This Week’s Moment of Happiness Despite the News

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

This might be kind of a weird one.

Monday was my first day back into reality, following a two-week trip away to the Oregon coast. I didn’t just step back into my roles, but I dove in immediately over my head, with Monday encompassing six clients, a class, and a book festival meeting, as well as numerous errands.

My 11:00 client canceled at the last minute. My husband was out grocery shopping and I was supposed to pick him up (he doesn’t drive) around noon or so. I decided to just take a quick nap, only for an hour, and then get back to it.

I sank very quickly into a deep, deep sleep. I dreamed I was walking along the Fox Riverwalk here in Waukesha, one of my favorite places. I heard my name called and looked over to see my friend, Kelly Cherry, sitting at a picnic bench. “Hey!” she called. “Come on over! It’s good to see you!”

Now here’s the thing. Kelly passed away on March 18^th of this year.

Kelly Cherry was my first creative writing professor when I came to the University of Wisconsin – Madison in the fall of 1978. Our relationship started in a bad place – she wasn’t happy she had a freshman in her intermediate creative writing workshop, which was for upperclassmen, and I wasn’t happy that she wasn’t happy with me. My high school creative writing teacher emailed the head of the English Department on my behalf, including my work and saying that I could not be in a beginner’s class. The head agreed and plunked me into Kelly’s class. I was the first freshman to ever be there.

Up until that time, I’d pretty much been placed on a pedestal, in regard to writing. I published for the first time at the age of fifteen. I was raved about, lauded, told the world was my oyster, whatever the hell that means, as I’m allergic to oysters. Kelly was the first person to ever shred me. And shred me she did.

Luckily, I’m a pretty stubborn person, and I just kept coming back.

Because of my start with advanced classes, I proceeded more quickly than most through the program. As a result, I ended up taking the intermediate workshop twice, the advanced workshop three times, and doing independent study twice. The second time I had to do independent study, that same head of the department and I sat down to figure out who I could do it with. I’d worked with so many, it was going to have to be a repeat.

“How about Kelly?” he said.

I flinched, but said, “Sure.”

We went out in the hall to find Kelly. He asked her about doing an independent study with me. Kelly flung up both hands, proclaimed, “I’ve done everything I can with her!” and flounced off down the hall.

I did my second independent study with someone else.

So how did she and I end up being friends?

Over the years, I realized I found great value in being pushed by her. She taught me to be tough, to let things roll off my back, if they couldn’t be applied, and to sit quietly and take the criticism if it did. I truly did not understand Kelly’s value in my life until much, much later.

In 2014, I was (and still am) working with the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books. We were looking for a keynote. Kelly had a new book out. I suggested her, she was accepted, and I reached out. She remembered me immediately. She praised me for what I’d done (turns out she’d been following me), accepted the keynote, and we reunited at the festival. We remained fast friends until her death this last March.

I think we most remember the teachers who built us up. But I remember Kelly because she built me up by tearing me down. She made me try harder. She made me prove her wrong. Which was what she was after all along.

So in this dream, I joined her at the picnic table. She reached across and grabbed my hands. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” she said. “Look at you!”

“Look at you!” I said. She looked wonderful.

She smiled. “You need to keep looking,” she said. “You need to see.”

I shook my head. I didn’t know what she meant.

“You know now, don’t you.” When I shook my head again, she said, “It never gets any easier. We wait for it to, but it never does. No matter the publications, no matter the awards, no matter about anything, it’s always hard, and we always think we’re not good enough. Always. We’re rough on ourselves, so we push ourselves to go further, so we can get away from the rough.” She sat back. “Like I did with you. Like I did with myself.”

I felt my eyes fill. My latest novel was turned in to a publisher months ago; it comes out on March 7^th. I didn’t write for months after finishing that book. I honestly thought I was done, and I had no idea how to deal with being done.

“You’re not done,” she said. “Your brain just needed a rest. You know that now.”

In Oregon, I’d sunk fully into a new book. By the time I came home, I was sixty pages into it. The doubts are there, as they’re always there. But I wasn’t done.

I suddenly woke up with a gasp, tears still on my cheeks. I was disoriented, unsure why I was in bed. Then realized my alarm hadn’t gone off – it was 12:30, I was supposed to be getting Michael from grocery shopping.

It was one of those dreams that didn’t let me go for awhile. I felt underwater for the rest of the day.

But I saw Kelly. And she taught me again. The doubts never go away, not even 14 books later. Not even hundreds of short stories and poems and essays later. Not even awards later. But you plow through them anyway.

And I’m not done.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

(And a special note – the 13th annual Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books is coming up on November 4 and 5! We have an absolutely stellar line-up this year, and I’ll be the Saturday morning keynote, along with my daughter, Olivia. Check out the book festival at www.sewibookfest.com!)

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

Well, really, the last two weeks have been a moment of happiness. Being in Waldport, Oregon, in a place I love to distraction, has been wonderful. A student emailed me and spoke of the “joyful photographs” I was posting on Facebook and elsewhere. If my joy at being here can come across in photos, then that joy is pretty darn powerful.

I’ve been coming here since 2006. In that time, there were a few years that I didn’t show. 2017, when I was in treatment for breast cancer. 2020, Covid. For two years, I went to different places in Maine, on the exact opposite coast. One year, I won a week-long retreat in Valton (where I fell down the steps in the beginning of September this year, when I won the contest again) and so I combined it with a week in La Crosse, WI, another favorite place.

