Author: Kathie

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

Olivia is 20 years old now. She’s a college sophomore. I look at her and think about how I was her age when I married for the first time.

Yikes.

She’s been on break from school since right before Christmas. It’s been an odd break. Usually, college kids are out and about, seeing friends from high school, going to movies, going bowling, meeting at each other’s houses, dating, goofing off, having fun. COVID has meant a very limited supply of these things. Mostly, she’s been in her room, drawing, writing, watching videos, interacting with her friends via social media. When she returns to school at the end of January, she will wear a mask and attend some classes in plexiglass-partitioned classrooms. She’ll attend other classes from her dorm room, sitting at her desk, staring at her computer screen. In the dining hall, she will eat at one end of a six-foot table, and one other person will eat at the other end. There are very few social gatherings, but some are held, mostly outside around a bonfire, or inside, masked and distanced. Last year, when she was in her first semester freshman year, pre-COVID, she was the friend with a car, and so she was always out and about, going to the mall, going to Target, going to Starbucks.

Not so, now.

So this week, her best friend from college came over for a good old-fashioned sleepover. It made me think of sleepovers of the past…

*elementary school, probably second or third grade, a group of girls gathered for Olivia’s birthday. Michael and I hid out upstairs, and one little girl, who constantly wanted something, a drink, something to eat, a different show on television, world peace, stood at the bottom of the steps and yelled, over and over again, “Olivia’s mom! Olivia’s mom!”

*middle school, sleepovers with two best friends, one whose voice we didn’t hear for over a year, and the other, who made up for it with statements like, “I think I would like to have blue hair when I grow up, and I want to sparkle.”

*high school, a variety of friends, sleepovers disappearing behind Olivia’s bedroom door instead of out in the living room, whispers about boys, coming out in wild make-up, songs played off YouTube. When I woke up at 4:00, the giggles, the whispers, still rose from the floor below.

And now this new sleepover, with a best college friend, in a time spent mostly inside.

They did go out for a bit, to spend the friend’s gift cards from Christmas. They wore masks, they paid attention where they stood, they came home.

Michael and I hid out again. From the living room came the sound of video games and movies, cabinets opening and closing, the fridge flapping like a revolving door.

And giggling. Lots and lots of giggling. No matter where I was, that lilting sound drifted up the stairs and followed me.

When I shut down for the night at 3:00 a.m., the lights were still on, the giggles still rose.

I went to bed that night, feeling surrounded by the familiar. There is still laughter. There is still a daughter who smiles.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

I’ve never been much of a plant person, likely because I tend to kill them. My mother was very into plants, and I grew up in a jungle, with plants on every table and windowsill and in every available spot outside. My parents once received an aerial view of their house, taken without their knowledge by a pilot flying overhead, and there in the front yard, was my mother, bent over her flowers, weeding.

I’m more the type that likes to walk through gardens, admire them, and then go home.

But there are some plants that have managed to tug at my heart, including one that will be this week’s moment.

For the last several years, there has been an orchid in the AllWriters’ classroom. I don’t remember why I bought it, other than I likely thought it was pretty and maybe I was having a down day at the time. But it blooms regularly and always makes me smile. Before COVID, I gave it its three (not two, not four, but three) ice cubes once a week. Then, when the studio was forced to go remote because of the virus, I began to teach from upstairs in my office and the classroom remained dark. I remembered to water the other plants in there, but the refrigerator, with the three ice cubes, was on a different floor. I would tell the orchid, “I’ll get you later, I promise,” and then I promptly forgot my promise and the ice cubes. When it began to look sick a while ago, I brought it upstairs to our living room, adjacent to the kitchen with its refrigerator, and now it gets its cubes regularly again. I love this little plant, and its leaves, once limp, are raised once again in glory. I’m waiting for the first time it blooms in my home and not my classroom.

A few winters ago, when I’d just gone through breast cancer, my husband surprised me by coming out of the grocery store and handing me a bag. “Who wants to see something pretty?” he asked. This is a line from The Homecoming, the original made-for-tv movie that birthed The Waltons, my favorite television show. Olivia Walton (yes, that’s why our Olivia is Olivia) comes up from the root cellar and says to the children, “Who wants to see something pretty?” and then she pulls out her Christmas cactus, in full bloom. When I looked in the brown grocery bag, there was a Christmas cactus. It was a riot of color this Christmas, and I love the darn thing. Every time I water it, I whisper, “Who wants to see something pretty?”

And then, of course, there’s the hibiscus tree. That little tree, whose branch snagged me in that same grocery store at the start of the pandemic, carried me through the summer. The blooms were incredible and there were so many. I talked to it whenever I was outside. I took all of the photos of it and put them into a book, so I could admire them over the cold winter.

The hibiscus is inside now, and sadly, it’s not doing well. It lost all of its leaves. I haven’t thrown it out, telling myself that it’s dormant, not dead, but I’m pretty sure I’m just in denial. I water it faithfully and hope, but there is a vein of reality running through me. I look at the photo book often. I bought a baby hibiscus plant and it sits on a table in my office. It’s doing well, but I have a hard time connecting it to that magnificent little tree that seemed to know exactly what I needed.

