Author: Kathie

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

I awoke this morning to a cooler Wisconsin. A glance at my phone told me it was only 59 degrees outside, beyond my shut-tight windows that have held in the air-conditioned air for weeks. Air conditioners all around the state have been working overtime, keeping unusually hot, unusually humid, unusually wet conditions from turning us into drenched sweating crabby beasts. Which we’ve turned into anyway, because we still have to go out there, and we know it’s there even when we’re inside.

But this morning at 9:30: 59 degrees. Blue skies. Sunshine. No rain.

I went downstairs and flicked off the a/c. Then I opened the windows and the two deck doors, one of which is beside my desk.

I sat down, finally, with a cup of strong hot coffee. I turned my face to the deck door and…Fall blew in.

It was one of those moments. Those perfect moments where all I could do was hold still, breathe in air that was no longer saturated with a wrung-out Summer, but chill with Fall and with the promise of Winter.  There was the strong scent of coffee. There was silence. Michael was at work. Olivia was at school. One cat slept beside me on my desk, one slept on my reading chair. A 45-pound dog sat on my feet. In five minutes, I would meet with the first of five clients today, but then, right then, I just held still.

I couldn’t help but take a breath because my world was taking a breath all around me. Encouraged by the arrival of Fall.

Fall, and familiarity. The feeling that, hey, this is all normal. This is the way it’s supposed to be.

Last week, I had a bizarre experience in physical therapy. A year after diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer, I am still struggling with fall-out. Lymphedema and radiation fibrosis syndrome restrict the range of motion in my right arm. The fibrosis makes my breast feel as if there are ropes just under the surface of my skin, and these ropes pull at muscle and tendon and tissue, causing pain.

In this second physical therapy appointment, I lay flat on my back on a table while the therapist massaged my breast in the slow circle of a self-exam, the type that I should have been doing, but didn’t, from 2013 to 2017.  The therapist’s fingers were primed to break apart the ropes that I apparently tied on myself, through self-neglect and busy-ness. As I lay there in the a/c air, in a room in the Cancer Center, a room right across the hall from where my mammogram turned my life upside down, where I had two biopsies, I listened as my breast gave off sounds like the shuffle of leaves as I’ve walked through them in the past. As I will walk through them again, soon.

Breasts are not supposed to crinkle.

That was not familiar. That was not normal. But by the end of the session, my breast had fallen silent.

Today was silent too, when Fall blew in.

I know I am living a New Normal. I am amazed at how quickly, sometimes, New can become Familiar. I walk into the Cancer Center without a flinch now, though I do find myself turning my face away from the radiation department, where I know Xappa lurks. I take my medication without thinking about it. I glance in the mirror, and then I glance away – the reflection hasn’t become familiar, but the avoidance of it has.

The New Normal. The Familiar Unfamiliarity.

At the end of my physical therapy appointment, I walked back out into the unusual heat, the unusual humidity, and looked up in the sky to gauge the next unusual rainfall. I snarled at the weather, but I just got in my car and drove home. I persevered. It’s what you do when the unusual becomes the usual.

But today, Fall blew in. And for one of those moments, those perfect moments, everything was normal. All was as it should be.

And you know, it really, really is.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

The piano’s story continues.

Over the weekend, I heard Olivia intermittently plunking on the new old piano. Every time I heard her, I smiled. And when I passed it, I smiled at the piano too. From time to time, if no one was around, I folded back the keyboard cover and plunked a little myself. A cheerful or melancholy rendition of “Chopsticks” (yes, Chopsticks can be melancholy). A song I remember that my brother made up, though I no longer remember how to do the left hand. The right-hand melody of “Heart and Soul”.

I think “Heart and Soul” with just the right hand is a pretty lonely sound. But I never learned the left hand/bass clef.

Over the weekend, I was at a used bookstore, and I found the nicest Introduction to Piano book. Not only did it teach finger placement and notes and songs, but it talked about a piano’s care and placement. I brought it home. Before the book even made it into the piano’s bench, Olivia snatched it and disappeared into her room.