But I’ve always returned to Waldport, and when I haven’t been here, my thoughts still make the trek. A wall next to my desk in my office at home is devoted to photos from this place. The wall behind me has art pieces incorporating sand dollars given to me by the ocean. Joyful photos. Joyful answers.

Wonderful things have happened here, both this year and in all the years previous. Magical things. Things that can’t be explained. Things that have never happened anywhere else.

There were not so great moments this year too, as there are every year. One happened with a nameless, faceless woman, just a voice on the phone, who wasn’t even here, but who helped connect me, in Oregon, to my daughter Olivia, in Wisconsin.

When I originally planned this trip, back in January, I decided to come in October, instead of my usual June, July or August. My summer was packed this year, and so I thought a trip in October would expand my view of this place, allow me to see it in the fall, a different season than I’d ever been here before. I planned on having Olivia come with me, for at least part of the trip, to celebrate her 22^nd birthday here. Olivia has traveled with me here three times, twice for the entire trip, and her first time, when she was seven, when she joined me here partway through my trip with her father. She loves it here. Since she usually has Fridays off in her school schedule, I thought she could fly in for an extended weekend.

I forgot that this year, her senior year, had an extra to it. She had school and she had work, but she also had her internship. There was no time for her to come. This meant that for the first time in her young life, I would not be there for her birthday.

She was turning twenty-two years old. She’s an adult. This shouldn’t be a big deal. But to me, it was.

The night before her birthday, I was rattled and trying to figure out what I could still do to make her birthday special. I went to a well-known flower site. Olivia never had flowers delivered to her before. Her favorite holiday, maybe because of its proximity to her birthday, is Halloween. I found a lovely flower arrangement of pink roses, her favorite color, that would be delivered in a white ceramic pumpkin. They guaranteed delivery on her birthday. Bam. Perfect. I made the order, but still went to bed in tears.

The next day, Olivia messaged a family chat we have on Facebook. “Did someone send a surprise present?” she asked. “There’s supposed to be a package waiting for me downstairs, at the front desk.”

“I did!” I said.

And then all hell broke loose.

She couldn’t find the package. She was told deliveries weren’t allowed at the front desk (then why have a front desk?), but that packages were brought to the mail room. She checked; it wasn’t there. She checked with public safety; not there. She was told it went to the Welcome Desk, and there, she was told that the delivery person said that it had to be paid for (it didn’t), and when the person at the desk said no, he took the arrangement away.

No flowers. No white ceramic pumpkin. No heartfelt card.

I got on the phone to the flower site. It took a bit, but I managed to get through to a person. By then, I was both in tears and mad as hell. Not a good combination. I explained the whole thing. “Hang on,” the woman said, “hang on. I’ll find out what this is about.”

A few holds later, she came back. “The flower shop we arranged the delivery through isn’t answering its phone,” she said. “My feeling is that someone thought they could get a few extra bucks into their pocket. Don’t worry. I’m sending the arrangement out again, with a different shop, and it will get there, just not today.”

Not on her birthday.

“It’s the first time I’m not there for this,” I said. “I’m not there for her.”

She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Kathie, I’ll make sure she gets them tomorrow. I’ll follow up myself. And as soon as we hang up, I’m going to call your daughter. I’m going to wish her a happy birthday, and I’m going to make sure she knows this is our fault, not yours. And that she has one fantastic mom.”

It was the second time I was called this during this week. Both times by people who weren’t my kids.

The woman on the phone did exactly what she said. The day after her birthday, my daughter had her flowers. “They’re so beautiful!” she said, sending me photos via Facebook.

And they were. So is she.

And so is that nameless, faceless woman on the phone. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

I’m currently on the Oregon coast, in the little town of Waldport, for two (and a half) weeks of retreat. The primary purpose is to write, settling into a novel I officially started the first week in September. But there are other purposes too – to catch up on sleep, to read for enjoyment, to maybe paint, and to have some fun.

I’ve been coming to this little town, and to this little house, since 2006. It feels like a second home to me. The travel is getting harder as I get older, and I do worry about being here by myself, more than I used to. During the day, the ocean seems friendly, if vigorous, and the chance of earthquakes and tsunamis seem minimal. I drive over bridges that have been here forever. I walk on a beach where many, many footprints have been left and washed away. Daytimes make this place seem immortal. Night times, I worry that it’s not.

And that I’m not either. A fact that I’ve always known, but which seems to get more real every day.

But even so, I sleep here. And I revel and relax, more than I worry.

Yesterday, I decided to drive into Newport, where there is a SuperWalmart. Waldport has a lovely grocery store, but it’s small, and many of the items I searched for when I arrived on Saturday weren’t there. It’s a gorgeous drive, one I used to make every day, to get to Starbucks. Now, there’s a great little coffee kiosk in Waldport, Espresso 101 (it’s on the coastal highway, Highway 101) and I go through there instead. They make a fabulous macadamia nut latte. And a French toast latte too! But on this day, I went into Newport, and enjoyed the drive the whole way.

On the way out of the store with my bags, I saw it. An original VW Beetle. Bright baby blue. Gorgeous. I thought immediately of my daughter, Olivia. She’s been Beetle-crazy since she was a little kid. There are Beetle posters in her room, both at home and at school. She wears Beetle t-shirts and Beetle jewelry. She owns all of the Herbie The LoveBug movies. When she was first learning to drive, I bought her a beater Beetle, which she loved and called Starlight Lashes. She adorned it with hot pink eyelashes on its headlights. I went online and found an original Beetle flower, which sits in a special vase built in to every old Beetle. The bud vase and flower was discontinued in 2011. Starlight Lashes unfortunately didn’t last very long. She was a mistake. She broke down several times just sitting in the parking garage. I eventually junked her, before Olivia learned to drive.

