Author: Kathie

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

This morning, I walloped my alarm clock, staggered out of bed, got dressed, and went downstairs. I poured a bowl of Wheaties, then reached for my pot of piping hot and fresh coffee – thank you, whoever invented the timer for coffeemakers so that your coffee is ready before you are! I pulled the pot from its cradle, held it aloft over my cereal bowl, and poured.

And then I stood there for a moment, knowing something was wrong with this picture, but not able to say exactly what. As I watched the steam rise from my cold cereal, the realization hit. And I stood back and laughed.

We’ve all done this, right? It wasn’t a senior moment (I hope). It wasn’t even about still being half in the world of sleep, dragging myself reluctantly into the world of awake. My mind was just off playing somewhere. In a world where coffee over cereal made perfect sense.

I laughed as I poured the coffee-cereal down the garbage disposal. I laughed as I poured a new bowl. “No, no, no,” I said, wagging my finger at my coffeemaker. “You stay in your place. You’re not milk.” Then I laughed over my ridiculousness as I got the milk out and finished making my breakfast. I brought it upstairs, along with a big mug of appropriately placed coffee, to the computer,  read my email and posted on Facebook.

“So it’s going to be a poured-my-coffee-over-my-cereal kind of day…”

As I ate and had to stop several times to keep a fit of giggles from spitting Wheaties all over my computer screen, I thought back to the day Michael and I moved in together. He and his brother loaded up a moving truck in Omaha that morning, then drove the eight hours to me, at that point living in a townhouse in Menomonee Falls that Michael and I rented together. I spent the day nervously cleaning and re-cleaning the townhouse, wanting to make it look good for Michael so he would think moving away from his home to be with me was a good idea. And then he showed up and by the time all his stuff was unloaded, all he could see was boxes and boxes and disarrayed furniture. Then we still had to take the truck to my old home and get some of my furniture which I hadn’t moved because I didn’t have a truck, but instead drove a Dodge Neon.

By the time we fell into bed that night, into a bed that for the first time was both of ours, in a room that was both of ours, in a rented home that, even though it was rented, still felt like ours, we were exhausted. Right before that, I went into the unfamiliar bathroom filled with unfamiliar things, grabbed my toothbrush, which at least was something I recognized, found a tube and loaded those bristles and stuck it in my mouth and began brushing.

Only to coat my entire mouth with Ben Gay.

Oh, hurt! Oh, burn! The emanating smell went up into my sinuses and I thought my nose was going to fall off. Much like this morning, I began to laugh and laugh, while trying to spit the offending stuff out, rinsing my mouth, which, just as my cheeks pooched out, was a disaster because I began to laugh again and so coated our bathroom mirror with watered-down Ben Gay. In the background, Michael kept calling from the bedroom, “What? What?”

Sure. You make a huge step in commitment toward someone, and the first thing you do on your first night in your shared bed is to kiss the man you love with a burning mouth of Ben Gay.

I laughed myself into a full coughing, barking asthma fit, which may have been because of all the Ben Gay fumes too. What a romantic night. What a way to make an impression on my new roommate.

Well, he married me, so I guess it wasn’t too bad.

But the laughter. And then, when I checked back on my Facebook page, I found a pile of “likes”. And comments about coffee poured over a breakfast burrito, and oregano sprinkled into coffee instead of cinnamon. Sometime last week, someone posted about hairspray that went in all the wrong places. And boy, could I ever tell you a story about a jalapeno pepper that ended up in a spot it was never intended.

Peppered (yes, that was deliberate) in between these comments were Been There, Done Thats.

And that’s when I felt it. The community formed by simple human acts. In this case, doing something so totally brainless that you can’t help but laugh. We’re all connected by simple human error.

I spent the morning laughing, and knowing others were laughing too. It doesn’t get much better than that.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

You know, fiction writers live weird double lives. And truly, they’re not double – they’re whatever the equivalent of double would be with a million. I live my life every day, of course, but in a certain part of my brain and my consciousness, I’m also living the life of whatever character I’m writing about right now, and usually developing the life of whatever character I’m going to write about next. I don’t know how many of these hidden lives I’ve lived, or how many there will be, but they’re just a part of the way things work. It’s always annoyed me when people assume my fiction must be about me, because  it really isn’t. It’s about these other people that show up in this special place in my head (I think it’s somewhere above my right ear) and start doing things and thinking things. Things I would never do or think myself, but they do, and so I write them down. I believe fiction writers have a special form of empathy – something that allows us to stay distant from what we’re imagining, but also allows us to get into the heads of others without losing our sense of self.