On Monday afternoon, I was pretty deep into writing. It took me a while to realize that I was humming. I stopped when I became conscious of it because I wondered what the hell I was doing. The song certainly had nothing to do with what I was writing.

Though maybe it did. The song was “Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring”.

From downstairs, I heard the piano, and the piano was singing that song. Only Olivia was home with me. Only Olivia could be playing it. With both the left and right hands.

I removed my own hands from my own lettered keyboard and just listened. There were a few hesitations, a few misplaced fingers. But then a silence and she played it again. Start to finish. Flawlessly.

There’d been no lessons yet. Just a friendly book from a used bookstore. And a young woman’s desire to play.

And my desire to hear. I can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted to live in a home filled with piano music. There was a piano in the home I used to share with my first husband. Each of my older children took lessons for a time and I loved to listen to them. When I left that home and that husband, the piano stayed behind. I hadn’t paid for it, he said, he did. So it was his.

But now there was another piano in my living room. And another child playing it. “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”.

Joy.

As Olivia started to play again, I sang the words, quietly.

“Through the way where hope is guiding,

Hark, what peaceful music rings…”

Later, Olivia asked me how I thought she did. When I told her she was amazing, she didn’t believe me. But she was. In how she managed to play. In how she made me feel.

And later still, home alone again, I sat down and played my lonely one-handed version of “Heart & Soul”.

“But now I see, what one embrace can do

Look at me, it’s got me loving you madly…”

Joy. Heart and soul. Sometimes, you can play a song with just one hand, but hear a symphony. Or at least, hear what you’ve always wanted to hear: a home filled with the sound of a piano.

Eventually, like Olivia, I’ll figure the bass clef out. Until then, I’ll listen. And play with one eager hand when I’m by myself.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

On July 7, 2017, I wrote this for my Today’s Moment:

And now, every time I pass a piano, I stop and look at it. That’s the instrument I always wanted to play. But beyond lunchtime renditions of Heart and Soul in the chorus room in high school, it never happened.

But I always thought it could. I thought I could do it.

I think I might want a piano for my birthday. I think I might want to learn. And even if I couldn’t, I could play Heart and Soul. Over and over. With heart. With soul. I could teach Olivia and we could play it together.

That piano never materialized. Not last year’s birthday. Not this year’s. And then today happened.

Perusing through Facebook a few days ago, I saw that Olivia’s first grade teacher (and also the mother of one of my son’s best friends and the mother of my daughter Katie’s first boyfriend) posted a photo of a piano. She said she was giving it away for free. She said it was hard to let go, and she was sad, but it was time for it to find another good home.

Hello.

I credit that teacher with turning the magic key that helped Olivia finally understand how to read. She was six years old and she was struggling. And she was unhappy that other kids in her class were already reading chapter books. She was hearing chapter books, which we read to her every night. The Junie B. Jones series was her favorite. But at times, I would find her sitting on the couch, holding a Junie B. Jones book open in her lap, and she’d have the most bewildered look on her face. She wanted to read. But she couldn’t make sense of the words.

And then her teacher gave her a book about a frog. I wish I could remember the name. The print was large and dark and there was only one word on each line. The illustrations bright, but not predominant and overwhelming, distracting from the words. And the “chapters” were only one page each. For whatever reason, Olivia lit up. She caught fire. She tore through that book, and then more by the same author. By the end of that school year, she was reading Junie B. Jones and more.

And now, years later, Olivia is a budding writer, artist and musician, playing four instruments – the violin, the acoustic guitar, the electric guitar, and the ukulele.

And here was her teacher with a piano.

Now I have to admit, the piano isn’t all for Olivia. You can see that last year, I wrote that I always wanted to play the piano. I have. My brother played the organ, and when I asked to learn piano, my parents said we already had a Hammond in the house and a built-in teacher, so I could just do that. Well, that didn’t go so well. It just wasn’t what I wanted to do. It wasn’t who I was. Who I am.

