This Week’s Moment of Happiness Despite the News

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

Before our dog, Ursula, moved in, we had two beagles, Blossom and Donnie. Well, we called Blossom a boonglehound. The closest we could figure was she was a beagle and coonhound mix. All of her features were beagle, but she had long, long legs. Donnie was classic beagle. Short, stubby, and an eating machine. Blossom came from a humane society. Donnie came from an animal rescue. Both were beloved.

Blossom made it to fifteen years old, Donnie to thirteen. They both died on the same day. Blossom had advanced kidney disease that was supposed to kill her within a year; she made it five years. Donnie had a cancer in his leg bone that was supposed to be slow-growing and give us several more years. Three weeks later, he was walking in a daze and doing things like standing in his food dish and looking at me with the most confused expression I’ve ever seen on any dog. When we lost them, they went together, both on the veterinary table, with all three of us with a hand on each. There were two vets, and the dogs were injected at the same time. We were there, they were together, it was heartbreaking.

One of the best things about the beagles was their greeting. When I drove into my parking space at the condo, I would get out of the car and look up to the door for the second floor deck. Two beagle faces would be pressed against the glass or the screen, depending on the season. Their tails would be a blur behind them, and their faces would be rocking because their front paws would be paddling in place, just from the joy of seeing me come home. By the time I got up the stairs to the doorway that enters our condo, I’d open that door to two beagle bodies pressing forward, tongues licking, tails propelling, excited grunts and whines all around.

With that kind of welcome home, home always did feel like home.

Three weeks after the beagles’ passing, Ursula came home with us from a different humane society. She wasn’t a beagle. But her gentleness completely took me in at the kennel. It wasn’t until we got her home that we realized her gentleness came from fear.

Ursula was afraid of everything. The microwave. The icemaker. The television. The buses and cars going by outside. The sound of flags flapping from down the street. Wind. Wind chimes. Thunder. And for heaven’s sake, when the rare occurrence of a rocking church choir coming on television happened, that dog was a blur up the steps and into her crate, where she huddled, shivering.

Along with her fears was an aversion to narrowish spaces. Three years into owning her, she still wouldn’t walk down the hallway from our kitchen to the back of the condo, where Olivia’s room is, and where the treadmill is, and where the door to the second floor deck is. Livvy tried to coax her down to her room; no go. I laid treats on the floor. She only went as far as the bathroom and then turned tail.

Three years in to Ursula-ness, we’ve pretty much given up on Ursula ever making it through our entire house. Which means I also gave up hope of ever seeing a dog face pressed in welcome against my 2^nd floor deck door.

But that doesn’t mean that Ursula isn’t as beloved as the beagles.

When I’m working at my desk, often that concrete head will suddenly be resting on my thigh, looking up with eyes that see me, appreciate me, love me.

In the morning, as I putter around getting dressed, brushing my teeth, making my bed, Ursula sits up on the loveseat that has become “her bed” and she tilts her head against the back so she can see me wherever I go.

I do still get greeted at the door of the condo. I have to stand stock still before stepping inside so that she can give me a thorough sniff, making sure that nothing happened to me while I was gone.

Her tail-wagging reverberates around the entire house as she thumps it on the couch, the loveseat, against the coffee table, against the cabinets, against anything within reach. Including the cats’ faces.

And she smiles, bringing her lips back, showing her amazingly tiny teeth for a 50-pound dog. She grins, which makes me laugh, which makes her grin harder.

One of my clients lost her 12-year old dog a little over a month ago. She finally managed to write about it. In her piece, she said, “He was no fur baby, but a companion of the highest order.” And she said, “The grief has been the howling kind, the kind I imagine the dog might feel for me.”

I think of Blossom and Donnie. And I think of two others, Penny, another beagle, and Cocoa, a chihuahua.

And I think of Ursula, her concrete head on my thigh.

They have all been companions of the highest order.

Early this week, I drove in to my parking spot at the condo. It was a nice day, and all of my windows and deck doors were open. I don’t know what made me step out of my car and look up to the second floor deck. There’s been nobody there for three years.

But there was on that day. Her face pressed to the screen, Ursula gave me her tiny-toothed grin. Her tail was a blurred whip behind her, and her body rocked with her prancing front feet.

“Hi!” I called. “Hi, Ursy! Hi!”