And then this week. I was back in the grocery store. It was a gray Saturday, with more snow predicted. COVID is still with us. The vaccine roll-out has been a disaster. The mob insurrection at the Capitol was days away. We didn’t know that, of course, but there was a tension in the air. Anyone who has been paying attention to the news knew that something was coming.

I felt gray like the day. I went in to the store, picked out our Sunday doughnuts, then headed for the self check-out. On the way, I suddenly saw a small white garden table set off to the side. It was filled with primroses.

Hot pink. Purple. Red. Yellow. The colors were so bright, I felt like summer blew in through the doors and waited just for me on that table. I stood and admired them. I started to walk away, but then went back. “You’ll kill it,” I said to myself.

But there was one. Bright pink. It had one leaf curled like a beckoning hand and it beckoned for me. I thought of my orchid, the Christmas cactus (who wants to see something pretty?), and my hibiscus which got me through a difficult summer.

We are heading into a difficult winter.

I picked up the little pink primrose. And I brought it home. I transplanted it into a bigger pot and as I tucked the new dirt around the little plant like a blanket, I heard a plane fly overhead. I wondered if the pilot would take a picture, and if it would somehow capture me, not weeding, but bent over a little plant.

It made me smile.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

So Christmas is over. It was an odd one, for sure. We did it via Zoom, with Michael, Olivia and me in different rooms in the condo, on our own computers, Katie on her computer in Louisiana with her husband by her side, Andy in his apartment a couple miles away, on his computer, Christopher with his wife by his side in his house a mile away, and Grandbaby Maya Mae on her own iPad.

All these faces on the screen like the Brady Bunch. Weird. We had a few glitches, of course, but thank goodness for technology. It allowed me to see my kids and my granddaughter and watch them as they opened their gifts. So the holiday was…different. But not devastated.

Whew.

And now, New Year’s Eve.

Without a doubt, 2020 has been an awful year. The pandemic has been a major part of the awfulness, but of course, political issues have run hot too.

One of my favorite Christmas presents this year came from my husband. It’s a beautiful Christmas ornament, made out of wood, backed in red, my favorite color. It looks like a snowflake. But when you look closer, you see that the “arms” of the snowflake spell a word. The ornament says, and pardon the language if you have sensitive ears and eyes, “Fuck 2020.” It made me laugh.

But it also made me want to cry. I could only hold it up to the screen to show my kids and watch them laugh. We weren’t able to pass it hand to hand.

What a year.

At 12:01 a.m. this coming morning, we will cross into 2021. I think that most of us have the common sense to know that change isn’t going to be instantaneous. 2020 isn’t a skin we’re going to shed. But I know that many of us are also dreamers, who hope-hope-hope that something magical will happen and our country and this world will suddenly snick back into shape, as of God or a Higher Power was a chiropractor and adjusted us into our proper posture.

So we need to prepare for waking up tomorrow morning, without much changed.

Yet. We need to celebrate the Yet. Change is coming. But change is rarely fast.

My moment(s) of happiness this week came from watching people post what was good about their 2020. I saw lists of job triumphs and health triumphs and personal triumphs and births and moves and glorious sunsets and sunrises and on and on. And my moment(s) came from watching people reach with hope toward the New Year. Hope!

Hope still exists. And I still have hope too.

Lots of good things happened in 2020, amidst the chaos. I managed to come up with a moment of happiness for every week of it, except one. This was a challenge, let me tell you. But I did it, and I’m better for it.

Better.

My friend who is going through breast cancer during this time ends every email with one word: Onward! And I stand with her.

And now…on to 2021. Happy New Year, everyone!

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

Onward!

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

So they say when you get married, you not only marry your chosen person, but you marry the entire family. I found out, years and years ago, then when you divorce your chosen person, the entire family divorces you, whether you want them to or not. It’s a hard fact of divorce, and one that hardly anyone ever talks about. I was reminded of it this week. And yes, it does lead to a moment of happiness, or at least, a moment of peace.

I met my first husband when I was sixteen years old. He was the first boy to tell me my eyes were beautiful. I’ve always been sensitive about my eyes – I was born with strabismus, a condition where the muscles of the eye don’t work quite right, and as a result, my eyes were crossed. I likely saw double for the first sixteen months of my life, and then between 16 months of age and 15 years, I had five eye surgeries. When I was sixteen, the surgeries were behind me, and it was clear my eyes would never be perfectly straight. I was playing in the band at a new high school, and at the first football game of the season, I was in the stands, waiting for the halftime show. This boy sat next to me and said, “I know you’re new here. You have the most beautiful eyes.”

I married him five years later.

We stayed married for 17 years, and produced three amazing children. Then for reasons I won’t disclose here, we divorced. Suffice it to say that I was the one who did the leaving, and it remains the hardest decision of my life.

I’ve been married to Michael for 21 years now, and away from that first marriage for 23. The first Christmas after my divorce, I asked my now ex-husband if I could send Christmas cards to the members of his family, members who I considered my family. He said no, they never wanted to hear from me again.

So I remained silent.

I saw them years later at my oldest son’s wedding. One sister-in-law spoke briefly to me. No one else did.