I arranged to have the piano transported to my home. Olivia’s teacher asked me for the colors of my living room and then she recovered the piano bench in coordinating material and made a matching runner for the top.

And now, there is a piano in my living room. I wasn’t even all the way down the stairs to show the movers out when I heard the first plinks and plunks. It appears that Olivia’s first grade teacher has turned the key to another facet in her brain.

I sat on the stairs for a few minutes and listened. The plinks and plunks weren’t music yet. But they will be. Just like the letters on the page weren’t words yet, there for a while. But they are now.

I got out the Liquid Gold, my mother’s ever-ready furniture-ER-in-a-spray-can, and I polished that piano to a high shine. When I dusted the keys (sans Liquid Gold), I plinked and plunked myself. I haven’t actually pulled out the bench yet, haven’t seated myself, haven’t laid my hands on the keys. Though I did stand next to a seated Olivia and played a rousing chorus of Chopsticks.

Hello, Piano. You’ve come to another good home. You are going to be well-loved. Again. Hello, long-standing wish.

I’m gonna play. So is Olivia.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

We decided to take Grandbaby Maya Mae to the Racine Zoological Gardens. She’s been to the Milwaukee County Zoo a number of times, so we thought a visit to a smaller, more intimate zoo would be a great experience. We didn’t tell Maya one of the benefits of the Racine Zoo – it’s right next to Lake Michigan.

I was excited. Maya has three sets of grandparents. One has a backyard swimming pool, and another is installing one of those infinity lap pools, so Maya is well-acquainted with chlorine. But Lake Michigan…

I remember well introducing my own kids to large bodies of water. Rehoboth Beach and Virginia Beach and a beach in Rockport, Texas, for my first three kids. Myrtle Beach, St. George Island in Florida, and Waldport, Oregon for Olivia. And for everyone, Lake Michigan.

Once the zoo was thoroughly visited, I helped a hot, sweaty and tired Maya into the back seat of the convertible. “We’re going to someplace special,” I said. “Lake Michigan.”

“Yay!” she said. “What’s that?”

Oh, education time.

We found an incredible beach a short distance away from the zoo. As I parked, all Maya could see of the lake was a strip of blue over the edge of my car. She asked if that was part of the sky. “Yes,” I said as I unbuckled her, “the wet part. The great part.”

And then she stepped out. And froze. Instantly dumbfounded. “Whoa…” she said quietly.

“We’re going to it,” I said. “You’re going to put your feet in Lake Michigan.”

She leaped straight up and then plunked down on the sand to take off her shoes. “I’m going in the ocean!” she crowed.

I looked toward the lake. Many times, returning from Oregon and my visit with the Pacific, I would dare to look out the window of the plane (I normally keep the shade closed) and admire the sheer presence of Lake Michigan. It is our ocean, on the Midwest coast. I always felt like she welcomed me home after my trips, and reminded me of her presence. But how to explain the oceanic personality of this great lake to a five-year old? I decided to keep it simple and let the lake do her own talking. “It’s not an ocean,” I said. “It’s a lake. A great lake.”

“Lake,” she repeated.

“Its water isn’t salty. It’s fresh,” I said. “But it’s big, like the ocean. And it’s blue, like the ocean.” We began our walk across the sand.

“It sounds like the ocean,” Maya offered. I brought her a conch shell from my retreat this year. Maya met me at the airport and she held the shell to her ear all the way home.

We stood on the edge of the lake. We just looked. Then Maya took my hand. “I’m a wittle bit nervous,” she said.

“It’s okay,” I said. “She’s big. She’s going to feel cold. But she won’t hurt you. Besides that, I’m here.”

And we walked in. Maya shrieked and laughed and exclaimed over the way the sand shifted under her feet. “I can’t believe I’m here!” she yelled and flung her arms to the blue sky.

And I thought back over four kids, getting their feet wet for the first time. And now a grandchild. I can’t believe I’m here either.

“Look, Gamma Kaffee, look! I’m on my knees!”