And she wiggled some more, then whipped around to meet me for my thorough sniff at the condo door.

She assured me I was just fine. And I was.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Lately, I’ve been finding myself craving silence. Typically, when I get into one of my cars, I immediately turn on the music, either via CD in one car or Spotify in the other (because the newest cars have the gall not to have CD players!). But for the last few weeks, I haven’t even reached for the switch. When I’m home alone, I keep the television off. I speak to the pets in a whisper. I’m avoiding crowds. I just want it to be quiet.

I know where this is coming from. The world is so loud right now. We’ve talked about noise pollution for years, noise coming from traffic and machinery. But our newest noise pollution is coming from people. I can’t turn on my computer or the television without seeing and hearing scenes of people standing in mobs, yelling and screaming. Everything seems to cause great anger, and everything seems a reason to protest.

I’ve been most shocked by the scenes coming from school board meetings. Across the entire country, parents are standing up and interrupting, yelling, screaming, cursing, over the mask debate. Over both sides of the math debate. All I can think when I see these scenes is that we, as parents, are supposed to be role models for our kids. What are we teaching them? That there’s no such thing as listening? No such thing as discussion? That it’s okay to use foul and violent language on everyone from teachers to principals to board members? That no one deserves our respect, at least long enough to listen and consider?

I look at my granddaughter and I worry.

This week, I talked with someone who is a new school board member in a different city. She supported the mask mandate. And then she had to sit for five hours through a meeting where parents pitched fit after fit after fit. She has now received death threats and vile messages. Over masks. Over masks! Death threats over masks?

Here in Waukesha, we made national news when our school board decided (wrongfully) to not take advantage of a federal program that provides free meals to all kids in the schools. One board member said (audaciously) that this would “spoil” our children. After much public outcry, the decision was reversed. But the woman who was worried about spoiling is now receiving – you guessed it – death threats and vile messages. Now, I’ll be the first to say that she was being ridiculous and cruel and likely should not be on a school board representing children. But death threats?

I was, until recently, the president of our condo board. At our last meeting, a neighbor interrupted my every sentence, shouted over me, and called me names. She didn’t seem to think this was unusual behavior. Then, a few weeks ago, I had to tell a neighbor that we couldn’t cut down and replace a dead tree in front of his unit because the condo association doesn’t own the strip of grass the tree is planted in. He responded by sending me a string of emails, filled with f-bombs and m-f bombs and all sorts of vile language. He finished by calling me a liberal.

I suppose I should be grateful he didn’t threaten my life. But all this over a dead tree that isn’t even on our property? I resigned.

Silence, please, silence. The noise is exhausting.

So late last night, or early this morning, depending on how you feel about 2:00 a.m., I was getting ready for bed. I live in the heart of downtown Waukesha, and so even at that hour, there was some noise. A car passing by. The hum of streetlights. A distant train, a not-so-distant siren. And then suddenly, there was a new sound.

I froze. Was that…?

It came again. A car went by, so I wasn’t sure, and I waited some more. But then…there it was again.

An owl.

I’ve lived in this condo for 15 years. I have never heard an owl.

I stopped what I was doing and went out on the 3^rd floor deck. As I leaned against the railing, I heard it again and again. The call echoed in the empty parking lot. Somewhere, in one of the surrounding trees, was an owl. I closed my eyes, dipped my head, and listened with all my heart.

Back in 2018, I was sitting in an allergist’s office, after a night when I went into anaphylactic shock over sunflower seeds, something I’d eaten my entire life. The oral chemotherapy drug I took for breast cancer exacerbated current conditions, and my allergies were out of control. I sat there, defeated, doctor’s appointments and offices now routine in my life, wondering if breast cancer didn’t get me, if bizarre allergies would. I scrolled through my phone and suddenly, my screen was filled with the face of an owl. It was a photo taken by a student, who found the owl in her backyard.

I made that photo my Moment. In that blog, I said, I sat in that sterile room, expecting nothing and expecting the worst, and I just took in this owl’s face. I wasn’t in the forest, but as far as I’m concerned, we did breathe the same air. She drew me in to her meditation. Magical reality. My shoulders relaxed. My pulse slowed. My mind stilled.

And now, on my deck, I didn’t see this owl. But I heard it. I heard it with my whole peace-craving heart. And I stilled again.