Then, a couple weeks ago, my daughter told me that my ex-mother-in-law was in the hospital with COVID. And then a couple days later, she died.

I will admit that my first thought was of my ex-husband. Is he okay? Can I help? Eventually, I sent a card. It felt like the only thing I was allowed to do.

But I thought of my mother-in-law. And whenever I think of her, one huge memory always comes through.

When we were first married, I would drive to my in-law’s house after work to pick up my husband, who car-pooled with his father. One day, on the way to their house, I was following behind a motorcycle. From the side of the road, a small cat came out of the field and began to cross. I watched, horrified, as the motorcyclist veered out of his way to hit the cat.

I can still remember to this day that little cat, flat out in the middle of the road, his head up, looking after the motorcyclist, as if wondering what happened and why did he do it.

I pulled over and parked, then stood over the cat to make sure no other vehicles hit him further. Eventually, he stood up and walked wobbling to the other side of the road. I held my hands on either side, so he could bump off of me and not fall back down. Then he disappeared into the cornfield.

I feel as if I was stone-faced when I got back into my car. I drove to my in-laws’ house. When I walked in, my mother-in-law looked up at me, did a doubletake, and she said, “What’s wrong, Kathie?”

I burst into tears and told the story. Before I was halfway through, my mother-in-law encircled me with her arms and held me so close, rocking me back and forth, and saying, “Oh, how awful. Oh, how awful.” Eventually, she sat me down at the kitchen table, brought me a cup of coffee and a cookie, and she hugged me again.

“Some people are just bad people, Kathie,” she said. “But you’re a good person.”

I’ve never forgotten it.

Because of COVID, my ex-mother-in-law died alone.

There was a memorial service for her this week, at her church. It was for family only, for the family I used to be a part of. If not for COVID, it would have been a typical funeral, and I would have slipped in and sat in the final row, so I could pay my respects and say goodbye. But I couldn’t. This was COVID era, and I was no longer family.

So I watched it on the video link.

When it was over, I headed out to Starbucks and then I had to go pick up a last-minute gift I’d ordered for my granddaughter. As I drove down the street, I suddenly had to grind to an almost-halt behind a very slow-moving vehicle. I saw that there were several, all moving really slowly. I thought maybe there was an accident ahead. And then I noticed the telltale flags on the antennas. And the flashing hazard lights.

“No,” I said out loud.

The cars turned at an intersection. I saw one son’s car, a bright red Kia Soul, and then my other son’s car, a little white Smartcar. I was at the end, the final car of my mother-in-law’s funeral procession.

I didn’t follow. But I watched them go up and over a hill. And then I said out loud, “Goodbye, Mom. Thank you so much.”

I felt at peace.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

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

Eons and eons and eons ago, it was discovered that I had a brain blip. I was in the third grade and we were studying zoo animals. For one assignment, we had to choose a water fowl to talk about. I drew a pudgy black and white bird with webbed feet and wrote a few lines about him. I called this literary masterpiece: “The Pelican”.

My teacher, Mrs. Campbell, studied it. “Kathie,” she said, “this is a penguin.”

“Yep,” I said. “A pelican.”

“Penguin.”

“Pelican.”

She wrote the word penguin on the blackboard. “What does this say?” she asked.

I looked at it, took a breath, and said, “Pelican.”

She frowned. Then she wrote the word pelican on the board. “What does this say?” she asked.

I repeated my process. “Pelican,” I said.

She used a pointer to go back and forth between them and asked me to say what each spelled.

“Pelican. Pelican. Pelican. Pelican.”

Finally, she pointed at one of the words. “Kathie. Take a deep breath. Say peng.”

“Peng,” I said.

“Guin,” she said.

“Guin,” I echoed.

“Penguin.”

“Penguin,” I agreed.

“So what does this say?” She pointed to the first word.

“Pelican.”

And thus the pelican penguin bizarre brain-fartiness was born. I didn’t do it with any other word, then or now.

Fast forward years to when I was a young mom, at the zoo with my three kids. I think they were around eight, six, and five years old. One of the first things you see at our zoo after the entrance is the peli – I mean penguin exhibit. “Look!” I said. “There are the pelicans!”

Three pairs of wide eyes looked at me. “Mom,” the oldest, Christopher, said. “Those are penguins.”

“Right,” I said. “Pelicans!”

So if you’re a parent, you know you spend years trying to do right by your children. It’s not always easy, but you strive. You love them beyond anything or anyone else in this great universe. And yet make one mistake…and that’s what they remember.

Ever since that day, I have three children who call penguins pelicans. On purpose. They wrap their Christmas presents in peli—penguin paper. I believe that both of my boys at one point had stuffed peli—penguins on their televisions, because of the classic Monty Python skit, “There’s A Peli—Penguin On The Telly!”, a skit which never failed to put me into helpless giggles. One son, I believe, still has that stuffed bird by his television, though he’s soon to be 35.

At the zoo that day, my now ex-husband said to me, “Kathie. Penguins.”

“Pelicans,” I agreed.

Honestly, I don’t think that’s why we’re divorced.