Later, I bought Olivia another Beetle, this time from a dealership that included a warranty. This one, she named Snowbug. I called her Lil B. In this one, Olivia not only learned to drive, but she took it to college, and the little Beetle drives her faithfully back and forth.

I honestly don’t think Olivia will ever drive another type of car.

So…this old Beetle in the Walmart parking lot. Baby blue. Winking in the sun.

I put my bags down and got out my phone so I could take a picture and send it to Olivia. As I did so, a man came up to stand beside me. “You like it?” he asked. “It’s mine.”

If anyone belonged in this classic Beetle, it was this man. Hair, albeit gray, down to his elbows. A tie-dye t-shirt. Torn jeans. And a great smile.

I told him about Olivia. He told me that he had 3 other old Beetles at home, and he’d just gotten this one running.

“It’s really cool,” I said. Then I went off to my rental car, which it took me a couple tries to find. It looks like so many others in the lot. Not like the standout that is the VW Beetle. Embarrassing to admit, but yes, I hit the unlock button and tried to open the back of a car I thought was mine…and then realized it wasn’t. My car was a couple rows over.

After I loaded up, I was bringing back the cart when I saw the blue Beetle coming toward me. At the wheel, the smiling man. He stopped by me and rolled down his window. “This is for your daughter,” he said. He handed over a small metal sign, pink, of an original Beetle. On it, it said, “Love” and “XOXO”  and “Heartbreaker.”

The Beetle is the original LoveBug, doncha know.

“Thank you,” I said. “She’ll love it!”

He winked at me. “I found it at Goodwill. Knew I’d find a use for it.” He laughed and drove off.

So now I have a special souvenir to bring home to Olivia. And a story.

And the thing is, he could have been angry at me for taking a photo of his car. He wasn’t. He could have stormed off without saying a word. But he didn’t. He not only talked to me, he listened to me when I talked about Olivia. And he didn’t have to go out of his way to find me again, in a completely different row, to give me the little Beetle plaque. But he did.

Sometimes, people are just really nice. And there shouldn’t be a just in that sentence. Sometimes, people are nice. It’s a great thing to be reminded of that.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

So last week Thursday, I had a new author photo taken. For many, including me, this feels like a necessary evil. People like to know what you look like when they read your books. I remember flipping to Wally Lamb’s photo a thousand times as I read She’s Come Undone, because I simply couldn’t believe that a man could write a woman’s point of view so very well. Each time, I nodded at him and said, “Good job,” as if he could hear me. I find myself smiling at a lot of author photos, because they make me feel like I can now picture a new and very good friend.

But photos of me – blech.

I was born with strabismus, which causes my eyes to cross. I had five surgeries to correct it as much as it could be – one at 16 months, 2 when I was 8 years old, and 2 when I was fifteen. The nights before school photos were torture. My mother would sit me on a footstool before her and we’d practice how I should hold my head just so, so that my eyes would look straight. Tilt here, tilt there, turn your chin, and so on. But when I sat down on the school’s stool, the photographer took the photo before I even had a chance to recite the directions to myself. My mother refused to buy my 7^th grade photo. I bought it myself, so I would have record of who I was then.

So photos are not my favorite thing. I was in my early 30s before I could look anyone in the eye.

Body image is also another bugaboo. We talk a good game in this country about not body shaming, yet plus-sized models get slammed for being “unhealthy”, and thin models beam from multitudes of magazines. And don’t even get me started on how we deal with women and their breasts. We talk the talk, but we don’t walk the walk.

For me and my own self-image, I started with the crossed eyes. Don’t look at people, and then they won’t notice your eyes. I remember my father arguing with my mother, who wanted to get me braces. “Just don’t,” he said. “She gets teased enough about her looks already.” My weight has gone up and down so many times, I no longer know where I feel my best. I used to work as a weight loss consultant. At that point, I was a size 6, I worked out at the gym for at least three hours every day, and I had an eating disorder that outweighed my weight. I’ve had four babies, five, if you count the one I miscarried, and I do. And then there’s the breast cancer, which brings me right back to breasts again. My right breast has, with all good intentions, the ultimate one being to keep me alive, been mutilated.

It’s hard, sometimes, to look in the mirror and smile.

A few weeks ago, I bought a lovely soft sweatshirt. It’s blue, and in silver letters, it says, “Strong Women Come In All Shapes”. I saw that shirt in the store, teared up, and bought it.

And so now, we come to last week’s photo shoot.

My photographer, who has been with me for years now, is a lovely man who refuses to let me frown. Or even look brooding. He makes me smile. And when he takes my photo, he makes me feel the way I imagine supermodels must feel. Or the way they should feel, no matter their size.

For this shoot, I really wanted a photo by a weeping willow tree. This photo is for my novel, Hope Always Rises, which comes out on March 7. A willow tree features very strongly, and so does the Fox River. And so Ron and I trudged across the grass in Frame Park in Waukesha, heading to a weeping willow tree I love and always pat when I pass by. It didn’t take long to get the photos.

The next day, Ron sent me the digital image gallery. And I admit, the first thing I thought when I scrolled through them was, Oh, no.

