Author: Kathie

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

Okay, break out the woowoo. Break out the whackadoodle. But really, I am not crazy, even though in the last ten days, I’ve dealt with the following:

*oldest daughter starting her semester of teaching at a university during the COVID era.

*youngest daughter starting her sophomore year at college during the COVID era.

*granddaughter preparing to return to school in second grade after our district school board decided it was perfectly fine for elementary school students and their teachers to go back five days a week face to face…during the COVID era.

*mammogram to check for any more breast cancer – I’m clear.

*ultrasound to check nodules on my thyroid to make sure they’ve not become cancerous – I’m clear.

*shuddering through the horrific shock waves from Kenosha, WI, which is about 45 minutes from here.

It’s been just a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitle bit stressful.

So this past Saturday morning, I was more than a little anxious as I prepared to go pick up a rental van to move my daughter Olivia to college. I got into my car, Hemi, my Chrysler 300C Hemi (this is important to note). I was driving this car, not the convertible, Semi, to the rental place and leaving him there all day while we moved Olivia. I got in, started the car, put my seatbelt on, and glanced to my right in preparation to start backing out. Something caught my eye and I looked down.

There was a feather on my passenger seat. A very neat, perfect feather. Not ruffled at all. Perfect.

I threw the car back into park.

Many people know of my terror of birds. I don’t like them. I can admire them from afar, but keep them the hell away from me. My two attacks this summer with redwing blackbirds left me traumatized and housebound for weeks.

But…here’s something odd. Throughout my adult life, when there are stressful things going on, or when I am in need of some encouragement or comfort, feathers tend to show up right in front of me. I have a blue vase in my office, filled with these feathers.

One feather of note was in 2015. My friend and mentor, Ellen Kort, Wisconsin’s first poet laureate, died on the same day that my novel, Rise From The River, was being launched. I took a walk that afternoon, grieving that, not only was she not going to be at the launch, but I wouldn’t even be able to call her afterwards to tell her how it went.

As I walked up the far side of our bus depot, a long sidewalk surrounded on both sides by concrete walls, a feather floated down and landed right at my feet. I picked it up and I recognized it. It looked exactly like the drawings of feathers that are on the cover of Ellen’s poetry chapbook, If Death Were A Woman. I met Ellen for the first time at a reading for this book. I treasure my signed copy. Ellen wrote, “To Kathie, Celebrate life! Keep the words flowing!”

I have.

I came home that day, pulled her chapbook from where I keep it on display in my classroom, next to a photo of my hands holding the book as I taught from it at an AllWriters’ retreat. I found some glue and I affixed the feather from Ellen onto her book.

I knew she was with me and watching when I presented my novel that night.

There have been many other feather moments. My full vase attests to this. I can’t explain them. They just happen.

And now there was this feather on my passenger seat. The seat where my daughter rides along when we go somewhere.

Now the importance of it being Hemi. If the feather landed in Semi, I likely would have just laughed and brought the feather in to be with the others. Semi’s top is always down. A feather could come from just about anywhere.

But this was Hemi. During the summer, I don’t drive Hemi much – I’m in the convertible until the snow flies. Hemi was locked tight, all his windows closed, his sun/moon roof sealed tight. I hadn’t driven him anywhere in weeks, before this morning when I decided to take him to pick up the van. I do get into him to move him into the city parking lot when I want to back Semi out of the garage. But he remains closed at all times. There was no bird feather in that car the day before. There was no way a bird feather could get in my car. And yet…there it was.

I was worried about both of my daughters. One teaching at university, one attending university. Reports were everywhere of COVID running rampant within the first week of classes in schools across the country.

My girls!

But there was an impossible feather in my car.

I let my shoulders relax. I took a deep breath. And then I moved my daughter into her dorm room. And when I returned home, I brought that feather inside. It sat beside my computer this week. Whenever I found myself worrying about Olivia, or worrying about Katie, I held onto it, like Dumbo’s magic feather. And now, I’m tucking it into the vase with the others.

It’ll be all right.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Early this afternoon, I had one of those awkward appointments at 1:30. Awkward, because I had to leave at one, and at one, I was just starting to get hungry, but I couldn’t eat because I had to leave, but I also knew that when I walked out of the appointment later, I would be starving. Not leaving myself enough time to think about and solve this puzzle, I took off, made it to my appointment on time, and then walked out…ready to graze on anything that didn’t move, and some things that did.

I’ve been watching my weight for a while now, but Thursday is my cheat day. I weigh in in the morning, and then finish the day with an ice cream sundae from Culvers. But today, I decided that instead of going home and eating the nutritious, healthy meal I planned, I would stop at McDonalds. And I would STOP at McDonalds. I wouldn’t eat while driving. I wouldn’t put pedal to the metal to get the food home. I would stop.

Due to COVID precautions, I figured I’d eat in the parking lot. I was in the convertible, so it guaranteed fresh air and sunshine. But when I left the drive-through, I saw that only one of the three tables outside of McDonalds were occupied. A grandmother and her granddaughter were in one of the tables on the end. So I parked and got out, choosing to sit at the other end, with the center table between us.

