Author: Kathie

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

My life ever since January 17^th, 2024, the day Michael was struck and then run over by a passenger van, has been a Roller Coaster. Yes, with capital letters. It should also be bolded and in the largest font a laptop can produce. It’s been nothing short of chaotic. There was his accident, the time in the hospital (6 weeks), the time in rehab (3 weeks), the time at home with a revolving door of home healthcare workers (just over a month), his last time in the hospital (a month), his time in hospice (5 days, barely), and then this long, long haul after his death (almost a year). Mixed in with all that was the death of my two cats, Edgar Allen Paw (14 years old) and Muse (20 years old). There was my trying to keep up with my own schedule, plus everything that Michael used to do around here.

There have been decisions to make. Decisions, decisions, and more decisions. And now nobody to be a sounding board. Michael couldn’t make a decision to save his soul, that weight has always been on me, but he was a great listener.

Then last week, the book-banning story hit. I wasn’t expecting the hoo-ha that came with it, For a little bit there, I felt like I was trying to swim upstream against a rapids of stampeding plesiosaurs (look them up). I wear a ring on what used to be my wedding ring finger. The ring is called Swimming Against The Current, and it shows many little silver fish swimming in a circle around my finger, but there is one little gold fish trying to swim the other direction.

I about twisted that ring into a groove down to the bone last week. I was that little gold fish.

Which is why, yesterday, when I suddenly had a quiet day, filled with nothing but simple pleasure, I posted on Facebook, “I don’t say this often. But I had the nicest day,” followed by a smiley face emoji. As almost 100 people “liked” the post, I’d say it’s been pretty obvious that I’ve been under some stress.

My day was simple. It was my one day off a week. I do a different day each week, so that I can keep my full schedule of clients and classes, and everyone on each day of the week knows that every five weeks, they’re going to have a day off. So I slept in, until 12:30. I had breakfast in my recliner with a good book, not in front of my computer. I went in to see my chiropractor, who got a crunch out of my neck that made me instantly three inches taller. Then I went for a pedicure and a warm stone massage.

I’ve only started pedicures since Michael died. I have fibromyalgia, which makes me very stiff and often in pain, and so contorting myself into taking care of my own toenails has become impossible. Michael used to take care of it for me.

One of the things he’s no longer around to do.

I mostly wear sneakers and boots, so I didn’t used to color my toenails. But now, as long as I’m at the spa, I do. It gives me pleasure to look down and see a bright color winking up at me.

The massage…oh, the massage. I started doing warm stone massages after I was diagnosed with fibro, at the suggestion of my rheumatologist. I am a great lover of heat, and I soon fell in love with the heated bed, the heated stones, the heated towels, and the warm, warm hands of the massage therapist. The therapists (there have been a few over the years) learned quickly that even in the high heat of summer, they need to have the bed cranked up to its highest temperature.

The warm stone massage also, for some reason, unleashes my mind. I often get the best story ideas when I’m under so much heat. My favorite massage story was when, in the middle of a massage, I suddenly heard the opening line to my novel, Learning To Tell (A Life)Time. It’s the sequel to my first novel, The Home For Wayward Clocks, and despite requests, I’d said, often and in public, that I would not be writing a sequel. Another book was published after Clocks, and I was working on a different new novel, when, facedown on the massage bed, I heard, “I never expected to cry when my mother died.” I knew, without a doubt, that this was Cooley, a main character in Clocks. “Shit!” I exclaimed, and my therapist’s hands flew off of me.

“I’m sorry!” she said. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” I said. “I have to go home and write a book.” By the time I left the spa that day, I knew the book was set sixteen years after Clocks, that James, the other main character, was no longer with us, that Ione, a secondary character, was in “the garden of dementia” (because Cooley was told that Ione didn’t have Alzheimer’s, but “garden variety dementia”), and the book was going to be about Cooley trying to learn about her mother, who she’d been estranged from for all the sixteen years between books.

The cost of the massage was more than worth it that day.

The massages fell away from my life after Michael’s accident. I simply didn’t have time, and while it sounds odd to say, I didn’t have the energy. Everything was about Michael. It had to be. I don’t regret it. I wish I’d had more time to devote to him.

But now I was back. I had a day off. I had time.

As I lay with closed eyes on the massage table, turned up high, and as I felt the warm stones, the warm towels, and the warm, warm hands of the therapist, I realized something else I’d been missing since Michael died.

Touch.

When Michael was alive, I couldn’t walk past him without his hooking me with an arm and pulling me in for a hug. When we sat side by side on our reclining loveseat, his hand always found its way to my arm. In the car, as I drove, always drove, because Michael was phobic about driving, his hand was on my thigh. Whenever we walked together anywhere, his hand would clasp mine. At night, as I fell asleep, he was an extra blanket, his arm and leg thrown over me, tucking me tightly to him. And there were a myriad of other touches during the day. For twenty-five years.

I’ve been told that people often cry on the massage table. Something is released. That never happened to me before, but it surely did yesterday.

Crying would not normally be considered a moment of happiness, but for me, the more I release this grief like no other, let it out into the world and not just roiling around inside of me, the more I recover. And return to myself, but minus a very important part.

I returned home, every muscle loose and relaxed, and my mind there too. It was in the eighties here yesterday, but I drove home in the convertible with the heated seat on.

I don’t say this often. But I had the nicest day.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Hooboy. My Monday this week was what we all claim Monday to be…hard. Stressful. An entire week in one day. And yes, I’m leading with that, to point out a moment of happiness.

I’ve written often in this blog, from its inception as Today’s Moment through its transition to This Week’s Moment, about the high school I graduated from. I went to three different high schools in my typical four-year stretch, and I credit Waukesha North High School with saving my life. For the first time ever, I felt I was in a place where I not only belonged, but I was welcomed.

I was already writing, had already been published (by the Catholic Herald Citizen, no less!), and knew that this was what I wanted for my life. When I arrived at Waukesha North, it was a veritable feast of classes for someone like me – I took creative writing, journalism, and literature classes called Growing Up In Literature And Reality, Mystery And The Macabre, and Science Fiction and Fantasy. I served in the club that put together the literary magazine – a literary magazine! – and at times, wrote for the school paper. I received amazing encouragement from the faculty, in particular, my creative writing teacher, who I am still friends with today. He told me that I had a gift, but it was my responsibility to use that gift. And so I have.

As I grew as a writer, and even before my books started coming out, I presented at Waukesha North often, in their English classes (sadly, no longer as varied and plentiful). When the books arrived, they were in the school library. I was on several class reading lists, and every semester, I was contacted by students who were reading my books for assignments. I was giving back to the school who gave so whole-heartedly to me.

And by the way – I wrote a story for that literary magazine, whose storyline leaked out to parents, who then complained that it shouldn’t be published. It was my first experience with censorship. The administration of the school backed me up, and the story appeared.

In 2020, I was nominated for and received a place on the school’s Wall of Stars – a collection of alumna that had succeeded in their fields and gave back to the community. I was beyond honored, and despite Covid, I attended the awards ceremony. The trophy sits on a shelf in my office, always within my sight. My name is on a plaque in the school’s atrium.