I could hear my mother’s voice. “You should have tilted your head that way! Turned your chin! Look at your eyes!”

I heard my father’s voice. “She gets teased enough about her looks already.”

But mostly, I zeroed in on my breasts. I have a prosthesis, but I rarely wear it. It’s not that it’s uncomfortable. It’s that it’s a reminder. Plus, I honestly thought that the difference in breast size between my left and right really wasn’t all that noticeable.

In these photos, oh, yes, it was.

I sat with these photos for a few days. I showed them to my husband and my daughters. When I said something to my husband about not realizing that one breast is noticeably smaller than the other and why didn’t anyone ever tell me, he didn’t say a word. He just looked away. I didn’t say anything to my daughters. I let them pick out their favorites.

And then, reluctantly, when Ron called me to get my decision, I made up my mind. I actually went with his favorite.

The next day, I wore my “Strong Women Come In All Shapes” sweatshirt. I let it hug me.

Just a short while ago, Ron sent me the finished image. I sighed and opened it.

And you know what? My photo smiled at me. Strong. Confident. And you know what else?

I smiled back.

Because it was me. I shoved aside all the voices and just saw myself. I looked into my own eyes, I looked at my smile, I looked at my body, which, despite many battles, has served me well. I gave a nod to my mind, which fuels all of me, and has served me even better.

I smiled back.

Strong Women Come In All Shapes.

And I’m one of them.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

 

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

This week’s moment started with a not-so-great moment. I looked out into what is a writer’s almost worst nightmare.

A practically empty room. (Not a worst nightmare because it wasn’t completely empty.)

One of the most challenging parts of being a writer is having to get out there and speak in front of groups. Due to changes in the publishing industry, writers, the vast majority of whom are introverts, have had to work hard to fashion themselves into extroverts, at least for as long as it takes to get up in front of a group, read from your work, talk about your work, and then return to home or hotel room and sit in the dark for a bit. Gone are the days of J.D. Salinger, where a writer could be, not only an introvert, but a hermit.

Over the years, I’ve fought with my own sense of introversion to get out there and speak, and I’ve gotten myself to a point where I actually enjoy it. I’m terrified right before, but as soon as I step into the room where I am to appear, an alternate personality takes over and I’m comfortable. I’ve been told that when I enter a room, I own it. Trust me, that is an ability that took years to hone.

One of the events I always picture as I’m preparing for an event, and it’s a memory I wish I could purge, is a time early on in my career when I was asked to present at a bookstore in Green Bay. I walked in, owned the room…and absolutely no one showed up. No one even came into the store during the two hours I was there. It was like someone took out a billboard, saying, “Kathie Giorgio is at the bookstore…Don’t Go!” It was just me, the bookstore owner, and her two cats. I returned to my hotel room, devastated. Since then, I’ve presented to groups of many sizes, from a dozen to hundreds. But that image always haunts me…and always dissipates when I face my newest group.

Until last Thursday.

I was set to present my novel, All Told, at a local library. When I arrived, there was only one person – a lovely student who showed up to hear me speak. He and I talked while I set things up, and then we settled down to wait. And we waited. And no one else showed up. Fifteen minutes in, I packed up, thanked my student for showing, and then went home. Devastated.

Facing a fully packed room is a scary thing. Facing a room you thought was going to be fully packed, but has one lone person…abysmal.

But there was an up-side.

Since the start of the pandemic, I’ve read every night to my granddaughter, Maya Mae, who is now nine years old, soon to be ten. We meet on Zoom, and our time is 8:30. On this night, I thought I wasn’t going to be able to see her, as the event was supposed to go until 8:30. But instead, there I was, home.

So instead of reading to a filled room, I read to my computer screen, filled with the expectant face of my granddaughter. Who listened to every word.

Now granted, I wasn’t reading from my work. Maya and I recently read, and fell in love with, Katherine Applegate’s book, Crenshaw. It was so good that even Michael made sure he was nearby, so he could hear me read the next installment. On this night, we were starting a new Applegate book, Wishtree. I let Maya’s parents know I was unexpectedly available, and then, whoosh, there she was, grinning at me, on my computer screen.

That smile alone is enough to brighten my day.

We talked about her school day, and then I asked her if she was ready to read the book. She said yes, but then said, “Guess what, Grandma Kathie?”

I miss being Gamma Kaffee, but love anything this little girl will call me. “What?”

“My school library has Crenshaw!”

Her excitement let me know that this book, Crenshaw, is likely to become the book she remembers the most from her childhood. For me, it’s A Candle In Her Room, by Ruth M. Arthur. Maya is in the fourth grade now; I was in the fourth grade when I discovered A Candle In Her Room. I checked it out so many times, the public librarian gave it to me. It sits with all the other books in my classroom.

I’m not a librarian, but I gave Crenshaw to Maya. I remember who I was at that age whenever I look at my copy of A Candle In Her Room. I hope, in the future, Maya remembers herself. And me.

I cracked open the cover of Wishtree and began to read. The book began with an amazing description of a northern red oak tree named Red. Red told us that all red oak trees are named Red.

Maya began to wave her hand like the eager student she is. “There’s a tree like that near my playground at school!” she said.

“Maybe it’s Red,” I said.

She agreed.

When we finished our chapter, she sat back and sighed. “This is going to be a good book,” she said.

Looking at that bright face, eyes filled with visions of oak trees named Red, a cat named Crenshaw, and sassy little girls named Junie B. Jones, Ramona Quimby, and Gooney Bird Greene, I sighed with her, filled with satisfaction myself. It was going to be a good book.