For non-writers, I know this sounds really weird, but I’ve yet to meet a fiction writer that this doesn’t happen to. And I’m so glad it does. It’s responsible for the creation of literature that goes back to the world’s beginnings. The word was created, and then the writers began to create worlds.

So I’ve been working on this new book which is basically centered around an affair, and how that affair affects way more than just the man and the woman and their immediate families. But the man in this case is decidedly the instigator, the mean one, the liar. His wife enters into it too, but she has her (maybe forgivable) reasons. As I’ve written the stories, which are chapters in this book, about the people who are affected, watching that ripple spread wider and wider, in circle after circle of deceit and manipulation and narcissism and misogyny, I’ve felt myself growing angrier and angrier. Not at the Other Women and other people involved. But at the man. And sometimes his wife, who is fully aware of what he’s doing.

Now add to this that I’m writing this book in the middle of a world that seems to have gone crazy. Every day, I’m lambasted, just like everyone else is, with stories of school shootings and mall shootings and store shootings and temple shootings and shootings and shootings and shootings. For everyone, whether you’re for gun control or not, whether you’ve shot a gun or not, it seems like the air is just full of whistling bullets and explosions. I’ve found myself worried at times, especially on busy mornings when I barely have time to read a headline, let alone react to it, that maybe I’m becoming hardened. Maybe I’m becoming jaded. Maybe the day-to-dayness of this is becoming so routine that I will start feeling removed, dispassionate, as if a shooting is as common and easily forgotten as a report on the latest style of jeans.

And maybe that worry has been in the room next door to the room in my brain where the characters hang out. This room next door is where I silently ruminate on things. Those silent ruminations sometimes come out as stories or poems. But mostly, they remain silent. But I think maybe there was a secret window between the two windows, and the current characters in my head opened it. Because it seems I had more to learn about myself in writing the latest chapter than about my characters. It seems I needed to provide myself reassurance.

I finished the first draft of this latest story/chapter this week. In it, the first woman that my mean man hurt shows up in a diner, lifts up a gun, and blows him away.

I have never ever ever written a violent gun scene before. Never.

And I will admit that when I wrote how she pulled the trigger and how he fell, for that brief moment as those words came out and I pounded my finger on the period to end that life and end the sentence, a thought whipped across my mind: Good. He deserved it. It’s about time.

And in the very next moment, my hands flew off the keyboard and smacked themselves across my mouth in that universal expression of sheer horror. Not horror at what I’d written – following this storyline for almost a year now, there’s no question in my mind that this is what would happen.

But horror at what I thought. Even for a moment.

And in that moment, with my own thoughts still ringing in my ears and with my eyes on my words on the page, I had my moment of reassurance and the wiping out of that ruminating thought. I am not becoming dispassionate. There is nothing day to day about an event that leaves innocent and sometimes not so innocent people dead. Despite the news around me (“This week’s moment of happiness DESPITE THE NEWS”), I am hanging on to my humanity with every bit of strength that I have. The needle on my moral compass hasn’t moved, despite what we’ve all been exposed to.

Whew. I’m still me in here, in my own skin, despite what’s happening in the news and despite what has happened in my own life and despite what I wrote this week and despite the things that happen in that special little room above my right ear. Most of what shows up in that room is for the reader – but every now and then, it’s for me.

Teacher, teach thyself. Writer, write it down.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

Yesterday, I had a breast MRI. It’s no secret that I dealt with breast cancer a couple years ago, and a year after the surgery, the surgical site became severely infected. No one knows definitively why – the infectious diseases doctor thinks that since the mammogram I had right before was particularly vicious (I cried – I’ve never cried during a mammogram), it caused internal bleeding. The right side of my breast collapsed – there was more damage from the infection than from the partial mastectomy. Now, there is so much scar tissue, the 3-D mammograms aren’t as effective, and so my doctor wanted me to start having MRIs.

Which are downright miserable.

To do a breast MRI, they place a molded plastic tray on the sliding table that goes into the MRI machine. Instead of being on my back, I’m on my stomach. The tray arches me into a small cat stretch, and there is an opening above and below my breasts, so they hang down and free. My arms are stretched forward, so I look like a flying superhero. And then they stuff me into the machine. The mold is only padded minimally – it’s hard and uncomfortable.