I also don’t think the kids even remember anymore where this came from. Except that we have this peli—penguin thing going on in our family. And they know I say pelican all the time, with these lovely black and white waddling waterfowl. P-E-N-G-U-I-N spells pelican.

So last summer, deep in the pandemic, I was perusing through Facebook when I saw that a friend, a poet, was moving to Pennsylvania. He was selling some things, and there were six plastic peli—penguins for purchase. They were Christmas decorations. Some held candy canes.

So yes. A poet, moving to Pennsylvania during the pandemic, was selling plastic peli—penguins.

I bought them, strapped them into the back seat of my convertible, and laughed all the way home. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I was going to do something.

And then an idea hit. A trip to Etsy, and I found what I needed. A stencil. Of a pelican. Really. Not a peli—penguin.

The peli—penguins all got a nice soapy bath. I painted some rough spots. And then each peli—penguin got a tattoo of a pelican – a real pelican – on its white tummy. Beneath that, Michael helped me out with his beautiful penmanship and wrote out the names of the family, including in-laws and my much-adored Grandbaby Maya Mae, who knew nothing about Grandma Kaffee’s speech impediment.

Then I thought I had it all planned out, this pandemic paradoxical ploy of mine. I packed one plastic peli—penguin up and shipped him to Louisiana to my daughter and her husband. It was to arrive last Friday. So that day, I planned that I would show up at my boys’ houses when they were at work and leave behind the peli—penguins on their doorstep.

Oh, and one would appear outside Olivia’s door too. And one by my fireplace, for me and Michael.

Friday morning came. It was pouring. My pandemic paradoxical peli—penguin ploy was pulverized. I couldn’t leave them outside. The rain might wash away the tattoos. So one showed up on time in bright and warm Louisiana. One showed up outside Olivia’s room. One at my fireplace. But three more waited piteously in the back seat of my car.

Saturday. It snowed.

I let both boys in on the ploy. One, he of the peli—penguin still on his telly, came by to pick his up. He got it home and promptly sent me a photo with the peli—penguin checking out Virtual Reality.

When it stopped snowing, I snuck over to the other boy’s house and left one peli—penguin for him and his wife, and one, holding a candy cane, for Grandbaby Maya Mae. I hid in my car in the dark and watched as they came home and Maya walked up to the creatures. She stared. Then she picked one up and brought it inside. The one with the candy cane.

When I talked to her via Zoom later, I told her most of the peli—penguin story. I asked her if she liked her peli—penguin. “Grandma Kaffee,” she said, with her arm draped around a pelican’s shoulders. I mean, penguin. I mean, pelican. “I love him. I’m going to keep him in my room.”

When I asked her what she thought it was, she studied him for a moment. Then she said, “It’s a penguin with a pelican on its belly.”

Exactly. A pelican with a pelican on its belly.

Preposterous.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

My granddaughter, Grandbaby Maya Mae, lives exactly 1.2 miles away from me. This is a distance easily walked. During the course of a typical week, back before March 2020 when things were still typical, I drove by her home several times a week, and even if she wasn’t there, I waved at the house and called, “Hi, Maya!” She attended my book launches, always sitting quietly and politely, even when she was only a toddler.

Grandbaby Maya Mae has appeared in several of my Moments. One of my favorites is from when I was doing the Moment every day, in 2017. On October 10^th of that year, I wrote about this moment with Maya, when I told her she was making a fashion statement.

“I admired Maya Mae’s leopard-print dress draped gracefully over hot pink leggings, the leggings ending over beaded flip-flops. “You look beautiful, Maya Mae,” I said. “You make a fashion statement.”

She looked up at me, eyes wide. “Whaaaaaaaaaaat?”

Oboy. “A fashion statement. It means that you choose to wear what makes you feel beautiful. You wear stuff that you like and that makes you happy. You wear what makes you Maya Mae.”

She thumped her chest. “I am ME!”

Indeed.”

Maya is 7-soon-to-be-8 now. And she grows ME-ier every year, if not every day.

And right now, because of COVID, I don’t see Maya in person, despite the fact that she is only 1.2 miles away. Easily walked. I’m not out driving as much, but when I do, if I pass her house, I still wave and call out, “Hi, Maya!” though there is a significant catch in my voice.

Since March, I can count the times I’ve seen her in person on one hand. With less than one hand. I saw her on Memorial Day, when we had a socially distanced cookout. I saw her this past October, when she came to dinner to celebrate my being put on my high school’s Wall Of Fame. A couple days after that, she was at my home for several hours when we babysat because my son and his wife simply ran out of babysitting options, so I took a risk. And that’s it. She wasn’t here at Thanksgiving. We don’t know yet what Christmas will bring.

However, I do talk to her almost every night, via Zoom. We are reading our way through the Junie B. Jones series. I see her, hear her, and we laugh. She wiggles her loose teeth for me, and pokes her tongue out through the gaps where teeth have already been lost. She displays her artwork. She models her new clothes – she’s still making a fashion statement. She shares her toys with me.

It’s not the same, but it helps.

A few nights ago, I read the next chapter of Junie B. Jones. When I was finished, Maya sat straight up, crossed her arms and declared, “And now, I am going to read to YOU!” She stretched out her arms and two pointer fingers targeted me. I was delighted.