And in 2023, my books disappeared from the school library.

I’d heard, through a media source, that the school district performed a “sweep” – removing “questionable” books. I didn’t think my books would be included – there was no reason for them to be, and I was on the Wall of Stars. But when I called and spoke with librarians who knew me, it was confirmed that my books were included. One librarian, who didn’t know me, told someone else who called that my books were removed because of low circulation. I knew this not to be true, as I was still, up until that year, being interviewed by students fulfilling assignments.

There wasn’t really anything I could do. Research and digging revealed that the books that were removed in the sweep were donated to an organization that ships books overseas to other countries.

At least they weren’t burned.

So I moved on.

Near the end of 2024, I was asked by someone who was organizing the 50^th Anniversary Celebration of my high school if I would speak at the event about what the school means to me. It was also suggested that I give a gift to the school. I agreed and thought, since I was being asked to participate, maybe things smoothed out and my books were being welcomed back. So I spoke. And I donated a copy of each of my 15 books.

Two days later, I was informed that my books had to go in front of the administration for approval. But, the principal told me, he would have me back in for photos with the books in the library as soon as they were returned with that approval.

Four months later (about two weeks ago), I was informed that the books were not being accepted. According to a deputy superintendent, they liked to have books in their library that had high school age protagonists.

Eleven of my fifteen books have high school age characters in them. One book in particular, Olivia In Five, Seven, Five; Autism In Haiku, is about not only a high school student, but now a graduate of Waukesha North High School…my daughter.

Then I was told that they like to have books in their library that fit within their core curriculum.

I told them I was ON their core curriculum with some of these books, from 2012 to 2023.

I offered a compromise – don’t put them in the library, but put them on display, in a showcase, behind glass. I was told they “don’t make a practice” of putting books on display.

So I picked up my books and brought them home. At least they weren’t shipped overseas this time.

But when I posted about this on Facebook, everything exploded. I’m followed by a lot of media sources, and before I knew it, I was interviewed by a local television station and two local newspapers. The next day, I was told I was being talked about on a local conservative radio talk show. I had a client, so I couldn’t listen, but I did tune in when the recording of it went up on the website. I listened to the introduction, laughed, and stopped listening.

Oh, man. It’s been crazy.

So where is the Moment in all this?

The Moment is in the tidal wave of support I’ve received. On social media and in personal communication, writers and readers from around the world have been sending me their outrage over what happened, and their support and encouragement for me. My website, right here, has been visited by almost 2000 people in three days. Bookstores have been calling me, asking if I have copies of my books I can bring in, because they are selling out.

You know that feeling I said I had when I first walked into my high school at the tender age of sixteen? That feeling of not only belonging, but being welcomed?

I’m there again.

But I do want to be clear on this – I do not hold my individual high school responsible at all. My love and appreciation for Waukesha North continues. What they did for me in those three semesters I was there not only changed my life, but it formed it. The school not only helped me figure out a life path, but it encouraged it and helped me develop a belief that was so strong, I walked into improbable careers. One as a writer. One as a small business owner.  I will always be appreciative of Waukesha North High School. I moved back here so that my four children could attend. And despite this, I believe it’s a fine school, that is doing its best despite the shackles placed on it by the administration.

I requested that my name be removed from the Wall of Stars, and that has been granted. It didn’t seem right, to have me there, my name listed as someone to look up to, but then not to have my books in the library.

But I have my trophy, that was given to me by a school, and its administration, that believed in me. I have my experience there.

That can’t be taken away or rejected.

That’ll do.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

The following are links to the tv interview, and the articles in the newspapers.

Channel 6 in Milwaukee:

https://www.fox6now.com/video/1636138?fbclid=IwY2xjawKJ7i1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFOM3NZRk0ya0ZTSm1FQW5IAR5AxpRpBdUrXWNMHsI68bWH_d2lZz5U93ENWnAcK6bVS2gceE790HHL3vQuZQ_aem_iinYdg9SkWTzCbpUabaM_w

 

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2025/05/06/waukesha-author-asks-for-name-removal-from-alumni-wall/83460572007/?fbclid=IwY2xjawKJ7lRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFOM3NZRk0ya0ZTSm1FQW5IAR7ASlnHVXqyI83XtbyDtTQpVbh8twPVDBfu-zXA6cKcMe3J6OJ4kmDugBuAcg_aem_y8apts_-tzTnDlt4iVyplw

 

Waukesha Freeman:

https://www.gmtoday.com/the_freeman/news/waukesha-north-alumna-asks-for-removal-of-her-star-on-wall-of-stars/article_9e6e95c7-2014-5f0e-9140-ae8c2f063f00.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawKJ7ndleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETE0NFpJZzIyWEVGVVNVT3ppAR6j15wNm4NQ6qOqi3RR8GJMEinzDUgj-Mxf0LgrxP6NPuGNHEaRTx-31aA5Bw_aem_J_rlGMu4M5RwbAVYBXRONA

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

For about 20 years now, I’ve been an unnatural redhead. From the common descriptions you read of redheads, they were everything I wanted to be. Confident. Assertive. Strong. Some would say stubborn. Others would say bullheaded.

I had the bullheaded part down pat. The others, I strived for.

As a child, my hair was stuck in the middle of a battle between my parents. My father loved long hair, and he wanted my hair long. My mother, who noticeably wore her hair short, wanted my hair short. During the cold weather months, my hair was allowed to grow, as my father made the argument that this would keep my neck and ears warm. My mother also couldn’t drive by choice, and didn’t drive until I was well into high school. During the warmer months, she could walk me to a local hair shop, sometimes a salon, sometimes a barber shop, and have my hair cut into what she called a pixie…really, really short. We would go during the day, when my father was at work.

I cried the whole day, because I knew what this meant, other than the fact my hair was going to be short again. I was going to have to go through days where my father would only refer to me as “son” and “little boy.”

I don’t know why, but when I entered middle school, my mother gave up the battle. Maybe this was because the popular style was long hair, parted down the middle, which was exactly how I wore it. By the time I hit senior year, my hair went down to the backs of my knees.

And I decided I hated it. It took forever to dry. It tangled easily. And maybe, just maybe, I decided I didn’t want to be like everyone else.

A few days before graduation, I brushed my long hair for the last time. Then I went to a salon and had three feet of hair cut off. It was the era of “feathering”, and the woman who cut my hair feathered me all over the place, while trying to teach me how to do it myself.

It was then I discovered how much only seeing out of one eye at a time affected my close depth perception. I could not tell when the curling iron was getting close to my forehead. Several scalding, tearful events later, I gave up and just wore my newly short hair straight down. By the end of college, I’d discovered the perm, and grew my hair out to shoulder-length again.

But as much as I admired redheads, I didn’t color my hair. I was a brunette. My hair matched my eyes. I was okay with that.

Until 2005. Lots of changes then. I was on my second marriage. I had four kids, three from my first marriage, and one from my second. I’d been to grad school, the first in my immediate family to earn an advanced degree. I was becoming known as a writer, particularly in the short story. I was teaching, and had just opened a creative writing studio, a business I was told would be impossible.