When I finally climbed into bed, I could still hear that owl’s call, through my bedroom window. I slept deeper than I have in weeks.

I hope he’s still there tonight.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

(If you would like to see that original blog,, it was posted on 2/1/18.)

 

 

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

This past Sunday, I drove my daughter Olivia back to her college for her junior year. This is the third time now that I’ve rented a van, helped my husband pile all her stuff inside, and watched her in the rearview as she followed me in her shiny white VW Bug to her home away from home. The packing has become easier every year, as we figured out just what we needed – last spring, Olivia found some great heavy duty blue bags with zipper closures that carried the majority of her stuff. Michael likened the loading of the van to playing a successful game of Tetris: all the pieces just slid in and tucked together, until nothing had the chance to shift and break. At the school, we knew exactly where her room was, we knew the COVID protocol, we got our cart, and, Tetris-like again, we got her unloaded in two trips. Because she’s had the same room for all three years, it was easy to return the furniture back the way she liked it. She said she could do her own decorating. She walked us back to the van, kissed us goodbye, and we were gone. I was sad, but this year, I didn’t cry.

Olivia is my fourth child to have send-offs. Christopher and Katie attended the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Katie went on to grad school in Tallahassee, Florida – that’s the furthest anyone went away to school. Then she returned to Wisconsin to earn her PhD in math at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. Andy went for a year to our own UW – Waukesha, but when he decided school wasn’t for him, his send-off was to a full-time job and his own apartment in town. All of the send-offs were hard. And all were exciting too. My kids were becoming who they wanted to be.

But with Olivia being the last, my baby, though they’re all my babies, and with her high-functioning autism, there was a difference. I’ve not only been her mother, but her advocate. And suddenly, I wasn’t allowed to be. She was an adult. I was supposed to step back. I felt like the school allowed me to drop my daughter off, and then they tossed me out the massive double wooden doors and latched them tight,

I’ve still wiggled my way back in there, when necessary. There is no stopping Mama! I don’t believe in throwing the child off the dock to learn how to swim. That’s not a learning experience. That’s swim or die. I will always be there to lift my kids up.

The first time I dropped Olivia off for school, oh, was it hard. But we unloaded, set up her room, helped her decorate, went to a couple Welcome To School events, and then we drove off. I watched her again in my rearview mirror as she walked by herself back to the dorm.

And then, a few hours later, we were talking to each other on Facebook Messenger. The time got later and later. Eventually, I reminded her that she had an early orientation the next day, her first official college event, and she needed to get to sleep.

She said that she knew. And then she typed, “I just wanna text you. Well, Mama, I miss you. It feels really odd being on my own.”

My daughter missed me.

And now here we are, in her third year. A Tetris year, where everything we’ve done, we’ve done before, as we’ve learned how to get our daughter to school, to a room that feels like home, to a place where she can learn everything she wants to learn. To a place where she can become an adult.

That night, we talked on Facebook Messenger again. She showed me how she decorated her room, how she hung some new lights, how so very Olivia this room looked. I reminded her of her message to me, on that first night away at school, that very night after I dropped her off and watched as she grew smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror.

She answered, “And it still feels odd being on my own, even two years later.”

I answered her just the way I did before, the way I will always answer her, the way I will always answer any of my children. “As I said then, and I’ll always say it, I am right here. I am always right here.”

She said, “I know, Mama.”

My heart was so full.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Right now, my very best friend is a book I’m reading. Ever read a book like that? It’s not like I’m in love with the book. But even when I’m not reading it, it’s nearby, so that I can pick it up at any available moment. Five minutes between clients, read. Watering the plants, hold the watering pot in one hand, the book in the other, read. Go to the bathroom…you get the picture. The book is The Bookish Life Of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman. And the thing is, what’s most important about this book isn’t that I’m learning great things, or the world is moving beneath my feet. It’s that I’m honestly flat-out ENJOYING it.

Yesterday, when I read this at lunchtime, the only time in my day that I make myself sit down for a meal and read, I came across this section:

“Libraries were her favorite places, and when she traveled, she would start out at the local library, thus immediately identifying herself as a total nerd. They say you always remember your first time, and Nina definitely did. Walking into the Los Angeles Central Library to get her first library card, when she was eight or so, was still a memory she treasured. The entry hall of the library was as beautiful as any cathedral, and Nina had looked around and realized she would never run out of things to read, and that certainty filled her with peace and satisfaction. It didn’t matter what hit the fan; as long as there were unread books in the world, she would be fine.”