And I have a granddaughter, a sassy little girl named (Grandbaby) Maya Mae, who is going to be a reader. She already is.

It almost made up for the nearly empty room at the library. Almost. It surely helped.

Thank you, Tony, for showing up on that night.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Several members of my family work in customer service. My husband, one of my sons, one of my daughters, and my daughter-in-law all deal directly with people and have been trained to smile cheerfully and respond politely to whatever is thrown their way. The stories of what is thrown their way often leaves me with a dropped jaw and a sense of horror.

I was equally amazed during the early times of Covid, when everyone who could hunkered down at home. Most who worked customer service jobs could not work from home – they had to be where the items were that people continued to need, pandemic or not.

And pandemic or not, I think customer service people are heroes.

I had an experience this week with a customer service worker that left me comforted, laughing, and happy.

Over the weekend, I had to return a package to Amazon. At least here, Kohls department stores serve as a place to hand over returns to Amazon. So I went, but of course, I couldn’t just leave the store without poking around. That’s just not physically possible, especially since they put the booth for Amazon returns at the far back corner and you have to walk through the entire store to get to it. Smart. I found a style of leggings that I just loved, and on sale, which is my call to action. All of the colors weren’t available at the store, so when I went home, I hopped online to kohls.com. There were the leggings and there were the colors the brick and mortar store didn’t have…and for a dollar less! Ohmygod, I heard the trumpet call! I made my purchase and signed off.

The next day, I received an email that said my items shipped. Fast! But as I scrolled through the email, I found that my leggings were shipped to an Audrey Thomas in Michigan. What? As fast as that trumpet call sounded the day before, it now turned into a wailing siren. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod! Was I hacked? Was this Audrey even now charging up my Kohls account to its max? I ran, if you can run to a website, to kohls.com and swiftly changed my password. Then I started scouring the account to see how I could stop the shipment…and there didn’t seem any way to do that.

Bear in mind this is around midnight on Monday. And it was a Monday that had been very, very, very long.

I was surprised to see the little icon for being able to talk to someone at Kohls via text. Expecting it to say that the system was closed for the night, I clicked it. And I was connected to someone named Anna. She greeted me as cheerfully as text can greet. I explained my problem and she set about seeing if there was any way to stop the delivery in Michigan. As she left me on pause to do that, my husband Michael wandered by. I explained what was happening.

“Wait,” he said. “Don’t you have a grand-niece named Audrey Thomas who lives in Michigan?”

Oh. My. God. I do. She is soon to be ten years old. She’s a very sweet munchkin.

When Anna came back, she explained that the last time I used kohls.com for an order, I sent a package to Audrey Thomas in Michigan. This was when Audrey was two years old, and was experiencing the joy of receiving not one brother, but two. Little baby twins. I sent the boys a package from another store, and then bought Audrey something special too, from Kohls, so she would also have something to open, just for her.

Eight years ago. I hadn’t ordered anything else from Kohls in eight years.

“Ohmygod,” I typed to Anna. “Can you stop stopping the delivery? I just realized that Audrey is my grand-niece. She lives in Michigan. Can the delivery still happen and I’ll just ask my nephew and niece-in-law to send it on to me?”

She answered, “LOL! And sure!”

“I’m so, so sorry,” I said. “I am so embarrassed!” And truly, though she couldn’t see it, my face was as red as could be, and tears were welling in my eyes.

“It’s okay!” she typed. “With all that’s happening in the world today, it’s easy to get lost in all the details. You’re fine! It’s all taken care of. And,” she added, “you gave us both a good laugh.”

I did. And I’m sure I gave my nephew and niece-in-law a good laugh too. Good grief.

“I’ll take care of it,” Anna said. Those are the sweetest five words ever spoken.

“Thank you,” I said. I wished we were in person, so she could see that gratitude on my face and hear it in my voice. But black and white texting would have to do.

“You’re more than welcome,” she said. “We had fun tonight! Thank you right back!”

And we signed off.

That extra warmth from a faceless, voiceless woman named Anna from who knows where allowed me to go to bed that night with a sigh of contentment. All the sirens were quieted. Everything was well. She could have handled it with just flat text, with no personality whatsoever. But she didn’t. She reached out with her words and provided comfort.

Thank you, Anna, wherever you are.

And Audrey, your great aunt Kathie did not forget you. I thought it was an incredibly odd coincidence that whoever this person was had my grand-niece’s name. I just never connected you with ordering grown-up leggings from Kohls, especially at a time of night when you were likely sound asleep.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

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

It seems I’ve been thinking about parenting a lot lately, and in particular, what it means to be an older parent, with adult kids. This became pretty clear to me last week, on retreat in Valton, Wisconsin, when I sat down to work on what I thought might be a book, not entirely sure what it was to be about, and ended up writing the first chapters of a novel about a woman working through letting her children go.

Oh, I thought. I guess you’re thinking about this more than you thought you were.

Over the last few years, there’ve been a lot of changes. I’ve had to adjust to having a child move to another state farther away than a car ride, and apparently, that move is permanent, and so I have to settle myself to seeing that child maybe only once a year or so. Her move occurred just before Covid hit, and so I went 2 years and 10 months without seeing her, which was excruciating.