But then she got out a collection of sheets of paper, all stapled together down one side. She held the front up to the camera, where I admired a drawn picture of a cat and a dog with very grumpy faces. “This,” Grandbaby Maya Mae announced, “is a BOOK. And do you see who wrote it? Do you?”

I looked at the bottom of the cover, where there was a name in all capital letters. “M, A, Y, A!” I said. “Maya!”

“MAYA!” she shouted, both hands flung out in the best Ta-dah! ever. “I wrote a book!”

She wrote a book!

“And I’m going to read it to YOU.” She sat back down and I listened as she read the story. A cat and a dog lived together, but never got along. They fought a lot. One night, they went to sleep after barking and meowing at each other all day. In the morning, when they woke up, it was Christmas! They opened presents and then they smiled at each other. They became friends. The End. Throughout, Maya held the book up to the screen so I could see her illustrations, just like I showed her the illustrations in the books I read to her.

“Maya!” I exulted. “You did it! There’s conflict! There’s a resolution! There’s character development!”

“Gramma Kaffee,” she said (the “Gamma” is gone, unfortunately, but the Kaffee is still there), frowning at me. “I WROTE a BOOK.”

She did. With that pure unadulterated, well, let’s make that unadulted joy of just putting one word after another and seeing how they made a meaning and suddenly, there was a story. One of my first stories was “The Deer That Went Boating”. And I didn’t think of conflict, resolution, or character development either. I acted out the story that night in the bathtub, playing with bathtub toys. When I got out, I quickly dressed in my pajamas while whispering my soap-bubbled words so I wouldn’t forget them, sat down at my desk, and wrote the story. Then I tamped the pages all together and stapled them down the side. A book.

Just like Maya Mae. And Maya Mae, just like me.

1.2 miles. And hours, days, months of pandemic. But that face beamed at me from the screen and mine beamed back at her. I remembered the face that beamed back at me when I looked in a mirror that night after my bath, when I held my book and thought about showing my teacher the next day.

“Mrs. Faticci,” I said. “I wrote a book.” And she beamed.

“Maya Mae,” I said now. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Maya said. And then she sat down to read her book again.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

With Thanksgiving out of the way, Christmas is now looming. And I say looming, because pre-pandemic, I wasn’t crazy about Christmas, and this year, I’m even less crazy about it. The news is filled with dire warnings, warnings which I take very seriously, and so of course, it’s leading me to wonder if Christmas is going to happen at all. It will certainly not be the usual Christmas. It will likely be a Christmas spent staring at a computer screen at faces I love staring back at me.

Now I live in a 3-story condo, which does not have a basement. It also has only a one car garage. So storage is at a premium. Consequently, we rent a storage space off-site, and that is where all of our Christmas stuff resides. One of the reasons I’m not crazy about Christmas is that it just adds more to-do’s on my already overflowing to-do list. I have to:

• Drive to the storage facility.
• Probably forget the key to the padlock, have to drive back home, then return to the storage facility, where I will struggle with remembering the passcode on the keypad outside the locked gate. And where the gate will likely malfunction.
• Figure out which boxes marked Christmas are filled with the Christmas decorations we actually use – there are years represented here, and also several life situations. Michael’s life before us, our life before Michael, and all of us together. So we don’t use it all. But we don’t get rid of it either.
• Load the car.
• Reload the car with better organization so that it all actually fits.
• Drive home.
• Carry all of the stuff up to the second floor, which is where our living room is. Endure swearing and groaning and the required tripping over two cats and a dog.
• Move the piano so that there is room for the tree. Not easy.
• Designate the setting up of the tree and the decorating of it to Michael and Olivia because I have to get to work in my office upstairs.
• Listen to increasing decibels as Michael’s grumpiness grows and wait for the final, “I’m done! This is all yours now!” and the flump as he throws himself muttering into his recliner.
• Wait for Olivia to call me downstairs to admire the tree.
• Spend the rest of the season yelling at the cats to get out of the tree and picking up cat barf from their chewing on it and sweeping up broken ornaments that they knock down.
• Spend the rest of the season reassuring the scared-of-everything dog that the tree is not a monster and nothing she needs to be terrified of. Up her dose of CBD. Think about plying her with Fireball. Instead, ply myself.
• Christmas is over, do all of this in reverse, swear never to do it again.

Doesn’t that sound like fun? Oh, sing we joyous all together! But I have to admit, on Christmas morning, the tree sparkling, the kids under my roof, the granddaughter piping away in excitement, the aroma of cinnamon rolls throughout, well, for that moment, it’s all worth it.

But this year…well, it’s different, isn’t it. We don’t know right now if there will be an in-person family get-together at Christmas or if I will be delivering presents to doorsteps and then we will watch each other open those presents on Zoom.

So frankly, I have absolutely no desire to go through steps 1 – 14 above. The three of us talked about it, and none of us were enthusiastic.

One night late last week, I sat in my recliner after everyone else went to bed. It was around two in the morning and it was dark outside. Inside, I had the fireplace on and the reading light over my chair and I sat in my circle of heat and glow, enjoying a very good book. I looked at the corner of the living room, where the tree would normally go. Where it should be, by now.