At first, they arched me so high, I actually pressed against the opening of the machine. This made it impossible for me to breathe. So they pulled me out, adjusted, then stuffed me back in. And there I stretched, for the next half hour, as the contrast burned through my veins and the machine racketed all around me. All I could see was the floor of the machine through my little face pillow. A fan blew on me to keep me cool, and in about five minutes, my hips began to ache and so did my shoulders. But I couldn’t shift my position.

As I said, miserable. And very claustrophobic.

But the Moment of Happiness happened right before the procedure.

Two women technicians helped me. When I walked into the room with the machine, they prepared me, pulling off the robe and opening further the gown I was told to put on, open to the front, of course. I was standing there in all my breast-cancer-beaten-up glory when they turned away to get the plastic mold ready.

“So how are you today?” one of them asked.

“Well,” I said, “I’m standing here bare-breasted, about to climb onto the largest vibrator in the world. It looks like it’s going to be that kind of day.”

I was puzzled when they froze, and then even more puzzled when they looked at me, their eyes wide and their mouths hanging open.

And then I realized what I’d just said and slapped both hands over my mouth.

That’s when all hilarity busted loose. One technician laughed so hard, she had to drape herself over the mold. “Geez, that’s uncomfortable,” she said when she straightened.

I had to sit down, the laughter weakening my knees.

“We’ve never had anyone say something like that before,” the other technician said.

“You just made our day,” the first one said.

I was still laughing when I climbed onto the largest vibrator in the world and stuck my breasts through the opening. It took a while to get settled because I kept returning to the laughter and then they would laugh and we’d have to start all over again.

It helped to think about the laughter as I suffered through the procedure. But I couldn’t think about it too much because then I’d laugh all over again, and I wasn’t allowed to move once the process started. So instead I switched my thoughts to their saying I made their day.

I’m glad I was able to do that for them. What they do can’t be easy.  I hope they giggled throughout the day and then retold the story to their co-workers and other patients and to their families that night. I hope there was lots and lots of laughter.

Within an hour of the MRI, my doctor emailed and told me the MRI was clear. So of course, that’s a Moment too. Two and a half years cancer-free!

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

New Year’s resolutions are all around us right now. Articles on the internet talk about how they fail. Television commercials are all about weight loss and fitness. I usually pay very little attention to resolutions, but this year, I decided to bring about change. In my case, though, I’m not moving forward. I’m moving backward.

For several years, I worked as a weight loss consultant for three different weight loss companies. I’d lost a substantial amount of weight myself and the step into mentorship seemed a natural one. I actually kept the weight off for over ten years, which meant that I was a “success” – but all successes can be reversed. In my case, I became too successful.

Everything in my life became about my body. I weighed myself over 25 times a day. If I sneezed, I weighed myself to see if that little explosion caused a loss. I kept a constant magnetic food diary on my fridge and everything that went into my mouth went onto that diary. If I made a mistake, it was devastating to me. My shame was exposed on the refrigerator. I worked out every day of the week, doing advanced step-aerobics and body-building. My platform in step-aerobics teetered high on two risers, putting my knees at dangerous angles, but I didn’t care.

Everything else fell to the wayside. My writing. My family. My daughter, who was in afternoon kindergarten, would come with me to the gym in the morning, sit in the daycare and cry, then come home with me to have lunch. She’d help me apply my makeup, standing next to me like a surgeon’s assistant, handing me the next tube or brush or powder. Then I’d walk her to school and she’d cry while watching me drive away. I saw my boys at breakfast. They were asleep by the time I got home. I worked seven days a week.

Monitoring. Checking. Weighing. Measuring. At work, we had to weigh in once a month in front of everyone, and if we hit five pounds over our goal, we had one month to lose it or lose our jobs. I lived in constant fear of the work scale. Even when I sunk to almost twenty pounds below my goal weight. Even then, my mother, an incredibly tiny person who spent her life shopping in the girl’s department (not juniors – the GIRL’S) told me I was still fat and needed to lose more, so I dropped an additional fifteen. I simply stopped eating. I ramped the workout schedule. I fainted.

I was so sick, and I didn’t even know it. I thought I was healthy. I thought I was beautiful. I thought I was a role model.

And then I broke.

Fast forward to now. I never returned to the gym or to formal dieting, afraid I’d hurt myself again. I threw myself into an intellectual life, ignoring the physical. Writing and my business keep me always busy. As the pounds came back on, I told myself I couldn’t go to the gym – there was no time. And there really wasn’t. After my bout with breast cancer two years ago, the oral chemo I’m on for five years exacerbated my Oral Allergy Syndrome, making it impossible for me to eat raw fruits, raw vegetables, seeds, or nuts. I go into anaphylactic shock. I now have an epi pen in my purse and on every floor of my house.