There she was, this “wittle bit nervous” girl, on her knees, her dress floating around her waist. She repeated the arm-fling to the sky, bringing up a great slosh of water, which of course, fell right back down on her.

She wasn’t in a swimsuit. We didn’t have a change of clothes. We didn’t have a towel. There were no outdoor showers. Ohboy.

When we finally got back to the car, we scraped her off as best we could. We wrung out her dress. She laughed the whole time. And it was then that I learned that invaluable benefit of being a grandmother.

We gave this sand-encrusted, sweat-layered, soaking wet child back to her parents. There was no washing the child in the tub, and then washing the tub from the child.

And best of all? Maya said, “This was the best day of my WIFE!”

More grandchildren, please.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Last Saturday, Michael and I drove to Beloit, Wisconsin, where I introduced a student at his first book debut (Yay!) and took part in the celebration. We’d never been to Beloit, so we took advantage of the time between the event and the dinner and we explored. We ended up in a lovely park right next to the Rock River.

Photo opportunities abounded, so it wasn’t long before Michael wandered away. I wanted to get closer to the water, so I crossed a walking bridge that went over a thick patch of lilypads. I was partway across when I heard a little boy yell, “Look! A frog!”

A frog! I stopped and leaned over the railing, looking where this boy pointed. And sure enough, just like a cliché, a big green frog sat on a lilypad. The sun sparkled in his eyes and his chin filled and emptied with his breath, like a bubble pulse. I was charmed, as I always have been around frogs.

From the ages of six to twelve, I lived in way northern Minnesota, in a little town called Esko. During the mid-sixties to early seventies, it was the type of place where a summertime child could fly out the door right after breakfast and disappear and nobody worried. Every child was always Somewhere. Even though the area was home to grizzlies and moose and porcupines and skunks, a child was always Safe.

A little creek ran through my back yard. Every spring, against the banks and tucked in bends, were beds of frog eggs. I filled ice cream buckets with eggs and silt and creek weeds and then I watched as the eggs hatched. The tadpoles were swimming commas and then suddenly, like magic, they sprouted legs. When that happened, I returned them to the creek.

Which led to a bumper crop of frogs. I became an expert at catching them, holding them, talking to them, and then letting them go. Or maybe not an expert – maybe the frogs just knew that I’d never do anything to hurt them.

Watching this boy now, I both hoped for the frog’s escape and for the boy’s opportunity to hold such a creature in his hands.

When I wrote my first “novel” in the fifth grade, one of the main characters was a frog. In high school, I had to take the class where everyone was required to dissect a frog. I refused. Luckily, my teacher was patient and willing to sit down and discuss my arguments against the dissection. He offered me an alternative – write a research paper about how the frogs in our classes came to be there. I think he thought that I’d find it was a benign thing – the frogs were raised and then sent to the schools. Their whole life purpose was dying so we could learn. I believed we could learn just as easily through books and illustrations.

I did the alternative. I unearthed tons of material about frog farms, the inhumane environments frogs were raised in, and even found evidence that the “painless” way we were taught to kill the frogs – inserting a pin in through the back of the head to the brain – was actually torture.

I got an A on the paper. Then I sent it in to the Humane Society of the United States’ magazine for kids, KIND (Kindness In Nature’s Defense), and they published it, and then published it again in the HSUS magazine.

This past spring, I was on my way to pick up Olivia from work when I passed a swampy area and I was bowled over by the chorus of singing peepers. I pulled over to listen. After getting Livvy, I pulled over again so she could hear them too.

All brought back to me on this day, the day of a young boy shouting, “A frog!” and seeing a frog with the sun in his eyes.

The boy took one splashing step in the water and the frog disappeared under the blanket of lilypads. “I just wanted to see it,” the boy said, looking up at me on the bridge. I nodded. “It’s okay. You’ll get the next one. Just walk really quiet. And think hard about how you would never ever hurt it. The frog will know.”

The boy smiled at me and the sun sparkled in his eyes too.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

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

There’s a party going on in my bra. The women are BACK! (Just so you know, I have never referred to my breasts as “the girls”. That feels patronizing, disrespectful, and frankly, a little bit pedophiliac to do so.)