My table was half in the shade and half in the sun, so I sat in the shade, but stretched my legs out to the seat across from me, which allowed my upper half to stay shaded and in the nicest of breezes, and my lower half baked in summertime. I had a book with me – I always have a book with me – and so I set out my lunch, opened the book, sipped my frappe and settled in for a spontaneous lunchbreak. There was work to do at home…but it could wait.

At the far table, the little girl, maybe four years old, suddenly leaped up to dance on the concrete and shout, “I see you! I see you! Hi! Hi!” I thought maybe she was talking to me and I looked up to smile, but her head was tilted toward the bluest of blue skies. So I thought maybe she was talking to birds, but as she waved and danced, I realized there weren’t any birds. But there was a thin white contrail.

“There are people in there,” the grandmother said. So the girl was calling to the plane.

“Hi, people! Hi!” she shouted. “How are you? I am fine!”

The grandmother laughed. “They can’t hear you, honey.”

She stopped. “They can’t hear me?”

Grandma shook her head.

“They can’t see me?”

Grandma shook her head.

The girl stood silent and I wondered if tears were on the way. But then she danced again. “I can see them!” she said. “And I can hear the plane!” She twirled. “Hi, people!” she sang. “Hi! Hi!”

What a great kid!

After a while, they left, and I continued to enjoy my lunch. A few minutes later, two young men sat down at the table where the grandma and girl used to be. They spoke in low voices and I pretty much tuned them out. But then I became aware of a very different sound. It was twangy, high-pitched, twang-twang-twangity!, and accompanied by a thump, thump, thump! So I looked over and saw the tiniest ukulele I’ve ever seen. And this young man was playing it like the hottest electric guitar, and he thumped his thumb against the body, and his head bobbed and bobbed while his friend set out their lunch.

As time went by, with a few pauses for the boy to grab a bite, I found my head bobbing too. My feet, propped on the seat across from me, tapped into the air. The air blew over me, just the best combination of warm and cool, and I tilted my cheek to better catch it. I was reading a good book. I didn’t have the most healthy of meals, but man, was it ever tasty. And while I wasn’t listening to an orchestra, or a grand piano, but to a teeny tiny ukulele which sang mostly rhythm, too tiny to really belt out a melody, I was an audience to a concert.

And I realized, sitting there, that I was perfectly happy.

Perfectly.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

You know, it’s amazing to me how that opening sentence, at the beginning of all my blogs, has changed in meaning since I started this in January of 2017. At first, “the news” meant political news, and personal news, after I was assaulted by a man wearing a red MAGA hat. Then “the news” became all personal as I was given a diagnosis of breast cancer. And now, of course, “the news” focuses mostly on COVID in a worldwide way, as COVID ravages people who have it and people who don’t, as everyone’s lives are affected and changed.

This came clear to me earlier this week, when one of my daughters, who is able to teach at home, talked about the difficulty of isolation, and my daughter-in-law, who is an essential worker, talked about how much she’d like to stay home. I’m living the stay-at-home style, and my response was that it’s not all it’s stacked up to be either. The isolation, the loss of human interaction, the suddenly overwhelming amount of dependency on the computer screen, phone screen, television screen, is taking its toll too.

Last Monday, I had to go in to the cancer center for a mammogram and a check-up with my surgeon. I am three years out from breast cancer, but because of the severity of an infection in the surgical site a year after surgery, I still feel like I am being closely watched. Instead of a once-a-year mammogram, I have alternating every six months, an MRI, a mammogram, an MRI, a mammogram. This is unnerving. But my mammogram was clear, which is a great relief.

More unnerving though is COVID. I asked my surgeon, and I will ask my oncologist when I see him in October, just how vulnerable I am. My hope was being three years out, my immune system would have had plenty of time to bounce back.

My surgeon shook her head. “With everything you went through,” she said, “you are indeed still vulnerable. If all goes well, your immune system will be fully recovered in five to seven years.”

Five to seven years. Then she said I should continue with keeping myself in isolation as much as possible.

I left the cancer center, happy with my mammogram result, but discouraged nonetheless. The COVID answer was one I expected, but not what I was hoping for. It meant:

*no travel

*no “live” classes

*can’t see my granddaughter, whose parents are both essential workers, and who will soon be returning to face-to-face public school

*can’t go to restaurants

*can’t go anywhere, really, unless it’s outside and not crowded

*at home, at home, at home

Bleah.

As I pushed open the door of the cancer center, I automatically looked behind me to see if anyone else was coming through. There was a woman coming toward me and so I held the door. This is double-politeness now; not only did she not have to push the door, but she avoided touching a heavily used surface. Her eyes crinkled and her cheekbones lifted her mask, so I knew she was smiling, and she said thank you.

And then she said, “Oh! I love your mask!”