But through it all, you know what I missed? The movement. The weight lifting. The feeling strong. I loved aerobics, but the weight training had a whole different impact. Once, before I went off the deep end, I was working the circuit in the weight room and two men came up to watch me. I ignored them and just kept on lifting. Eventually, one guy looked at the other and said, “I guess women just aren’t delicate anymore, huh?”

Bear in mind that at this point in my life, I was quiet. I didn’t speak back, I didn’t speak out. I was pretty darn submissive. But I carefully lowered my weights (don’t clang!), turned to the men and said loudly and clearly, “Fuck you.” With those weights in my hands, I was strong.

So as 2020 approached, I sat and gave myself a talking to. I’ve been very focused on what I can’t eat – not what I can. I can eat cooked vegetables and cooked fruits. A new gym opened up in town that is open and staffed 24/7. I could go work out after midnight, when I was done with work for the day, instead of sitting in my recliner and watching television. I wouldn’t lose sleep –  I’m awake at that time anyway.

It’s been years – since the early nineties – since the eating disorder. I am now no longer just a strong woman when I am lifting weights. I am a strong woman. Period. My life used to be all physical. Then it switched to all intellectual. Now – I believe I can do both. I can be strong in mind and body.

I can do this.

So I joined the gym and started attending this past Saturday. I’ve been there every day this week. And my moment of happiness?

Sitting down at the first weight machine. Grasping the handles. Lifting. The weights were set lighter than years ago, but I could do it. And it was still there, the lyricism of muscle, the contraction, the release, the rhythm. Breathe out while lifting, breathe in while releasing.

The strength. And yes, the delicacy of a body with muscles and tendons and sinews all working together. Like a clock. Like a machine. But with heart.  There is poetry in words. But there is poetry in the body too.

I could have cried with the sheer joy of it.

I can do this. Watch me.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

And Happy New Year!

When my daughter Olivia came home for her first Christmas break from college, it absolutely stunned me that she returned without her three best friends since her very young childhood:

Maxie: a beanie baby-sized blue and white bear or dog, depending on who you talked to, representing some drug (apparently a giveaway from a pharmaceutical company), picked up at a rummage sale by Olivia’s grandmother when Olivia was about a year old. I honestly don’t remember why Maxie was named Maxie.

Norman: a kangaroo with a pouch, but a male name. During my first residency at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where I earned my MFA, they held a fundraising auction of items donated by faculty and students. Olivia was born in October of 2000, and I left for my first residency in December of 2001, so Olivia was only 14 months old and I was full of grief and guilt over being so far away from her for 15 days. I missed her first steps, and by the time I came home, she was running. When the kangaroo came up for auction, my hand shot up so fast, I don’t think anyone dared bid against me. I named him Norman because that’s what he looked like, despite the joey-less pouch, and he sat on my bed in my dorm room for the rest of the residency and rode with his head sticking out of my backpack when I flew home.

Teddy: a homemade teddy bear with a cliché name, purchased during my second residency in Vermont.

These three have accompanied Olivia from her bedroom in our first house to this one, from sleepover to sleepover, to Oregon and Myrtle Beach, on college tours, and back. Wherever she goes, they go.

And she came home without them. They’re on her bed in her dorm room.

“Mom,” she said, when I expressed surprise at their absence, “do you want me to go back to get them?”

I’m not sure why I was so stricken. Maybe it’s just another sign of her growing up. Maybe it’s because I feel like she always has a source of comfort when they’re around, even if I’m not.

Maybe it’s because, at 59 years old, my own special stuffed animal, Rontu, is still in my closet. I’ve never grown up enough to leave him behind.

I was either seven or eight when I met Rontu. My mother took me to the S&H Green Stamp store to make some purchases, and while I waited for her, I wandered to the storefront window. On a rocking chair was a black and white stuffed dog with a big nose and floppy legs and jingle bells in his ears. I climbed into the window, sat in the chair, rocked, and listened to his bells ring. And fell in love.

I told my mother I wanted this dog. She said she didn’t have enough stamps. So I said I’d ask for him for Christmas. On Christmas Day, as soon as I picked up the box, I heard the jingle bells. No present was ever opened faster.