But I still didn’t want it. Just the thought of it made me moan with overload. But clearly, something was missing. As a nod to holiday glee, Michael brought home a small rubber ducky wearing a Santa hat and it sat on our piano, but it seemed more pathetic than gleeful.

Something was missing. Well, a lot would be missing this Christmas, but in that room, something was missing.

So I went upstairs to my computer and got on Amazon. I ordered a teeny tiny tree that came with lights, sparkly ornaments, pine cones, a star, and a piece of bright silver fabric to wrap around the base. It arrived just in time for Olivia to come home for Thanksgiving break, which will blend into Christmas break. Her college is going remote for the last few weeks of this semester, so she’s home through January, when the school will decide if face to face classes will resume or if it will stay remote. More uncertainty. I handed her the little tree to decorate. And she did a lovely job.

A few nights ago, I was alone in my recliner again, everyone asleep. The only one with me was a little gray cat who purred  on my lap. The fireplace was on. My reading light was on. A very good book was balanced on the cat’s back. And I looked toward the island which separates our living room from our kitchen.

The tree, tidy and small, glowed softly in the dark. It threw out little glimmers of red, blue, green, and yellow. The ornaments, sprinkled with glitter, reflected and sparkled. The star at the top glistened. At the base of the tree, I’d set a Christmas card a student sent me. It was hand-painted with watercolors, and inside, her message was written in calligraphy. I knew this was this student’s first attempt at both painting and calligraphy. It was beautiful. It was hopeful, a reaching out to the future with new abilities and talents and dreams achieved.

That little glow soothed me. It was enough, for this Christmas.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Well, this is a very different Thanksgiving, isn’t it. I know that my house is very quiet today, without the sounds of four kids, two in-laws, and one granddaughter. There are still the two of us and our Olivia. But everyone else is practicing smart COVID distancing. It’s sad, but at the same time, I feel cared for. And I care for them too.

Every Tuesday, on the AllWriters’ Facebook page, I post a writing prompt for, well, all writers. This week, I posted, “Write a list poem, please, of all the GOOD things that happened this year. Try.” A few hours later, a student posted, “You, for one.” Not a poem, Mary Ann, but it made me happy anyway. On Monday, I was interviewed by another student for her vlog on gratitude on YouTube. I’ve never been interviewed for such a thing before, and when she said she wanted to talk to me about my gratitude practice, I was really kind of floored. I don’t think of writing these Moments as a gratitude practice, but I suppose they really are. Noticing these sometimes small, sometimes big things that bring me joy does make me feel grateful, though I don’t know that I was conscious of that before. The interview was a very fun one to do, and you can see it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn3rrTm5v4o&fbclid=IwAR0JUDK9UgQo2gW1hUX1pbOcL3xs7n-QJ2xScMn8B3CH39WftI3jPR1sVwA

So I decided I would use this space to list what I am grateful for, in a sense writing my own prompt (though it won’t be a poem either!) and acknowledging my own practice. I think it’s pretty amazing that there can be gratitude in this awful year. In the interview, I said that one of the things I’ve learned is that happiness doesn’t just happen. You have to look for it. That’s especially true in 2020.

So here we go. The things I’m grateful for:

MY KIDS

Shortly after COVID started, my three oldest kids, all living outside of my home, set up a Facebook chat so that I can be in touch with them at a moment’s notice. I speak to them every day. I always thought that the easiest time of parenting would be when my kids were adults, but I’ve not found that to be true. I can no longer gather them together under my wings when there is trouble. Even Olivia, while still in college and not completely independent yet, is out of my reach for much of the time. But being able to talk to the kids every day, make sure they’re feeling okay, has helped a lot. And I have to think that they like to touch base with me too.

NINTENDO SWITCH’S ANIMAL CROSSING NEW HORIZONS

By extension from my family, yes, I am grateful for a video game. My son Andy has a close friend named Rayne, and I’ve considered her a part of my family since she and Andy were in high school. She lives in Portland, Oregon now. Soon after COVID started, when it was pretty obvious I was getting stressed out, she told me she was playing Animal Crossing and it was helping a lot. I played the GameCube version of this years ago and absolutely loved it. Rayne said the new game was very similar to the old one. I didn’t want to spend money on a game system right now, as I own and run a small business and, of course, COVID makes that business’ future uncertain. But my son Andy stepped up and bought me a system and the game and it’s been a lifesaver. I escape for hours onto my own island, building and decorating my house, talking with friendly animal neighbors, growing pumpkins, creating a coffee shop and an exercise center and a symphony and all sorts of places. Now, being a writer, you might think I can escape to other worlds pretty often. But the thing is, when you write fiction, it has to have a conflict, so no story or novel is completely peaceful. My Animal Crossing island, which I named Dreamhome, is peaceful.