I was growing in confidence. Assertiveness. Strength. And I was putting my bullheadedness to good use. Just like a redhead.

I had a hairstylist by then named John. I was back to wearing my hair short, and whenever I went in for a haircut, before he’d let me go, he’d take gel and style my hair in punk, little spikes all over my head. I would laugh, go home, wash my hair, and smooth it back down.

Until I didn’t. I told John not only to punk it, but to make it red. We studied these little bits of colored hair stapled to a placard, and we both chose the same shade.

Oh, terrified.

But I will never forget picking up almost six-year old Olivia from summer school that day. The kids were playing on the playground when I walked across it. The teachers’ jaws dropped. Then they circled around me in what took me a while to recognize as a circle of admiration. Then Olivia ran up to me.

“Mama, is that you????” she shrieked. And she proclaimed me beautiful.

Thus began 20 years of punky red hair. It became a part of my “brand”. One time, when I was walking back to the condo in the middle of a snowstorm, after I parked my car in the parking garage across the street, a car skidded to a stop beside me. A woman opened the driver’s side door and stepped out.

“Excuse me,” she yelled through the wind. “Where do you get your hair done? I love it!”

I laughed. “Foxies,” I said, “on Wisconsin Avenue. Ask for John.”

“I’m going there right now!” She got back in her car and slid and skidded away.

John told me later she indeed went there right now. He gave her the punk style, but her red was a little bit different. “Because yours is you,” he said.

John died several years later. I now see Michelle, who has been keeping me red and short and spiky.

But lately, maybe because Michael died, maybe because I am now alone, just Kathie, not KathieandMichael, I’ve found myself wondering if I’m still me under my hair. Partly, it came from asking Michelle if my hair had gone gray at all, one day when I was there for my usual cut and color. “Well, I can’t tell now,” she said.

Can’t tell now. Who I am, under the color.

The thing is, I think I am who I am, confident, assertive, strong – also imaginative, creative, talented, and a few other things – because it’s just me. I’d be me if I was bald. Which may be why I’ve considered lately having my head shaved into a teeny tiny buzz cut. Though I haven’t. Yet.

But I did go in to see Michelle and told her to hold the color. Still keep it short, and I’m still gelling it. But no red.

And there was my hair, for the most part. Some of the red remains on the tips at the top. It’ll be gone with the next cut. But I’m a brunette again. My hair matches my eyes. My eyes, which used to always be studying the floor, but now look straight ahead at whatever’s there.

There is gray, at the temples and some on the sides. But I’ve found I don’t mind that. That’s a part of who I am too. I’m going to be sixty-five soon. I just signed up for Medicare.

I don’t know if anyone will be stopping a car for me soon, in the middle of a snowstorm, shouting exclamations of loving my hair. I’m pretty sure my daughter still thinks of me as beautiful, and she knows exactly who I am.

So do I. And I’m good with that.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

One of the things that I love the most about the little house I retreat to on the Oregon coast – and that caused me to choose this place for the first time back in 2006 – is that there is dedicated space for writing, and dedicated space for doing artwork. Many of my books have had a draft pounded out in the writing nook, on an old beat-up table that butts right up to the window overlooking the ocean, which is only a few feet away. Upstairs, there is a loft, with a larger window facing the same direction. It’s perfect for artwork. The owners of the little house have another beat-up table, left in storage when I’m not there, so the table is just for me. While the view is lovely, I often paint at night, with the windows wide open, letting in the sound of the ocean.

During the day, when I’m writing, I look up to watch the passing whales or birds, and to watch the light change on the water. At night, when I’m painting, I look up at the blinking lights of a passing fishing boat, or to listen to the waves or the ecstatic sound of children with flashlights playing in the sand or basking in the light of a bonfire.

It’s just so idyllic. But especially, it’s idyllic because it’s like a home for two separate places in my brain. One that expresses itself in words; one that expresses itself in imagery and color.

I’ve craved that in my own home, which is a live-where-you-work condo. Here, my brain gets compartmentalized into my writing space on the third floor, and my teaching space on the first floor. But when I’ve wanted to work on art, I’ve either had to haul stuff down to the classroom and hope I don’t mess up the conference table, or haul stuff into the kitchen and hope I don’t mess up the island.

Since Michael died, I’ve sort of thrown myself into a massive purge and reorganization of floors two and three of the condo – where I live. About the only room that hasn’t been affected is my writing space, because that space has always been fully me – I never shared it with anyone, other than the feline and canine interlopers. I think one way I’ve been working myself through Michael’s death is by making the condo more fully mine – Michael’s presence is still here, but not as obviously as before. Interests that we shared remain. Interests that were purely his have been carefully given away to others who share those interests and will love those objects as much as he loved them.

There’s more to do, yet, but lately, my focus turned to a back room. This room has gone through more transitions than any other room in the condo. It’s sorta useless, really – there isn’t a closet, there’s no storage, it’s just this room that sits at the end of the hallway and also is outside of Olivia’s bedroom. The most important aspect of it is there is a second floor deck that is accessed through a door in this room.

First, it was a bedroom for my oldest son who was in college when we moved in here. He came home every other weekend to work, and so I put in a futon with storage underneath, and a table with cubbies and a tv on top. It worked as his room until he graduated and moved out. Then it became a tv room for a while. Next, because Michael was teaching more and more for me, we changed it to Michael’s office – but with the rule that if he began to make it into a mess, it would stop being his office.

It became a mess. Despite decorating it to his specifications, including a lovely desk with a marble top, and plenty of shelves and cubbies for storage, it wasn’t long before he was working on his laptop while sitting on his recliner in the living room, because every available surface in the office was covered – mostly with stuff that it didn’t need to be covered by.

I took the space back during the pandemic, and it became a workout room. It still held Michael’s card catalog (in college, he worked in a library and he loved card catalogs, so I got one for him from an antique store) and an antique RCA Victor radio/record player console. Incongruously, I added a treadmill and free weights, and a television to watch while I was on the treadmill.

And now…here we are, in this new chapter.

Last week, the radio/record player console left, followed by the card catalog. The console was purchased by a woman for her son, who had just won a contest where his radio play was produced. He loved all things Old Time Radio – just like Michael. I have no doubt that console will be treasured. The card catalog went to a man who contacted me immediately when I listed it, saying he’d been looking for one for years to keep his card collection in. He sent a photo of where the card catalog would be, and reassured me it would be well-loved. I believe him.

Then I looked at the room, almost bare again, except for my treadmill, and I knew what I wanted. A lovely student showed me an easel a family member of hers was giving up. It was old and beat-up and wonderful. I said I wanted it. Since I received it, it’s sitting in my garage. But now…

With the help of my son, we moved the treadmill, so that its front is up against a wall. I no longer need the television, which rested on top of the card catalog. I can watch things on my phone. The treadmill folds, which was something I never took advantage of, but I did now, and floor space suddenly became open to me.