I named him Rontu, after the Aleut dog in my favorite book at that time, The Island Of The Blue Dolphins, by Scott O’Dell. Karana, the main character, nurses Rontu back to health after she shoots him in the chest with an arrow. She says that Rontu, in her language, means Fox Eyes. Well, my Rontu didn’t have fox eyes. He had cloth black and white eyes and jingle bells in his ears. And I loved him to distraction. It didn’t matter the time of day or night, he was there for me. When I cried, it was into his ears. When I was happy, I shook him and he sang with jingles. For the longest time, I played out an imaginary story in my head where scientists blended my ovarian eggs with a black and white dog’s sperm and Rontu was the result. He was my baby. I know, that’s weird. But my imagination has always been just slightly off the tracks. Ronto was way more than my baby. He was my partner, my security blanket, my forever companion.

He came with me to college. He sat on my bed during my first marriage. He was nearby on a chair for my second marriage. And now he resides in my closet, where I see him every day when I get dressed and I smile at him.

He’s fragile. Hardly any fur left. But he still jingles.

This week, I had the stomach flu. And it was a horrible version of it. During the worst of it, when Michael moved downstairs so I would have instant access to the bathroom and I was wracked with unstoppable nausea and body aches that wouldn’t let me straighten my body out, I got out Rontu and curled my body around him. My cats were annoying nursemaids, insisting on getting in my face or laying directly on a sore joint. Not so Rontu. He lay quietly pressed into my belly and I felt better. If I shifted even a little bit, he still jingled.

Sometimes, you can reunite with pure childhood happiness even in the middle of a bout of the stomach flu.

I hope, when Olivia returns to college, she swoops down on her three best friends and lets them know how she missed them. I hope they are, to her, what Rontu is to me.

Everyone needs a Rontu.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

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

And Merry Christmas!

Now I know I could have said Merry Everything, or Merry all the different practices in the world, but I’m not. To me, Merry Christmas covers it all, not just Christians (and in fact, I get quite perturbed when I hear a Christian retort, “Say Merry Christmas! You liberals aren’t taking that from us!”, because there’s nothing to take). Any story with Santa Claus ends with him saying “Merry Christmas!” The classic Dickens tale A Christmas Carol isn’t about Christianity.

Christmas is giving. I find that to be the simplest definition.

BUT…that’s not what this blog is about. This is about my moment of happiness this week.

On Christmas day, after everyone who was going home went home, and Olivia was in her room, and Michael was cleaning up the demolished kitchen, I mentioned to him that I didn’t understand why I kept seeing Facebook posts about the movie Die Hard. “Why is everyone discussing watching Die Hard?” I asked. “What the heck?” Now I will admit I’ve never seen the movie. It’s not the sort of film I enjoy.

Michael explained to me that many people consider it a Christmas movie. When I asked why, because I understood it to be an action movie, he said, “Because it takes place at Christmas.”

So I pondered that for a bit. Is that all it takes to be a Christmas movie?

When I think back to all the movies and TV specials I watched as a kid and even now that I associate with Christmas, I came up with the following list:

A Christmas Story

A Charlie Brown Christmas

Frosty The Snowman

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (only the original please)

A Year Without A Santa Claus

The Night The Animals Talked

Santa Claus is Coming To Town

A Christmas Carol (I have particular fondness for the musical version)

How The Grinch Stole Christmas (animated)

The Little Drummer Boy

And of course, of COURSE, The Homecoming, the made-for-TV movie that resulted in the TV series, The Waltons.

Ever since it came out in VHS (whenever that was) and now in DVD, I have watched The Homecoming on Christmas Eve. My brother calls John Boy John Boob. My ex-husband teased me and the show mercilessly whenever I watched it. And Michael, my current husband, holds his tongue until the Walton family is sitting around the radio, listening to Fibber McGee and Molly. Michael sputters that the particular episode they’re listening to was actually aired in 1940-something, not when this particular TV movie takes place. But I watch it avidly, settling in whatever couch or recliner or chair I have at the time, and I turn out all the lights and I refuse to talk to anyone. My shoulders relax, I take a deep breath, and I sink into that world. Either out loud or in my head, I recite each and every line.

The movie takes place on Christmas Eve in the Great Depression, and John, the father, is late getting home from his job far away, where he stays during the week to provide a paycheck for his family. There is a bus crash and Olivia, the mother, is sure John was on it. Eventually, Olivia sends out her oldest, John Boy, to look for him. Before then, she asks John Boy what he’s hiding in his mattress, and it turns out that it’s a tablet, where he’s been writing. He says,

“Things stay in my mind, Mama. I can’t forget anything. And it all gets bottled up in here, and sometimes I feel like a crazy man. I… I can’t rest or sleep or anything till I just rush off up here and write it down in that tablet. Sometimes I think I really am crazy. If things had been different, Mama…I could have done something with my life. What I would have liked, Mama…was to have tried to be a writer.”