My husband Michael gave me a mask for my birthday. It has all of my book covers on it, except for the cover of the book that’s coming out in September. I love it, even as I wonder about using COVID as a publicity opportunity, or making my face into a billboard.

I explained to the woman that I’m a writer and that these are all my books. And she just lit up.

“I’m writing a book!” she exclaimed.

We moved into the parking lot and she told me about her book. It’s called, she said, “There But For Grace”, and she said, “because, you know –“

I expected her to say, “– go I,” but instead she said:

“Here you are!” And she pointed at me emphatically.

I took a step backwards.

She continued to tell me about her book. She’d been through so much in her life, cancer, suicide, deaths of good friends, and on and on. But with each reported event, I expected her to say, “But I got through! I survived!”, she instead pointed at me and said, “You will get through. You will. You can do this.”

Point, point, point.

“Really,” she said finally, after taking a deep breath. “You can get through this, you can get through this, no matter what, you will get through this.”

I felt myself tearing up.

“That’s a promise,” she said.

Eventually, we parted. I sat in my car for a few moments.

There but for grace, here I am. I will get through. I will. I can do this.  I can get through, I can get through, no matter what, I will get through this.

That’s a promise.

I drove home, smiling.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

When I started at Planet Fitness in January, I learned very quickly that I need to have something to watch while on a treadmill. Thanks to Netflix and Hulu, I quickly fell in love with the series This Is Us, and often had tears running down my face when I finished my workout. Other times, I watched Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, and the incredible music kept me bopping along. Sometimes, I just watched HGTV, though I found that hour-long shows were the best, providing me with nonstop distraction the entire time I was working away.

Then COVID hit and the gym closed down. Stuck at home, I ordered a small stepper and some free weights. I put the stepper behind the loveseat in my living room and then held on to the seat back while watching (and laughing) at Schitt’s Creek. I hated that stepper, but Schitt’s Creek helped to make it tolerable.

Over Memorial Day, the gym reopened, but I just didn’t feel comfortable. Sad, I canceled my membership. Then I bought a treadmill and rearranged a back room into a workout room. I still had my free weights and Michael and Olivia gave me a resistance band for my birthday. I prop my phone on the treadmill and watch shows.

It’s been a disorienting time for everyone, I think. Things that we used to do every day are gone. Things that we used to do without thinking now require thinking and planning, and sometimes, worrying for two weeks afterward, wondering if we’ve been foolish. I used to look out my windows and admire the views. Now, I look out the windows with hunger. I want to sit in a restaurant for a relaxing dinner where I am served. I want to go to a flea market. I want to wander the mall and get lost for hours in a bookstore.

But I stay at home. Do my job. Walk on my treadmill.

Recently, I started watching the Gilmore Girls. Old show, I know, but new to me. Within two episodes, I was thoroughly hooked and delighted.

A few nights ago, I was watching and tromping when, on the show, Lorelei, one of the main characters, comes across an abandoned inn. It’s called the Dragonfly Inn. But I immediately didn’t care what it was called. I almost fell off my treadmill as I yelled, “That’s the Waltons’ house! It is! That’s the screen door! That’s the furniture on the porch! That’s the barn and Daddy’s sawmill!”

Oh, The Waltons. My favorite television show of all time. I loved it in high school when I didn’t even watch it. Instead, I sat in my bedroom upstairs, writing in my journal while my family watched The Waltons downstairs, and on the show, John Boy was in his bedroom, writing in his journal while his family listened to the radio. I felt so much connection, I didn’t go down to watch, but let history repeat itself through me.

I loved it when I began to watch it for real, when I was pregnant with my first child. The Waltons allowed me to release hormone-heavy emotions every single day. And then I just kept loving it, to the point of being able to recite each episode by heart, owning pretty much every kind of Waltons memorabilia there is, and visiting the real Waltons Mountain in Schuyler, Virginia.

I will never forget being in the Waltons Mountain Museum, across the street from the Hamner House, where the real “Jim Bob” lived. I met Earl Hamner’s aunt, who was visiting that day. She saw me correct the tour guide (I was right!) and she came up to me afterwards. “Please,” I said, “can you show me a trailing arbutus? Grandpa Walton loved the trailing arbutus, and I’ve always wanted to see one.”

She took me by the hand and led me outside. Against the wall of the museum was the trailing arbutus, covered in bees. We stood there in reverence. I felt at home.

Now, on the treadmill on that night, I felt the Gilmore Girls fall away. Instead, there was only that house. I felt familiarity drape me like Olivia Walton’s quilt, when they spread it over her legs, affected by polio. I watched the screen door, expecting Mary Ellen to burst out in a fit of teenage pique. Or Grandma, grabbing John Boy’s hand and asking for a tour of the college he would attend. She would see a posting about a class called The Bible As Literature, and encourage him to take it. I would take it too, when I went to college. I expected the dog, Reckless, to come out of the barn and sprawl by the sawmill. In the sawmill, the writer A.J. Covington stayed in a small room and encouraged John Boy to give up the idea of writing his One Big Story, but instead to write all the little stories. I saw the tree where Olivia sat while John Boy read her the poem The Windhover for her birthday, a birthday where she felt old and ordinary and like there was nothing left.

