This Week’s Moment of Happiness Despite the News

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

You might want to consider this Part 2, and last week’s Moment, Part 1. Last week was anticipation. This week, reality. I am in Lafayette, Louisiana, visiting my daughter, Katie, who I haven’t seen for two years and eight months, because of Covid restrictions.

I’m actually going to post this Moment early today, because at the normal time, I plan to be on the University of Louisiana campus, with my daughter.

I’ve become ever more aware this week of the full effects of the pandemic, even if you never caught Covid at all. We were, and are, all affected. We all faced hard times.

As a mom, even as the mom of adults, the Covid years left me pacing. How do you protect your children when you can’t even be with them?

The pandemic reminded me a lot, in emotions anyway, of 9/11. One of the moments I remember so clearly from 9/11 occurred a few days after the attack, when I was watching Oprah talk to Christiane Amanpour. The conversation included a clip of Amanpour asking a senator if he thought US citizens would all be given gas masks, similar to what happened in other countries. “Oh, no,” said the senator, “we’re not in that much danger.” Then Amanpour asked him if he was aware that everyone in the Congress and Senate had been issued gas masks that day.

My fear went into overdrive.

9/11 happened in 2001. Olivia was one month shy of one year old. Katie was 14, Andy 15, Christopher 17. That night, I fled to my basement office and began searching on eBay for gas masks. Vendors were selling “family packs” of four, but there were six of us, including a baby. The prices were in the thousands, which I couldn’t afford, yet I placed bids anyway, and was outbid in seconds. I never went to bed that night, glued to CNN, and feeling like there was no way I could protect my children. I was a failure. I was too poor. My kids would die because of me.

And now, years later, the pandemic. Only one child, Olivia, was still under my roof. My sons were close by, in the same town. My daughter, Katie, impossibly far away in Louisiana, a place she’d only called home for seven months when the world turned upside down.

And again, I felt useless. I saw Christopher, his wife Amber and my granddaughter Maya Mae every night on Zoom. I still saw Andy, because he was over so often, it didn’t make sense to suddenly not see him. Olivia was just down the hall, in her room. But Katie. She was with her husband, Nick, so she wasn’t alone. But she was so far away.

And a thought that kept crossing my mind, as I considered and researched and explored how to keep my kids safe, was that I was high risk. Between my age, the breast cancer, the asthma, and fibromyalgia, I knew if I caught Covid, I would likely die.

And I would die without seeing my daughter.

Today, I said to Katie, “It’s been a hard couple years.” And she looked at me and said, “Yes, it has.”

And yet one of the things I’ve seen over these years is that my kids can handle things on their own. I am not as necessary as I once was. Which is, of course, hard to handle. As I’ve been here this week, I’ve watched the one child I couldn’t see for two years move easily through her environment. She is confident and sure of herself. Which is, of course, what I’ve always wanted her, and the other three kids, to be.

Speaking to a barista at Starbucks this week, I told her why I was in town. “Two years!” she exclaimed. “I can’t imagine being without my mom for two years!”

I wondered if Katie felt the same way. She seemed to be just fine, without me.

I watched her stride. I watched her call out hellos to students and other faculty members. I watched her teach, her hands raised and moving, like mine, her interactions with her students, like mine, her “Gotcha,” my word.

Where did the little girl go? The little girl who was so scared of kindergarten that she wouldn’t let go of me and I had to inch her into the classroom. I had to come up with a plan, where first, she stood just inside the playground fence and I stood outside of it. Her fingers, behind her back, laced through the chain link and into mine. Then, day after day, week after week, I moved backwards. To the sidewalk. To the curb. To my car. Inside my car. And eventually, the day came when she stepped onto the playground and I drove away.

So proud.

And now, two years and eight months without her mother, where was my girl? I didn’t drive away by choice. But she was definitely on her own.

When Katie showed me her office, I looked around and, first, saw the painted mannequin I created for her when she moved to Tallahassee, Florida, for her masters degree. Math words and formulas are buried in long squiggles and curves of color. She has it on a shelf, right above her computer. And then I looked to the right.

“Bowser!”

When Katie was six years old and had given up Pinky, the ragdoll I wrote about last week, she and I found a stuffed Old English Sheepdog at a rummage sale. He quickly became her best friend. Bowser. He went to every sleepover, every vacation, every bed in every bedroom through moves and college and grad school. And now here he was, in her office, in the university where she teaches math.

I rested a hand on his no-longer-furry head.

Katie smiled. “Sometimes students need a stuffed animal to hold onto, during difficult times,” she said.

And sometimes, so do daughters. When their mothers are far away for two years and eight months.

There she was. And she’s just fine. While she may not need me as much as she used to, she’s still very much my girl. Every moment while I am here, beside her, is my moment of happiness despite the news.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Anticipation: noun. The act of looking forward. Pleasurable expectation.

Sometimes a Moment hasn’t happened yet, and it already causes great happiness. Anticipation. Many of us hear that word and think of the old Heinz Ketchup commercial where the song “Anticipation” is sung as the camera follows the slow release of ketchup from its bottle. That was a good commercial, though I’m not overly crazy about ketchup. But anticipation can also mean so much more than a condiment.

In August of 2019, my oldest daughter, Katie, moved away to Lafayette, Louisiana, to teach math at the University of Louisiana. I watched her go with great grief. She was the first, and so far, the only, child of all four to really truly fly the coop. My sons live here, in Waukesha, and my daughter Olivia is still in college, which is 20 minutes down the road. Katie first went away the furthest when she attended grad school in Tallahassee, Florida, but then she returned here to earn her PhD at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. I visited her often in Tally, and she came home fairly often too. When she left for Lafayette, for the permanence of a job, I still figured it would be like the Tally experience. We would go back and forth.