Olivia reassures him that he can, of course he can.

And every year, I sucked those words in, those words I didn’t hear from my own family, though I did hear it from the most wonderful line-up of teachers. I listened to them and I listened to Olivia and I listen to her still and I believed her.

And then…I believed in me.

Best Christmas gift ever. Year after year after year.

I won’t watch Die Hard, just because it takes place at Christmas time. Just give me The Homecoming. I accept its gift.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

Just wanted to show everyone that the new lion is in and he’s wonderful. Also, if you go to my personal Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/kathie.giorgio.5

I am having a contest to name the lion. Winner gets their choice of one of my books, signed and delivered. If more than one person chooses the same name, then those people will be put into a drawing.

Isn’t he perfect?

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

Here we have the continuing story of the Literary Lion – this one is called The New Literary Lion.

Well, we’re almost exactly a month beyond the theft of our Little Free Library books and my own Little Literary Lion (see November 21 This Week’s Moment). Despite a huge wave of community compassion, with Facebook posts being shared over and over, people looking for the lion as they drove throughout Waukesha (and by one particular address), looking on CraigsList, Facebook Marketplace, and other for-sale sites, articles in the local newspapers, and on and on…Little Literary has not come home. I can’t tell you how I’ve been moved and heart-warmed by the support over what some might consider silly. But after my blog on what that little statue, and the two before him, meant to me, that he’s way more than a concrete lion, people just HELPED. It wasn’t isolated to Waukesha – thoughts of love and encouragement came from around the United States and around the world.

Sadly, I kept an eye out for another Literary Lion. There were so many things that he had to be. Heavy, for one. In good shape, of course. Not overly scary – so many children visited Little Literary. So the new lion had to have a sweet face. He had to look intelligent. Thoughtful. Literary, donchaknow. He had to look at home in front of a typewriter, if there was a typewriter for him.

I saw a lion listed on Facebook Marketplace that really pulled at my heartstrings. He was called “vintage”. He was so vintage, his front paws had worn away. I wanted to give him a safe home where he could continue to disintegrate in peace. But, I reminded myself, that’s not the purpose of the Literary Lion.

Then I saw another one that I just fell in love with. A lying-down lion. He was relaxed, laid back, his tail curled neatly to his side. Thoughtful face. But…he was two and a half hours away, in a town called Elwood in Illinois. With my schedule, I just couldn’t figure out how I could spare five hours in driving, and who knows how much time actually picking up the lion. I asked the seller if he could be shipped. It would be really expensive, he told me. And he was afraid the lion would break. I put a notice up on Facebook, looking for someone who lived close to the lion, who could pick him up and meet me halfway. But there were no takers. Reluctantly, I looked away. But every time I did a search on the Marketplace, both for my own Little Literary, in case the thieves put him up for sale, and for a new lion, I saw that thoughtful face and I hovered there for a bit.

Then not one, but two lions came up for sale nearby. I had some trepidation – what would I do with two? And they were roaring, which I was afraid would make them scary. But I contacted the seller and off we went, me, Michael, and my son Andy. When we pulled up, the woman came out, looked at Hemi, my car, and said, “You’re planning on taking them home in that?”

She neglected to tell me that when she purchased the lions, they were delivered in a truck and put in place with a crane. They weighed 500 pounds. EACH. They would have broken my car’s suspension.

We went home lion-less.

When I posted about this latest fiasco on Facebook two nights ago, a student asked me about the one I loved in Illinois. I explained that he was still available, but just too far away. I posted his picture, sighed, and went downstairs to teach my class.

When I came back up, I found a message from my friend Stephanie. Stephanie used to be one of the hosts of an NPR radio interview show about books, and she interviewed me many times. We always had so much fun, and our interviews could have gone on for hours. She moved away to St. Louis, my birthplace, a few years ago. “Surprise!” she messaged me. “The little lion from Elwood, IL will be picked up tomorrow by me as I’m on my way to Chicago.” Her husband, she explained, would continue up to Wisconsin and pass the lion off to me.

I was floored. And thrilled. Oh, holy cow. Or holy lion, I guess. Oh, merry Christmas!

On Wednesday, she sent me a photo of the lion riding next to her in her car. He was so heavy, he set off the seatbelt indicator. He had to be strapped in. I am getting a very safety-conscious lion.

