Author: Kathie

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

So I was attacked by another bird this week. Another red-winged blackbird. A friend obligingly sent me a link to an article about these birds, with the very appropriate headline, “Red-winged blackbirds: Nature’s A-holes”. I wholeheartedly agree.

I was deliberately taking a walk away from Waukesha’s Riverwalk, where I was attacked two weeks ago. That attack was fast and furious – the bird approached from behind, dove against my right ear, and left. The Riverwalk is well-known for RWB attacks this time of year. People who run/walk/skate there wear helmets until mid-July, when the babies leave the nests.

So I switched to walking downtown, and through a few open areas in city parks that were nowhere near trees. On Friday, I hung up with a client and I had an hour and a half before the next. So I ran down the stairs, out the garage door, crossed my parking lot, crossed Walgreens parking lot, and headed down the little drive that connects Walgreens with one of our major roads. Very, very urban. Very city. And on the corner, far away from water, was one lone little tree. As I passed, I heard the RWB call and then saw him fly out from the little tree and perch on the street sign.

There was no escape.

I moved to the furthest side of the street and walked faster, but to no avail. He gave out an ungodly shriek and attacked my head. In a minute, I was in my worst nightmare. He was in my hair. I felt claws and beak. He kept shrieking. I shrieked too and swatted and then tried to duck and run at the same time. I lost my balance and went flat out and hard on the pavement.

The wind was knocked out of me and I couldn’t move. Still, the bird kept attacking. I finally got up to my hands and knees, crawled just a bit, and was starting to stand when I realized my phone fell out of my pocket and I had to backtrack to get it.

Cue the horror music. More bird attack.

I finally made it around the corner. My palms, elbows and knees were torn up and already starting to bruise. My knees and ankles and wrists ached. My back and stomach muscles clenched. I had to call Michael to help me home, even though home was only a few hundred feet away, because my legs were shaking so badly, I didn’t think I would make it.

The end result? I was always afraid of birds. Now I’m terrified to be where they are. I tried to take Ursula out to do her business, saw an RWB fly from tree to tree near her favorite spot, and had to drag her back in, pottyless. I couldn’t take the garbage out to the dumpster. When I drive, I’m in a convertible, but at stop signs and stoplights, I hunker down low and watch the trees. My fear has spread to all birds, not just the RWBs. I’ve put a fake owl on my deck and hung balloons with holographic predator eyes that are supposed to scare birds away.

This is not good.

But then I was looking through some photographs of my previous trips to the Oregon coast, my favorite place in the world. And I found a photo of a pelican. A big, brown pelican.

On my visit to the coast in 2010, I was walking the beach one late afternoon. I was almost back to the house when I heard an odd whirring sound, and then…WHUMP! On the sand in front of me, a pelican fell out of the sky. And I mean fell. He didn’t land. He came straight down and walloped into the sand. If I’d been two feet further on, he would have landed on me.

We looked at each other. His eyes did not look angry or threatening. He just looked tired. I waited with him for a bit, but he didn’t move. My cell didn’t work at the house, but I ran inside and used the landline to leave a message at the aquarium in Newport – they did animal rescues. When I went back outside, kids had surrounded the pelican and they were poking him with sticks and tossing stones at him. He didn’t move. I yelled and chased the kids off. The pelican’s eyes were sad.

I sat down close by and stayed with him until it grew dark. Then I said goodnight and went inside. I hoped by morning, he would be gone, taking wing and flying away.

He was gone in the morning, but he didn’t fly.

When I went out to him, he hadn’t moved from his spot. But he was stretched out in flight formation. His wings were at full span and I was amazed by their width. His feet were straight back and turned sole-side up, as if his legs blew behind him as he soared. His eyes were closed. He didn’t look unhappy. But I wept.

I stayed in vigil with him until the aquarium guys showed up. They identified the pelican and marveled that he was not from the Oregon coast – he must have been blown off his migration course by a hurricane near Florida. They took him away. I smoothed out the sand where he’d been, pretending I was putting his soul to rest. I hoped he was flying beyond the sky.

Looking at that photo, I remembered the warmth I felt for that big heavy bird that fell from the sky, and nearly hurt me, but didn’t. I remembered the admiration, the sympathy, my need to protect him.

I can’t hate all birds. I can’t judge all birds on the basis of these two RWB’s, especially that last one that really, really hurt me. I’ve discovered that falling at (almost) 60 isn’t the same as falling at 50 or 40. But I shouldn’t hate all birds. That’s just wrong.

Isn’t it interesting that this realization comes at a time when we are being encouraged to realize that looters are not the same as peaceful protestors.

And at the same time that we’re being encouraged to realize that while there are definitely bad cops, not all cops are bad.

There are bad people. But not all people are bad.

There are birds.

I might just take a deep breath. And go out for a walk.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

For a while today, I thought I was going to have to skip this week. I was thinking about this blog as I went to bed last night and still thinking about it when I got up this morning. I wasn’t coming up with any moments. None.

Part of the point of this blog has always been to watch for the moments. To look for them. And to be aware that they might not be big. There have been many times I’ve really had to search. I honestly don’t know how I did it as Today’s Moment, every day for a year. Now I have a whole week to sift through, and sometimes, it’s really difficult.

Especially in times of pandemic. And especially in horrific moments in our collective history.