She didn’t come home for Christmas that year, as moving is expensive, and so is airfare. I didn’t like it, but I figured I would make a trip down in spring. For the first time, one of my kids was living somewhere that I couldn’t picture. She was living someplace I’d never been. And so I looked forward to the spring of 2020.

But, well, COVID.

Consequently, I haven’t set my own eyes on my daughter since August 2019, other than through a screen. I haven’t hugged her. Haven’t walked alongside her, haven’t taken her shopping for her birthday, haven’t met her for coffee at Starbucks.

It’s been a long two years and eight months.

On Saturday, I am flying to Lafayette. And I am going to see my daughter.

Anticipation. It’s a moment of happiness that exists now, and it keeps growing bigger. By the time I actually see her, actually hug her, it will be a moment of undeniable joy.

All week, I’ve been over my head and out of my head with memories of this little girl.

The way she wanted to always be in a dress, because she was a girl and the brothers were boys, but she also wanted to do everything they did. Ever see a little girl try to stand at the toilet to pee like the boys? Soaked socks.

The dance recitals.

The school telling me that they wanted to skip her at least two grades. Saying no, and hoping it was the right thing. It was.

Brushing her hair.

Pinky. Pinky was a Fischer Price pink and white checked ragdoll that I bought at a garage sale three days after Katie’s birth.  Teeny tiny Katie crushed that ragdoll to her face and it became the lovey she couldn’t live without. Except Fischer Price was no longer making them. I scoured rummage sales and thrift stores for years and bought one whenever I could find it. When one would wear out, Katie would take it with her to a nap and wake up to a Pinky who looked the same, but had a slightly different rattle. “She must have a cold,” I would say. She bought it. In my storeroom, there is a box of 21 Pinkies. I can’t stand to give them away.

Pride. So much pride in this girl, now woman, who took to math the way I took to writing. Whenever I traveled, I would look for any schools having book sales, and buy up any old math textbooks I could. It was how Katie had fun. When she moved to Tallahassee, I took a calendar I gave her with monthly illustrations of fractals, cut them out, and mounted them on her wall so her bed’s headboard would be mathy. I’ve given her math t-shirts and jewelry.

And so now. She’s been fully in my heart, but she’s also been a face, a voice, a line of type on a computer screen. For two years and eight months. On Saturday…well, on Saturday, she’ll be Katie. My girl.

Anticipation. The act of looking forward. Pleasurable expectation.

I can’t wait to define reunion.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Years and years ago, I saw my first sandhill crane. I don’t know how I missed them; I lived in northern Minnesota from the age of 6 until I was twelve, and I’ve been in Wisconsin ever since. It seems like they’ve become a lot more prevalent in populated areas in the last decade or so, and now, I not only see them, I watch for them.

I’m terrified of birds, to the point of ducking whenever I hear them, which is often. The other day, the bushes lining my chiropractor’s office was filled with chittering, cheeping creepy little birds, and I nearly had to call the office to ask someone to walk with me. Instead, I plastered myself against the wall and slunk-ran as fast as I could. Then, I had to find my way back out. I flat-out ran.

But the sand hill cranes always held a fascination, an admiration, for me. They move ponderously, like they’re thinking great things. And in flight, they’re just a ballet. They never seemed threatening to me, despite their size and prehistoric appearance. I’m not saying I’d go out of my way to stand right next to one; but I almost always pull over my car when I see them, just to watch.

For quite a few years, I had a student, a poet, who took workshops at AllWriters’, my studio, and also worked with me one on one when she wanted to write a children’s book. I think we spent as much time talking as we did working. She was a joy to know. She supported me and my studio and cheered as the studio grew and grew and grew.

I walked her out to her car one day and, across the street, there stood a pair of sandhill cranes. We leaned against her car and admired them. She filled me with facts I didn’t know:

*they are among the oldest living birds on the planet,

*they stand at 3 to 4 feet tall, but their wingspan is 6 – 7 feet,

*their flight reaches 25 – 35 miles per hour, and they can fly up to 300 miles a day,

*they mate for life.

“And they’re just so elegant,” my student said.

That word, elegant, has stayed with me all this time. When I see sandhill cranes, I think, Elegant.

“Do you know the legend?” she asked.

I didn’t.

“When poets die, they are carried to Heaven on the back of a sandhill crane,” she said. She smiled at the couple across the street. “I like to think of that,” she said. “I look forward to that. What a wonderful way to end a wonderful life.”

That stuck with me too. I like to joke that when I die, it will take about 20 of those elegant cranes to haul me up to Heaven, if that is indeed the direction I will go. But while I joke, I also always think, They’re magic. I will fly on the back of one magical crane.

Yesterday, I heard that this special, gentle, elegant student passed away. At first, I was awash in sadness. Mostly, I realized, for my own loss.

And then, the oddest, most wonderful thing. On the day that I found out about my student’s death, March 23, yesterday, Facebook, which likes to remind everyone of what they’ve said and posted on that particular day, but over the years, told me that my blog, at that time called Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News, was about sandhill cranes. It was on March 23, 2017.

And I remembered.

When poets die, they are carried to Heaven on the back of a sandhill crane. I like to think of that. I look forward to that. What a wonderful way to end a wonderful life.