And right then, right there, I was off. My kitchen disappeared, my lunch disappeared, my current world disappeared, and I was running through all the libraries I’ve ever loved. The books I’ve loved. And that kept me company.

The first public library I went to was in Cloquet, Minnesota, when I was six years old. It was relatively small, but I was small, and so it was big to me. There was a second level, and the floor was made of glass blocks, which meant I could see the footsteps of people looking for books. I would stand under it, choose a set of feet, and follow them.  I made up stories about who owned the feet, what they were doing, what they were looking for.

In that library, I read for the first time A Candle In Her Room by Ruth M. Arthur. And then I read it several hundred times. I checked it out so often that, the last time I went to return the book, the librarian handed it back to me. “It’s yours,” she said. I still have that book, but not my original copy.  I unfortunately lent it to a student who never returned it. But I bought another copy, because my life wouldn’t be complete without it.

That same librarian, upon realizing that I was reading well above my age level, took me, at 7 years old, to the young adult section. She introduced me to Walter Farley, and all of the Black Stallion books. Thus continued my love of reading, and a new love for horses, which ultimately led to my meeting Secretariat face to face in 1983.

Cloquet’s library led to Stoughton, Wisconsin’s library, to Cedarburg, Wisconsin’s library, to Waukesha, Wisconsin’s library. And then on to Madison, where I attended the University of Wisconsin – Madison, which held oh so many libraries. I stood in each one, clasped books to my chest, read them with ardor, and stood in front of the shelves where I dreamed my own books would be.

And now, that’s where they are.

Downstairs, in the AllWriters’ classroom, there is an entire wall of books, and shorter bookshelves in front of the floor to ceiling windows. Books lay sideways on top of rows of other books, because there isn’t enough shelf space. Just outside the door to the studio, in the entryway, there is a shelf holding the books of students, all published by traditional publishers. Outside the front door, there is a Little Free Library, watched over by a concrete lion, the fourth of his lineage in that spot.

And on my left hand, my pointer finger, there is a ring, given to me by a student after I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017. It’s a spinner ring, meant to alieve anxiety with repetitive motion, using my thumb to spin the ring. The student asked my husband for a favorite quote to put on it, and so when I spin, I see the words, “Keep passing the open windows.” This is from John Irving’s The Hotel New Hampshire, my answer to “If you could only have one book on a desert island, what would it be?” I own a signed copy.

And just a short time ago, in Waldport, Oregon, I walked into a used bookstore, checked to make sure my books weren’t there (they weren’t – and I want them held lovingly in homes that can’t imagine giving them up), then glanced into a locked cabinet to see Ray Bradbury’s The Complete Poems Of Ray Bradbury. In the middle of a town where I knew no one, I found a friend, a writer I held close to my heart since I was seventeen years old. The book was signed. I bought it, kept it next to me throughout my trip, and now it’s just to the left of my writing desk.

That line in this book, “It didn’t matter what hit the fan; as long as there were unread books in the world, she would be fine,” led me one step further. It doesn’t matter what hits the fan; as long as there are unread books in the world, I will never be alone. I will always be making new friends.”

I came back into my kitchen, finished my lunch, hugged the book, then carried it with me as I returned to work, so that I could read some more with every passing chance.

And yes, that helps. Despite Anyway.

 

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

A long, long time ago, my mother was given a date palm tree on the day I was born. At the time, the plant and I were very small. The plant fit neatly into a pot that could stand on any table, though the little tag that came with it promised that it would grow tall. I was a preemie, born on July 29^th when I was due on my mother’s birthday of September 4^th, but it was promised I would grow too. My mother somehow linked the two of us, plant and baby, together, and she told me as we both got older, she felt that if she could keep the plant healthy and growing, I would be healthy and growing too.