Every year, I have two big events that I really look forward to. One is the AllWriters’ Annual Retreat, which I’ve often described as my favorite weekend of the year. And the other is my own retreat, usually two weeks, and usually on the Oregon coast. I have often said it’s the only place where I feel fully like myself. I don’t know what it is about the little house I go to, in the little town by the great big ocean. But when I go, I don’t say I’m going on vacation or I’m going away. I say I’m going home.

And this year, both of these events are now canceled. In my Facebook feed, under the everyday reminder of Memories, I am being inundated with photos of previous AllWriters’ retreats. There are also reminders of posts, where I counted down the days to Oregon. My next book, a full-length poetry collection called No Matter Which Way You Look, There Is More To See, features a cover filled with the photograph I took the first time Olivia came to Oregon with me. She was seven years old and she was dancing with the ocean.

I am surrounded with reminders of what I’m missing.

We’re all missing something, of course. One by one, we’ve seen vestiges of summer set aside for at least a year. Summer festivals and fairs. Fourth of July parades and fireworks. We’re also adjusting to special hours and special methods for things and activities we’ve always counted on – the library, the mall, flea markets.

But the absence of these two things, the AllWriters’ Retreat and my own personal retreat, have laid me pretty low. They encapsulate, animate, really, the two great passions in my life. My own writing. And teaching.

So when I set out for a walk today, it was in a sad mood. The malicious red-wing blackbirds kept me away from the Fox Riverwalk, and so I wandered up and down the streets of our downtown area, through one park, down more streets, into another park, and then home. The first park holds my town’s bandshell. As I approached, I saw a man sitting there, facing the empty stage. His image struck me as poignant – we’re all looking at what we’re missing, and we’re all waiting.

As I continued, I took deep breaths and I was grateful for them. It was a bad asthma day yesterday, requiring me to take two doses of my emergency inhaler. As someone with asthma, I am always deeply grateful for being able to take in the air I breathe. Something most people don’t hear about is that asthmatics often have trouble with the exhale as well. We feel like we can’t empty our lungs, which causes us to breathe in again, just so we can try once more to exhale. On my walk today, my breathing was easy.

My breathing was easy. And I thought about that as I walked up a hill, then up the slope of a picturesque bridge over another section of the Fox River, and over and down.

It wasn’t the first time I contemplated the irony of our two big issues right now. COVID-19 steals its victims’ breath, sometimes requiring ventilators. The victims can’t breathe.

And George Floyd, as he lay dying under a police officer’s knee, said repeatedly, “I can’t breathe.”

George Floyd said it. Victims in ERs and hospitals said it. Protestors chanted it.

And walking up and over a bridge today, and all the way home, I began to chant with each footfall, “I can breathe I can breathe I can breathe.”

I can.

I am so grateful.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

It’s weird being friends with a hibiscus. Like I said last week, I’m not a plant person. I don’t like digging in dirt. While I love looking at plants, going to botanical gardens, and I love the Domes in Milwaukee, actually caring for plants just isn’t high on my priority list. I tend to forget they need things. Like water.

But near the end of April, a hibiscus in a grocery store waved one of its leaves at me and said, “C’mere.” So I did.

This isn’t my first hibiscus. We moved into our home almost 14 years ago, after going through the painstaking process of having it built. We moved in on my birthday, July 29, 2006. The next summer, after we were settled in, I was out buying a few pots of flowers for the deck when I saw a hibiscus. I didn’t know what it was until I read the label. But its braided trunk and huge orange flowers caught me. I brought it home, and until last winter, the hibiscus first spent the warm months greeting students at our front door and winter months listening to students read their work in my classroom. Then, when I added a Little Free Library to the front niche, the hibiscus moved upstairs, to my third floor deck and spent the winters in my office. I decorated it at Christmas, with little lights and tiny Starbucks coffee cup ornaments. It listened to me work with students and read my own work out loud. It was company. And then, last summer, it died.

I left the pot sitting out on the deck and all winter long, I looked out at those bare branches.

So then, of course, the pandemic hit. In late April, I was making my way nervously into our MetroMarket. I doused myself in hand sanitizer and strapped on my mask. There were plants right outside the door and that is when the hibiscus flicked its leaf and caught my attention.

Braided trunk. And the most stunning pink flower. I stopped and looked. I think I said out loud, muffled by my mask, “Well, aren’t you pretty.” And I took a deep breath.

My mother always told me to never ever ever buy outdoor plants before Memorial Day. But that day in April, a hibiscus, and hope, rode home with me in the back seat of my car. And yes, we had frosts and freezes, so the tree was carried in at night, then carried out again in the morning if it was going to be warm enough.

And I began to talk to the darn thing.

Maybe it’s the isolation of Safer At Home. I’m not going out much right now and haven’t for months. I talk to my students and clients and family on screen or on the phone. I go out for walks sometimes on Waukesha’s Fox Riverwalk, but as I was attacked yesterday by a red-winged blackbird, I don’t think I’ll be going back there anytime soon. I think a lot about the baristas I used to talk to, and the guys at Planet Fitness when I went there at midnight every night. I think about talking to passersby and people in stores and, well, the whole world. Now, talking in person seems to be a dangerous thing to do.

So I talk to my hibiscus.