I also had to adjust to my youngest getting older and older, and being more and more on her own. Soon after Olivia started college, I watched an episode of the television show Atypical, about an autistic boy as he graduates from high school and moves on to college. In this particular episode, the mom realizes her son left some required paperwork behind. She brings it in to the college office and is told she can’t drop the papers off, because she’s not the son. She tells a friend, “It’s like I’m suddenly not allowed to be his mother anymore.”

Oh, I felt that.

In the one case, with my daughter who moved, she didn’t seem all that affected by not seeing me for more than two years. I no longer had a role in her life, except as visitor. And in the other case, because of my daughter reaching a certain age, I wasn’t allowed to be her mom anymore, despite my being her advocate for all of her years.

I’ve been feeling like I’ve been fired.

And yet…there were two instances this week where I felt like a parent again, but in a slightly different role. Or posture, really.

First, my son asked me to come with him to pick out new glasses. I agreed, because I know what it’s like to try to pick out glasses when the frames still just have fake glass in them and you need your glasses to see, so you can’t really see what you look like. That seems like a simple thing.

But I also fully remember the story of this son when he got his first pair of glasses. He was the first of my then-three children to need them. He was four years old. His preschool teacher told me he’d flunked a vision test they’d given at school, so off we went to the eye doctor. The doctor did all of the usual things and said words like “astigmatism” and “near-sighted” and he eventually fashioned a pair of glasses for my son to try. “Here,” he said, “put these on.”

And Andy was awestruck. Behind the lenses, I saw his eyes widen. His jaw dropped. He put a hand up on each side of his head, holding the glasses on, and his gaze swept the entire room, up, down, left and right. “Oh!” he kept saying. “Oh!” And when the doctor took the glasses off and Andy’s world fell back to what it had been, his whole face fell. The doctor explained we had to have his glasses made, just for him.

“Mommy,” he said, turning to me, “when can I have them?”

Thank goodness for the optical stores that make your glasses in an hour.

And it was such a stop-in-your-tracks parenting moment. I don’t think I slept for a week, wondering how I could have missed the fact that my son was having such difficulty seeing.

Then today, I stood next to my thirty-six year old son and helped him pick out new frames.

No one knows that face better than me.

Then, last night, at the launch of my poetry book, Olivia In Five, Seven, Five; Autism In Haiku, I stood next to my soon-to-be 22-year old daughter and listened as she read her contribution to the book, a poem called “She Holds The Infinite World”, written about her experience with autism. I listened as she answered questions from the audience. She was calm, confident, well-spoken.

Brilliant.

And I realized, standing there, that parenting is just different now. Instead of standing behind them, hoping and praying that they won’t fall, but ready to catch them when they did, I now stand beside them. Still hoping and praying, but knowing they’ll be able to pick themselves up on their own. If they need help, I’m there.

If they don’t need help, I’m still there. Standing with them.

And I have to say, I glow just as much with pride now as I did with their first words, first steps, first everythings. And second, third, fourth everythings, and on into infinity, or at least as long as I live.

Beside them. All four of them. Always.

(Know one of the things I love most about Olivia? She still calls me Mama.)

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

I’ve been on retreat this week, thanks to winning runner-up in the Zona Gale Short Fiction Award, and so I’ve been isolated in the middle of nowhere, which in and of itself is a moment(s) of happiness. I am a city girl at heart, and so hearing coyotes, a rooster which insists on crowing in the afternoon rather than the morning (I like him!), the gentle baaing of sheep and goats, and the clip-clop of horses pulling Amish carriages aren’t high on my list of must-haves. But they’ve been a balm this week.

At my home in downtown Waukesha, I’ve been surrounded for months by the sounds of interminable construction. Sewer pipes are going in, and the major streets to the left and right of our one-block street are being changed from one-way to two-way. The noise is non-stop. There are cranes everywhere, the trucks beep whenever they back up, and the construction workers shout to be heard over the noise. One morning last week, I was awakened way too early by the construction noise, by every truck that delivers something to Walgreens showing up (Walgreens is literally my back yard), and our garbage being picked up. Every one of my nerves has been standing on end for weeks now. I’ve had the a/c on even though I hate a/c, and even on days when a/c isn’t necessary, just to have the windows closed and to cover some of the noise.

Out here, in Valton, Wisconsin, an unincorporated village that has, by its own description, “no businesses and no amenities”, the quiet has been wonderful. Though at night, I run a sound machine, because I can no longer sleep in absolute quiet.

But the sounds in this silence! We all know I don’t like birds, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like birdsong. I’ve heard more unfamiliar birdcalls here than I’ve ever heard in my life, and the majority of them are pleasant. I laugh every day at 3:00 in the afternoon when the rooster crows. One afternoon, I was taking a break on the lovely front porch, and a man who lives in the house across the street, hidden by trees, was chopping wood. I read to the whack of the axe, and then the thock as the chopped limbs were tossed into a pile. The rhythm was irregular, I couldn’t tap my foot to it, but it was such a nice accompaniment to the reading of a wonderful book while drinking strong coffee and eating Orange Oreos. And every time one of the carriages goes by, I hear the clip clop of the horse long before I see the carriage, and I look up. Even if I’m in mid-sentence, I look up. It’s just such a joy to see. And hear.