The right breast is a little more battle-scarred. A year after diagnosis, biopsies, surgery and radiation, she bears a patch of discolored skin, she’s swollen and strangely shaped, and she’s numb. The other one, biopsied just once, feels a little bit guilty that she escaped with less trauma, but she’s also got her own scar and she carries a little clip for future reference and future mammograms.

But they’re both okay. They’re fine.

I’M fine.

I had my year-later mammogram today. 3-D, bilateral, just ever so many ways to squash me, squeeze me, lean me, bend me, twist me, turn me, you name it. And then there was the wait for the results. Still robed, still near the mammogram machine, and with the full knowledge that the ultrasound machine, which would be the next step if things didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to, was right down the hall. There was no piped-in music for me to hum to, and the book I’d brought along to keep me busy was left accidentally behind in my locker. There were magazines and  I know I paged through one while I waited, but I couldn’t tell you what I read. Mostly I turned pages, but stared at the clock, thinking, Isn’t this taking too long? This is too long. Something’s wrong.

But then the technician came back and cheered, “It’s all good!”

I held it together until I got to the dressing room. Then I cried.

What does this all mean? I don’t need a mammogram again for a year. I’m back on a regular schedule. I do have to see the medical oncologist every four months for now, and have bloodwork to show continued cancer-freeness. I need to continue to take the estrogen-squashing med that keeps this estrogen-feeding cancer away.

It means I’m okay.

After I pulled myself together, I got dressed and headed to the elevator. When I got to the first floor, the doors opened, and there was a man, about my age, facing the elevator and in the middle of sweeping his arms open in a grand game-show hostess-type gesture. He immediately looked embarrassed.

“I’m sorry!” he said. “I was pretending to use magic to open the elevator doors, and then they opened! And there you were!”

I smiled at him. “Well, thank you,” I said. “It worked. I was on the second floor and now I’m on the first.”

He laughed.

Everyone in this part of the building is dealing with cancer in one form or another. In all of its forms. Internally. Externally.

Everyone in this part of the building wants a little magic. They want to perform it. They want to receive it.

“In fact,” I said, “I just found out that the breast cancer I had last summer is gone. Poof! Disappeared. If your magic had anything to do with that, I am so grateful.”

And he lit up. He WHOOPED. And his arms swept open again and I stepped into them and received one of the best hugs of my life.

“Congratulations,” he said when he stepped back.

“Thank you.” I held onto his elbows. “Are you okay?”

His face went soft. He drooped, his chin tucking to his chest, his whole body just somehow sloping downward. But then he pushed his shoulders back and he looked me straight in the eye. “I will be,” he said.

It was my turn to give him a hug.  I hope it was one of the best he ever received.

“Magic,” I said.

He nodded. “Poof!”

Poof.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

  

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

I’ve been staring at the blank page for about five minutes now. One of the things I’ve pushed on myself with this blog is absolute honesty. Readers have told me that what draws them in is the rawness, the realness, the truth of experience that I write about. I’ve thought about that a lot this week and I’ve also thought about how last year, when I vowed that I would write one moment of happiness a day for a year, there was only one day that I wasn’t able to do it. I wondered if this would be another one of those days.

It’s been a very difficult week, for a number of reasons.

*Yesterday was the anniversary of my partial mastectomy. As these anniversaries have arrived – one year since bad mammogram, one year since diagnosis, one year since surgery – I expected to feel celebratory. I don’t. Instead, it’s as if all the emotions I held at bay then in order to get myself through the whole breast cancer crisis without falling completely apart are washing over me now.