She earned her ride.  I hope it was every bit as joyous as she expected. I hope it was as wonderful as she was.

And now? Every time I see a sandhill crane, I will think, Elegant. And I will think of that ride. I will think of, and remember, her.

She is not lost to me.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

(Because the first year of the original moments have been published in a book, Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News; A Year Of Spontaneous Essays, they no longer appear on this website. But if you have the book, you can see the original sandhill crane post on March 23^rd. To order the book, go to https://www.amazon.com/Todays-Moment-Happiness-Despite-News/dp/1684331293/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1648152852&sr=1-4

 

 

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

Do you know what weeks are the hardest for writing a moment of happiness? There are the weeks, of course, where many things happen, and I have to sift through them to figure out what brought me the most, what stopped me in my tracks with a moment of happiness so palpable, I was conscious of it. And there are the weeks when nothing comes to mind at all, and I sit at my computer for an impossible length of time, digging through everything that happened that week, looking for something, anything, that made me smile. And there are the weeks that I compare my moments, good and bad, to what is happening in the world and feel like I just can’t even talk about my little life when so many things are happening. Ukraine weighs heavy on my mind these days.

But believe it or not, the hardest weeks to write about are when my moment of happiness centers on a personal accomplishment. I struggle sometimes between seeing happiness as happiness or seeing it as bragging. So I wondered about that, as I realized, very quickly and profoundly, what my moment was this week. Because I immediately began looking for something else, thinking, not that I didn’t want to write about it, but that I “shouldn’t”.

I found myself several times this week talking to students and clients about the writing life, and a life in the arts as well. While such a life means doing what you love, it also means your success is fully dependent on what everyone else in the world thinks about it. In a conversation with Eva, my Australian client, we said the following (we meet in the AllWriters’ chatroom, so I have the conversation in black and white):

Eva: Why is this all so hard sometimes?? This creative life?

Me: Because writing isn’t supposed to be easy. If it was, everyone would do it. Think of it as a scavenger hunt. You’re looking for a story. And finding pieces.

Eva: Questioning ability…

Me: Yep. All the time.

Eva: Even when you know you have something…it’s not there all the time.

Me: And even when you know you have something, not everyone sees it.

Eva: So yes, this creative field is hard because subjectivity, and you are always progressing, progressing, never arriving…

Me: Yes. And we are always dependent on the viewpoints of others.

Eva: Oh yes.

Me: And at the same time, we’re preached at to put our own opinions of ourselves first. We’re told it’s what we think that matters. But in writing, and other arts, our success is totally dependent on what others think.

After Eva and I talked, I thought a lot about this. Often, when I tell my students and clients what a good job they’ve done, where they’ve really gone above and beyond, and even when I crow about their publishing successes, their response is to duck their heads, look away, mumble thank you, and quickly change the subject. But when I tell them what needs to be improved, what didn’t quite make the cut, they are all laser-eyes and focus, pulling in every word.

While I think this is really predominant in those of us who work in the arts, it’s not just for us alone. Years and years and years ago, when I worked as a weight loss instructor and coach (yes, I did!), I did a presentation on accepting compliments. Every person in that room acknowledged that when they were paid a compliment, they pushed it away and often disparaged it.

“You look great today!”

“What? Oh…really? No…I barely ran a comb through my hair. And this sweater is decades old.”

When I was still an undergrad, I took a course on 20^th Century Literature. And in one particular class, led by the head of the English Department, we’d just handed in important papers the week before. The Head said he was going to choose a paper to read that was exactly what he was looking for and more. And then he read mine.

I found myself sinking in my seat. I hoped to heaven he wouldn’t say whose it was.

At the end, he didn’t say, but he handed me my paper first and my authorship was obvious to the rest of the class. When the bell rang, I should have stayed and thanked him. But instead, I slipped out before anyone else reached the door and I ran down the hall. Even as I did so, I knew if it was anyone else’s paper, they would have done the same thing. Later, I showed up at his office hours and thanked him. When he praised the paper again, I ducked my head, looked away, and mumbled thank you, then told him what I was doing in other classes.

Good grief. How far back does this go? In all of us?

And now it’s this week. And the moment I zinged to immediately when I considered what to write about. I started this moment in a dozen different ways, and then I wrote all of the above, and as I did, I thought, To hell with it. I did this. I was acknowledged. And I’m gonna use it for my moment.

In the middle of my day on Tuesday, out of the blue, I received an email from an editor I hadn’t heard from in a very long time. His name is Jordan Hartt, and the magazine was Conversations Across Borders, an international literary magazine that was interested in connecting people of the world. He had the title of the story he’d published, “108 Worldly Desires”, as the header of his email, and I opened it with great curiosity.

“Hey, Kathie,” he said. “I published this over a decade ago, and it’s still getting 10-15 views a day. Thought you’d get a kick out of knowing that!”

A kick? Oh. My. Gosh. A story, MY story, over ten years old, still being viewed 10 – 15 times a day. This was crazy! I very quickly did some math, which I verified with my mathematician daughter, because I’m not good at math. 10 years, 365 days in a year, not counting leap years, is 3,650 days. He said it was viewed 10 – 15 times a day, so let’s go middle ground, 13 times a day, And not figure in that it was likely read more than that earlier on. But 3,650 multiplied by 13 equals 47,450.

My story, “108 Worldly Desires”, has been read at least 47,450 times. And it’s still garnering reads over 10 years later.

I stared at that figure and I was shot through with happiness. Absolute. Profound. And a feeling of great accomplishment.