Yesterday, I was on the front porch again, coffee, Orange Oreos and book in hand. It had been a rough day. At 3:00 in the morning (why is it always 3:00?), I needed to use the bathroom. The bedroom is in a loft here, and you have to walk down the stairs to the main floor to reach the bathroom. The stairs are steep and smooth, smooth wood, with no runner for a better grip. There is a banister, but just on one side. My head was full of words, the ones I’d just read (yes, I was still awake – I’m a night owl) and the ones I’d written that day and was excited about, and when I glanced down, I thought I was on the last step. I wasn’t. I was three up. And so I fell. The pain was phenomenal. I got up and leaned against the wall. I could not put weight on my left leg. I wasn’t sure what hurt worse, my foot or my knee. Eventually, I got as far as the couch. Then the bathroom. Then back upstairs, which was excruciating, and probably really stupid. All I knew was I wanted to be in bed. So I was in bed where I shivered and shook. I called Michael, we debated my attempting to go to the ER (no businesses or amenities, remember. Closest hospital was a 20-minute drive away in bright sunlight. This was middle of the night dark and we had a heavy fog, and the roads are twisty and curvy with steep drop-offs.), decided against it, and he stayed on the phone with me until I stopped shaking.

The next day brought more pain. But I pushed through, then brought myself out to the porch and drank my coffee, ate my Oreos, and read my book…and heard a meow. Looking up, there was a tuxedo cat, sitting at the end of the front walk. “Hi,” I said.

He meowed and blinked.

“How are you?” I asked.

He tilted his head.

“Me? I’m okay. Lots of pain. I should probably go home. But you know…I think I need the silence more. And the chance to work.”

I swear he nodded.

“Do you want to come here? For a visit?” I’d been missing the pets at home. Ursula’s concrete head on my thigh while I wrote. Edgar smiling at me from his chair. Muse getting in the way.

He stood, twitched his tail at me, bowed his head, and left, disappearing through the trees toward the home where the chopping man lives.

And so I finished my snack and went back in to continue writing.

On the way here this past Sunday, I drove by many Amish carriages. But at one point, on the side of the road, a group of maybe 30 Amish folks walked toward me. They walked singly or in groups of two. As I drove slowly by, every one, every single one, smiled and flashed the two-fingered peace sign at me.

Peace. It was exactly what I needed. And the tuxedo cat agreed with me.

This whole week has been a moment of happiness. I’ve written, starting a new book, and a book I finally recognize. I’ve read and admired the words of others. I’ve slept. And yes, I took a tumble down the stairs, which is likely going to have some consequences.

But sometimes, the peace-filled sounds of silence in the middle of nowhere trumps everything else.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

My family and I have set up a chat amongst ourselves on Facebook Messenger. Populated by my husband, my sons, my daughters, my daughter-cuz-I-like-her-and-she’s-been-around-forever, and me, the chat was primarily set up to discuss the game Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Switch, which we all play. But every now and then, or actually, more than every now and then, we drift off topic. One day last week, the topic got a bit heated.

My daughter Olivia loves Halloween. She started talking in the chat about what she might dress up as this year, and how she’d like to decorate her room, and eventually, she made the exclamation, “I think Halloween should last for four months!”

Most of us were disgruntled by the fact that Halloween stuff was appearing in the stores in August. My son Andy called it a capitalist Hellscape. I said that if you’re so focused on a holiday that is so far away, you’re missing what’s happening right now. Rayne, my daughter-cuz-I-like-her, told Olivia the world is her oyster and she should do whatever makes her happy. Andy eventually declared The End, and we went on to other subjects.

I have to admit, I’ve never understood the phrase, “The world is your oyster.” I don’t want an oyster. Unless they are oyster crackers. I like oyster crackers.

But this conversation popped back into my mind a few days later, when my husband came home from grocery shopping. “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” he said. “The new harvest of Orange Oreos is in.”

“No!” I said. “It’s too early! They’re likely not ripe yet!”

“I looked them all over,” he said. “I made sure none of them were yellowy. Only the most orange ones came home.”

I gave a cheer and ran to the snack cabinet.

So what is this then?

It’s Orange Oreo season. But I have to be clear – for me, it has nothing to do with Halloween. It has everything to do with the orange.

A week or so ago, I saw a conversation under a post on Facebook about how someone refused to eat some mint ice cream because it wasn’t green. “Mint ice cream has to be green,” this someone said. There were quite a few SMHs (which I just learned what that means last week too) and disparaging comments. I stayed quiet. I think mint ice cream should be green too. Speckled with brown chocolate chips.

Color means a lot.

I don’t remember exactly when Orange Oreos first came out, but I do clearly remember standing enamored in the cookie aisle of the grocery store. I brought them home and a love affair was born. In many of my short stories and almost all of my novels, Orange Oreos appear. The first story I wrote which had Orange Oreos in it actually featured the cookie in a major way. It is called Marriage In Orange, and I wrote it in 2007, so I assume the cookie came out around then. I rarely eat any other kind of Oreo. And there are a bajillion kinds of Oreos now, a far cry from the original white stuffed cookie I used to eat accompanied by milk when I was a kid. I was very much an adult when Orange Oreos came out. And I have been known to buy many packages and put them in the freezer so that I can have them long after they disappear from the shelves.

What makes them so special? I have no idea. I have to repeat, since we just had the raucous discussion in Facebook Messenger, that this has nothing to do with Halloween. I ate these cookies for years before I realized there were Halloween shapes stamped into the cookie parts. The packages often come with a Halloween word, like “Booooo!” on the cellophane wrapper. That all goes right over my head.

It’s all about the orange.

Do they taste like orange? Not in the citrus sense, no. But they taste like the color orange should taste. Many argue that they taste just like the regular original Oreo. I disagree. They taste BETTER. They taste ORANGE.