In the living room, in a place that was always awkward, was my antique phone table, which has an old-fashioned push-button phone resting on it that has been repainted into art. I found it at an antique mall, which is where the table came from too. It moved into this new space, and has become a place where I can sit and change my shoes. Then the easel came up and tucked into a corner, in front of the door leading to the HVAC unit that heats and cools my classroom downstairs. That door is rarely opened, but just in case, the easel is easily folded. Then I took a trip to St. Vinnie’s and found what they called a TV table. It’s perfect for holding my art supplies. I added a barstool to sit on while painting. And finally, I added a small colorful rug with so many colors that, if I spill paint, no one will ever know.

I had paintings on the walls already, but I went into my garage and pulled out more that I had in storage there and added them. Everything was carefully placed – the treadmill can fold down without disrupting anything.

And then the final for me. I love painting mannequins. That’s how I got started. Back in 2018, on the day before my birthday, Michael, Olivia and I went into Boston Store, as it was going out of business. Everything was for sale. I went into the women’s department and saw a plus-sized female mannequin. I’ve always wanted to paint a plus-sized female mannequin.

“I want this,” I said. And Michael and Olivia bought it for me for my birthday.

She’s sat since 2018, waiting for me. She was in my office, then the storeroom, then came into the classroom when I closed the storeroom down. Now, she’s sitting on that repurposed TV table, and she’s at the perfect height for me to start applying paint and brush. She will be my first project.

Given to me by Michael and Oliva.

I haven’t started yet, and I haven’t unfolded and used the treadmill yet, at least since the change. But I keep walking down the hall, looking at it, and sighing in absolute pleasure.

Like I do in Oregon.

It’s all there, waiting. And that part of my brain, so unexercised, is delighted.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

 

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

Going to the movies was a favorite activity for Michael and me. Even when streaming services became popular, allowing you to see movies in the comfort of your own home with your own microwave-popped popcorn, we preferred the big screen, movie popcorn, and the reactions of others all around us. When the theaters added reclining seats, including armrests that lifted to make the seats into a love seat, so much the better. I’ve yet to experience heated seats, which I’ve heard are out there, but I look forward to it.

In particular, Michael and I loved what we called writer movies. These could be movies based on books by favorite writers, or movies where the main character was a writer. Often, after seeing the movie in the theater, we’d buy it on DVD (again, before streaming) so we could enjoy it and discuss it another time. Soon after Michael and I moved in together, he introduced me to a movie called Jake’s Women, starring Alan Alda, where he played a writer whose characters came to life and talked to him. A writer movie with Alan Alda…heaven!

Since Michael died, I’ve been to several movies, usually in the company of my son Andy and my daughter Olivia. But recently, a movie came out called The Friend. I saw the preview the first time I went to a movie alone, and when I saw that it was a writer movie, I knew I had to go. When the movie showed up in our theaters, it had a shockingly low number of showtimes, so I knew it wouldn’t be staying long. This last weekend, both my son and daughter were unable to come with me, so I went alone to my first writer movie without Michael.

I knew that the movie was about a writer whose best friend had died and left her his gigantic dog, a Great Dane. I didn’t know that the best friend was a writer too, and both of these writers were also teachers, which of course, parallels my life with Michael. The dog, Apollo, was up to his haunches in grief, along with the writer who was left behind.

At one point, the dead writer’s wife says, “How do you explain death to a dog? He sits by the door every day, waiting for Papa to come home.”

Our dog, Ursula, knew Michael as Daddy. Ten months after Michael’s death, Ursula comes downstairs every morning and sits in front of Michael’s recliner, facing it, staring at it. In the evening, she stands by our front windows, watching for Michael to come out of the bus station.

Ten months.

I went to a relatively late movie, 9:40. This theater allows you to choose your seats when you buy your tickets, and I bought mine before anyone else had. I chose my favorite seat. When I arrived at the theater, there were only two other people there, and they were in my same row. There was only one seat between us. When I sat down, they got up and moved to a new area. I wondered if they’d snuck in from another movie.

I think I was only about ten minutes into the movie when the tears started. I sat with the armrest down; there was no need to raise it. But Michael was so missing. The grieving dog, the grieving writer, the dead writer, ohmygod, I was suddenly immersed in it.

At some point, the other two people left. They were not in the theater when the movie ended. I never saw them go. At first, I couldn’t get up and leave. I just sat there, staring at the empty screen. One of the ushers came in and asked me if I was all right.

“No,” I said. “But it’s okay. I will be.”

I will be.

I explained to the usher that the movie hit me more than I thought it would, that my husband and I are/were writers, and that Michael passed away last June. He sat down next to me. Not in the seat Michel would have been in, I noticed, but to my left. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “What was your husband like?”

What a nice young man. We talked for a while, and when I left, walking out into the chilly almost-midnight air, my tears were gone. The young man waved at me, and he was whistling as he began to sweep.

But here’s the thing.

That movie was the best damn movie I’ve seen in a long, long time. Even if my situation wasn’t what it is, this movie would have entered my bloodstream and just left me fully involved and invested in what was going on on the screen. I felt for the writer. I felt for the dog. I felt for the dead writer.

And because of my situation, I then felt for Michael and for Ursula. And for me.

I will watch the movie again when it’s out on streaming. When I got home that night, I ordered the book, which is by Sigrid Nunez. It arrived on Monday, and I am now deep in it, and I am just as wowed by the book as I was by the movie. This is a movie that Michael and I would have talked about for days. But even without him here, I know what he would have said. I know what I would have said.

The conversation is happening anyway. Despite the empty seat.

Some people would wonder why I let myself be “triggered”. First off, I didn’t know fully what the movie was about. But if I had, I would have gone anyway – it was a writer movie. I also didn’t leave when I realized the storyline. I deliberately do not avoid “triggers”, because the more I learn, the more I experience, the more I am exposed to people who have experienced the same thing – and survived! – the more I see that I’m going to be okay too. The more I witness other people’s strength, the more I realize my own.

I’ll be okay, I said to that nice usher. And – spoiler alert – the writer and the dog in the movie end up okay too. I am following in their footsteps.

And I think I want to adopt a Great Dane.

(By the way – that usher? I feel like I am reminded over and over again about the goodness of the majority of people on this planet, even in the midst of all the chaos we’re witnessing. As long as there are people like that young usher, asking me if I’m okay, and then sitting down beside me to talk, the world is going to be fine.)

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Four words (well, technically, three words because one word was used twice) were presented to me this week which provided a huge moment of, if not happiness, then great relief. My feeling is that most people will see these words and wonder why they brought happiness or relief. They were:

Traumatic grief. Complex grief.

Why the relief? Because suddenly, what I’ve been feeling has been identified, defined…and I’m not the only one. Which means I’m not going crazy.

Having raised an autistic daughter, I’ve been exposed over and over again to the word “spectrum”. No matter what my daughter did or didn’t do, no matter if what she was doing or not doing was done or not done by tons of other children identified with autism, she was on the spectrum. Olivia is twenty-four now, and as I watched her grow, I also watched the word “spectrum” grow. It seemed to be applied to just about everything as the years went by.

And now…grief is also on a spectrum. I am on a spectrum.