And so now, I’m not going to duck my head, turn away, and mumble thank you, then change the subject. Though I did send him a thank-you email. With about a million exclamation points.

Lookit, lookit, lookit! (Link is below!)

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

Link to 108 Worldly Desires, so you can add to the number who have read it:

http://www.kahini.org/108-worldly-desires/

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

I guess I’ve always considered myself a scavenger. I prefer old things over new, and I especially enjoy finding treasure. When I was a little kid living in northern Minnesota, there was a big field across the gravel road from my house. It was a baseball field, or at least, it had one of those high fences surrounding where a batter and a catcher would be. Kids played there during recess at school. But mostly, it was a big empty field.

At a far corner, behind a bunch of brush, there was a secret spot, or at least I called it a secret. There were large rocks in a strange sea of gravel. As an adult, I know now that this was likely where construction workers put all of the rocks excavated when the homes in this area were built, but for me at that time, it was like a secret circle. I spent hours there, sifting through the rocks, looking for ones with sparkle or unique shapes, that I brought home and kept in buckets in the garage. I never went there with friends. If someone happened to walk through, I’d hide behind a rock until he or she left. This was my secret spot, my magic circle, my treasure trove. Toys were fun too, but these old rocks, dug up and left behind, were my treasure.

When we moved to Wisconsin, we lived in a neighborhood right next to a country club with a golf course. On summer evenings that went on for hours before dark, I wandered the course and the bushes and trees around it, scavenging for whole golf tees and lost golf balls. I collected broken tees too, of particularly bright colors and patterns, and they were kept hidden away in an old cigar box that I bought for a nickel at a rummage sale. But the whole tees and golf balls that were still in good shape, I sold at a lemonade stand I set up on the 9^th hole. I offered two different drinks, usually pink lemonade and then some other Kool Aid flavor, and I set up displays of the tees and golf balls. Found treasure to the golfers, and found treasure to me, with the bright colors I would admire inside my cigar box, a relic from another time.

I clearly remember my first “big find” at a garage sale, which I started frequenting when I was still in elementary school. But here, it was the summer before my junior year in high school, and someone down the road had an old typewriter for sale at their rummage sale. It was five dollars. I was with my mother when I saw it, and she thought I was ridiculous for wanting it, so I went home without buying it. But then I returned two more times. Each time, it was still there, waiting for me. The last time, I handed over the five dollars. That typewriter still sits in my classroom. I can’t explain the feeling it gave me then and now, when I hold it and think about all the fingers that have pounded out words on it. It’s history.

After years of scrounging through rummage sales every week and weekend, primarily for clothes and toys for my growing kids, I discovered Goodwill and St. Vincent de Paul and the Salvation Army. I abandoned rummage sales for what was essentially a rummage sale of all things under a roof that kept me safe from the weather. When I divorced my first husband, I made the awful mistake of believing him when he said he would cover all the kids’ expenses if I didn’t go for child support in the courts. Of course he didn’t follow through, and so I had to dress my kids, in the throes of fragile adolescence when the world becomes about who is looking at you, on my very, very limited budget. My kids wore clothes from Goodwill and the Target clearance racks, and they looked darn good. My daughter might tell you differently, as I could never find the exact style jeans she wanted and the other girls wore, but she looked great.

And now, years later, when scavenging has returned to being a source of pleasure and not necessity, it continues. All of Olivia’s prom and homecoming dresses came from Goodwill. She’s never shown up to an event in a duplicate dress from a mall store. She’s worn designer dresses to her orchestra concerts, and the dresses never cost more than a few dollars. Right now, she’s toting a Vera Bradley purse, mega-pricey in the stores, that we picked out last weekend at a St. Vinnie’s. She loves it, and she learned that good quality doesn’t have to come with an inflated price.

Through all of this, I hoped I was teaching my kids that they could have what they most treasured, whether it was an old typewriter or a designer handbag, without giving in to vast commercialism and consumerism and overpricing. The treasure isn’t in how much you pay. It’s in what you love.

But there was a new treasure yet for me to find.

My son Andy is going to be 36 years old this Saturday. Throughout our years together, I would call him from Goodwill or wherever I happened to be, telling him I found this video game or that comic book or this t-shirt with that superhero on it – his treasures. When he responded enthusiastically, I bought it for him. But lately, he’s begun hanging out in Goodwills himself. He shows me his finds.

Two weeks ago, I took him with me to a St. Vincent de Paul in Pewaukee, a huge store that is housed in an old Pick’N’Save grocery store. Last weekend, when Olivia wanted to go to see it, I took her, and Andy came again. We had a ball.

As we were driving home, I told Andy that on the next weekend, for his birthday, he could pick wherever he wanted to go to dinner, and I would take him.

“Oh!” he said. “And maybe…maybe we could go to another Goodwill too. Together.”

Together.

And there’s my treasure.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

There have been quite a few times lately that I’ve begun to think of myself as old. Not “getting” old. But “old”. Already arrived. And yes, I know this will immediately be met with all my friends, students, clients, readers who are older than I am, saying in a unified shout, “You’re just a baby! Wait til you’re 70, 80, 90, 100, dead!” Be that as it may, I still found myself feeling old.

And tired. Well, maybe more worn. I think when the news that COVID was dissipating was followed immediately by the horrendous attack on the Ukraine, I felt like the title of William P. Barr’s newly released book, “One Damn Thing After Another”.

I’ve been fighting bouts of insomnia lately as well, and on Thursday night into Friday, I hit another one. On Friday evening, I was supposed to be going with my daughter Olivia to an Imagine Dragons concert. When I dragged myself out of bed on Friday, all I could think of was canceling. I was so tired. I was so old. I was so worn out.