My mother was huge on plants. She didn’t have a green thumb, she had a green body and a green brain that went with it. Our house was a jungle, with plants and plant stands in every room, including the bathrooms. When we moved to our house in Waukesha in 1976, it was on an acre and a half of land and it quickly became my mother’s playground. Plants were everywhere…next to the house, on either side of all walkways, up and down the driveway, around the patio, around the decorative rock placed at the bottom of the driveway, in random places around the “acreage”, in pots, in the ground, hanging from the eaves. A photographer once took a photo of our house from the air and then came to our door, looking to sell the photo. In it, my mother walked, in her perpetual cardigan sweater even in the summer, moving from plant to plant. And the yard was gorgeous.

When my parents traveled, my mother asked me to take care of the plants, a request that always turned my blood to ice. Understand that this wasn’t just filling a watering pot and dumping it on the plants. There were some plants that needed to be watered from the top, some from the bottom, some in special little tubes stuck into the soil. There was plant food – not for everybody. There was water that had to come from the outside hose into old milk bottles and left to sit in the basement for a certain amount of time before using it on only certain plants.

It was crazy.

No matter how hard I tried, I killed a few. My mother swore and cussed and said I was horrible and she would never ask me to watch them again…but then she would and the whole thing would start over.

When my mom passed away, homes were found for her plants. None came home to me. I was the plant-killer. I knew she wouldn’t want them there.

But see, there’s this little addendum. When I was a sophomore in high school, a teacher, Mr. Jacobson, asked me to take care of the plants in his room. I don’t remember why. But I did it, and I was particularly enamored of the plant called a Wandering Jew. I was hot on the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat then, and when Mr. Jacobson offered me two cuttings from his plant, I took them home, put them in pots, placed them on my stereo speakers, and named them Jacob and Joseph. They came with me to college. They grew and grew.

I added more plants in college. In my first few apartments, I had plants too. I enjoyed taking care of them. I enjoyed talking to them.

But after a visit from my mother, in which she plucked at my plants, told me I was watering them wrong, that they needed different sun or more shade, it never failed. I’d trip up and my plants would die. Eventually, I gave in to my fate as a plant-killer and I stopped having plants.

Back to the date palm. For some reason, at Christmas of 1981, my mother brought me the date palm that was my botanical twin. She reminded me that it was attached to me somehow, and if something happened to it…well, no pressure there, donchaknow. I put it next to my stereo, the same one where my Wandering Jews still sat and flourished. I watered the date palm and I talked to it. For all of three weeks.

And then my new kitten tried to climb it and snapped its trunk right in two.

Well…I’m still alive, aren’t I, some 40 years later.

But most of those 40 years, I’ve been plantless. There have been a few, here and there, and most of them died, confirming my status as a plant-killer. I’ve thought about that date palm often. I wept when I carried it to the dumpster. And I quickly closed my ears after I told my mother, via telephone, what happened to it.

We’ve lived in our current home for fifteen years. It houses AllWriters’. And in those fifteen years, some plants have crept back in, mostly in the classroom. A shefflera. An orchid. A Christmas cactus, given to me by Michael during my cancer year. A philodendron, because they’re supposed to be indestructible. A hibiscus tree, and then another hibiscus tree, and now my current hibiscus, Carla (yes, the other two died). The plants in the studio have thrived, and I’ve always said it’s because of the creativity of my students.

But you know, I take care of them. The plants. And my students.

Last week, someone on the NextDoor app asked if anyone wanted her date palm tree. It was getting too big, she said, to shift it from outdoors to indoors. I looked at the photo. And I know it wasn’t my twin, but I recognized it anyway. I told her I would take it.

The day I picked it up, it was pouring. The plant was left out on the driveway. She was stuck in a trashcan filled with dirt. And she looked miserable.

I knew how she felt.

I put her into my car, not worrying about the drenched fronds dripping on my leather seats. I didn’t worry about the dirt. I talked to the plant all the way home. Michael helped me get her into the studio. I welcomed her home. The next day, I bought her a new lovely pot and removed her from the garbage can.  I’ve talked to her every day and made sure she has plenty of water to help her through the shock of new home, new dirt, new pot.

She looks happy. I’m happy too.

So something I’ve learned. Do-overs are possible. And you don’t have to wait for someone to give one to you. You can just do it yourself. You can also learn to talk back. To speak up.

I’m not a plant-killer.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

I’m back from Oregon now, and reflecting a lot over everything that happened there, physically and emotionally. When I’m at home and at work, I am too busy to let things really affect me. I work no less than 85 hours a week with AllWriters’, I write, I’m a mom and a wife, and I’m involved in community activity, and so typically, I glance at what’s happening to me, but then sink into work.