MY WONDERFUL CLIENTS AND STUDENTS

AllWriters’ provides me with my extended family. Thanks to the miracle of the internet, I was able to completely move my business online. The majority of it was online already, but we had at least one workshop going every day, including Saturday, in the on-site classroom. It’s been dark since March, but my computer screen has been brightly lit. Seeing my students succeed is one of my biggest joys in life, and please bear in mind that success does not necessarily mean publication. For some of my students, success is their actually giving some time and thought to their own dreams. Putting a word down is a success. Writing a story, a poem, an essay, is a success. So is writing a book. And so is publishing. But the biggest success of all is acknowledging who you are and what you can do. I love what I do, and I love watching them learn that they love it too, and can actually say that out loud.

MY NEW PUBLISHER

My 12^th book, 6^th novel, is under contract with a new publisher. This publisher blew me away to the point where I had to call the acquisitions editor and ask her to sit down with me and go over the contract paragraph by paragraph because I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. The new book will have a hardcover edition, something I’ve never had before. There will be international distribution. And there was that magical word of all magical words – an advance. There is nothing that says a publisher believes in you more than their offering to pay you before your book is even released. Holy cow. This was massive validation.

I am grateful as well for my previous publishers, of course. They believed in me when no one else did and put me out there. Without them, I wouldn’t be here.

CONTINUED HEALTH

Three years out from breast cancer. Still taking the oral chemo pill every single night, but I only have two years left. Three years out feels good.

TECHNOLOGY

Lordy. Can you imagine going through this without Zoom, Skype, Facetime, and however else people are still getting together? I don’t understand the internet, I can’t see it or touch it, but I am ever so grateful for it.

So. Even in this awful, no-good, horrific year, there are things to be grateful for. While I’m not consciously aware of having a “gratitude practice”, I am aware of being thankful. We look ahead. We move forward.

We go have some pumpkin pie, fresh out of the oven.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

This may come across as an odd one at first. I’ve actually spent a huge amount of time today, trying to come up with another Moment instead of the one that keeps popping up in my head. I’m worried about this Moment coming across as I’m somehow happy that a friend has been diagnosed with breast cancer. I’m not. But the Moment is caught up in this.

So a friend told me on Monday that she’d failed her mammogram and was going for two biopsies on Tuesday. On Tuesday, she emailed me and said, “Radiologists can be wrong, right?” And on Wednesday, we spoke in the morning, while she was waiting for the result, and we spoke again in the evening, when she had the result. Positive. With the exact same breast cancer I had in 2017.

I’m three years out now, though I am still on oral chemotherapy, popping a little yellow pill each day that leaves me feeling achy and sweaty. Fun. I’ve never considered my breast cancer experience positive before. But now…well, this week, it showed me what that experience could do. For others.

When she told me she had to have the biopsies, I was able to tell her exactly what would happen and how it would feel. She walked in to the clinic with real knowledge.

When she emailed me, asking if a radiologist could be wrong, we were able to compare notes. My radiologist normally told women they had a 20% chance it was cancer, and an 80% chance it wasn’t, but with me, he was switching it. He was 80% sure I had cancer. In my friend’s case, her radiologist told her she was “pretty confident” it was cancer. My friend and I talked about this, talked about how we walked out, shattered, of the same cancer center, talked about our hopes…and then talked about reality.

When she called me with the result, she cried, and I knew where the tears were coming from. I told her not to try to stop them. We discussed the blank stares, the shock, the belief that it wasn’t real, that there would be a phone call saying that the wrong result, someone else’s, had been given. Her next step is an MRI, and we talked about that, and I told her things that the medical staff hadn’t told her to expect. How hot she would feel. How her lower back would ache because of the lay-on-your-stomach position, and how the required pose arches your back. The first time I had the MRI, I didn’t know about bolsters. They didn’t tell me about bolsters. But when I said at the second one that my back ached after the first MRI, they immediately pulled one out and eased the strain in my back by supporting my shins. Apparently, the bolsters are a secret.  “Ask for a bolster for your shins,” I said.

We talked about the well-intentioned, but inane things people say. “Oh, you’re so lucky! You have the good kind of cancer!”, because the cancer she has and I had was estrogen-based and more easily treated. But there is no good kind of cancer. “Keep a positive attitude! That helps in the healing!” Actually, stuffing your feelings of sadness, fear and anger makes you suffer more. I told her she would have negative days (like right now) and positive days. Accept them both. “Once you have the surgery, don’t say you have cancer anymore! That puts it out in the Universe and it will come back!” Oh, for god’s sake. I didn’t even have to explain that one. Our eyes rolled and our laughs were incredulous.

And I told her about the one thing that someone said to me that stuck. That resonated. I received the 80% news two days before I was to lead the AllWriters’ Annual Retreat for a four-day weekend. I am pretty sure I walked the halls of the retreat center for those four days with the cliché deer-in-the-headlights expression, that wasn’t a cliché because I never ever ever expected to have to face breast cancer. One of my students, a doctor, would stop me in my tracks whenever he saw me. He put his hands on my shoulders. And he said, “You’re going to be okay. No matter what. You might have a tough time for a while, but you’re going to be okay.” He didn’t tell me I wouldn’t have it, that it would be all right. He didn’t tell me it would be easy. He didn’t tell me to stay positive and to pull tricks on the Universe. He just said, “You’re going to be okay, no matter what,” letting me know that even if it was hard, there would be a time again when all would be well.

And he was right.