From the time of Michael’s accident (January 17, 2024) to now, I have had so many wide-eyed realizations in the middle of feeling like maybe I finally had a handle on things. I don’t think I’ll ever forget sitting at my writing table in the little house on the Oregon coast last summer, watching out the window as a couple I’d just spoken to as I took my morning walk moved down the beach. They’d told me they were there, celebrating their thirtieth anniversary. Me, with my lack-of-filter mouth, blurted out that I would have been celebrating my twenty-fifth anniversary, but my husband just died, which, of course, put a pall on the conversation. They couldn’t get away fast enough.

Tucked back in the house, watching them walk away, I suddenly felt that the word “died” wasn’t right. And that’s when I got hit upside the head with the realization that my husband didn’t die. He was killed.

And from there, it was like all the kinds of death just unfolded themselves in a list behind my eyelids. Old age. Natural causes. Illness. An accident caused by the person who died. Murder.

And then Michael. Dead because he was killed by a negligent driver who not only struck him with his passenger van, but then ran over him with all four tires.

Killed.

Out loud in that little house, with only the ocean to talk to, I said, “No wonder I’m so angry.”

I am someone who is, unfortunately, a perfectionist, and who always wants to do things right. Since Michael’s death in June, I have struggled hard with trying to figure out what is the right way to grieve. From people around me, lovely people, I’ve heard all sorts of things. I’ve been told I’m strong, when I don’t feel strong. I’ve been told I’m amazing, when I feel anything but. I was asked how I could stand up in front of a huge crowd, celebrating my studio’s 20^th birthday, and read both a section from Michael’s forever unfinished novel and poetry that I’ve written about this experience without breaking down. Which made me wonder if I was expected to burst into tears. Or maybe I was supposed to stop and apologize and say I was unable to go on. I’ve also been told I seem removed, which made me further wonder just how I was supposed to appear.

And then, of course, a few weeks ago, I was told I was in “pity city”, a phrase which pretty much tipped me over the edge.

To the people closest to me, I’ve asked, “What am I supposed to do? Who am I supposed to be?”

And the answer is usually the same: “Just keep on being yourself.”

But when “pity city” hit, I felt like I was failing grief. How in the world do you fail grief? But I somehow was. At that point, I didn’t see myself as on a “spectrum”. I saw myself as alone. And abnormal.

I am definitely experiencing lighter days. Which is wonderful. But then I still had a day last week where I realized, as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning, that I was not going to be able to get out of bed. And, if I did get out of bed, I was going to be worthless. There would be no talking to me on that day. Luckily, it was a day off for me (and one thing I’ve noticed is that these bad days do seem to appear mostly on my days off…maybe because that’s when I can allow the bad days in?). However, I did have an event scheduled that day, where I was to be speaking before an audience. There was just no way. When I talked to my dog that morning, it was in a whisper. That was the most I could do. And so I canceled.

Which I never do.

Not only am I on the spectrum of grief, but I am on a spectrum of emotion. They change, minute by minute. And they are all, apparently, okay.

So this week, I spoke with someone who specializes in grief recovery, and not only that, she lost her partner years ago in a similar fashion to Michael. When she explained traumatic grief and complex grief to me, I recognized myself and what I’ve been feeling so clearly, I might as well have been looking in a mirror.

The definition of traumatic grief: Traumatic grief, also known as traumatic bereavement, occurs when a death or loss is experienced in a highly distressing or shocking way, leading to symptoms beyond typical grief. In addition to typical grief symptoms like sadness and longing, individuals with traumatic grief may experience intrusive thoughts and memories about the loss and the circumstances surrounding it; hypervigilance or heightened awareness of potential threats; difficulty processing the loss and accepting the reality of the death; emotional dysregulation, such as intense anger, anxiety, or detachment; and physical symptoms, like shakiness, nausea, or trouble breathing.

And this gave me my Moment how? Because it means I’m not going crazy. It means I can do things, like get up in front of a large audience and read Michael’s work, and then have a day where I can’t get out of bed. It means I can seem removed to one person, but then have my eyes fill with tears at an offhand comment by someone else.

It means I’m okay, even when I’m not. And it means I’m going to be okay too.

There is so much to learn.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Well, there’s no doubt which moment is the Moment this week. It sent me right over the moon, or more accurately, overwhelmed me over the moon.

I didn’t find my missing jewelry box. But I found my missing jewelry. The song goes, “Lookin’ for love in all the wrong places…” I was lookin’ for the wrong thing in all the wrong places. The box was gone. The jewelry…still here.

Continuing with a quest to get my house organized, to have everything in places where I know I’ll find it, and understanding all along that this was a thinly veiled way of trying to feel like my life was under control again, I turned to a problem area of my own. Mostly, my focus has been on Michael’s parts of the house, which ended up being in much worse shape than I suspected. Hidden behind closed doors, closed cupboards, closed drawers, was a mountain of stuff that should have been thrown away or given away years ago. And lots and lots of secrets.

For the most part, I was always the one that wanted to keep things minimal. Neat. Organized. Tidy. But there are two places where my own collecting has gone overboard. Clocks and jewelry. The next step in my organizing quest will be to start going through my clocks and slimming my collection. But first…I stood in front of my jewelry cabinet.

Years ago, I found on Craig’s List a listing for something called an antique chimney cabinet. It’s tall, about 7 feet, but slender, filled with five shelves. I saw the photo and recognized a fantastic place to keep jewelry. I had a jewelry armoire at the time, but it didn’t hold enough. This, I thought, would hold a lot. And it did.

Most of my necklaces and earrings, I keep in ice cube trays. These can be stacked. I had a lot of ice cube trays.

I brought the chimney cabinet home, and, appealing to my minimal nature, it didn’t take up much room, but kept its promise of holding a lot. I don’t shop for jewelry at jewelry stores. I look in art galleries, but also in flea markets and thrift stores. My taste is eclectic, and I also very much enjoy knowing that when I walk into a room, whatever jewelry I’m wearing will not be worn by anyone else. It’s not mass-produced by commercial stores, but by lovely individual people.

But…I no longer even knew what I had in there. Some jewelry likely hadn’t been out of the cabinet in over ten years.

A couple people suggested that I might find the missing jewelry box in there. I pushed that possibility away. The jewelry box would not have fit through the cabinet door onto the shelves. I didn’t consider at all that I might find the jewelry.

The first day of cleaning it out, I got through two shelves, stacked with ice cube trays. In one of the trays, I found a small pocket watch, which looked amazingly like my grandmother’s, passed down to my mother, passed down to me. It was one of the missing pieces. I held it for a long time and thought, No. It can’t be. Why would I put the little pocket watch in here, but not the rest of the jewelry? That doesn’t make any sense. But this little pocket watch was so familiar, and it wound – it was not battery-powered. I carefully put it in my “keep” pile. Then I worried over it the rest of the night as I tried to sleep.