Whether it’s coincidence or not, she’s putting forth an amazing array of blooms. Her first few weeks, maybe in response to the cold, she kept her branches tucked close, like a Christmas tree that is still wrapped in string. But as time went by, she’s relaxed and the buds just keep erupting. This week, I figured out how to write outside on my deck – previous attempts at dimming the glare have always failed. But a sudden thought about putting my laptop into a box tipped sideways was all the brainstorm I needed. So this week, the hibiscus also listened to me reading out loud as I worked on what I hope is the final draft of my new book. She responded by giving me three more flowers.

I call her Hibby.

This week and last, unthinkable events that began in Minnesota added a layer of hate and anger to what was already layer after layer of stress and fear. Like many, I was left speechless with the shock that what happened to George Floyd could still be happening in this day and age, when I would expect the world to be at a certain level of kindness, compassion, and intelligence. Apparently, we’re not. Before, with the pandemic, every time I stepped outside, it was like walking into a fog of fear. Now, it’s a wall of anger.

And on my deck, the hibiscus keeps blooming. Every morning, I look outside to celebrate her blossoms. I carefully pluck spent flowers (I refuse to call it deadhead) and then admire what has come out wild and alive overnight. Wild, alive, and bursting with exuberance. If a hibiscus could dance, this little tree is dancing. And laughing. And saying, “Look, look, look! See it all.”

The hibiscus reminds me that there is still beauty in the world. With each new bud, I see hope. In her green leaves, I see health and robust joy. I talk to her. She listens. And then she blooms some more.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

I am just not a plant person. One big reason for that might be that I tend to kill them. But really, while I don’t like to take care of plants, whether they’re indoors or outdoors, I think it’s more about my not liking to dig in dirt, and it’s also connected with my fear of birds. You have to dig in dirt, no matter if a plant is in your house or around it. Birds, well…that’s for the outdoor plants.

Back when I was living in my first house, I actually took care of a lot of outdoor plants. I had a huge bed of lilies of the valley lining the back of my house. I really did love them. When those little bells bloomed in the spring, they were just the prettiest things. My daughter would always cut a batch and bring them in to her teacher. I also had geraniums which grew to enormous sizes and a variety of pots and flowering bushes. My lilac bush was the envy of the neighborhood.

One day, I was weeding the lilies of the valley. I was not wearing gardening gloves. I reached under the crowd of leaves and found what felt like a big rock. I pulled it out…and found myself holding a very dead bird in my very bare hand.

Now for most people, this would likely elicit a shriek and maybe even a pitch of the bird over the head and as far away as possible. I did shriek, though I think my neighbors probably thought of it more of a blood-curdling scream. And as to how far I threw the damn thing…it was never found again.

But that’s not where it ended. See, when I was eight years old and still liked birds, I found a dead robin. I very carefully picked it up and carried it home. I was going to ask my mother for a shoebox and I was going to give the poor thing a decent burial. But when my mom saw it, she gave a shriek that was remarkably similar to the one I would let out decades later, and that bird flew too, in a very dead way. Then I was hauled down to the basement where she scrubbed my hands in the laundry tubs in water so hot, I could barely stand it, and she yelled the entire time about how birds are covered with mites and bugs and fleas and worms and how we had to get them off my skin. She used one of those scrubbing sponges, and by the time she was done, I was beyond tears and my hands were bleeding. I was bandaged to the point where I couldn’t play for about a week.

As this was the same year I watched Hitchcock’s The Birds (I don’t remember which came first), I’d say that’s where my fear of birds started. Right now, I won’t walk in one of my favorite places, Waukesha’s Riverwalk, because the red-winged blackbirds are having babies and the parent birds are dive-bombing people’s heads. I’ve seen runners wearing biking helmets. I freeze when I see geese. I just can’t do birds. And that day when I was weeding…there was a dead bird in my hands again. Consequently, digging in dirt to take care of plants means dead birds. No more gardening for me.

When we moved here, I was relived there wasn’t a yard. I have a teeny strip in front of the AllWriters’ big window. I have hostas there and some big red lilies that come back every year. Thankfully, this doesn’t require much weeding and it’s such a slim space, if a bird bonked off the window, as they have, it would bounce onto the sidewalk and I would see it. I place two pots of flowers around my concrete lion, a pot of flowers on Olivia’s little deck on the second floor, and two pots of flowers on our third floor deck. This year, we added three little pots that hang from an outdoor clock. None of these require weeding. I can stand above them and just water.

This year, the plant-shopping was a little more frazzling. I like to get my plants from Home Depot, as I’ve had great luck with the plant-longevity there. When I arrived this year, I was shocked at the number of people not wearing masks (I had one on). I very carefully wound my way around the crowd and dove in when there were blanks to look at and select my flowers. When it came time to check out, they had lovely markings on the parking lot, keeping us all six feet from each other. The check-out person was masked and gloved. I breathed a masked sigh of relief, paid for my plants, and brought them home. I made a quick pit stop at Stein’s as I wanted some outdoor statuary of – believe it or not – peacocks or cranes to put around my water fountain. She’s a large nude woman, and a couple birds around her, birds that have never given me trouble and these birds would be fake, so they’d be fine, seemed appropriate. Surprisingly, in Steins, people were masked. And most people were outside. The fake birds were inside. I brought home two peacocky-craney things and one definite peacock.

At home, I spent the rest of the afternoon getting things set up. The plants went into the pots. The fake birds got set up. My hibiscus tree, bought a few weeks earlier, was blooming as if joy ran through its planty veins. We had a new little table and chairs. I filled and turned on my fountain. And then it was all done.