Familiarity, in the middle of all this chaos. The Walton family stepped out of the shadows and wrapped me in memory, writing in my journal, weeping while pregnant, and everything else that came after. Getting through and getting through and getting through. History repeating itself.

I don’t think I have ever been so happy to see a house before.

Now, I knew, Waltons nut that I am, that the set with the house burned down in 1991. How was it here, in the Gilmore Girls, so many years later? Research once I got off the treadmill showed that the house was rebuilt, so that the Waltons could return for their reunion shows. I should have known that, but I didn’t.

But there it was, in front of me. All right, even after a fire. A miracle.

And yes, that helped. Oh, how it helped. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

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

Someone on my Facebook page suggested that maybe my birthday would be my Moment this week. My birthday was yesterday, and I turned sixty.

Well…

Birthdays when I start a new decade have always been tough for me. I was okay with 20, but from that point on, 30, 40, 50 and now 60 have been hard. I don’t know why the number affects me so, except that it might just show the steady moving forward of time. I love and collect clocks, and the thing about clocks is that the numbers don’t keep unreeling. They go around the clock face, 1 – 12, over and over. There’s no end. With age, well, I’ve yet to see someone live to 200. Those numbers definitely reel out to an end.

Sixty feels odd to me. I think of sixty and I see Grandma Walton. Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies. Aunt Bea from the Andy Griffith Show. I do also see really classy and wonderful women too (not that these women weren’t), like Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren, Dame Judi Dench. And of course, I see many writers who I love and admire.

And then I see me. And I’m nowhere near where I wanted to be when I turned sixty. While I know I’ve accomplished quite a bit, the things I’ve accomplished were not necessarily my goals. Or more accurately, my one goal. The goal I set for myself when I was twelve years old.

Get on the New York Times bestseller list.

And as I turn sixty, that goal seems to be pretty much dead in the water. Yes, I know full well the story of Delia Owens and Where The Crawdad Sings. At age 70, she made the New York Times bestseller list with her first novel. It’s now being turned into a movie. But the hard fact is, as anyone in publishing will tell you, she’s an anomaly.

So for the most part, my birthday was not a happy one.

There’s this pandemic. I was supposed to be in Oregon, celebrating my birthday in my favorite place in the world. The place where I feel the most ME. I knew this birthday was going to be difficult, and I made the travel arrangements way back in January. Instead, I was here. Home.

So yesterday, I wandered to Pewaukee Lake, to a teeny beach I’ve never been to. I treated myself to some lunch and I found a picnic bench in the shade that was a distance away from everyone else. I had a good book, so I sat and read and glanced out at the small lake. It wasn’t the ocean, but it was pretty. The leaves rustled above me, and they were an echo for the waves washing up near my feet. Eventually, I closed my book and just watched the lake.

There was an island a ways out and I saw a few heads bobbing around on it. I wished I could go there, but on my own. There was a dock I wanted to walk out on, so I could sit surrounded by the water, but there was a group of teenagers there already. They climbed up onto the dock railings and did back flips and somersaults into the water. I hoped it was deep enough and remembered when I was that young when I never would have given a thought to if it was deep enough.

Two women about my age and a third woman who was likely their mother walked up and stood carefully six feet away from me. They watched the divers for a while.

The mother said, “I hope that water is deep enough.”

She had to be at least eighty.

After they left, I watched the teens some more. One young girl, brilliantly clad in a bright pink bikini, climbed up on the rail. She turned so she was facing the open lake. Then she stood for just a moment. The boys she was with fell silent. The sun fell around her in a golden and holy glow. Then she raised her arms to shoulder height, then brought her hands before her in a prayer. I couldn’t see fully, since her back was to me, but I saw the movement of her upper arms and I know exactly what she did.

She touched her prayered hands to her forehead.

Then to her mouth.

Then to her heart.

A few days before, I was at the amazing outdoor labyrinth in Regner Park in West Bend, Wisconsin. I kicked off my sandals and walked the labyrinth barefoot, connected to the earth. Before I began, I stopped at the stone embedded in the ground at the entrance. The stone is engraved with a sunshine and the word Believe. I raised my arms to shoulder-height, then prayered my hands. I touched my forehead, my mouth, and my heart.

I honor this place with my mind, with my words, with my heart. I give all due respect.

I stepped into that labyrinth and lost myself for an hour as I wound my way in, then back out.

This young girl stretched her arms over her head, hands clasped, and did a beautiful effortless dive into the sparkling water. When she came up, she was laughing.

When I stepped out of the labyrinth, I was smiling.

I stood and applauded her. She waved from the water, and we laughed together.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The main thing I’ve learned from writing these moments is that you don’t wait for happiness to come to you. You seek it out.