The next day, I settled down to go through the final three shelves. My donate pile filled a large box, not just with jewelry, but with some little plastic cubes I’d bought years ago to keep individual pieces in that were too large to fit in a space fit for an ice cube. Scattered in different places throughout the jewelry cabinet, I found all of the missing pieces:

*my grandfather’s pocket watch, identified by his picture inside the back lid,

*my wedding ring from my first marriage, which also had an anniversary band soldered to it,

*a small ceramic pin of a dog holding a daisy, a gift to me when I was eight years old and in the hospital, for the third of five eye surgeries I would receive between the ages of 16 months and 15 years,

*my engagement ring from Michael, bought the weekend we rented our townhouse in Menomonee Falls, the first place where we would live together. We’d gone into an antique store called Needful Things. This was perfect, as Michael’s favorite author was Stephen King, and in one of King’s books, there was a store called Needful Things. Without my seeing, Michael found the engagement ring and bought it, presenting it to me later that night. It didn’t even need to be sized. It was perfect.

*a miniature gold hourglass pendant, filled with diamond dust for sand. A gift from Michael on our first Christmas.

*the diamond and ruby heart pendant that caused this whole search to happen, when I realized I couldn’t find it for Valentine’s Day, the day I always wore it. Michael gave it to me on a Valentine’s Day before we were married.

All there. All intact. All so very precious.

The hourglass and heart pendant did indeed come from jewelry stores, but because they were from Michael and from his heart, I didn’t care.

Tears have been common since Michael’s accident, then over the five months where he tried to recover, and since his death. The tears on this night were a mix of joy and sadness.

But how did they get into the jewelry cabinet? They were kept in a special little jewelry box, specially purchased for the pieces that meant the world to me, but that I didn’t wear often. I have absolutely no memory of removing them from that box and putting them away in different parts of the jewelry cabinet. They weren’t even together. They were scattered.

The closest I can figure is that I did it in April. Michael was home from the hospital, and I was trying so hard to make our condo comfortable for him, and to give him as much independence as possible. He was sleeping in Olivia’s room because he couldn’t climb the stairs to our bedroom on the third floor. Olivia moved all of her clothes to her apartment, and I then moved all of Michael’s clothes from his closet down to the closet in Olivia’s room. This would allow him to pick out his own clothes each day and not have to wait for me to run them down from our room. I took advantage of all the stair running to bring up a corner desk that used to be in our room, on my side of the bed, where it fit perfectly in a corner. Months before, Michael decided he wanted one of his old time floor-standing radios up there, and so it took the place of my desk. It also stubbornly always managed to find my toe if I got up in the middle of the night. So I brought the desk back up, and quickly hid the radio in my car, where it was then moved to the storeroom. The little jewelry box sat on top of that radio, and it wouldn’t fit on the desk.

I must have decided then to take the jewelry out, put it in my cabinet, and give away the jewelry box. But you couldn’t prove it by me. I have no memory of doing so.

But there they were.

All of the pieces are now safely back in the chimney cabinet, newly cleaned out and the collection slimmed down to the point that I know exactly what I have and where it is.

In total, I used to have 28 ice cube trays of jewelry, each holding 14 pieces. I gave away 17 ice cube trays worth of jewelry. The little plastic cubes I had, that held jewelry too big to fit in the ice cube trays, I didn’t make a final count of, but there were about fifty. They’re all gone. Besides the remaining ice cube trays, I have a few original boxes holding jewelry, especially from my favorite gallery in Newport, Oregon. I easily cut my collection by more than half.

Among the remaining, those special missing pieces. All of them. Eventually, they will be passed down to family members. But not yet. They are something treasured that I thought I lost, but I didn’t.

I can’t say that about my greatest loss of all. But I will make do with what he gave me.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

This morning, I woke up laughing. I was immersed in a dream. Olivia and I were in a restaurant and Michael showed up. He sat down, ordered a meal, and then told us that his whole death had been a mistake. The explanation in the dream, while convoluted, made sense, though I can’t remember the details now. I do remember getting up and being enveloped in his hug while I told him how happy I was to see him. Then I pulled back and said, “But just so you know, there’s no way in hell you’re getting your clothes closet back. I’m using it now.”

Which pretty much sounds like me. In my massive house reorganization, which will continue this weekend, my spring and summer clothes took over Michael’s closet. This means I no longer have to deal with the dreaded twice-a-year switch-out of seasonal clothes, something which always caused Michael to put on his headphones so he couldn’t hear me swearing and moaning away as I worked my way through it.

I smiled over the memory of the dream as I worked my way through morning clients. I think the dream reflected what I’ve been feeling this week, and what I talked about to a couple people. I feel like I’ve turned a corner, in a way. Things have started to feel…normal. Though I hate to use that word. They aren’t normal; Michael isn’t here. And I hate to use the phrase “a new normal”, because new implies something bright and shiny and exciting, and this new chapter of my life has definitely not been that.

But whatever this is, this week, I started moving through my day much as I did before the world blew apart. I went from task to task. I smiled, interacted, laughed, got things done. I was not distracted. My thoughts still drifted to Michael, but I didn’t burst out into tears. There were challenges, and I frowned at them, but faced them, fixed them, and moved on. It was like a fog lifted. A fog, but also a sense of something that had been grabbing and pulling at my feet as I tried to move forward going away, leaving me free to move. I walked easily; I worked easily; I smiled easily.

And as I talked to clients, I glanced up now and then at the photo of Michael I have sitting on my credenza, across the room, and directly in my line of vision. He smiled back at me.

One of the biggest physical effects of grief has been an overwhelming fatigue. I have been craving sleep, sleep, and more sleep. I’m a lifelong insomniac, but since Michael’s accident, and then his death, I have been asleep within a few minutes of going to bed. I’ve found myself typing critiques with my eyes closed because I couldn’t keep them open. I got into the very bad habit of meeting with morning clients, and then crawling back in bed at noon and sleeping for a couple hours, which badly ate into my writing time. By the time I got up, got showered and re-dressed, answered phone calls, had lunch, took the dog out, it was almost time for late afternoon clients to start. The fatigue causing me to return to bed every day essentially took away my number 1 method of battling negative things: writing.

But then there was this week. Fog lifted, feet free, eyes open. I did not return to bed after morning clients. At least…until this morning. I did today.

And then I was gifted with the dream, which caused me to wake up laughing.

My Moment this week is very subtle. There is no one frozen-in-time moment that I am conscious of. There is no solution; Michael did not come back, and he never will. But there is this very mild, very quiet feeling of the path opening up before me again. That feeling of “Life goes on.”

I’ve always hated that phrase too.

But I think I know now, I feel now, that “Life goes on”, doesn’t mean “Life goes on and you totally forget that the one you lost ever existed.” Life goes on does not mean that you skip and twirl. You just move. But you move with purpose, and for me anyway, with a sense that I am doing what I’m supposed to be doing.

And as I said before, with the impact of the video I watched last week, “Life goes on” also does not mean you move on. You move forward. Michael is still very much on my mind and in my heart. But you know, when he was alive, I wasn’t thinking about him constantly. I didn’t stand at the window, watching for him to come home at night. I didn’t wake up with him and watch him go to work, counting the hours until he came back. In fact, I asked him to quit kissing me goodbye in the mornings because he woke me up a couple hours before I had to be awake, and I wanted to be left alone. He and I moved often in different directions, but always knew the other was within reach.

It’s not all that different now, except he’s not within reach the way he used to be.

I had a call from my tax guy a little bit ago, saying my taxes are ready to go. I had to teach myself how to get everything prepared for the tax guy this year – Michael always did that. But I did it, and apparently, successfully.