If you’re not familiar with Imagine Dragons, please make yourself familiar. I heard them for the first time a couple years ago, when I was on retreat on the Oregon coast, where I was working on All Told, my novel that was just released. My rental car didn’t have a CD player, and as I was totally unfamiliar with things like Pandora and Spotify (see? I told you I’m old), I had to play the radio on my daily half-hour trek from Waldport to Newport, to have a coffee break and let my brain cool at Starbucks. The station I listened to seemed to be on a loop, and every day of my two weeks there, I heard this unfamiliar song, and every day, my head tilted toward the radio and I wondered who it was. I finally googled one of the lyrics and found that it was “Whatever It Takes” by Imagine Dragons. Another song, “Thunder”, was always played on my way back to Waldport, and I loved it too, but wouldn’t realize until several weeks later, after I bought the CD Evolve for “Whatever It Takes”, that “Thunder” was Imagine Dragons too. Since then, I’ve bought every CD they’ve made, and once I figured out Spotify after buying a new car that didn’t have a CD player either, I loaded them onto Spotify. They just amaze me. Months ago, when the news came out about the concert here in Milwaukee, I didn’t even wait five minutes before I bought tickets, and I crowed to Olivia that we were going, on a cold night in February, what seemed like a long way away.

But it was now. And it was on a night that was indeed cold, a day after a major snow dump, and I’d had next to no sleep. I was tired. Worn out. Old. What was someone like me doing going to a concert? I needed a cup of hot tea, and maybe some warm milk (both of which I hate), and head to bed by 8:00 (I’m never in bed before 3:00 in the morning).

When I told Olivia I was thinking about canceling, she protested. Loudly. I thought maybe Olivia could take one of her friends, but my tickets were only available on my phone (something I still don’t understand…I’m old), and I didn’t want to hand over my phone for several hours. So eventually, I yawned, drank a pot of coffee and had a Starbucks, and I went. Olivia, when she ran out from her dorm and jumped into my car, said, “I’m so glad it’s finally time!”

Right then, I did not match her enthusiasm.

I thought it was likely unusual that I was 61 years old and my daughter was 21 years old, and we were both going to a concert to see a band we loved. But the first thing I noticed when we found our seats was the incredible age span of the audience. Olivia and I sat together. There were teenagers a row in front of me. There were elementary school kids behind me. Everyone of every age was in that arena.

When Imagine Dragons came out, they did their first song, and then the lead singer, Dan Reynolds, addressed the audience. To paraphrase, he said, “It’s been a really rough couple of days for all of us. Let’s let it go. Let’s leave it at the door. Politics. Illness. War. For the next few hours, let’s let it go and just be here, together.” I was amazed that the sigh released by the audience didn’t blow the roof off the arena.

And then we rocked. We danced in our seats. We sang as loud as we could through our masks. I knew the words. My daughter knew the words. Everyone of every age knew the words.

And that music just lifted me up. Up, up, up. I felt a sense of connection with the band, with my daughter, with everyone in that audience, that I haven’t felt in a long, long time. I knew that in that arena, there were likely a million different beliefs, a million different reasons for believing, a million different patterns for living the life we’re living. But despite those differences, we were all there for the same reason. The love of this music. And because of that same reason, the differences no longer mattered.

I could have hugged the entire world that night. Well, except Putin. Even I can’t go that far. But I arrived at that concert tired and worn out and ready to start calling myself old. I came home, not young, not refreshed and energized, but fully me again. Just me.

And one thing I always am, despite everything, is hopeful.

Thank you, Imagine Dragons. And thank you, Olivia, for insisting that we go.

Pop in a CD, everyone. Open up Spotify. SING.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

To hear my favorite Imagine Dragons song, go to:

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

Four years ago today, we adopted our dog, Ursula. Her official name: Ursula Le Guin Giorgio. She was originally from Alabama, and she’d been shipped up to Wisconsin with four other dogs to a humane society here. We were told that shelters in the south were overrun with dogs and cats, and in order to stop so many from being killed due to overcrowding, there was a movement underway to send animals up to other states with room in their shelters. I chose Ursula’s name, and I named her after the writer Ursula Le Guin, because I figured, with everything Ursula had already been through, she needed to be a strong woman to survive. She did, and I didn’t yet know the half of it.

We’d been through a lot ourselves. Our beagles, Donnie and Blossom, died three weeks prior to our adopting Ursula. They passed away together, side by side on the vet’s table, with all three of us resting a hand on each dog, and with two veterinarians injecting that fatal shot into each dog at the same time. It was a wonderful, horrible experience. Blossom was fifteen years old and had advanced kidney disease. She’d been diagnosed years before, and we’d been told she’d die within that first year. Talk about a tough woman. She struggled, but she remained. She went from a 35 pound beagle/coonhound mix to twenty pounds at the end. Donnie was thirteen years old, and diagnosed just weeks before with a form of cancer in his bones that we were told would take years to take his life. Instead, those few weeks later, he was doing things like standing in his food dish and looking at me, as if he was saying, “I know this isn’t right, but…” They’d both lost any sense of being housebroken. We were heartbroken, but we made their passing as gentle as it could be for them.

It was horribly hard on us.

I said no more dogs. But three weeks later, the empty couch, the lack of sound (jingling collars, ticking toenails, wagging tails hitting everything in sight, and beagle-speak) did me in. I saw a dog called Mama on the humane society’s website, and I pulled Michael and Olivia in with me.