I found happiness at little Pewaukee Lake on my sixtieth birthday.

(But next year, I’d better be in Oregon!)

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

Throughout this COVID Summer, I’ve been getting hit with reminders of what was going on during this time three years ago. That was Breast Cancer Summer. Facebook reminds you daily of what was going on during whatever date however many years ago, and my reminders have been filled with the day of the mammogram tanking, the day of biopsies, the day of diagnosis, and then doctor appointment after doctor appointment. I am coming up on the anniversary of the surgery, of being tattooed for radiation, of radiation starting and ending. I was scared three years ago. And I’m scared now too.

So one thing I’ve been trying to do since January, pre-COVID, is lose weight. I joined a gym and I sat down and figured out what I could realistically eat. I have Oral Allergy Syndrome, which is exacerbated by the cancer meds I’m on. I am allergic to all raw fruits and vegetables, to many seeds and many nuts. I’ve only ended up in anaphylactic shock once, and it’s not something I ever want to do again. There are epi pens on every floor of my home and in my purse. So for a long time, I was hung up on what I couldn’t eat – which feels like everything healthy – and so I just gave up. But then, in January, after being told by many weight loss companies that they couldn’t help me, even as they advertised they could help everyone, I sat down with my own knowledge from being a weight loss counselor for several years and I decided to focus on what I could eat, instead of what I couldn’t. I can eat cooked vegetables and fruit. I began to look at my carbs and my sugars and I cut down drastically. I still have some sugar, as I believe it’s unrealistic to expect to be totally without, but anything I have with sugar has to be below a certain number of grams. I joined a gym and started working out every night at midnight. And I loved it.

I felt empowered until March, when COVID hit and the gym closed. But I kept moving forward, buying a small stair-stepper and absolutely hating it, and using free weights. The gym reopened over Memorial Day weekend, but with limited hours. After attending a few times, I just felt nervous and stressed, so I canceled my membership, bought a treadmill, and set up a work-out room in my home.

The weight is coming off, albeit slowly. I’m 26 pounds down. I feel a lot better, though not as good as I expected. The cancer meds cause joint and muscle aches, and now I’ve added working-out aches to that, and so there’s a lot of pain. But I work through it.

Now here’s something that most women will know, and most men won’t. When the female body loses weight, guess what loses weight first. It’s where there’s a lot of fat storage, of course – the breasts.

Because I had a significant partial mastectomy, my right breast was already obviously smaller than the left, because a big part of it is missing. My surgeon encourages me to have reconstructive surgery every time I see her, and every time, I say no. I’m not a fan of elective surgery. But I will admit, it’s taken me a long time to adjust to my new appearance. I tell myself it’s okay, I’m going to be sixty, not twenty, thirty, or even forty. I have a partial prosthesis for when I do public events.

But you know what? Now that I’ve lost weight, that breast is even smaller. And it’s growing smaller faster than the left breast. Even wearing the prosthesis now, there’s a difference.

Well, isn’t that just a fine how-do-you-do.

I’ve been more focused on this as we move steadily toward the anniversary of the surgery, and those last moments when my breast was whole and looked like it was supposed to. I had surgery on July 25, 2017.

Last night, after I stomped on my treadmill for an hour and then hefted the free weights, I went upstairs to take a shower. Right before I stepped in, I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror. I turned and faced myself, full frontal.

Yep. All there. Left breast, present and accounted for, smaller with weight loss. And  the surgically smaller right breast, determined to lose weight faster than the rest of my body. Still misshapen. Still odd. Still…well, still there, isn’t she.  Battle-scarred.

A survivor.

“You go, girl,” I said to her. “Keep up the good work.”

And I got into the shower, feeling just fine.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

When the vice-principal of Waukesha North High School called me over my lunch hour on Tuesday, I had that immediate visceral reaction we all get when a vice-principal calls. All four of my kids went there, my three big kids graduating in 2002, 2004 and 2005 and Olivia just last year. I graduated from there in 1978. And so my first response was to duck.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. “You don’t have kids here anymore, Ms. Giorgio.”

Then he went on to tell me that “many people” nominated me to be inducted into Waukesha North’s Wall of Fame. The committee agreed that I should be there. To be put on the Wall of Fame, you “must have graduated from Waukesha North at least five years go and you must have demonstrated citizenship during and after high school, and must have made a significant contribution to the community and society.”

I laughed in response, that same laugh of surprised joy as whenever my teachers there told me I’d done a good job.

It’s easy to pick the Wall of Fame as my Moment this week. But it goes deeper than just getting an award.