I had to buy a new laptop last weekend, because my current laptop decided that the left side of the keyboard was no longer going to work. I’ve been working with an external keyboard, which I hate. It’s bulky and it makes travel difficult. But in the past, whenever a new laptop was necessary, it was Michael that put everything from the old one to the new one. I don’t know how to do that. So I found someone who does, and it’s being done for me. I did it.

There are going to continue to be things that I find that Michael used to do, that now I have to learn to do. And…while at first, everything seemed insurmountable, they’re not. I’m doing them. I think of Michael, smile, and then get things done. I think of him, dream of him, and then bring him along with me as I move forward. For this week, anyway, the fog is lifted, my feet are free, my eyes are open.

And no matter what, he’s not getting his clothes closet back.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Just a few minutes ago, I was eating lunch (late) and reading a book, when I came across this sentence:

Everyone dies, and yet it’s unendurable.

• Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

And just like that, my head was hanging and I was crying onto my ham and cheese sandwich.

My life has been like that lately. Plugging along just fine, feeling, well, reasonable, and then something happens to make me cry, or the alternative, make me laugh. I’ve always been a rollercoaster, but lately, I am the rollercoaster from hell.

I watched a video sent by a student earlier this week. It was of a Ted Talk on grief, and the speaker, Nora McInerny, said, “Grief isn’t fatal, but it can often feel like it is.”

I didn’t have a ham sandwich at that moment. So I cried over my keyboard. Here is the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khkJkR-ipfw

Two weeks ago, I wrote this blog and told how I’d been staring at the blank screen for ten minutes, trying to come up with something that counted as one of my Moments. Then, last week, the day after writing my Moment, I had such an avalanche of small good things that all I wanted to do was come home and write a second This Week’s Moment for the same week, to talk about the miracle of small surprises. There were no rainbows, no unicorns. No sudden opening of my door and Michael walking in, saying, “Surprise! It was all a big mix-up involving my doppelganger!” No gift of a clock that turns back time so I could call Michael and divert him long enough to keep him from stepping into that intersection until that blue passenger van drove by, leaving him unharmed. No. It was just one small good thing after another.

First was the arrival of new dishes. When Michael and I moved into this condo 19 years ago, Michael was surprised when I told the kitchen designer that I wanted a plate rack. I wasn’t even sure why I wanted one. I’ve always been the type that likes things neatly stacked and tucked away. But being able to have the plates easily within reach, and also treated as art, just appealed to me. When I went on a search for plates, I couldn’t find any that I liked. Finally at Goodwill, I mix and matched a set of solid burgundy plates with solid hunter green plates – the two colors used the most in our very bright condo. For 19 years, they’ve lived in the plate rack, but as time went by and some broke, they did not break evenly. I now had more burgundy than hunter green, and the lack of a cohesive rhythmic pattern was making me crazy in my newly reorganized kitchen. I even used a wooden silverware organizer to organize my BATTERIES by size. The plates that just weren’t even just screamed at me.

When I went for a plate search last weekend, it was like when we moved in all over again. It seemed like all the plates were white or beige. Some had pretty prints on their surface, but their edges were still white or beige. It took a lot of searching, but then I found them. And they arrived on my doorstep on Friday, the day after I posted my blog.

The outer edge of the surface is every color imaginable. The surface you eat on varies by the plate, from orange to green to yellow to blue. The rim that faces into the room when they’re in the rack match the surface. It was like my kitchen suddenly lit up and sang with brightness. With joy.

Well, with rainbows. I guess rainbows were involved.

I packed up my old dishes and brought them to Goodwill, back from whence they came, hopefully to give someone else some of the happiness they’d given me. As I drove home, down Main Street, of all streets, how down home can you get, I looked ahead and saw a man walking behind a young girl on the brightest yellow bike. Daffodil yellow. My favorite flower. As I got closer, I thought, that looks like my son. That looks like my granddaughter.

It was! They were!

I drove around the block so I could come up beside them. Hearing my son’s, “Hi!” and my granddaughter’s even brighter “Hi!” just melted me. And I have to say, there is no more beautiful sight in this world than my long-haired, long-legged granddaughter on a daffodil yellow bike. She was a poem. I wish I’d thought to take a photo, but I was too busy admiring her.

Back at home, I tackled the last of my second floor decluttering/organization goals. Michael always wanted a card catalog, like we used to use in the library. I found one for him at an antique mall soon after we moved in to the condo. It’s in my back room, where my treadmill is now, and we used it as a medicine cabinet. Bandages under B, Sudafed under S, we argued over if Tylenol should be under T for Tylenol or A for Acetaminophen. The T won. However, as I discovered when I started to clean out the multitude of drawers, it was another victim of Michael’s hidden hoarding. Every drawer was stuffed to the brim – and there was no sense to the alphabetization. I threw out over 200 pens – all of them dead. Receipts. A set of magnets. A set of fake bloody fingers, bought to scare us at Halloween. A Lone Ranger badge. Old autograph books. A working Viewmaster and reels.

I threw out three bags of garbage. I did, however, sell the autograph books and Viewmaster and reels within 24 hours of listing them.

But it was done. Every bit of the second floor of this condo is now organized according to my very strict rules. Even the batteries. I feel like I am calming chaos.

Then, in the mail, there was a package with a book I’d ordered. It contained a poem I hadn’t thought of in years, but that came to me suddenly one night, and so I looked it up, found it, and ordered the book.

Years ago, when I was a student at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, six lines of this poem were published, I believe in an article in the Daily Cardinal, the student newspaper. I loved the six lines so much, I cut them out and thumbtacked them to a bulletin board I kept for years, filled with lines I loved from all the things I read. At the time, the name of the poet wasn’t included, nor the title, and I thought this was the whole poem:

The night I lost you

someone pointed me towards

the Five Stages of Grief.

Go that way, they said,

it’s easy, like learning to climb

stairs after the amputation.

The day these words came back to me last week was a few days after I was told by someone important to me that I needed to move on, let it go. I was, he said, in “pity city.” And now this poem came back, glowing like a moonlit path in the darkness.

I Googled the words and found that this is a much longer poem, called “The Five Stages of Grief”, by Linda Pastan. It was in a book with the same title. I searched further online, found a copy, and bought it.

Now it was in my hands. As I slid it out of the envelope, I found it was originally a library book. Inside was stamped “No longer the property of Falvey Memorial Library, Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania.”

I clutched the book and wondered if it felt as abandoned as I’ve been feeling. And now, well, I’d saved it.

That night, in bed, I read the entire poem. And again, I cried, this time over the final stanza:

Acceptance. I finally

reach it.

But something is wrong.

Grief is a circular staircase.

I have lost you.

Grief is a circular staircase. The perfect definition. Crying over a ham sandwich. Elating over the poem that is my granddaughter. Feeling accomplished over thoroughly organizing a floor of my home. Crying over a poem that resonated decades before it would resonate with me in an even deeper way. I saved the poem. Now it saved me.