I sat down in one of our rockers. Michael sat in the other. Olivia perched on the wicker loveseat. And in the middle of a city, all was peaceful. Sure, there was the sound of cars going by. But we were high up on the third floor. There was flowing water. There were cushioned seats. And there were flowers.

And no birds. Not real ones, anyway.

It was peaceful. I breathed a sigh of relief. Without a mask.

Sometimes, facing a fear doesn’t mean overcoming it. Sometimes, it means learning to live alongside it. I have my flowers without digging in the dirt. I even have my pretty birds, without having to worry about mites and bugs and fleas and worms, and without having to wash my hands to the point of bleeding. Despite fear, I was able to create a sanctuary, using some of the same things, in slightly different versions, I’m afraid of.

Bliss.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Recently, we had to go to Olivia’s college to move her things home for the summer. Olivia herself has been home since spring break started in March. COVID-19 was just gaining steam then, and by the end of spring break, her school, like every other school, decided not to bring students back on campus. Olivia stayed home – her things remained in her dorm.

We worked solemnly that day to pack her up. I think all of us were remembering the day in the fall that we brought her and managed in just a few hours to turn an empty room into an Olivia room, filled with her personality and style. Now – we were de-Oliviaing it, and she hadn’t been in it for months.

And I kept thinking about how, despite this challenge, Olivia made it through her freshman year with amazing composure and strength and grace. Her grades: excellent. Solid friendships were made. She spoke up for herself when she needed extra attention or help. She had a feature article published in the literary magazine. She joined the music club, continuing to play her violin despite the fact that the school doesn’t have an orchestra. She excelled.

“Oh, Mama,” she said to me, “I feel like I’m someplace finally where I belong. Where I’m accepted.”

Moving Olivia’s stuff home, we quickly became, well, overstuffed. I redid her room after she moved out, so suddenly, we had double everything. Olivia lived amongst extra furniture and backpacks and artbags and boxes during the last of her online final exams, and then, without my asking, she threw herself into her walk-in closet and began purging. By the time she was done, my trunk and entire back seat of my car was filled with discards. And there were still more bags waiting in the hallway. I’ve already made one trip to Goodwill.

At one point, Olivia brought us a stack of her early artwork and stories. Nestled in there was a small photo book put together by the teachers in her Birth to Three program. Olivia started there because of feeding and sensitivity issues, and then the concern grew to autism. Michael and I both paged through the little book, and at one photo, we both froze. “Oh,” I said. “She’s come so far,” Michael whispered.

It is a photo we don’t remember. Autism isn’t a visual thing – you can’t look at someone and say with absolute certainty, “That person is autistic.” But in this photo…Olivia looks autistic. She is with Santa Claus, and she is totally turned away, her eyes averted. Her hands are in full stim. She’s talking Livvyonian to her fingers – the name we gave to the way Olivia used to speak, when she spoke at all. Mostly, she was silent.

She looks autistic.

When I went to college in the fall of 1978, I intended to major in special ed, with a focus on autism. This was pre-spectrum – not much was known about autism yet. In high school psychology, I read a book called Dibs: In Search of Self, about a boy who was autistic. I was enamored. In my first (and only) special ed class in college, I watched a movie about autism, and it showed something called dance therapy. A dancer mimicked an autistic child’s stimming movements and what happened was magical – the child looked up, locked eyes with the dancer, and leaped into her arms. She “spoke” his language. I didn’t stick with the major – I became a writer. But that scene has always stuck with me.

Then, in the year 2000, I had Olivia. She was my fourth child, and clearly, she was different. But I never thought autistic. She wasn’t the boy named Dibs. She wasn’t the boy in that video. When the A-word came up with her, both Michael and I resisted. As I sat in an appointment with her doctor, and as he told me that Olivia might always see me as no more than a block of wood, she played at my feet. But throughout the conversation, she tapped my shoe. When I looked down, she’d look full in my face and just beam.

I was not a block of wood. Olivia was there. She knew who I was.

You do things sometimes out of a sense of intuition, out of a deep knowing of what is right. Olivia was formally diagnosed as high-functioning autistic when she was three. We were told to take part in all sorts of services and therapies. I dutifully filled out the mountain of paperwork, and I mean mountain. I put it in its already addressed envelope, brought it to the post office, and mailed it. Weeks later, I found that it was lost – it never made it to its destination.

I looked at Olivia then, and she looked up from lining up her massive number of bright-colored counting bears and she smiled at me. This was a daily activity. Our house was filled, right after breakfast, with a straight-lined path of counting bears. It was what she did. It was Olivia.

We didn’t fill out any other paperwork. I remembered that long ago movie, with the dancer reaching out to the autistic boy in his own language, his own movements.

And so we reached. We listened. She told us in her own way what she needed and we provided. She learned language from television – we kept it on constantly. She learned from repetition – we repeated and repeated and repeated. She reacted to music – we put her in a music class, and later, when she demanded a violin in the fourth grade, she got one. We followed her. We listened and we watched.

Olivia burst fully into language when she was seven years old. Her speech therapist, as a reward for a good day, gave her chalk and told her to draw on the board. Olivia drew a story. They had to get her a stepladder so she could reach the entire board. And the most amazing thing – not only did she draw it, she jabbered it. Non-stop. At the end, the therapist took Olivia’s picture, and she stood there, arms upraised in victory, looking right at the camera. The therapist met me at my car that day, pulled me into the classroom, saying through tears, “You have to see this!” And there was Olivia, who calmly told me the entire story again. And smiled.