What we saw was a quiet, sweet-faced dog. She wasn’t bothered by all the kennel noises around her. She was gentle. And partway through our meeting, she lay that big concrete head on my thigh for the first time. Those eyes.

She came home.

Where we learned fairly quickly that the calm dog was a façade. Ursula was afraid of everything. Literally. The tv. The microwave. The coffeemaker. The icemaker. The buses going by. The flags waving on our walks, which, four years later, we no longer take and haven’t since about six months in, because she became an anxious pile of goo. She’s scared of the outside. She doesn’t like grass. The wind is terrifying. Don’t even ask about thunder and lightning. And, to our great surprise, one of her biggest fears is when a gospel-type choir rocks out on a television commercial or a show. She flies up the stairs and hides in her crate.

The closest we can figure is that Ursula was a kennel dog, used for breeding. She was called Mama because she’d clearly been a mother. Four years later, she still prefers to “do her business” on the parking lot, not in the grass.

So Ursula is totally different from Donnie and Blossom. Blossom was scared of thunderstorms, but that’s about the only fear there was, except for Donnie’s being perpetually paranoid that he would never be fed again. I had to put childproof locks on all my cabinets, because he learned to break in and eat whatever he could find. One of his most famous eat-capades was when he ate a bag of 25 “greenies”, special treats for dogs to clean their teeth, meant to be given only one a day, and he did so in 20 minutes. That earned him a trip to the vet, where they wanted to keep him overnight. I said no and brought him home after he was given subcutaneous fluid. Donnie burped and farted a few times, rolled over, went to sleep, and was just fine.

And now we have Ursula.

Besides the extreme fear, Ursula went into cardiac arrest after being treated for heartworms. She was at the emergency vet’s for a week. Now, she has some weird autoimmune condition that causes her toenails to grow in strange shapes and to be extremely fragile. She takes daily doses of doxycycline, Vitamin E, and Niacin. With peanut butter. She has more good days than bad, but the bad days are still events, when she spends most of the day in Olivia’s bathroom, in the dark.

Even so, her good and bad days are all good days for us. She has learned to romp and play in her own way, and even to make noises when there are french fries in the house. She wasn’t scared of the Christmas tree at all this year, even sticking that big concrete head into its branches. She loves our cats. She still won’t go for walks, and the only way to get her out on our deck is to drag her by a leash. The beagles used to spend long hound dog hours out there, basking in the sun. Ursula just stands at the doorway and looks. She sighs sometimes.

But even with those sighs, she knows she’s loved. Wherever we are, she is. Those sighs are also sighs of contentment and happiness. There are many belly rubs. There are what we call “eeeeeeee’s”, where she smiles at us, and her lips part, showing us shiny healthy teeth. There is always that clunky head on my thigh. There are french fries.

There are those that say Ursula is lucky, that not many would stick beside her with all of her challenges. But we believe we’re lucky too. The beagles were wonderful. Ursula is wonderful.

And don’t forget the cats.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

This week, I am on retreat, trying to get through a final draft of my new novel. Being on retreat means that I am not teaching or meeting with clients. I am instead totally focused on my own work. It’s also a time that I go to bed when I’m ready to sleep, and I wake up when I’m ready to wake up. And I read, read, read. Not student manuscripts, but books from the stack of wanna-reads next to my desk. During a typical work week, I only read during lunch. Breakfast is spent in front of the computer, opening emails. Dinner is spent in front of the computer, reading manuscripts. But during retreat, I read at a kitchen table at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then again at coffee break in the middle of the day. I read in bed, usually poetry, before I go to sleep. It’s WONDERFUL. And I write, all day long and into the night.

Usually, I take my retreats away from home, typically on the Oregon coast, which is where I will be in October of this year. For this retreat, I was also supposed to be away, at a retreat center in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. But a circumstance intervened and I was unable to get away. So I spent this week, in retreat, at home.

For the most part, it’s been okay. I’m writing and reading. I’m still able to get to the gym and swim (there was no gym in Mineral Point). But today, the second to last day of my retreat, well…

First, my husband fell on the ice, landed on his face, and broke a tooth. In order to still fulfill all of his hours at work, he needed me to pick him up at the last minute possible to make his dentist appointment. Okay.

Then my granddaughter, Grandbaby Maya Mae, had early release from school. There was no one to pick her up. So I agreed to do so – I was going to be out anyway, dropping Grandpa off at the dentist – and then I also agreed to keep her with me from 1:40 to 4:00. We made these arrangements over Zoom, and I was just about to sigh when it was interrupted by my granddaughter flinging both hands in the air, grinning with her entire body, and then she shouted, “And I’ll get to see you IN PERSON!”

My sigh was hiccupped off by laughter. And absolute joy.

A few weeks ago, I gave my granddaughter her 9^th birthday present. She had hair down almost to her waist. Like my hair, like my two daughters’, her hair was fine, but there was a lot of it, which made for snarl after snarl. One night, on Zoom, Maya showed me a photo of herself from when her hair was chin length. “Oh, Grandma,” she sighed. “I miss my short hair. And I want bangs.”

After a quick consult with her parents, Maya’s birthday present was created. A trip to a salon that specialized in kids. A haircut, style, and a pedicure. Then a trip to a fancy-schmancy store, where she could pick out an outfit all of her own. Finally, dinner out, after she changed into her new outfit, and we kept her hidden until her parents arrived and they got to see the new Maya Mae.