Waukesha North was the third high school I attended. My father worked for the government and we moved frequently. I attended schools in Berkeley, Missouri, Esko, Minnesota, Stoughton, Cedarburg, and Waukesha, Wisconsin. I don’t remember much about Missouri, I was only there for kindergarten. But in Minnesota, the teasing started. I was born with a condition called strabismus, making my eyes cross in to my nose. My first surgery was at 16 months, then two when I was eight, and two when I was fifteen. I no longer see out of both eyes at once. My eyes aren’t straight, but they’re as straight as they’ll ever be. Unfortunately for me, in 1966 when I was in first grade, a TV show called Daktari premiered, complete with a cross-eyed lion called Clarence. I was immediately branded as Clarence, and Clarence I stayed until I moved to Cedarburg for the first semester of my junior year, a few months after my final surgery.

The teasing was about more than my eyes. I was a quiet kid, introspective, much preferring to be on my own as opposed to in a group. I spent most of my time with my nose in a book, or scribbling my stories in a notebook. I wore my hair long, down to the backs of my knees by senior year, and I curtained it over my face to keep the world out. Which meant I was an easy target. When I was in Minnesota, the school system had only just started allowing girls to wear pants to school, and only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. They couldn’t be jeans. So when I moved to Stoughton in 6^th grade, I wore a polyester pantsuit on the first day of school. Where everyone wore jeans and t-shirts. I just didn’t have a chance. My eyes, my clothes, my withdrawn personality – once again, easy target. Many years of misery.

Remember Ally Sheedy’s character in the Breakfast Club? I could have played that part without acting.

By the time I got to Waukesha North, in my second semester of my junior year, I was a profoundly sad, profoundly angry, wreck. But I found myself suddenly in a place with people who spoke my language, who heard it, who understood it. The arts were held in just as high esteem as sports. I kept hearing my name over the PA system during morning announcements for the things I did, right alongside the athletes. I joined the school newspaper and the school creative writing magazine. There was a creative writing magazine! I took classes that I never even knew existed: creative writing, journalism, Growing Up In Literature & Reality, Mystery & the Macabre, Science Fiction & Fantasy. And I suddenly had teachers who not only listened, they heard me. And I was no longer teased. No one knew me as Clarence.

And I wasn’t Clarence. I was just Kathie. I fit in, and I stood out, and I belonged.

Despite being in this safe place, or maybe because of it, I found the profound sadness and anger surging up. I didn’t know it yet, but I was three years away from being told that I was dealing with chronic depression. My creative writing teacher, my English teachers, and my psych teacher, along with the administration, were concerned and they called my parents several times, asking them to get me into therapy, or at the very least, allow me to see the school psychologist. My parents were firm believers that psychology and those practicing it were “shysters full of mumbo-jumbo and gobbledy-gook.” They “ripped hard-working people off, charging exorbitant prices, and putting all the blame on parents.” They said I was only looking for attention.

Which, of course, I was. But not in the way they said I was.

And so the teachers and the administration decided to take a heady risk. They got me in to see the school psychologist, without my parents’ permission. I was not yet 18; legally, I wasn’t allowed to make my own decisions. But that school had my back.

Waukesha North High School saved my life.

To this day, I am grateful for the amazing care and compassion of my teachers and staff.

So this being put on the Wall of Fame, to me, means I didn’t let them down. I’ve lived up to whatever it was they saw in me. I hope they’re proud. I’m pretty sure they are, as one of the letters of recommendation came from my high school creative writing teacher. It’s because of them that I’m still here.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

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

It’s been a weird week. Have you ever found yourself caught up in an externally driven moment, a moment where you’re doing something that you tell yourself will make you happy, because the world would expect you to be happy? And yet something in you is saying, Stop! This isn’t me!

I found myself immersed in that this week.

My 60^th birthday is coming up at the end of this month. I’d planned on spending it in Waldport, Oregon, in my favorite house in my favorite place in the world. I started putting the idea together in January, inviting my kids, reserving the house, getting airline tickets and a car rented. It made me look forward to a birthday I dreaded.

There’s just something about 60. I feel like I’m entering the final stretch, but that somehow, I missed some laps. I’m beginning to question if I will accomplish all that I set out to do, but in particular, the one life goal I set for myself when I was twelve years old, and still haven’t reached. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s impossible – or more clearly, if possibilities are disappearing from my life. If I was never capable of the goal to begin with.

Going to Oregon softened that for me. And then, of course, COVID took it away. I decided instead to go to an AirBnB on a lake in Illinois, but the city right next to it is now a hotspot, and so I canceled that too.

I think I was looking for a way to make my birthday special, and I was looking to the world to tell me what that could be. In literature, in television, in the movies, on Facebook and in other social media, people face momentous birthdays and they buy a car. A dream car. So I decided to trade in my cars and get a new one.

Here’s why this is crazy. I love my cars. My cars ARE my dream cars. I’ve written about my cars. I own a 2006 Chrysler 300C Hemi and a 2012 Chrysler 200 convertible. They’re named Hemi and Semi. And when I say I love them, I mean it.