This week, Olivia was featured in the Waukesha Neighbors magazine. Her photo is on the cover and there’s a full article about her inside. At one point, Olivia said, “Our family motto is ‘Don’t give up.’ I was born autistic, for me personally, it has meant pushing through and showing that I am successful despite my diagnosis. I have grown from these struggles and I know I’m going to make it.”

She already has. From that moment of tapping on my shoe and smiling at me while I was being told I was a block of wood, she made it. There was never ever any doubt. Why don’t we remember that photo? Because we were already seeing past it. We saw her. And she was looking right back at us. Smiling.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

This week’s happy moment starts with a sad moment. A couple weeks ago, my Moment was about a happy face painted on plastic, covering a window in a building under construction. Waukesha’s new City Hall is being built right across the street from me, and the sudden appearance of this smiley face just brought me moment after moment of uplift. I looked at it several times a day, and I’m sure others did too. You can read about it here, or just by looking back to 4/30/20:

www.kathiegiorgio.org/4-30-20/

But right after that blog appeared, the construction moved into a new phase. First, the 24-hour lights were shut off at night and the smiley face no longer glowed with a yellow background. It was okay, though – when you live in a city, nights are never truly dark, and so city lights kept those two white dots and curved smile visible, no matter what time of night I looked out.

Then I noticed some of the plastic was coming down. On Tuesday, I watched the steady creep of windows being opened, heading toward my smiley face. That day ended with the window just before mine, and I breathed a sigh of relief that night, right before I went to bed, when I could look outside and still see the face smiling at me. I smiled back.

For the weeks it was there, even if I read horrible news articles right before bed, I went to sleep smiling.  And in the mornings, before I turned on my computer, I stopped at my deck door and grinned good morning at the smiley face. It grinned back.

It was silly, I know. But the fact that a construction worker found a way to send a positive message to the downtown area, and that positive message just kept greeting me throughout the day and saying goodnight to me at night, just HELPED. There’s no other way to say it. It helped.

Then I got up on Wednesday morning. I walked to my deck door, looked out…and the smiley face was gone.

I knew it was coming. It’s a City Hall, for heaven’s sake. They’re not going to build a lovely new building for government offices and keep up a smiley face painted onto a plastic sheet, protecting the inside from the weather. There would be glass. The whole building will shine and sparkle with newness.

But the smiley face. There was no one smiling at me. And so I didn’t smile back.

I glumly got my breakfast ready, then returned to my desk. I looked outside again, just to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. I wasn’t. And then I sat down at my computer.

And here we go. I looked up the email address for the mayor of the City of Waukesha. His office is in the old City Hall, which will be attached to the new City Hall. So somewhere in there, behind my missing smiley face, was the mayor. I sent him a copy of the blog. I told him what that silly smiley face meant to me. And I asked if they could, first, find the plastic that held the smiley face and let me have it. If it couldn’t be put back on the building, I could hang it from my third floor deck, and he would continue beaming at those of us who live and work downtown, and those of us who go on and off buses at our transit center. Second, I asked if the construction worker could be found and thanked. I hit send, I sat back, and I truly didn’t expect to hear anything.

At the end of the day, the opened windows were covered with plastic again. But none of them held smiley faces.

I didn’t go to bed last night with a smile.

Then this morning. And an email from the mayor. “Kathie,” he said, “please see the email trail below.”

Ohmygod.

First, the mayor contacted a city engineer. He asked her if she could find anything out about the smiley face. “I wasn’t aware of this until I read the email!” he said.

The engineer contacted the construction company. “What do you guys think?” she asked. “And thank you for making a citizen very happy!”

The project manager of the construction company answered, “We believe it is still wrapped up on the floor in the building, but I will need to verify. If we find it would you like us to drop it off?”

The engineer said I lived across the street and would walk over and get it. (Yes, I would!)

But then the project manager came back with, “Unfortunately the plastic had already been taken to the dumpster and we weren’t able to find it. We did forward on the message to the worker who made the smiley face so he knows the impact it had on this citizen, and I will leave it up to him if he wants to be “known” or contact her. Once the glass is installed I can look into options for getting another smiley face on a large window if you would like.”

Ah, well. So of course, the happy ending to this moment should be that I have the smiley face. I don’t. He’s in a dumpster somewhere. And yes, I was tempted to go over to the site and dive into every dumpster I could find. But I’m sure they were thorough.

But here’s the thing. I think there are many people who feel that the government, at any level, doesn’t listen to the citizens. Maybe we feel ignored. Or maybe we feel like we don’t matter to anyone on an “official” level. I know I’ve felt that way.

But you know what? The mayor listened to me about a simple painted-on smiley face on a piece of plastic tacked over a window on a building under construction. And he set things moving. Then there were other people who tried their best to find that smiley face and put him back in place.

That’s amazing.

And…I know there’s a construction worker out there who knows he made a difference. Not just for me. But for anyone who looked up at that smiley face and grinned in the middle of all this chaos.

And…there might be another smiley face!