Maya is now 9 years old. Her little speech impediment is gone – gone are the srees which are now trees, gone is my title which used to be Gamma Kaffee, and is now Grandma Kathie. She speaks with long sentences and even longer words. She reads to me on Zoom, before I read to her. And she writes stories.

She writes stories!

At the haircut appointment, I watched as hair flew and fell to the floor. At one point, I couldn’t even see her face. And then…and then…

Ever see a child start to grow up right before your eyes?

There she was. Her hair curved around that face I have loved since I was privileged to see her on ultrasound and privileged again to see her emerge into this world. New bangs provided a frame. Her nails glistened pink. And her smile. Oh, that smile.

Then she looked over my shoulder into the mirror behind me. “Oh, Grandma Kathie,” she breathed. “I love it!”

I realized, watching her grow up like that, right there in that salon chair, how fast the years are going by. She’s nine. Srees are gone. Gamma Kaffee is gone. Her own version of Uptown Funk, sung from my backseat when she was three and with the word “Funk” changed into something else entirely that nearly made me drive off the road, is gone.

Time is passing.

And this is why, on my second to last day of retreat, when I should be writing, I instead had Grandbaby Maya Mae in my backseat, telling me about her school day. It’s why she’s downstairs as I write this, watching Encanto, her favorite ever movie (I took her to see it), and she’s shouting up every single line as she’s memorized the entire damn movie, including, as she says, “the words I don’t understand.”  And it’s why, as soon as I’m done posting this, I will be running down to watch it with her in the time I have left before we have to go pick up her mother.

There will still be time to write. But time with her as a little girl is fast running out.

“Nobody talks about Bruno!”

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

 

 

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

Every now and then, it’s like a certain place or thing in my home has a spotlight thrown on it from my own mind, and it looms in front of me and behind me and beside me, moaning, “Cleeeeeaaaan meeeeee! Cleeeeaaan meeeeee!” It becomes the Heart of Darkness in my home and psyche. The horror! The horror!

Lately, I’ve been haunted by the credenza in my office. The credenza itself, I love. I found it in an antique mall shortly after moving in here. One of its doors doesn’t quite close, so I have to bolster it with some folded cardboard, but I find it beautiful. I also find it as my personal black hole. If I don’t know where to put something, it goes in the credenza. My dream of having it hold all my office supplies has long since disappeared as it holds a lot more than that.

So I had a four-day weekend this last week, and I decided it would be the weekend that I cleaned the credenza. On Friday, I carried up several large garbage bags, to be sorted into the Goodwill bags and the throwaway bags. I brought up our little wooden stepstool to crouch on as my days of kneeling are long over. We have concrete floors, and my knees would have been demolished.

And so I set to work. After about fifteen minutes, my husband stopped yelling, “What was THAT?” at every crunch, bang, and belted-out curse word. And the bags filled. Picture frames. File folders too big for my file drawer. Those weird metal things you put on the side of reports after punching in two holes. Odd little knick-knacks purchased for gifts and then forgotten about. An even weirder cloth thing that said in bright green print, “Namaste In Bed!” I asked Michael about that one, and he said he gave it to me once when I was sick in bed, and I was into meditation. Couldn’t prove it by me.

But then I found treasure. Actually, lots of treasure. I’d started putting photographs in there, with the full intention of yanking them out someday and putting them into photo albums. Remember when we used to do that, instead of keeping them on our phones and computers? So many photos that I meandered over, and then carefully put into large stiff envelopes to keep them safe.

And then I found my big kids’ high school graduation pictures. Back then (back then…my kids are 38, almost 36 and almost 35 now. My big kids are “back then”. Yikes.), you could choose to have a selection of the photos put into these tri-fold folders, like the ones that were used to hold your diploma, and so even if you only chose to have a few of the photos enlarged and framed for your Wall of Fame, you could keep your favorites as well. I had three of these. One for each kid.

We don’t have these folders anymore. I don’t have one for Olivia.

So I sat there for a while, looking down at the faces of my three big kids. Christopher. Andy. Katie. Such young and open faces. Faces ready to go out into the world and become…whatever and whoever they chose to be.

As I looked at each picture, defining and treasured moments for each child rose to the surface.

For Christopher: the Easter that he was attending CCD classes for First Communion. He went on Wednesdays, and on the Wednesday before Good Friday, as I was tucking him into his upper bunk in the room he shared with his little brother, he sat back up. “Mommy,” he said, “I don’t want to rise on Friday!”

“What?” I said.

“The teacher said that on Friday, Jesus died and then he rose and we will too, because of what he did! And it will happen on Friday! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to rise!”

Ohboy.

I did my best to explain, and then I tucked him back in with his favorite stuffed animal, a little red devil named Hot Stuff he received on the day he was born. I loved the irony, but I hated the fear put into my little boy.

For Andy: He was in third grade when he came running home from school ahead of the other two and burst into the back door. “Mom!” he yelled. “Mom! I wrote a story in school and I wanna show you!”

I came out of the little office I had for writing and said, “That’s wonderful! Show me! Show me!”

He started digging in his backpack, but then he stopped. He looked up at me, frowning, and then he looked away. “But I think I spelled wizard wrong,” he said.

At that time, the school was actually grading on how many spelling errors there were in first drafts. I was horrified. When the other two straggled in, I got everyone their snacks and then I explained to Andy that writers don’t care how things are spelled in first drafts. Writers don’t care about punctuation in first drafts. Writers don’t even care if the story makes sense in the first draft. We do that later.