That night, I messaged the seller, thanking him for his time and being willing to work with Stephanie to get the lion to me. His wife answered. “When I heard that your friend was bringing you the lion, I was happy because you really wanted it…I truly wanted you to have it after you tried so many ways to get him.” I sent her a link to the previous blog, so she would understand just how much this lion means to me. She said, “I love the story and, yes, you are a Literary Lion. Fierce in your conviction and love. May he be your new Literary Lion and friend.  I will miss him.”

I’ve gained a friend, and not just in lion form.

Today, I met Stephanie’s husband in the parking lot of a shopping mall, and between the two of us, we managed to get the lion from one car to the next. He is just…everything. I sang all the way home, and he rocked out in the back seat.

The next step…getting him under the Little Free Library. Am I worried he might be stolen too? Not so much now. He is way heavier than any of my previous Literary Lions, and he’s low to the ground. His long body will be all the way under the Library, and there is no way he can be tilted forward to lift up. He would have to be dragged by at least two people straight out, and then lifted, and by then, the noise would alert us. A security camera is also going in, and possibly a GPS tracker.

Trust me, I hate having to even think of these things. But I guess, in this world, in these days, I have to.

But…this world also contains people who search for missing concrete lions. Who try to find new ones. Who go out of their way to help me to bring one home, the perfect one. I am just astounded at the number of people, students, readers, friends, strangers, who rushed to reassure me that my dreams are still intact, still viable, and that in many ways, I am living them right now. I’m not just reaching for my dreams. I am holding them firmly in my hands.

I am a Literary Lion.

And if Little Literary still finds his way home? He will take a seat beside this new lion. Literary Lion #4. His name is still to be chosen – I’m kinda leaning toward Elwood. But he’s here.

Thank you to everyone who made this happen, and who created this Moment Of Happiness. Thank you especially to Stephanie Lecci. Love you lots. And thank you to Timothy and Betty, who sent this little lion on his way to me.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, happy, happy, happy, everyone.

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

This past Saturday, I was out at the mall, doing Christmas shopping, when I was unwittingly captured by one of those skincare guys. You know the ones…they’re attractive, usually bearded, young, have a lovely accent. And they always call you “miss” even if you’re a million bajillion years old. I honestly have no idea how it happened. I usually cross to the other side of the mall to avoid them, but somehow, there was suddenly this hand offering me a free sample in a shiny silver packet, and the next thing I knew, I was being led into this little store with a really comfortable chair.

I realized where I was and I thought about just saying, “No, thank you!” and escaping, but that chair looked good and I’d been shopping for a while. So I decided to take a little break, then say no, and move on.

The first thing that happened was my guy, who called me “KAH-dee”, told me I have beautiful skin for my age. He didn’t ask me my age. I didn’t tell him my age. Then he told me the only flaw he saw was I was a “bit poofy” under my eyes. I started to say that was because I rarely get more than a few hours of sleep at night, but he was off and running, snatching my glasses, and smearing some creamy stuff under my right eye. Then he took a little fan and blew it at me while telling me of the miracle of this cream. “You will feel it tightening, KAH-dee,” he said. “And you will look ten, twenty years younger.”

Oh, I felt it. The skin under my eye began to feel like it was being pulled to my ear. I don’t remember feeling like that when I was forty or fifty.

He kept showing me my reflection in the mirror, which, since he had my glasses, I couldn’t see. Finally, he plopped them on my nose, and yes, I was less “poofy”. But man, it was uncomfortable.

He began rhapsodizing about how young I would look, and how he loved my style (I was wearing old jeans and a favorite sweater) and how he loved my hair (it was time for a haircut and it was sticking out in every possible direction). He mentioned how I don’t wear make-up.

I don’t. I used to. I used to have a job where I had to slather on the make-up and look like I stepped off the cover of a magazine. I hated it. I also used to have one ginormous eating disorder from working in a field where I had to look incredible and incredible meant being about twenty pounds below my recommended weight and a teeny tiny size four.

I don’t ever want to go back to those days.

He asked me when I last did something for myself. Lost in that memory, I was tempted to say when I walked out of that old job, but I didn’t.

“Twenty minutes ago,” I said. I’d gone into a store to buy something for my sister for Christmas – mission accomplished! – and walked out with a lovely little pin that looks like a lizard. For me.  “And,” I said, “I’m heading toward another store to buy myself two or three more sweaters. I cleaned out my closet last fall and got a little too generous with the give-away pile.”

“Oh,” he said. He frowned. I’d thrown him off his script. I could well imagine the number of women who sat in this chair who honestly could not think of the last time they did something for themselves. I was lucky – it was an unusual day for me. But that lizard waved at me and called itself Newt and it reminded me I needed sweaters while in the middle of shopping for others.