I’m watching. I’m smiling. And I’m looking out my own window with hope.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

My 7-year old granddaughter, Maya Mae, discovered string games this week. You remember string games – where you would tie a big string into a loop, wrap it around your palms, and then make figures with complicated twistings of string and fingers, like Jacob’s Ladder, Witch’s Broom, Japanese Butterfly, Open Gate, and play games with more than one person, like Cat’s Cradle. Maya’s mom found a string for this on sale at work, and she remembered her own string games (she likes the Witch’s Broom) and so she brought it home. Maya learned the Witch’s Broom pretty quickly, but then, as she showed me, it became about wrapping the string around things, crumpling it, and doing all sorts of stuff to it.

I told Maya that I played with string too. And my big thing was Jacob’s Ladder, though I played many games of Cat’s Cradle.

When I was eight or nine, I was home sick with strep throat. In my home, even when my brother or I were sick, we had to be out of bed by 9:00 in the morning, so my mother could make the bed. There was no such thing as an illness so dire that beds couldn’t be smoothed and made up. So that day, my second or third day home, I got up, pulled on my robe, grabbed a book, went out to the living room and stretched out on the couch. I was covered with a special “home sick” blanket and my head rested on a special “home sick” pillow that were left in the closet when they weren’t used.

It wasn’t long before I was bored out of my mind. I couldn’t get on the floor and play because I was “sick” which meant stuck on the couch. My mother watched soap operas, so daytime television was stupid. I finished my book in no time flat. And you can only draw so many pictures. My mother was cleaning the house, as she did every day, and so there were no board games. I didn’t yet know how to play solitaire.

After lunch, my mother brought me a piece of string. She tied the ends together so it made a loop. Before she gave it to me, she put it on her own hands and showed me how to make a Jacob’s Ladder, the only pattern she knew. Cross fingers, drop thumbs, drop pinkies, grab first string, tuck over second, in and out and up and down, and suddenly…there was what could be a rope ladder between her thumb and forefinger. “It’s Jacob’s Ladder,” she explained. “He uses it to climb to heaven.” And then she taught it to me. It took a few times, but I got it.

And I was enthralled. I could hold the Jacob’s Ladder up and imagine all sorts of stories involving climbing ladders. I could carefully lay the ladder on my lap, without losing its shape, and turn my fingers into people and animals who used the ladder for escape and adventure. I didn’t need my toys, which were put away neatly in my closet, waiting for the day that I would be well enough to play on the floor again. Fingers. String. That’s all I needed.

And now my granddaughter, stuck at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, had a string too.

My daughters, now 33 and 19, both went through string phases and I enjoyed it with them. I bought them each a book called Cat’s Cradle, which came with its own colorful, durable string and a bunch of recipes for different games and figures. And now…here was the string again. I went online, found the book, and had it delivered to Maya.

In the meantime, a photo of her appeared, with the string wrapped around her ankles. With or without the book, she was finding her way, and this string, in the middle of massive technology, was capturing her imagination.

It made me think of other things I did as a child, that kept me busy in so many different ways.

*Jacks. I never played Jacks the way you’re supposed to. I thought it was silly. I tucked the ball away with my other balls and focused on the jacks, trying to get them all spinning at once and imagining a great ballroom of dancing couples, or a stage filled with ballerinas.

*Another Jacob’s Ladder. Five wooden blocks, held together somehow with elastic, and when I tilted the first in a certain way, it streamed down like a clacking waterfall. I have one of these now, with the blocks painted to look like books, and it’s a wonderful way to spend a few moments in thought.

*Yoyos. Marbles. They came out every spring.  I had a purple Duncan yoyo that I loved. And there were cat’s eye marbles, peeries, and steelies. Mine had names, and I never played for keepsies because they were family.

*Fishing with a stick, a string knotted at the top, and another bent nail for the hook. No bait. No fish. Who cared?

*Collecting rocks. I never had a rock tumbler like many of my friends had, though I asked for one every Christmas and birthday. But I collected rocks anyway and kept them in an old cigar box that my mother originally used for her art supplies, then passed on to me. Those rocks were jewels to me. And sometimes, they were characters, set up in complex scenes to match the story going on in my head.

Watching Maya with her string, I felt shot through with joy. It took the sting away, a little bit, of not being able to be there with her. But I did go downstairs and dig through the junk drawer until I found a spool of string. It was just plain string, not colored, not thick, but I cut a length of it, tied the ends together, looped it around my palms, and made Jacob’s Ladder. I watched my fingers fly, then smiled proudly at the result. There goes Jacob, climbing the ladder to heaven.

It’s all still there, you know. The joy of simple things. And especially the joy of something in your past connecting with a child of the future.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Well, here we are, still in the pandemic, still shut down, still not really sure what’s happening or why. Add to it that, at least in my little part of Wisconsin, we are being blown around by a wind so fierce, it feels like it should be connected to a severe thunderstorm, but it isn’t. From my little office on the third floor of my home, I’ve watched birds get blown off balance, into walls, and straight up into the air like feathered fireballs. My dog has taken to being permanently under my desk, where her weight will suddenly shove me backwards and where she is in constant peril of my running over her with my chair’s wheels. Several times last night, I stared out my darkened windows and shouted, “Will someone please turn off the wind????”

It’s a very weird life right now.

And I’m still thrown by watching the television commercials and other forms of advertising declaring, “We’re all in this together,” and then looking on social media and the news where we are all tearing each other apart. I’m not sure who this “together” is, but it’s certainly not “us”.