I used to stop in the street and stare when a Chrysler 300 would pass. It always felt unreachable. About ten years ago, I reached, and Hemi came home. I call him my bodyguard. His seats adjust to me when I get in. The hemi engine provides me with great power. A little over a year ago, on the freeway, a car three up from me hit a deer. I didn’t see it because of an SUV in front of me. By the time the cars between me and the deer veered away, the only thing I could do was hit the dead deer. Hemi rode right over it. We felt the bump. But none of us were jarred or hurt. Hemi carried us smoothly to safety, and then he began to smoke. Most of Hemi’s undercarriage was torn apart. But my insurance company put him back together again. My insurance man called Hemi by name. I wept when I got him back.

Semi drove me back and forth every day to radiation. Top down, music up, he cheered me on as I went to each appointment, and he cheered me up on the way home. He was a four-wheeled partner through a difficult time.

And now I was trading them in, because it seemed like this was something that people do when they have momentous birthdays. They get a new car.

I found a beautiful BMW 430i. I drove my cars in one by one. As I handed over the keys, I sobbed. I told myself it would feel better when I drove home in the new car, complete with all the bells and whistles. Complete with the possibility for a new life, for realized dreams, for possibilities.

I didn’t feel better.

I drove the BMW home on Saturday afternoon. By Sunday, I was a wreck. I texted the dealer and I asked if I could return the car and get my own cars, the cars I love, back. And then I spent a sleepless night, waiting for their answer.

On Monday, they called me by 10:00. My cars were still there. I could have them back. That BMW couldn’t get me there fast enough. There was no Hemi under that hood.

After everything was exchanged, the dealer walked me out to the lot. The cars had been brought out and were parked, side by side.

“Oh, boys,” I said. “Oh, boys. There you are.”

And I drove them home. Several times on Monday, I looked out my window at Hemi. I opened the door to my garage and I peeked out at Semi. And I breathed a sigh of relief each time.

So what did I learn from this?

We have to honor our own versions of happiness. I was operating on what I believed would make most people happy – a new, shiny, state of the art car for a momentous birthday. But that just didn’t fit with who I am…it didn’t fit with how I feel or what makes my heart lift or what makes me smile or weep with joy. I went with a world view, over my own view.

What made me happy? Walking out of that dealer and seeing my two cars, my Hemi, my Semi, who have driven with me through some pretty rough times. Both cars have wrapped me with heated seats when I’ve been chilled (Semi even with the top down!). Both have driven me through silent roads on dark nights. Both have caused me to whoop with absolute joy at the beauty of our earth as I’ve crested a hill or swept around a curve.

Oh, boys. Oh, boys. There you are.

Maybe, in almost sixty years, I’ve learned to honor myself and my own heart.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Boy, I have to tell you – when I was doing Today’s Moment Of Happiness in 2017, the year that I dealt with breast cancer, I thought it was just the hardest thing ever. But now it’s 2020, I’m only coming up with one Moment per week…but there’s COVID and everything else that’s happening in the world. This is not easy. Not only is it hard to find something to be happy about, my interactions with the world have shrunk. I am home most of the time. Days go by without my driving my car. I was getting out for walks, but attacks by red-winged blackbirds have made me leery of going anyplace where there might be birds. Which is everywhere. Everything I do is online – write, teach, shop,  read.

So this is difficult.

This is now July. When COVID hit in March, I thought, Well, this is awful, but it will be over by summer. Yet here we are and it’s not over. July is my birthday month. I will be turning 60 on the 29^th. And I truly wanted to celebrate by going to my favorite place on earth, a little house in Waldport, Oregon. But like everyone else, I will just be staying home.

Again.

So many things are canceled. Music festivals. County and state fairs. One of my favorite flea markets, held once a month during the summer months, is still going on, but I think I’m too nervous to go to it. Fireworks for the 4^th are canceled, except for a few select communities who are still doing them, and they are being flooded with thousands of people who still want to see fireworks despite their own being canceled. This morning, when I signed on to the internet, the first thing I saw was an article saying that Wisconsin’s state health department is begging people to just stay home.

Again.

A recent joy in my life has been returning to the gym. I joined Planet Fitness in January, and from my first day until they closed for COVID in March, I only missed three days. Since they reopened over Memorial Day, I’ve returned, but sporadically. I find myself happy while I’m there. And then absolutely paranoid when I get home. Did I touch something? Breathe something? What about that guy three machines over who sniffled? Gyms in other states have started closing again. Today, I thought I’d be going to the gym during the afternoon. But I’m not.

I’m going shopping for a treadmill tomorrow instead. While wearing a mask. And observing social distancing. And looking online first at stock so I have a pretty good idea of what I want.

And then I will just stay home.

Again.

Right before I came upstairs here to work on the blog, I said to my daughter Olivia, “I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to write about.”

She said, “Maybe take a break from it for a while?”

But that just filled me with grief. It felt like yet another loss, if I stopped the blog for now. One of the biggest things I learned while writing Today’s Moment every day for a year was that happiness doesn’t always come to you. Sometimes, you have to go looking for it. Sometimes, it’s not a miracle, but it’s a home-grown creation. Made with your own hands. Your own mind. Your own heart.