Beaming, he pulled the story out and we read it together. It was a wonderful story. And…wizard was spelled correctly. Again, I loved the irony, but hated the fear and self-criticism put into my little boy.

And then Katie. The kids used to come with me to the Y while I worked out. They stayed in the little daycare. One day, when I came to take them home, I found Katie standing right by the door. I thought she was waiting for me, but when I swept her up (she was three), she pointed to the door across the hall. “Mommy,” she said. “Show me.”

I walked her over and we looked through the little glass window into a dance class for teeny kids. Katie froze in my arms as she watched them twirl and bend and glide. Then she turned back to me, took my face in both of her hands, and said, “Mommy. I want that.”

I signed her up for dance class that day. Her teacher’s name was Miss Faye. On the first observation day, I sat and watched as Katie started in a row with the other kids, but eventually moved herself directly in front of Miss Faye, staring down at her feet, and making her little feet do the same.

When Katie was five years old, Miss Faye said Katie needed to go to a dance studio, that she couldn’t keep up with Katie’s desire to learn.

Off we went to Kellar Dance Studio, for years and years of ballet, tap, and jazz, and years and years of recitals. I watched in awe as my daughter rose on pointe shoes. And I grieved when she went off to college and dance came to an end. One of the high school senior photos shows her wrapping the delicate pink ribbons around her ankle.

My credenza is clean now, no longer a black hole. And while it took me a couple days to recover from the aches and pains of sitting on a low stepstool, it was so worth it. For those few hours, I had my big kids back.

It was lovely.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Muse is the only pet in our household who has been with us since her babyhood. She is eighteen years old, going on steadily to nineteen. And I can already hear my husband, Michael, saying, “You’re writing a moment of happiness about the Demon?”

Muse has always been a challenge.

Muse came to us after I mentioned in a workshop I was leading that we had an overabundance of testosterone in my house. There was Michael and my two boys. There was the dog, a Chihuahua named Cocoa. And there were two male cats, Einstein and Cornelius. The only females were my two daughters and me. The next week, a student came in to class with a box of teeny kittens. They’d been born in an RV traveling from the west coast to the east coast, and the owners were trying to find them homes so they could return to traveling with just one cat. Of all the kittens, there was only one female. She looked up at me from the box and blinked with a calm that was the direct opposite of her tumbling brothers. And so she came home.

Where she was instantly not calm.

She climbed into the eaves in the basement and disappeared under the floorboards. We despaired of ever getting her out. I had to place a kitty carrier on top of Cocoa’s dog crate and stuff Muse in it every night, because otherwise, she would insist on sleeping on my head. She tore things apart. She climbed things. She was wherever your foot wanted to be.

But she also was a champion mouser when our house was suddenly overrun with field mice. And she was tolerant of little Olivia putting her into a basket and carrying her around the house.

When we moved here, to our industrial style condo with the exposed rafters, she immediately climbed up and wandered above our heads. The developer of the complex warned that there were spigots up there that controlled our sprinkler system in case of fire, and if she bumped into one, we would have tons of water careening into our home. I hung items on the floor to ceiling beams on either side of our island, to prevent Muse from getting up there. Instead, she jumped from the floor to the counter to the fridge to the tops of cabinets, and then wandered around the spigots again. We gave up. At eighteen, she still does this.

I long ago started a photo series, called, “Because No Day Is Complete Without A Cat On/In Your…” If there was a piece of paper, she found it. She sat in my printer. The bathtub. On top of the shutters in a window. On a stack of three pillows. On top of Ursula’s raggedy pink blankie. On my computer. The other day, I found that Google had searched, seemingly on its own, for references to the word “pppppppppppppppppink”. Apparently, Muse needed to know all about the music star.

When Zoom became a daily presence in my life, Muse visited with my students and clients whenever I was trying to work with them. She made an appearance at my book launch last week. Lately, she’s become obsessed with sticking her head in any bowls or cups. She’s lapped up my coffee. She’s eaten my oatmeal. When I don’t have time to run my cereal bowl down to the dishwasher before I meet with a morning client, I have to stick the bowl on the highest shelf behind me. Muse will sit on the back of my desk chair, hunched, preparing to leap from the chair to that bookshelf. More than one student has shouted out, “No! No, Muse!”

Something that non-cat owners may not know is that as a cat ages, she loses her ability to retract her claws. Muse now sticks to everything she touches. Including me. The other night, when I finished meditating before sleep, Muse had one paw resting on top of my hand. When I moved, her claw stuck under my skin. She began yanking to try to get it out, but it was stuck. I was trying to reach across my body with my non-cat hand to disengage her, but try to do that from the flat of your back while you are in incredible pain. Eventually, she got out and I just quietly bled myself to sleep.

This week, when she was in the way during a class, I picked her up from my desk, intending to set her on the floor, so I could have ten seconds of peace before she returned. As I lifted, she set her paw on my forearm. I was wearing short sleeves. She stuck with four claws. Ever try not to scream while teaching a class, with a cat stuck to your arm, dangling in midair, with no possible way to get your other hand where you can disengage her?

I have. And I have the wounds to show it. Please send bandaids.

But this morning. Oh, this morning. I woke a few minutes before my alarm went off. Curled into my side was this teeny gray cat. She has never weighed more than five pounds. Her gray face was resting on gray paws, and her gray tail curled over her gray nose. I smoothed her fur, somewhat raggedy with age, from her head around the curve of her back. And she began to purr.

A much better sound than a bleating alarm clock.

What a wonderful way to wake up. For eighteen years.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.