But still. While a lot of things have ground to a halt, one thing has moved forward in my little world, and that’s the building of the new City Hall just across the street. It’s going to be a large building, with lots of windows. It’s on a hill overlooking downtown Waukesha, and even now, before it’s finished and  throughout its construction, it’s impressive. I’ve been like a kid sitting on the curb, watching the building go up. There have been huge cranes and beams and men teetering like Legos on upper levels.

As the framework went in and windows appeared, one right after the other, floor after floor, those windows were covered with a transparent, but cloudy plastic. Lights went on inside and they remain on 24 hours a day. One night, as I sat in my recliner in my living room, watching television, I glanced away from yet another “We’re in this together” commercial and looked out my window. The new building glowed quietly, but in one window, I saw something strange. A dot and part of a swirl. From the second floor of my condo, the view was partly blocked by the parking garage, and so I puzzled over this, but then let it go when my program came back on.

Eventually, I went back upstairs and crossed the floor of my office to turn off my computer for the night. And there, through my windows and deck door, I saw the complete picture of that dot and swirl.

Someone put a huge smiley face on one of the windows of the new City Hall. It beamed over Waukesha like a weird smiley Batman signal. The glow of the lights inside the building turned the space a gentle yellow and so the smiley face took on the classic appearance of the original simple smiley face, created by Harvey Ross Ball way way back in 1963. According to an article in the Smithsonian Magazine, Ball, a graphic artist, was commissioned to create a graphic to raise morale among the employees of an insurance company after a series of difficult mergers and acquisitions. Ball finished the design in less than 10 minutes and was paid $45 for his work.

The article said that the image was created to make the employees smile during challenging times and it worked. And on this night, in the middle of a pandemic, I looked out at a smiley face on an under-construction city hall and I couldn’t help but smile back.

The smiley face has become part of my day and night now. During the day, the lights inside the building are ineffective, but the smiley face is still there, white on transparent plastic, and he grins at me and the rest of Waukesha from across the street. I grin back. At night, he glows. I look at it first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

Last night, I was hit with night #4 of insomnia. I spent quite a bit of time sitting in my office, my chair turned toward the window, and gazing at the smiley face, which at that time of night/morning, seemed to be smiling only at me. It kept me company. It smiled through the dark. I smiled back.

During a pandemic, I’ve learned, the weirdest things become lifesavers.

I am actually dreading the day real windows go in to the new building. I wish I could find out who put the smiley face up there, and I wish I could find out who I could ask to carefully cut the plastic out of that window panel and give it to me, when it comes time to replace it with glass. When that smiley face disappears, I think I’ll feel like I’ve lost a friend.

But to whoever the construction worker is who put that smiley face on a high floor, backlit with glowing yellow lights, letting it smile down on all of us and giving us the opportunity to smile back during a challenging time…thank you.

And Harvey Ross Ball, thank you too. It’s still working.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Well, we continue living under the auspices of pandemic. It’s not an easy time. People are afraid of the virus, afraid of losing their loved ones, afraid of losing their own lives, afraid of losing their jobs, afraid of losing their businesses. I swear I can feel the shimmer of fear and tension in the air when I go outside. I can definitely feel it in the grocery store and the pharmacy. And I can feel it on the interactions in social media too. Last week, I wrote how we’re trying so hard to put a humorous spin on things. This week, I noticed a huge uptick in anger. Unfortunately, we’re striking out at each other. Those that believe we should continue to keep our states closed are arguing with those that feel the states should be opened up. There’s finger-pointing and name-calling and it’s just a mess.

I’m not above all of it, that’s for sure. I’m afraid for my family that is out there working in this, as essential workers. I’m afraid for my business. Lots of sleepless nights this week.

And yet one thing came through loud and clear. I want to see my granddaughter.

When my oldest son was the first of my four to get married, I wasn’t fifty years old yet. I didn’t want to be a grandmother. In my mind, I kept seeing Grandma Walton and that white-bunned woman from Looney Tunes who owned Tweety Bird. I wasn’t that. I told my son, “If you make me a grandmother before I’m fifty, I will remove the apparatus that made me a grandmother before I was fifty.”

Maya was born when I was fifty-two.

And here’s the thing. My resistance to being a grandmother began to fall away before she was even born. I was with my son and daughter-in-law for one of the ultrasounds. Today’s ultrasounds are phenomenal, and suddenly, on the screen in that darkened room, there was that little face. And she was smiling. Everything in me reached for her. Oh, there she was.

And then she really was there! I was allowed in the delivery room and I saw her being born. I saw my son holding her, saying over and over again, “I’m your daddy! I’m your daddy!” And I held her before she was even an hour old. It causes me to tear up even now.

Throughout her seven years, she’s convinced me that being a grandmother is the best role ever. From her mispronunciations (trees = srees, chocolate = swocwate) to her astute observations to her love of neatness and organization to the constant “Guess whats?”, she has wrapped me up and wrung me out. In one of the original Today’s Moments, I told her she was a fashionista, and when I explained that this meant she expressed herself through her clothes, she stood up straight, thumped her chest and declared, “I am ME!” Oh, yes, she is!

And suddenly…I can’t see her.

I delivered her Easter presents to her front porch and waved at her through their picture window. She stood on the back of her couch so I could see all of her, from head to toe. I stood on the lawn. Any idea how much I wanted to just charge through that front door?

But I didn’t. It’s not safe. For her or for me.

