I sat and watched as Katie started in a row with the other kids, but eventually moved herself directly in front of Miss Faye, staring down at her feet, and making her little feet do the same.

When Katie was five years old, Miss Faye said Katie needed to go to a dance studio, that she couldn’t keep up with Katie’s desire to learn.

Off we went to Kellar Dance Studio, for years and years of ballet, tap, and jazz, and years and years of recitals. I watched in awe as my daughter rose on pointe shoes. And I grieved when she went off to college and dance came to an end. One of the high school senior photos shows her wrapping the delicate pink ribbons around her ankle.

My credenza is clean now, no longer a black hole. And while it took me a couple days to recover from the aches and pains of sitting on a low stepstool, it was so worth it. For those few hours, I had my big kids back.

It was lovely.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Muse is the only pet in our household who has been with us since her babyhood. She is eighteen years old, going on steadily to nineteen. And I can already hear my husband, Michael, saying, “You’re writing a moment of happiness about the Demon?”

Muse has always been a challenge.

Muse came to us after I mentioned in a workshop I was leading that we had an overabundance of testosterone in my house. There was Michael and my two boys. There was the dog, a Chihuahua named Cocoa. And there were two male cats, Einstein and Cornelius. The only females were my two daughters and me. The next week, a student came in to class with a box of teeny kittens. They’d been born in an RV traveling from the west coast to the east coast, and the owners were trying to find them homes so they could return to traveling with just one cat. Of all the kittens, there was only one female. She looked up at me from the box and blinked with a calm that was the direct opposite of her tumbling brothers. And so she came home.

Where she was instantly not calm.

She climbed into the eaves in the basement and disappeared under the floorboards. We despaired of ever getting her out. I had to place a kitty carrier on top of Cocoa’s dog crate and stuff Muse in it every night, because otherwise, she would insist on sleeping on my head. She tore things apart. She climbed things. She was wherever your foot wanted to be.

But she also was a champion mouser when our house was suddenly overrun with field mice. And she was tolerant of little Olivia putting her into a basket and carrying her around the house.

When we moved here, to our industrial style condo with the exposed rafters, she immediately climbed up and wandered above our heads. The developer of the complex warned that there were spigots up there that controlled our sprinkler system in case of fire, and if she bumped into one, we would have tons of water careening into our home. I hung items on the floor to ceiling beams on either side of our island, to prevent Muse from getting up there. Instead, she jumped from the floor to the counter to the fridge to the tops of cabinets, and then wandered around the spigots again. We gave up. At eighteen, she still does this.

I long ago started a photo series, called, “Because No Day Is Complete Without A Cat On/In Your…” If there was a piece of paper, she found it. She sat in my printer. The bathtub. On top of the shutters in a window. On a stack of three pillows. On top of Ursula’s raggedy pink blankie. On my computer. The other day, I found that Google had searched, seemingly on its own, for references to the word “pppppppppppppppppink”. Apparently, Muse needed to know all about the music star.

When Zoom became a daily presence in my life, Muse visited with my students and clients whenever I was trying to work with them. She made an appearance at my book launch last week. Lately, she’s become obsessed with sticking her head in any bowls or cups. She’s lapped up my coffee. She’s eaten my oatmeal. When I don’t have time to run my cereal bowl down to the dishwasher before I meet with a morning client, I have to stick the bowl on the highest shelf behind me. Muse will sit on the back of my desk chair, hunched, preparing to leap from the chair to that bookshelf. More than one student has shouted out, “No! No, Muse!”

Something that non-cat owners may not know is that as a cat ages, she loses her ability to retract her claws. Muse now sticks to everything she touches. Including me. The other night, when I finished meditating before sleep, Muse had one paw resting on top of my hand. When I moved, her claw stuck under my skin. She began yanking to try to get it out, but it was stuck. I was trying to reach across my body with my non-cat hand to disengage her, but try to do that from the flat of your back while you are in incredible pain. Eventually, she got out and I just quietly bled myself to sleep.

This week, when she was in the way during a class, I picked her up from my desk, intending to set her on the floor, so I could have ten seconds of peace before she returned. As I lifted, she set her paw on my forearm. I was wearing short sleeves. She stuck with four claws. Ever try not to scream while teaching a class, with a cat stuck to your arm, dangling in midair, with no possible way to get your other hand where you can disengage her?

I have. And I have the wounds to show it. Please send bandaids.

But this morning. Oh, this morning. I woke a few minutes before my alarm went off. Curled into my side was this teeny gray cat. She has never weighed more than five pounds. Her gray face was resting on gray paws, and her gray tail curled over her gray nose. I smoothed her fur, somewhat raggedy with age, from her head around the curve of her back. And she began to purr.