During this same passage of time 3 years ago, I was in the thick of breast cancer. What’s amazing to me is how the dates are branded in my brain, like my wedding anniversary or my kids’ birthdays. June 20^th, flunked mammogram. June 27^th, diagnosed with breast cancer. July 25, partial mastectomy. July 31, met with my medical team, all in one room at the same time, to discuss my future. Which was going to be fine. August 28, first day of radiation. September 25, last day of radiation. Every day since, still taking oral chemotherapy, for at least another two years.

All the way throughout, many of my blogs started with, “How am I supposed to find a moment of happiness in the middle of (insert horrific cancer detail here)? And you know what?

I always did it. I always found it.

And now I’m going to do it.

Again.

Happiness doesn’t always happen to you. Sometimes you have to go out and find it. What is the use of learning something, and learning it profoundly, if you don’t keep practicing it?

So one by one, I did the following:

Found Edgar, my big fat orange bowling ball of a cat. Hugged him. He purred.

Found Muse, my teeny tiny 5-pound mouse of a cat. Hugged her. She purred.

Found Ursula, my big 50-pound afraid-of-everything pitbull. Hugged her. She slurped my face.

Found my daughter. Hugged her. She hugged me back.

And then I sat down and wrote this. Beaming. Safe in my home. Surrounded by who and what I love.

Again.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

(I gave up on trying to photograph me with the cats. They went into hiding.)

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

When it comes to shocking moments in my life, being told that my child was autistic and would likely never speak and would look at me like I was a block of wood probably ranks highest. I remember the doctor telling me, and I looked back at him and said, “No, she’s not.” Olivia, playing at my feet that day, tapped the toe of my sneaker and looked up at me and smiled.

In her eyes, I was not a block of wood.

But we all knew she was different. The inconsolable, out-of-control, constant crying when she was an infant. The touch sensitivity, the difficulty switching to table foods, the repetition of playing with the same toys the same way every day, only allowing in space for a new toy after the old toys were taken care of. The need for routine. The not speaking. The absolutely profound temper tantrums and meltdowns that left her physically and emotionally exhausted, and her parents and siblings right alongside.

The early years were difficult. There were times I had to put her safely in her room, shut the door, leave her to scream and throw herself around, and I would go sit on the couch and shake.

But you know what? Always, through all of it, there was the tapping on my shoe and the smile. There was launching herself into groups of people because she just wanted to connect so much. There was speaking, the incorrect words with emphasis on the wrong syllables, words learned through television, scripts repeated and repeated until she connected the correct words and she found that their meaning matched what she wanted.

And that smile.

Certain moments will always stand out.

Being told our daughter was autistic. (No, she’s not.)

The moment of acceptance. (Yes, she is.)

Telling her preschool teacher that we believed that Olivia would live a normal life, go to college, have a great job, do great things, and receiving a condescending pat on the shoulder and a “Well, we can always dream.” The instant and complete rage I felt at this woman who worked with Olivia for three years and still didn’t know who she was.

And the moment right after when I realized that the only thing that mattered was that we knew. And that “we” includes Olivia. We all knew who she was. We know who she is.

The kindergarten teacher who was the first to say, “My gosh, she’s amazing.” The first grade teacher who said the same thing. The second, third, fourth and fifth grade teachers who became her chorus. The aides. The special ed teachers. The occupational therapists and speech therapists.

The connection with her violin. Coming home after seeing an assembly where a quartet played and announcing she wanted a violin. No doubt in her voice. “I can play.”

The connection to writing.

The connection to art.

“She’s amazing.”

She is. It’s not that she overcame autism, or burst through it, or destroyed it. It’s just a part of who she is. She has dark brown hair, the most beautiful brown eyes, a smile that never quits, and she’s autistic. We don’t fight it. It’s part of the Olivia package. We incorporate it.

Olivia finished her freshman year in college this past spring. It was a year filled with excitement and possibility, then chaos and uncertainty as the pandemic set in. Yesterday, while I was on the phone with a client, she forwarded me an email from her college, saying that she made the Dean’s List. In her freshman year. In a chaotic, unprecedented, out-of-routine year for a young woman who thrives on routine.

Dean’s List. 3.9 GPA.

I was on the phone and I couldn’t shout. I couldn’t cheer. I couldn’t stamp my feet and clap my hands and just howl. Until I finished with my client.

I hung up the phone and shouted, “Michael!”

He was napping on the couch. “What?”

“Olivia made the Dean’s List!”

“Ohmygod!”

Olivia flew up the stairs. And there was that smile. She beamed at me and I said, “This is WONDERFUL!” and she said, “I don’t really know what it means.”

And I began to laugh and laugh.

This girl, this young woman, hit a difficult goal without even knowing she was doing it. She just did it. Just like tapping my shoe and smiling at me at the exact moment when I was told I’d be a block of wood.

“We can always dream.”

Damn straight. We always will. We know who she is. She knows who she is. And that’s the most important thing.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.