Then he said, “Well, you need to take care of yourself MORE, KAH-dee! Here is what I will do for you!” He stacked two of the skin care cream bowls beside me and told me they each cost $200, but for me, for ME, he would sell them both for just $200. “And I will do more, KAH-dee!” he said, and I wondered if he had a second job as a tv commercial announcer on all those made-for-tv products: “But wait! Order now and we will double your order!” He ran and got a slim tube of hand lotion. “I will throw this in too, KAH-dee!” He said the hand cream cost another $50. “So how will you take care of this?” he asked me.

I smiled. “I won’t,” I said.

The look on his face was positively stricken. “But, KAH-dee!” he said. “You will look so much younger!”

I stood up. “Look,” I said. “I’m not buying it because I’m happy with who I am. I’m proud of who I am. This is who I am, even my skin. Ten, twenty years? I don’t want to move backwards. I’m moving forwards.” I patted his face gently. To my surprise, he burst into the sweetest, most sincere smile. “Respect my age, respect me,” I said. “At least with me, you won’t make a sale by disparaging the results of my experience.”

And then I left. I bought three sweaters for myself.

The thing is, the lecture I gave him was one I had to listen to as well. I’ve been unhappy about turning sixty this coming summer. But my response to him was genuine and I felt it throughout every pore of my almost-sixty year old skin.

I’m happy with who I am. I’m proud of who I am. Respect my age, respect me.

I hope he learned something. I did.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Despite the news indeed, this week in our small city. On Monday, Waukesha exploded with news and nerves as not one, but two high schools were put on lockdown with gun threats. In one, a pellet gun was involved, the suspect shot by a police officer and sent to the hospital where he remains in stable condition. In the other, details are sketchy, with a suspect arrested in his house.

I live in the middle of downtown, and throughout the morning and afternoon, sirens went off and police cars whizzed by. Helicopters hovered. There were reports of swat teams and ambulances.

I no longer have anyone in the high schools, but it was still unnerving. And through it all, one question remained unasked and unanswered. I swallowed it and waited.

My daughter Olivia graduated from high school last spring. I found myself relieved that she was no longer there – she attended both high schools involved. But then I found myself feeling guilty for feeling relieved, because there were still all these other kids behind the locked doors.

I think the whole city held its collective breath that day. We didn’t begin to breathe again until lockdowns were lifted, children were released, press conferences were held, and reports that arrests were made and the only injury was to the suspect with the pellet gun. Then we all looked at each other uncertainly, not sure how this happened, not sure what would happen next, not sure what we could do to keep this from ever happening again.

And still, I didn’t hear anyone ask my question. I remained silent, unsure if I should be feeling what I was feeling.

It wasn’t until that evening, after everything was done, that I spoke to my daughter via Facebook Messenger. I caught her up on the events at the high school she attended for her freshman and sophomore years, and then at the high school she attended for her junior and senior years, where we moved her because of the extent she was bullied in the first high school.

The suspect with the pellet gun was from this first high school. A school that left us with no wonderful memories, but instead, a need to leave and find wonderful memories elsewhere.

My daughter, small on the screen in front of me, brought both hands up to her mouth. Her eyes widened. And then the first thing she said, the first thing she asked, was the question I’d been silencing.

“Mama,” she said, “what about the boy? The boy with the pellet gun. Is he okay? What was he going through that he would do such a thing? Is he getting help?”

She released the question I was scared to ask. The question that made me wonder if I was even feeling the right thing. The day had been filled with newsbreaks, showing people exclaiming, “Put him away! Lock him up! Why didn’t the police officer just blow him away?” and others saying, “I’m going to homeschool from now on,” and “It’s time for us to move away.”

To where? And how does that help anything?

I didn’t ask the question out loud, under the pressure of the overwhelming public response. I worried, with everyone, over the well-being of the students hiding in darkened classrooms, the faculty that tried to protect them, the school resource officer and police officer forced to make an awful decision. But I also worried, silently, about the boy with the pellet gun at one school, and the boy arrested from the other school, with so many details left unsaid.

And now my daughter said those words out loud. Is he okay? What was he going through that he would do such a thing?

The horror on her face reflected not just the act, but what was behind the act.

My heart burst for this girl, my girl, whose compassion knows no boundaries. Her sheer humanity makes me grow prouder each and every day.

May we all follow in her example. May there be many, many others like her in her generation.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.