A much better sound than a bleating alarm clock.

What a wonderful way to wake up. For eighteen years.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

For the last couple of weeks, my daughter Olivia accompanied me to the gym when I went in to swim. Bear in mind, I use the word swim loosely – I only recently took swimming lessons, and the 10-week program was interrupted after four weeks when my instructor, who was hugely pregnant, had her baby. The YMCA, which offered the lessons, couldn’t find anyone to fill in on the time slot that I needed, and so the lessons were discontinued. I was very disappointed, but felt I learned enough that I could join a gym with a pool and do enough that it would count as exercise (though I have to say, I did not join the Y).

Olivia is a natural swimmer. She started when she was in kindergarten and took to the water like the proverbial fish. She tried out for a swim team when she was in third grade, and the coach pronounced her exceptional. But the noise in the natatorium was just too much for her to handle. Even with earplugs, the constantly blowing whistles, the shouting coaches (shouting to be heard over the other shouting) and screeching kids sent her into a panic. We could only imagine what being at a meet would do, with bellowing parents added to the melee. So she didn’t join, but kept swimming. We talked about her joining a swim team when she got to high school. But when she learned the measure of commitment there, with early morning and after school practices, and meet after meet after meet, she worried about her academic performance and so she decided against it. Still, she swam whenever she could, and watching her body slice effortlessly through the water is a joy to behold.

As for me, well, I don’t slice. I chug. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to breathe while doing the front crawl or any stroke. On the side of the pool, when I practice the front crawl, my head moves the way it’s supposed to. But once in the water, my head takes on a life of its own and says, Nope, I’m looking down. I am not lifting to the side. Nope, nope, nope. And then, when I try, I get a mouthful of water. Bleah. So basically, I hold my breath as long as I can, then dog paddle with my head above water while I gasp, then plow my head in again and continue.

Hey, it works. It’s not pretty, but it works.

So these last few weeks, I’ve watched Olivia while I do my own thing. I walk forward in the water the length of the pool three times, then walk backwards three times, then dog paddle three times, do my version of the breast stroke three times, forward crawl six times, then reverse the order and finish with the walk. I did all this while I watched her head bobbing gently in the lane next to me. And I wished I could do what she does, all while admiring the grace and absolute beauty of my own daughter.

That wishing is sort of silly. She’s 21, I’m 61. She’s swum for practically her whole life, I’ve stuck with the dog paddle and flunked swim lesson after swim lesson. Though we do have one big thing in common: neither of us are scared of the water, and we both love it.

The last time we swam together, before she returned to college, she asked me about my goggles. We both bought some when we joined the gym, hers near her school, mine by me. This was my first pair of goggles. When I tried them in the pool, she was not with me. “I didn’t like them,” I said. “The water just came in and got stuck between my eyes and the goggle. It was like swimming in a fishbowl.”

She sighed, and at the pool, she tightened the goggles. And tightened the goggles. And tightened them again. When I put them on, they adhered to my face and I wondered if I would ever get them off.

But then I began to swim.

I could see! The world became aqua. Sound was gone. Even though I was in a pool with several other people, including my daughter, I was all alone and suspended and warm and surrounded with color and silence and my own movement. Following the blue line of tile on the floor of the pool was like following a chosen path. I felt at peace. My favorite place in the world is by water, and now I was not only in it, I was a part of it.

Until I had to breathe, of course.

And then I doggy paddled and breathed and admired my daughter before I plunged back in. There was beauty under the water, and there was beauty above the water.

While I will never swim like my daughter, I felt then that I’d joined into her world for a bit. I experienced what she did, even if it wasn’t for length after length of pool, but just for the time of a held breath.

And now, when she’s away from me and off at college and, eventually, off into her adult life, I will share her world then too.

It’s a lovely place.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

Remember board games? And not board games recreated to be played on a screen, but actually lifted from a box, the “board” magically unfolded, pieces chosen and placed, cards shuffled, dice rolled to see who goes first.

So here’s the thing. First, for the last two years, I have been totally enamored of, not a board game, but a video game on Nintendo Switch. Animal Crossing. I’ve written about this game before. When the pandemic started and I was a nervous wreck, a friend who I’ve known since she went to school with my big kids told me I needed to play Animal Crossing. “It’s getting me through,” she said. My middle son, Andy, who also played, said he would buy the system and the game for me. I’d played Animal Crossing before, when it was on the GameCube and when it was on the Wii, and even when I had, for a while, the handheld Nintendo DS. In each case, there were other games bought for the system, but the only one I played faithfully was Animal Crossing.