*A situation happened at the grocery store where Michael works. We’ve been waiting for the last 48 hours to find out if he still has a job (again), and subsequently, if we will have the health insurance we thought we’d have by September 1^st. If he doesn’t, and we don’t, then the mammogram and bloodwork I was to have to make sure the cancer hasn’t recurred will not happen. I will go off the prescription I take to squash my estrogen, which keeps the cancer away. I will not pay for any more COBRA insurance. I simply can’t. It is exorbitant, it is ridiculous, and when it comes down to a choice between paying for the place that houses my family and my business or paying for overpriced insurance for overpriced medical care, the home will win every time. My international students tell me that if I lived in their countries, all my healthcare for breast cancer would be free. Imagine living in a country that values the health and well-being of its residents over the wallets of the insurance and medical industries. But…this is where I live.

*A friend lost his child to suicide.

I didn’t think I was going to find a moment of happiness this week.

That last item has been preying on my mind and heart. And the thing is, I know that I’m not doing what most are, thinking such thoughts as How could the child do it? Why would the child do it?  I’m not asking those questions because I know the answers. Too well.

I am a five-time survivor of suicide attempts.  Years and years ago now. But certainly fresh in my memory this week.

Now usually, when I say this (which is rare), I laugh and add, “Obviously, I’m pretty inept at that sort of thing.”  And I was. I’m me, you know, and I’m not known for taking the easy way out. Some think that suicide is the easy way out. It’s not. And even as a child, I identified as a writer and I had to find the metaphor in everything. So my attempts were also symbols. And I have to tell you, I’m laughing as I type this, even though I wasn’t laughing those five times. My attempts were creative, artful, colorful, definitely not cliché…and failures.

But now, after that admission that I rarely make, I am adding something new.

I’m beyond grateful that I failed. Five times. I’m grateful that I was inept.

And so there’s the moment of happiness I didn’t think I was going to have this week. There’s also the realization that maybe I was so inept because there was a grain in me somewhere that has always wanted to survive.

I have survived. Many things. And I’m happy to be here.

There is also, of course, the moment of irony. Now that I’m happy to be here, I might not be able to continue to have the medical involvement that helps to keep me here.

I will admit that I am down, down, down. Earlier this week, I brought a hammer upstairs to my office. I took the sand dollars, the one given to me by the man in the fog back in 2015 and the one the ocean placed at my feet a few weeks ago when I asked for a sand dollar to show me that I was going to be okay, down from my wall. I took them out on the deck, laid them on the floor and raised the hammer to smash them both to smithereens.

But I didn’t. I cried instead. And then I hung them both back on the wall.

I was told, I believe, that I would be okay. Okay doesn’t mean that I will have health insurance and continued treatment. Okay means that I will be okay with or without it.

Though I sure would prefer to be with it.

This week, I also handed in all the material for my poetry chapbook, When You Finally Said No, due out in February from Finishing Line Press. I had to write the dedication. This is what I wrote:

To all of us in this sisterhood that no one would ever choose to join.

There is light.

Breathe.

Live.

Yep.

This week’s moment of happiness: I am grateful I survived. Then and now. I am happy to be here.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

When you’re a writer, validity comes in small packages. Your name in a magazine. Applause in a bookstore. An email from a stranger who just had to tell you how your book or story affected him or her. Hopefully five bright stars on a review.

And boxes. Brown cardboard boxes, delivered by a harried UPS driver. Heavy brown cardboard boxes. Because they’re filled with your newest book.

And for me, filled with a book I didn’t even know I was writing. How does that happen?

Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News; A Year Of Spontaneous Essays will be released on September 27^th by my publisher, Black Rose Writing. Ever since the idea of making my year-long blog into a book was broached and then solidified, the book just hasn’t felt real.

It’s a blog, for heaven’s sake.

It’s a blog of little pieces that I never ever intended for publication.

It’s a blog of little pieces that I didn’t edit – I wrote them once a day for a year, usually over about fifteen minutes, double-checked the spelling, and posted them. No editing. No polish. No careful scrutiny of word choice and arrangement. Raw.

A book?

All through the usual planning and putting together of Today’s Moment – the putting it into manuscript format, with the months becoming chapters (every day was in its own file – man, this was a Microsoft Word nightmare), making suggestions for the cover, seeing it erupt on my screen, new author photos, reading the blurbs for the back cover, getting the galleys, but other than looking for computer glitches, not changing a thing because that was the point of the original blog – it didn’t seem real. A book? I laughed every time I talked about it because at some level, I didn’t believe it. I write books: four novels, two short story collections, two poetry chapbooks. Today’s Moment – a book? I didn’t write a book. I wrote these little bitty posts. They started as Facebook statuses. Then blog posts.