This week, her mother mentioned that Maya seemed stressed. Maya was worried. From a 7-year old perspective, which isn’t that far from everyone else’s, she just knows there’s something that’s making people really sick and she can’t go to school anymore or see her friends or extended family. My daughter-in-law said, “I think she just needs to see that those that she loves are safe.”

And so on Sunday, I began meeting with Maya through Zoom. I dug out a book that I loved when I was her age – yes, I still have it, that’s how much I love it. And on nights when I’m done teaching by 8:00, I read her a chapter.

The first thing she told me when she lit up my screen was that she was organizing her art projects into her art organizer. Ohmygosh.

So…she’s not in front of me, in the flesh. When I say, “Gimme a kiss!”, I’m not presented with that little smooth cheek, since she hasn’t figured out that she’s supposed to be kissing me, not me kissing her. But I love the grandness of her presentation. Now, I can’t touch that little cheek. But I can see it. And I can see those cheekbones perk up when she smiles.

I hear that voice. I hear that giggle. And I see those amazing big, big eyes.

It’ll do. It has to. For now. This will get better.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

 

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

I think I’m probably going to struggle with this one, because I’m not quite sure how to express what I want to say. It’s hard because, among other reasons, it starts with heartbreak. My heart broke when I read a Facebook post by my daughter-in-law.

This is a difficult time. It’s not just COVID-19, though of course that’s at the core of it. It’s the political chaos that has resulted, plus the conflicting and unending reports and articles and theories. While the entire world is experiencing the same thing, our own personal worlds have shrunk as we not only stay at home, but we see less and less reasons to go out, because everything is closed. And we have to worry if those closures will result in calamities for our favorite businesses. And when you own your own business and that business provides your family with shelter and necessities…well, let’s just say the worries have been more than overwhelming for me and for many others.

I’ve seen, though, that many of us are working our way through this with humor. We post memes and videos and satire about the pandemic, about its treatment politically and medically. I spent days watching a lip-synching video done by a father and daughter, with a brief glimpse of Mom, that always left me laughing and jiving in my seat. I think we’re working hard to keep our spirits up, to try to ease discomfort and fear, to keep on smilin’. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Except when it starts to bleed over into hiding normal feelings and reactions, and that then makes those feeling normal things feel abnormal.

My heartbreak? My daughter-in-law posted on Facebook, “I’ve been having fits of crying every other day out of nowhere for 4 days now. Is anyone else experiencing things like that or is it just me?”

Are we laughing so hard now that we aren’t letting each other know that we’re scared? That we’re sad that our lives have been turned upside down? That we’re worried for our families, for ourselves, for friends, for all the people in our lives?

Amber is far from the only person who is breaking down every other day. She’s one of those we’re calling frontline workers, working in a grocery store. Of course she’s sad and scared. So are we all. And I think it’s time we admitted to it.

So many in my family are in customer service. My husband Michael and daughter Olivia work at Farm & Fleet. My son Christopher is at QuadGraphics and his wife Amber is at MetroMarket. My son Andy is the bakery manager at a Pick’N’Save. They are all out and about. I’m able to hunker down, and my daughter Katie, a math instructor at the University of Louisiana – Lafayette, is hunkering down too, with her husband, who is self-employed. But they’re in the middle of a hot spot.

My world has become about worry. Everyone’s world is about worry. And yet we’re laughing.

Which, overall, is a good thing. But not to the point of having to ask, “Is it okay to be sad? Is it okay to be scared?”

One of my biggest meltdown moments (so far) came a couple weeks ago, when I realized I misunderstood the Flatten The Curve! approach. I thought we were flattening the curve so that less people would get COVID-19. No, I was told, we’re flattening it so that the illness is stretched out over time, and our healthcare system doesn’t get overwhelmed and we have time to come up with how to treat it and develop a vaccine. I was told, “This won’t be over until everyone gets it.”

I flipped out. I became completely fatalistic. I wanted to run to the nearest ICU and grab the hand of a COVID-19 patient and rub it all over my face. I wanted to scream, “Get it over with! Let’s go! I’m on the high-risk list three different times, so let’s just give it to me and get the horrible death over with!”

Yeah. Meltdown Supreme. Not pretty. I began sleep-walking. Sobbing at random times.

It would have helped to know that I wasn’t the only one dissolving. Everyone seemed to be dealing with it just fine, laughing away on social media. I laughed away too, in between the tears. And in between laughing and crying, I had to wonder if I wasn’t going totally around the bend, because everyone else seemed okay.

And then came my daughter-in-law’s quiet question. “Is anyone else experiencing things like that or is it just me?”

Thank God for that quiet question.

“It’s not just you, Amber,” I told her. And then I began to talk to others. I found that, behind all the laughter and the fun posts and the weird questionnaires and polls and jokes and gifs and whatever else we’ve come up with, there was a large group of people, if not the entire world, who felt this way. And we needed to acknowledge that and lean on each other.

Laughter is great. I came across a meme that made me blow a mouthful of water all over myself. It showed one of Vincent Van Gogh’s self-portraits, his self-sliced-off ear carefully turned away from the viewer. From his remaining ear, a mask dangled. And over his head was one word: “Fuck.”

Ohmygod.

I shared it and more and more people laughed. But we’ve also come together to share fears and tears, confusion and concern, anger and shock.

Thank you for being brave enough to share your tears, Amber. Thank you for reaching for reassurance.

And…we will get through this.

Yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.