This time, I’ve been playing it for two years. And I haven’t lost interest.

Right before my 61^st birthday, my son posted on our Animal Crossing Facebook chat. “Look!” he said. He showed us a photo of a board game – Animal Crossing Monopoly.

Which shot me backwards in time.

My first passion with a game was dominoes. And that was largely because of a set that I won. I was living in Stoughton, Wisconsin, and I was about twelve or thirteen years old. My friend Lisa and I heard that across Lake Kegonsa, there was a “fisheree” going on. An ice-fishing competition, but complete with games and prizes for children. Did we think to ask our parents to drive us there? No – we chose to walk across Lake Kegonsa, something which horrifies me now as a mom. By the time we got there, we were nearly frozen, despite wearing snowpants, boots, winter coats, hats, mittens, scarves. We ducked into a tent with a heater and attempted to thaw before we checked out the games. Among other things, there was a short race, where you ran back and forth, carrying an egg on a spoon, and the winner was the person who had the most eggs in their containers. I won. When I looked over the prizes, I saw a beautiful dominoes set. Each of the numbered dominoes had a different brilliant neon color. I selected it, brought it home back across the frozen lake, and still own it today.

My first husband and I loved board games. We often preferred to spend our Friday and Saturday nights at home, different boards spread out on our kitchen table, playing until late into the night. I loved Monopoly the best, and was wicked with it. He loved Risk, which I couldn’t stand, but the one time I played him, learning along the way, I beat him soundly. He never asked to play with me again.

With the dawn of the video game era, we resisted buying our kids the first Nintendo system, but finally capitulated with rules that they could only play for so much time every day. Until their father and I joined in and got hooked. One of my first published pieces, appearing in the Wisconsin magazine of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, was how we convinced the kids it would be so much fun to play in the new fallen snow, and as soon as they were in the back yard, my husband and I were parked in front of the television set.

And now, years later…Animal Crossing Monopoly. My most loved board game. My most loved video game. Together.

“I want it,” I said.

My son gave it to me for my birthday.

It’s a bizarre game, not like Monopoly at all, and really, not like Animal Crossing at all either. Yes, there are cards and figures and dice and a “Go To Jail” square, but that’s pretty much where any similarities end. It’s goofy…but it’s FUN.

Last Saturday, after we decided we weren’t going to go out for our usual Saturday evening restaurant meal, preferring to hunker down inside due to the Omicron variant, I quickly called my son. “When are you off work?” I asked. “Are you up for pizza and Animal Crossing?”

He was. And not only was he up for it, but he brought along a delicious cherry pie; he’s the manager of a bakery and has access to such things!

We put a different spin on the game-playing this time, though. We’ve always played in the kitchen here, which is awkward. We don’t have a kitchen table; we eat at the island, which has only 3 barstools. There are always four of us for this activity; Michael, me, Andy, and Olivia.  We typically pull out a stepladder for someone to sit on for this event, which isn’t very comfortable.

But on this night, I had a thought. “My classroom is downstairs,” I said. “Why not play there? On the big table?”

Duh.

But I realized, as we played, what moving to the classroom did for us. It turned back time to when the board game truly was the focus. As we played, there were no screens around us. No television, no computers. Yes, we had our cell phones, but those went almost completely ignored as we bent over the board and took our turns and counted our money and made our choices. We ate pie and drank good coffee, we rolled dice and flipped cards and counted out loud as we moved our little players. And we laughed.

So much laughter!

After we returned upstairs, Michael said, “That was so much fun!”

It was. And you can bet we’ll be doing it again, down in the classroom. Down there, only the game – and each other – are our focus.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

It’s that time of year again. That time that immediately follows the holidays from Thanksgiving through Christmas through New Year’s. We go from celebrating and partying to viewing constant pokes on all forms of media about how we should be eating better and exercising more…and at the same time, we’re besieged with commercials about comfort foods. Warm, satisfying foods that can melt snowmen, make a wintry blast feel like the tropics, and turn the heat up on our insides while we crank the thermostat for our outsides.

Which is why, a couple weeks ago, when Michael asked me what I’d like to have on the grocery shopping list, I answered, “Oatmeal.”

Oh, oatmeal!

Now I’m no stranger to the gym. Since the pandemic hit, I don’t often go two days in a row, but I do go. I joined a new gym a short time ago, one that has a pool, so I can use my new ability to keep myself afloat and call my frantic splashing and paddling exercise. I love it.