Some would say that it’s no accident that they come out at the end of summer, because of Halloween on the horizon. Again, I disagree. They come out at the end of summer, when we’re on the cusp of fall and cooler weather and leaves turning all different colors, including…orange. There will soon be frost on the pumpkin, and pumpkins are…orange. The Orange Oreo, with its black cookie and orange stuffing, is perfect to sit down with on an afternoon, the wind chimes singing with a breeze smelling of fall. You can put on a sweater and sit outside, joining the cookie with a hot, hot, hot cup of coffee. And you can feel not too hot and not too cold, there is no snow, there are no mosquitos, the sun is bright, the sky is blue, and, like a child with an after-school snack, you can relax in perfection of temperature and taste and comfort.

So.

Olivia loves Halloween.

I love Orange Oreos.

Her Halloween can last for three months, since it starts in August.

My Orange Oreos can last for a huge part of the year, if I gather enough packages and don’t overstuff my freezer.

Hm.

I guess the world is our o(reo)yster.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

My 62^nd birthday is almost a month gone now. As of this last weekend, I still hadn’t had a celebration with my family. It was difficult this year. On my actual birthday, I was gone, off to La Crosse, Wisconsin, to visit a book club, present at a bookstore, and teach a class called The Labyrinth & The Creative Spirit at the loveliest of sculpture gardens. Since coming home, I’ve been busy, my kids have been busy, we’ve all been busy, and I came to a realization.

I guess I’m at an age and my kids are at an age now where getting together for Mom’s birthday is a thing of the past.

It made me sad.

At one point, when I asked my oldest son, Christopher, if he and his wife and my granddaughter, Grandbaby Maya Mae, were available last weekend to come over for a cookout for my birthday, he told me they were going to be in Chicago. I begrudgingly muttered something like, “I’m finally going to make my own birthday celebration because no one else seems to be.”

“Wait…” he said. “We were supposed to do something?”

Well, yeah. Honestly, I do everyone else’s birthday celebrations, I didn’t really think I should be responsible for doing my own.

And there was something about this birthday. For my generation and those before it, 62 was a pretty heavy number. It was the expected age of retirement, and often, over the previous generations, retirement was forced on people who didn’t necessarily feel ready to retire. Now, it’s not uncommon to see people working well into their sixties, seventies, eighties, and so on. So maybe that’s why 62 didn’t ring any big bells for my children. Life would go on as usual for their mother.

One of my students, a retired ER doctor who is ten years older than I am, said to me this week, “You’re going to work until you drop dead.”

Well, as someone who is self-employed, yes, that is likely. There is no pension for me. But yikes.

I’ve been very introspective since turning 62 on July 29^th. It’s been one of those self-assessment times. And while my overall conclusion is that I’m very happy where I am, I’m very happy with what I’ve done, I’d still have to admit that I’m not where I thought I’d be at 62. That’s a sobering thought when you obviously have less years to go than what you’ve already lived through. Some goals that I’ve held in front of me like a carrot in front of a donkey are likely to be unattainable. And somehow, at this age, you have to learn, or I have to learn, to accept that and be okay with it, or else settle into life as a bitter grumpy snarly person. Which, generally, isn’t who I am. But I don’t like carrots and the thought of swallowing this one is hard.

So back to my birthday. Despite busy schedules, I do have to cut my kids some slack. All four of them yelled a happy birthday to me in one form or another from across the miles while I was in La Crosse. When I got home, Olivia practically met me at the door, demanding that I open my present. It was a starfish Squishmallow (I love starfish – they are a part of my Oregon experience) and a new lovely pen in a blue the color of the ocean.

And then I had this cookout. I planned my favorite summer meal, because my birthday is a summer birthday and I totally love summer. I could live perpetually in summer. I drive a convertible for a reason. So I made brat patties and hot dogs and fresh corn on the cob from the farmer’s market. I made deviled eggs. My middle son Andy brought a peach pie, which is my absolute favorite. No cake for me, thank you, it’s always about the pie, and peach pie ranks at the top. There were only two of my kids in attendance, as one was off in Chicago with his family and one lives in Louisiana now.

But when Andy came in, he didn’t just carry a peach pie. He plunked a plant on my kitchen island. “This is for you,” he said. “It was on clearance.”

Which made me laugh. But what he brought me was a peace lily.

Which ultimately was what I was looking for, I think. Peace. Peace over turning 62. Peace over experiencing joy over the goals attained and not focusing so much on what hasn’t come to light. Peace over experiencing a different form of family, now that my kids are grown. Well, almost. The youngest is about to start her senior year in college, so she will be off on her own soon too. Peace over no longer hearing the news reported, but instead, it’s shouted, and it’s shouted over enemy lines where each side thinks of the other as the enemy even though we all live in the same place and so there is no meeting in the middle. There is no discussion. There is only noise.

Well…just some peace. And it was sitting on my kitchen counter, all green leaves and the beginnings of buds.

I brought it up to my office after dinner was done. It’s sitting on a shelf where I can see it every time I look up from my computer. If I look to my left, I see my deck garden, including the two hibiscus, Carla and Sydney, who are both blooming their hearts out.

During this week, the peace lily joined them and bloomed and bloomed. And I thought, well, that’s really it, isn’t it. Despite age, despite changes, despite it all, there are always blooms. And in this case, there is a very literal peace sitting right in front of me.

Thank you, Andy.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.