That’s who I am right now, and it’s okay. I am not living in pity city.  I am on a circular staircase. I am living my life. And when rainbow dishes and daffodil bikes and things being where I know I will find them lift my spirits like the sunshine of spring, I know I’m doing fine.

On Monday, a coaching client returned to me after a break. She’d sold her first book, and now was ready to start on the second. She brought me a vase filled with the most gorgeous daffodils.

My favorite flower.

On the tag wrapped with ribbon around the vase, it said, “The daffodil announces the end of the cold dark days – symbolizing rebirth and new beginnings.”

Daffodils and a bicycle. Rebirth and new beginnings. Finding an old friend in a discarded library book. Tears over a single sentence in a novel.

A circular staircase.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

I unexpectedly ended up with a week off from work and found myself with some extra time. An emergency that surfaced ended up not being an emergency at all, and as I’d already called off my classes and clients for the week, I decided to look at it as a surprise gift and settled in to have what was essentially a stay-cation.

Well, if you can consider a stay-cation to be when you do some more purging in your home. I cleaned out the coffee table in my living room. The table is actually a bench from the 1950’s, complete with the figure of a nude woman on the front, made out of decorative tacks. Over the years, it became our storage for DVDs and VHS tapes…most of which have not seen the light of day for a long, long time. Many were Michael’s. I took five garbage-bags full of these to Goodwill. What remains – my Columbia House DVD collection of the entire Waltons series, the entire series of Dr. Katz, a VHS collection of the children’s show Today’s Special, which I fell in love with when my kids from my first marriage were little, our Christmas DVDs, and my favorite ever movie, Mr. Holland’s Opus, now fit in a clock in my back room, which has shelves in its belly. The coffee table is essentially empty, with just a couple of my big books on clocks and my Nintendo Switch supplies. I also cleaned out the cedar chest at the foot of my bed, in yet another attempt to find my missing jewelry box (nope). And then I tackled the kitchen drawers. I discovered that all those times Olivia and I complained that we couldn’t find any scissors and Michael came home with two or three more, they were all actually there, hiding in an ever increasing number of “junk drawers”. I had two and a half dozen scissors in my drawers. I kept eight (I don’t know why) and piled the rest and all of the other junk into two more big bags of garbage.

I actually have a tool drawer now. And you can SEE the tools.

But in between that and sleeping, I did something else that I haven’t been doing. WRITING. I’ve written every single day this week. Every. Single. Day. I’ve almost hit page 200 of my new novel. And here’s the thing…I returned to my roots as a night-writer.

And oh, it felt soooo good.

My natural body clock has me set as a night owl. When I’m not battling insomnia, and that insomnia has been gone since Michael died and I instead began to battle exhaustion, I am still up until the middle of the night. If I went only by what makes me comfortable, I would be up at night until about three in the morning, and then I would sleep until noon. All of which I did this week.

Night-writing started out of necessity. My three kids from my first marriage were all born within four years. Child 1 and 2, Christopher and Andy, were born 26 months apart. Child 2 and 3, Andy and Katie, were born 13 months apart. So when Katie was born, I had a 3-year old who was just barely potty-trained, a 13-month old who wasn’t walking yet, and a really, really colicky newborn. That first year was…well, let’s put it this way. I’ve pretty much pushed it out of my memory.

But I am phenomenally organized, and so I began to organize my children too. By the time that first year was done, they all willingly went to bed at the same time. 8:00. As soon as I kissed them all goodnight and shut their bedroom doors, I shot down the basement stairs to my little office. I wrote until at least midnight, often later, and then came upstairs, too jazzed to fall asleep. So I’d watch an hour of the Waltons (at that point, on the Family Channel), get my daily cry in, and then pour myself into bed between two and three in the morning. While I couldn’t sleep until noon with three little kids at home, they were really good about playing quietly in their rooms until about 8:00, when I would get them breakfast and take whoever was going to preschool that day to school.

Eventually, though, my life changed. I worked various jobs outside of the house, usually in the evenings so that my then-husband would be home with the kids. When I began to teach, I very quickly got into the groove of teaching in the morning until lunch, and then teaching again from about 4:00 on. That left the afternoon, and I became an afternoon writer.

This has worked for me, though often, when I sit down to write, my head is so full of the manuscripts I just discussed, and the manuscripts I will be discussing later, that it’s hard to stuff myself into my own work. I’ve developed a few tricks to deal with that, the best one to assign a song to whatever book I’m working on. I play the song every day before I write, associating it with the book, and like Pavlov’s dog and the ringing bell, I begin to drool. I also start each writing time by reading out loud what I wrote the day before. This gives me a running start and reminds me of what I intended to do next.

But this week? This week, I cleaned and organized during the day, which helped my mind be at peace. I sat down to write about 4:00…and I kept going as it became dark, then darker, then darkest outside. And I wrote. And wrote. I wrung myself out. And then I wandered downstairs to the television, usually with two cats on my lap and a dog at my feet, and I watched, not the Waltons, but I finished the whole series of Everybody Loves Raymond, and I started watching (again) Night Court. Where I used to cry every night after writing and before bed, now I laughed.

I felt fully back in my skin. I was doing what I love the most – writing – at the time I loved the most – middle of the night, no one awake but me. No distractions. Quiet. My whole focus, my whole mind, lost in the story I was writing. For those that don’t write, this is the time that you stop seeing your own world around you, and you see the world you’ve created.

It’s magical.

When I’m asked into a classroom of kids, anywhere from elementary through high school, I borrow a lesson I learned from John Boy himself on the Waltons. He was encouraging his little sister Elizabeth to write, because she was having trouble with her schoolwork. I took his lesson and expanded it. I had a bag of slips of paper with what appeared to be random words written on them. I’d have kids volunteer to come up, pick a slip out of the bag, and then write their word absolutely anywhere on the board. Words were everywhere!

I’d point them out and say, “Just words, right? Well, look.” Then I took each word and put them in order, forming an intriguing and exciting opening sentence. And the eyes would widen.

“Magic!” I would crow.

“Magic!” the kids would shout back, even the high schoolers.

And then we’d begin to work on their own stories.

Oh, I felt the magic this week. The words which have been scattered throughout my whole being came together and formed sentence after sentence, and I just RIPPED.

And another thing – in my fiction, I do not write about myself. Part of the magic is being able to slip into other lives, other souls, other feelings. But what I will do, from time to time when I find myself personally disturbed, facing something I don’t know how to deal with, is put a character in a similar, but not exactly the same, situation. And then I let my ability to tell stories unwind and watch how my brain gets that character out of the mess.

Then I know I can get out of the mess too.

So it’s probably not surprising for me to say that this book started out as a reaction to Roe vs. Wade being over-ruled. It continued that way for a while.

And then Michael died.

Dealing with grief has entered this novel. Roe Vs. Wade is still there. But Audrey, my main character, has lost her husband of only six years to Covid. And I’m watching as she twists and turns through grief. And I’m throwing out words at random on the page. Then they all come together in sentences. And paragraphs. And pages. And she is finding her way.

I will too.

And when I return to being an afternoon writer next week? I’ll be just fine. The midnight oil is burning bright within me now. I will tap into it at noon instead of midnight.

Magic.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.