I eat fairly well, despite the fact that I have Oral Allergy Syndrome, which means I’m allergic to all raw fruits and vegetables, plus quite a few seeds and nuts, though I can still eat berries and green grapes. The allergy is spreading; this week, I reacted to a packet of taco seasoning my husband used when he made his famous nachos. I eat a lot of cooked fruits, but unfortunately, the most common place you’ll find cooked fruits is in pies and cobblers and crumbles. Yum.

But I try.

Lately, the temperature has dipped. It was two below zero when I left the gym last Monday night, and I was convinced my hair, still wet from the pool, would freeze and snap right off. We have snow on the ground. When I see that famous commercial of the snowman coming in from outside and slurping up a bowl of soup, which miraculously melts the snowman into a little boy, I immediately want soup. And chili. And hotdish and hot casseroles. And hot chocolate. Laced with crème de menthe.

And oatmeal.

Yum.

When I was a kid living in northern Minnesota, oatmeal was a rare treat in my house. There was no instant version yet, and so my mother had to haul out the large cardboard canister with the white-haired guy with the funny hat plastered on it. She didn’t make individual servings, but a whole pot, for all of us, and she had to stir and stir and stir before dumping the wonderful- smelling, but disgusting-looking, glop into our bowls.

Then my dad doctored it for us, in a way I’ve never seen anyone else do. First, he put several pats of butter into our bowls, and we watched it melt into golden trails through the glop. He sprinkled on sugar. And then he added just a bit of milk.

It was amazingly good. I started drinking coffee at a young age (third grade, I believe), and coffee and oatmeal for breakfast made me not care that I was about to walk to school in snowpants, a heavy winter jacket, a hat and mittens, hood pulled up and tied under my chin, a scarf around my throat, big clunky boots on my feet. I was warm the whole way, and it wasn’t the attire that made me so.

Yum.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was overcome with cravings for oatmeal. He was due on January 28^th, and at Christmas, I left my job as a secretary for Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Ozaukee County so that I could become a stay-at-home mom. Every morning, I hauled my very pregnant body out of bed, retrieved my own canister with the white-haired man with the funny hat, stirred and stirred and stirred, and then added butter, sugar, and milk. And then I made another bowl for lunch. And sometimes, a bowl before bed. Christopher was born ten days early, on January 18^th, and when I had breakfast in the hospital, I requested oatmeal. It came without butter and sugar and milk. Bleah.

It was my mom that made the oatmeal. It was my dad that made it good.

And so, when my husband asked, I answered, “Oatmeal.”

It’s the season.

We do have that fabled white-haired man canister in our cupboards, but that’s only brought out when I make my meat loaf, which requires old-fashioned oatmeal. What my husband brings home to me from the grocery store still has that man on it, but the oatmeal is instant, and made individual serving by individual serving. I open a packet, empty it into my favorite bowl, add water, and stick it in the microwave for one minute and thirty seconds. No stirring, stirring, stirring. No big pot. No waiting.

I keep myself busy during the one minute and thirty seconds by preparing to doctor. I get out the butter and the milk. I forego the sugar and even the Equal, because the oatmeal I favor is flavored – maple and brown sugar.

When the microwave beeps, I do my best Dad imitation. Butter pats. Golden trails in the glop. A little bit of milk. I pop it back in the microwave for 30 seconds, because the milk cools it down too fast. In that 30 seconds, I pour my cup of strong black coffee. And then I have breakfast, like I did so long ago, not caring about the snow on my deck, the temperature my cell phone tells me it is outside, the wind whistling at the windows.

My father didn’t cook much, except for stints at the outdoor grill. But the man knew his oatmeal.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

This past Tuesday, my novel, All Told, was released. It’s my 12^th book; sixth novel. I was asked if Book #12 is as exciting as Book #1.

I’ve known for my entire life that I’m a writer. I used to trace the pictures in my picture books and then rewrite the stories the way I felt they should be written. I didn’t apply the word “writer” to myself until the fifth grade, when my teacher, Mrs. Faticci, told me that’s what I was. I wrote about that in an earlier Moment. I didn’t connect what I liked to do – put words together with the pictures that rolled through my mind – with those wonderful books I read. When the word writer was given to me, I shuddered with joy. It was as much me as my name.

I started submitting to magazines when I was twelve years old. My first published piece appeared when I was fifteen as a four-part serial in the Catholic Herald Citizen, of all places. I rewrote the story of Christ in 70’s slang. When I went to college at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, I tried making writing my hobby, and I majored in special education (with a focus on autism – that was fortuitous) and then social work. But the only thing that lit me up were my literature classes and my creative writing workshops. Against my parents’ will, I switched my major to writing, and again, felt like my name fit.