So throughout all of our conversations the last few days, I told my friend she would be okay. No matter what.

And I knew that I was giving her the one thing I really wished I had during all of my own experience – someone who would sit and listen and understand and say, “I know,” because the experience was shared. The “I know”, my “I know” comes from compassion, for sure, but it also comes out of knowledge. She can see, in me, someone who knows what she’s feeling, knows what she’s going to go through, and is still sitting, intact, right across from her. With a wonky-looking breast, for sure, but really, intact.

Before we hung up on Skype last night, she said, “Kathie, you are a really, really good friend.”

And for the first time ever, since the radiologist told me I had an 80% chance of having breast cancer, and it turned out he was 100% right, since going through the ultrasounds, biopsies, MRI’s, surgery, 20 rounds of radiation, what has been 3 years of oral chemotherapy, what will be a total of 5 years of oral chemotherapy, since tears and fears and anger and the world not only turning on its ear, but feeling like it became roadkill, for the first time ever, I am grateful that I had breast cancer.

Because I could be there. In the deepest way possible. For her.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Since the pandemic started, I haven’t been able to see much of my only grandchild, Grandbaby Maya Mae. She’s no longer a baby; 7 years old and in the second grade, she would be quick to assure you that she is not a baby at all. But to me, of course, she always will be, just as my kids are too. I can’t help, when I look at them, to see who they are now, but also to remember the little ones they used to be.

I was in the room when Maya was born. I saw her come into this world. It was an event I will never ever forget. When you’re a mother, you’ve had the experience of birthing, but you’ve never witnessed it from the outside. In the case of my kids, I’m pretty sure they were all born when my eyes were squeezed tightly shut and I was shrieking. When Olivia was born, my obstetrician had this obsession with having the mom reach down and catch the baby as it emerged. I clearly remember him yelling, “Reach down! Reach down!” and while I don’t think I said it out loud, I absolutely thought, Are you out of your freaking mind? My body was caught up in getting that child out, and reaching for her with my hands at that moment would have meant I unfisted my fingers from whatever it was I had my death grip on. Olivia was safely caught by my doctor and then placed on me as I collapsed back into the birthing bed. And that was wonder enough.

But Maya…I saw her pop into the world. I saw her daddy, my son, holding on to her and saying over and over, “I’m your daddy! I’m your daddy!” And I held her too, before she was ten minutes old.

Maya lives in the same town I do, so this new isolation because of the pandemic is hard. Soon after the initial shutdown, I set up Zoom calls with Maya, where I read to her every night and she tells me about her day. I’ve seen her in person less than a handful of times since March. I don’t know what we’re going to do for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everything is still up in the air. But thank goodness for Zoom. For letting me see her face and hear her voice.

This week, that little face and voice told me about a diary that she got from her Scholastic order at school. The diary is fuzzy and has cat ears, and Maya is the Cat Queen, just parading through Halloween dressed as the Crazy Cat Lady. This diary, true to diaries throughout the years, comes with a little lock and key, and Maya told me she writes her thoughts down in there, and then she locks them away.

I was delighted, and asked if she still has the journal I gave her last summer, to write stories in. In first grade, Maya began to write stories. I wanted to give her a special place to do so. The journal was purple and had purple feathers on it.

“Yes!” she said, and despite the gift of the journal being over a year before, she knew exactly where it was. She retrieved it, and then we spent a few minutes going over what she wrote way back then. “Wow,” she said. “I wrote sloppy when I was young.”

When she was young.

“I’m going to write another story!” she said, and sank right down on the floor with her pencil to do so.

“That’s excellent!” I said. “Read it to me tomorrow when I call you again.”

There’s something about your child, or your grandchild, connecting with something that you do. My oldest child, Christopher, wrote phenomenal poetry when he was in the first grade. I remember marveling over his instinctual knowledge of when to use repetition, and when to quit. As an adult, he doesn’t write, but he loves music and song lyrics. My middle child, Andy, was writing a novel for a while, and even took part in one of my classes. I will always remember when he came home in third grade, running in the door and shouting, “Mom! Mom! I started a story about a wizard!” And then he slouched for a minute and said, “But I think I spelled wizard wrong.” We spoke over an after-school snack of milk and cookies about how writers don’t worry about such things in first drafts. We worry about that later. He brightened, and he finished that story. My third child, Katie, she of the amazing math mind, also has an amazing mind for haiku. Every now and then, she sends me one, and each and every time, I marvel. And then there’s Olivia, the child of two writers. She writes poetry. She’s working on a novel. She’s had a poem published in a literary magazine already, and two articles in her college’s magazine.

And now, Grandbaby Maya Mae.

When I called her on Zoom the next day, she charged the screen with her purple feather journal. “Grandma Kaffee,” she said, the toddler “Gamma” gone, but the “th” still difficult, so Kaffee remains and I love it, “I’m going to write a chapter book!” And then she sat down and read to me. It’s all about a girl named Maya.

A chapter book.

That “something” about a child connecting with you with what you do…it somehow shows a respect, I think, an acknowledgement of who you are, beyond their mother, or their grandmother.

I treasure them. I treasure their words. Each and every one.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.