A book?

Yesterday, I was waiting for a client to Skype me for a coaching session. She was running late, so I had to stick by my computer for when she called. When the doorbell rang, Michael answered it. He called up the stairs, “Are you expecting anything? There’s a bunch of boxes.”

Today’s Moment isn’t due out until September. I ordered books to have with me when I do appearances and events not associated with a bookstore. But this was only July.

And you know, it’s not really a book anyway.

“I’m not expecting anything,” I said.

“Well, there’s something here,” he said. Later, he told me he had an echo of this conversation when he said to the UPS driver, who was helping carry the boxes into the AllWriters’ classroom, “She has a book coming out, but they’re not supposed to be here yet.” “Looks like they are,” Mr. UPS said helpfully.

A book?

I met with my client. I wondered about the boxes downstairs, about what was inside. It had to be the new book. It had to be. But…but…but…

A book?

I finally went downstairs. There were six boxes in my classroom. I picked one and set it on the table. And I sliced it open.

Packaging paper. Chucked that to the side.

And there she was. The face of Today’s Moment. My name on the cover.

And right then, it became real. Real! Really really real!

I wrote a book without trying to write a book.

I wrote a book that people, readers, followers, ASKED to be made into a book.

I’m a freaking character in my own book.

And apparently…I can write even when I don’t think I’m writing.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Book #8 (and #9, a poetry chapbook, will be released in February).

Validity.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

(By the way, you can pre-order Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News; A Year Of Spontaneous Essays now, at 15% off, directly from the publisher.   http://www.blackrosewriting.com/biographymemoir/todaysmomentofhappinessdespitethenews

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

And what a horrific couple of weeks it’s been for news. How anyone can think of children being taken from their parents as their parents are deported and not be broken by that…it’s been a hard couple weeks. I think we’ve all been hugging our children even more closely than usual.

I couldn’t hug my children. I was off on my own writing retreat on the coast of Oregon. But I watched the news every night and ached.

Tomorrow, I bring my youngest, Olivia, to have her senior portrait taken. Senior. And on Saturday, we are going on the first of likely five college visits. A few weeks ago, I was in the middle of a massage and I was scrolling through my head as to what was next on my overstuffed agenda when that phrase “college visit” really hit me.

Oh my god, I thought. She’s going to be leaving me. And she’s the last. There will be no one left at home.

When I flipped from my back to my stomach for the rest of the massage, the therapist quietly handed me a Kleenex and I gratefully took it.

While I was away on retreat, I didn’t see or speak to Olivia all that much. The day before I left, I dropped her off at a special three-day leadership academy at a local college, so she wasn’t even home when I flew to Oregon. While I was gone, I phoned home every night via Facebook’s video messenger, but other than Olivia making a few appearances on the screen, I mostly talked to the dog and to my husband. Olivia is smack dab in the middle of the stay-in-her-room-with-headphones-plugged-in mode. Apparently, that held true even while I was gone.

I missed her, even though if I was home, she would be in her room behind a closed door. But in the house I was in, the bedroom where she sleeps when she accompanies me was empty. The door was open. Every morning, I drew the blind as if she was there and opened the window to let the sea air in. And I glanced at the still made bed as I walked by.

On Saturday, I left the little house and drove to Portland. Sunday, I climbed on board two planes and flew home. I wondered if Olivia would be at the airport. My husband was at work; my oldest son was coming to get me. I knew my granddaughter would be there. But Olivia? Not sure.

As I walked up the ramp which would take me away from the gates and back into familiar territory, I saw my son stand up and wave at me. The top of a bouncing brown-haired head bobbed at his side. I smiled. Hello, Maya Mae.

And then Olivia stood up. She looked right at me, burst into a smile and began to run.