All along, my most favorite thing to write was the short story. My stories began to appear here, there, and everywhere. But it felt like the way to prove you were really a writer, you had to write a novel. And so I began to try.

After college, I joined a community education workshop led by Waukesha writer Ellen Hunnicutt. She became one of my most impactful mentors and cheerleaders. She told me that what made a writer a writer wasn’t talent. It was determination and discipline. So I settled in to be determined and disciplined. I never questioned that I had the talent. Writing is the only thing about myself that I’ve never questioned. Everything else…hoo boy.

My first novel wouldn’t be published until I was fifty years old.

I went through four agents. My last two were top-notch New York City agents. The third represented the book that would become, much later, In Grace’s Time. We were told the book was beautiful, but too “quiet”. After a year of submitting, she told me to shelve the book and try the next one. That was The Home For Wayward Clocks. When she read it, she told me it was stunning, but that she didn’t represent “dark” books.

So I had the choice of keeping my top-notch agent and writing another book, or firing her. I fired her.

A short time after agent #4 started submitting Clocks, we heard from an editor at Scribner’s. She loved the book, but said it needed editorial direction. She also felt it was too early in the submission process to give that direction, that someone else might take it as is. So my agent shopped it for a year, before she said, in a distinct echo from agent #3, to shelve the book and write another one. When I asked about re-submitting it to Scribner’s, she said she didn’t want me to do that, because often the editor lost interest in the time that it took to rewrite the book, and it was just a waste of energy. I was lucky at that time to be asked to be a graduate assistant for a residency at the college where I’d received my MFA in fiction (yes, I returned to grad school) and Wally Lamb was there too, as a speaker. We went to the same school. So I pulled Wally aside and asked for his advice.

He said, “New York editors don’t give second chances. Tell your agent that she works for you. Then set up a meeting with the editor. Listen carefully to what she wants to do and decide if you can do it. Then do it.” And that’s what I did.

The editor said she wanted me to change it from first person to third – EASY! – and she wanted me to bring out the “fairytale nature of the book.”

Say what?

For six months, I rewrote the book. In that time, we were contacted by an editor from Algonquin who saw one of my stories and wondered if I had a novel. So now I had two waiting editors.

Both of them rejected Clocks. Scribner’s because she’d moved to a new publishing house and was no longer interested in literary fiction. And I honestly don’t remember why Algonquin said no.

So I was back to square one. Shelve the book and keep the agent? Or fire the agent?

I fired her. And I went out on my own. And then I sold it on my own. To a publisher who took it as is, no changes, and who said to me, “New York missed out on you.”

Determination and discipline, doncha know. Thank you, Ellen.

When The Home For Wayward Clocks came out, I was fifty years old. And then came Enlarged Hearts (short story collection), Learning To Tell (A Life)Time (novel, and the sequel to Clocks), Rise From The River (novel), Oddities & Endings; The Collected Stories Of Kathie Giorgio (short story collection), True Light Falls In Many Forms (poetry chapbook), In Grace’s Time (novel), Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News; A Collection of Spontaneous Essays (the first year of this blog, in book form), When You Finally Said No (poetry chapbook), If You Tame Me (novel), and No Matter Which Way You Look, There Is More To See (full-length collection of poetry). I’ve had three publishers.

And now…All Told. A novel. And my fourth publisher.

Throughout this time, many, many short stories, poems, and short memoir, were published in magazines and anthologies.

In August of this year, my poetry chapbook, Olivia In Five, Seven, Five; Autism In Haiku, will be released. Book #13.

I am putting the finishing touches on Book #14, a novel.

I am my name. Kathie Giorgio. Writer. It is not a hobby and never has been. It’s a life. A lifetime. I am never more happy than when I’m writing.

So back to the question at the beginning of this blog. Is  Book #12 as exciting as Book #1? Yes, yes, yes. And Books #2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. Book #13 to come. Book #14 in progress.

Yes. It’s my name. It’s who I am. And there is nothing like feeling like you actually belong in your own skin.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

All Told is available pretty much everywhere. Look for it at your favorite bookseller. It will be launched at a special event for the Southeast Wisconsin Festival Of Books on January 27 at 7:00 p.m. central time. It is a Zoom event, so anyone from anywhere can come. I will be reading from the book, and then I’ll be interviewed by Jim Higgins, the books editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It’s a free event, but you need to register. Here’s how: https://www.booksco.com/event/kathie-giorgio-virtual-author-event-sewi

All 11 books.