In Oregon, all that busy-ness came to a stop, and I found myself walloped with everything that happened in 2020 and in thus-far 2021.

The pandemic.

The election.

The insurrection.

These all caused an abundance of sadness and fear and anger to wash over me, much as Ms. Pacific’s waves would, if I walked into her. On my walks by the ocean, who I talk to non-stop, I found myself alternately crying, ranting, and shaking.

And then there was Carla. Carla was my student and friend who passed away on May 11^th. She was only 34 years old. I wrote about her in my 5/13/21 blog, as well as in other blogs. She was born with Cystic Fibrosis. And she died after a number of illnesses pecked away at her vulnerability and did her in.

In Carla’s final months, and before we knew these were her final months, Carla and I talked about my trip to Oregon. She embroidered an artpiece for me, of the cover of my poetry book, No Matter Which Way You Look, There Is More To See. That cover features 8-year old Olivia, with me in my favorite spot in Oregon, dancing with Ms. Pacific. Carla spoke about wishing she could go with me.

My birthday is July 29. Carla’s is July 30.

We were close, despite our different perspectives. I was grieving getting older. She was celebrating getting older.

And yet, she could listen and hear me, just as I could listen and hear her.

We made a plan. We would meet, via Zoom or Skype, at the time that my birthday was ending and hers was beginning. I would stand outside, so she could hear the sound of the ocean, encouraging us both to keep breathing with her steady in and out waves. Carla wouldn’t be able to see the ocean, as its pitch black out there at night, but we could see each other, and we could listen, and we could hear.

And then she died, before her birthday.

Her celebration of life was on her birthday, and I was invited to attend. I so wanted to be there. I thought about changing my travel plans, coming home early. But I knew I had a date with an ocean. And I had a promise to keep with Carla.

Because Carla wasn’t there to confer, I made the decision to do our date on Pacific time. And so, at 11:55 p.m. on July 29^th, I stepped outside onto the deck of the Wavecatcher, the little house I love so much.

I didn’t carry my computer, because I couldn’t reach Carla by Skype or by Zoom. So I just tried with my voice. Carla could listen and hear me. She always could.

I told her about my trip. I described the ocean on sunny days, on foggy days, and the incredible sunsets I’d been gifted. I told her about the evening of the whales, spout after spout coming up through the waves, and the great curves of backs following right after. One foggy evening, as I took my walk, a flock of pelicans flew by me, close enough that I could hear their wings whistling. I told her about the posterboard, taped to a defunct phone booth on the main street of the town, from a mother begging her son to call her. I told her about finding Ray Bradbury’s signed book of poems.

And I told her about my talks with the ocean. About how I didn’t ask to see a sand dollar this year, and I thanked the ocean for teaching me about faith and loyalty, about always being there and ready to welcome me back when I came home. And I told her about how one morning, the day before my birthday, I found myself weeping as I walked, and the discussion I had with the ocean on a feeling of hopelessness, and the great ask I made. And how, by the end of that walk, my tears were gone, a realization had appeared in my mind, along with an idea I immediately put into action.

I said thank you to Ms. Pacific, who also always listens and always hears.

(I won’t say right now what the ask was – I need to keep it tucked inside and see how things turn out.)

When I finished talking, it was Carla’s birthday. I wished her happy birthday and then I asked her how she was. Was she okay? Was she there?

I heard the sound of waves, encouraging me to keep breathing, even if my breaths are older now. And I felt washed over with peace. I also heard the sound of, I believe, an owl. A single note. Not mournful. But resonant. And at rest.

I listened. I heard.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

The embroidery art Carla made of my book cover.

 

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

Actually, today is my birthday. My 61st. And so as present to myself, I’m taking a day off. This Week’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News will officially return next week.

However, I can tell you that if I was writing a Moment today, I would tell you that my moment was opening my eyes this morning and realizing that I’ve made it this far. 61  years. It is an every-night practice of mine to face myself in the mirror just before going to bed and saying, “Thank you for getting through this day.” Today, I’m saying, “Thank you for getting through 61 years.”