It wasn’t my five-year old granddaughter that reached me first. It was my seventeen-year old soon-to-be-gone usually-locked-in-her-room daughter.

When she got to me, she threw her arms around my neck and she rested her cheek next to mine. That soft cheek, still the cheek of a newborn, of a four-year old with night terrors, an elementary school child who was bullied, a middle schooler who was finally told of her autism, and a high schooler who knocks my socks off with her intelligence, her compassion, and her determination.

That soft cheek. I didn’t scoop her up as I would have years ago. She’s no longer scoopable. But she bent down to me and there she was.

“Mama,” she said.

Mama.

Tonight, I told a student in the state of Washington about my obsession with the television show, The Waltons. I told him one of the things that drew me to the show was that the children, as they grew older, continued to call their parents Mama and Daddy. No Mom. No MUH-ther! Mama.

Mama. That soft cheek.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

A few mornings ago, I woke up laughing. I think the laughter evolved from a couple of levels – first, I was laughing at the dream I was having. But second – I was dreaming. And remembering it. And reacting to it.

Partway through radiation treatments for breast cancer last year, my dreams disappeared. I’ve always been a vivid, graphic, sharp dreamer, dreaming in color and stereo, and I always remember my dreams. But suddenly, they were gone. In its place was a great black void of beyond-exhaustion that reached up and pulled me in to a sleep that didn’t even feel like sleep. There were times I ran for my bed because I felt it coming on. And there were times when I literally did not remember my head hitting the pillow. This beyond-exhaustion just swallowed me up. And it swallowed my dreams up too.

At the same time, and for the only time in my life, I gave up writing. I couldn’t put words or thoughts together. That, more than anything else, more than the radiation, the surgery, the medication, even the word cancer and the uncertain future it brought with it, scared me. My dreams disappeared. My writing disappeared.

I disappeared.

I didn’t understand it. The radiation was on my right breast and lymph nodes. But somehow, the scrambling it was doing to my body also reached my brain.

The writing was first to come back, slowly but surely. I worked on a novel and, working on the third draft now, I can still see signs of the mess I was in. Stories came too, and poetry. And these weird little essays. I would say that I’m now back to writing at full force. Though there are some afternoons that the black void comes to take me again. When it does, I accept it. And then I write the next day.

But the dreams hadn’t returned.

Until I came here, to Oregon, to the magic little house by the ocean. And suddenly, one night, it was like someone hit a switch and that part of my brain turned back on.

Just like, on my first trip here, the light over the writing desk suddenly turned on by itself in the middle of the night.

I woke up laughing. And I remembered my dream. So what was it?

I was sitting in a writing class and the teacher was handing out little square pieces of glass. She said it was for a creativity exercise. When I received mine, I saw it had little shapes molded into it, shapes very similar to the seashells I’ve found on the beach. I held out my hand and she sprinkled more glass pieces into it, three-dimensional pieces that were glass versions of those same seashells.

“What are we supposed to do?” I asked.

She said, “Fit the correct glass shells into the shapes.”

I looked around. The other students were already hard at work. I sorted through the glass shells in my hand and ping, ping, ping, put them into their spaces. Easy peasy. “This is kind of silly,” I said. “This isn’t a creativity exercise.”

The teacher sat across from me, smoking a cigarette and smiling. She said, “Well, it makes about as much sense as me teaching you how to write.” Then she leaned forward and laughed.

And I laughed too. And woke up.

Today, I sat down for my morning of writing, which typically continues here until I get hungry and then I stop for lunch. But today, when I looked away from my screen, I found it was 3:30 in the afternoon. I’d written through my coffee break, my lunch break, any bathroom breaks. The world fell away from me today and I was fully lost in my story. And I was freaking starving.

I laughed then. And I laughed when I woke up from that dream. I am dreaming in full vivid color again. Not all the dreams are making me laugh. There was one so disturbing, it took me most of the day to shake it. But that’s okay. It goes with the imagination. It goes with the dreaming and writing brain. It goes with me.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.