Happy birthday to me! See you all next week.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

When I turned eighteen years old in July of 1978, I was in a tough spot. I just graduated from high school and I was accepted into the school of my choice, the University of Wisconsin – Madison. More than anything, I wanted to major in English with a creative writing emphasis; that’s what they called a creative writing major in those days. My high school creative writing teacher wrote to the head of the department, Ron Wallace, with a sample of my writing, and assured him that I did not belong in a basic creative writing workshop. I was put immediately into the Intermediate Writing Workshop, and the next semester, into Advanced.

My parents, however, did not want me to major in creative writing. They said it had to remain a hobby, and that I needed to major in something that would pay the bills when I graduated into the real world. They were paying for my tuition and books, and since they said they would not support me unless I majored in something else, I had no choice.

In desperation, I wrote to the man I considered the Writer of All Writers: Ray Bradbury. I loved him, of course, for Fahrenheit 451 and Dandelion Wine and The Martian Chronicles, like everyone else. But my favorite was Something Wicked This Way Comes, a book I still use in lectures today to show how to do characterization. I told Bradbury that more than anything else in this world, I wanted to write. I wanted to be a writer. I felt I already was.

And he wrote back. Here is what he said:

“Dear Kathleen Thomas: Thanks for your letter. If you want to be a writer of course the answer is: write every day of your life from now on…write, write, write: On top of which, stuff your eyes with stories, novels, plays, essays from every field in the world. Get to it. Good luck! I enclose some research materials that may help you. Best from,

Ray Bradbury

August 31, 1978”

I showed the letter to my parents, but it didn’t move them the way it did me. Today, that letter is framed and hung in my office.

I went off to college and first, I majored in Special Education, with a focus on autism (which feels very ironic now, given my daughter Olivia). I nearly flunked out. First semester sophomore year, I changed my major to social work, and I challenged myself to a semester without any creative writing classes or literature classes.

I nearly flunked out again, and I also nearly died of boredom.

This just wasn’t Me.

So I changed my major again, to English with an emphasis in creative writing. I told my parents after the fact and said that if they didn’t want to support me, I would drop out of school and work until I could return. They continued to pay for my tuition and books, but whenever they were asked in my earshot what I was majoring in in school, they answered, “Oh, she’s getting married.” And after I graduated, whenever they were asked what I was doing, they said, “Oh, she thinks she’s writing the Great American Novel.”

She thinks.

Everywhere I went, Ray Bradbury’s letter went with me. I wrote every day (now, I no longer write on weekends). I stuffed my eyes with words of all kinds, and I still do. I live the life of a writer.

But lately, things have felt a little odd. Most people think of me as a fiction writer, and granted, I do write a lot of fiction. But I also write essays and poetry. Lately, my poetry has been getting a lot of attention, and people are surprised.

I have poems out in several current issues of magazines right now.

I won runner-up in Rosebud Magazine’s poetry contest.

I won first prize in the Wisconsin Writers Association’s Jade Ring Contest.

I’m in these places with writers who have devoted their lives to poetry. Who call themselves poets. I don’t call myself a poet, a fiction writer, a novelist, a short story writer, or an essayist. I just say I’m a writer. Because that’s what I do. But I feel sort of squinchy, being on the same roster as these poets.

And yet…and yet…well, I wrote the poems, didn’t I.

This week and next, I am on retreat in Waldport, Oregon, in my favorite little house by the ocean. I’m working on a new book. I have a novel coming out the end of the year. I have a poetry book coming out in 2022.

I’m living the life of a writer. But…squinchy.

I took a break two afternoons ago and drove into town. There’s a great used bookstore there, called Well-Read Books. I wandered around, made sure my books weren’t there (they weren’t), and glanced through the poetry. Then I looked in the collectibles cabinet.

And there was Ray Bradbury. A signed first edition of The Complete Poems of Ray Bradbury.

Ray Bradbury wrote poetry? The writer of Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine, and The Martian Chronicles?

He does. And fully unapologetically.

I bought the book, of course. During the day, it sits beside my computer. At night, I read it in bed.

Ray Bradbury is a writer. He writes it all.

And so do I.

Thanks, Ray. (And yes, before anyone tells me, I know he’s gone. But his words are as alive as they ever were.)

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Last weekend, Michael, Olivia and I drove into downtown Milwaukee to see the Beyond Vincent exhibit, a full immersion digital exhibit of Vincent Van Gogh’s work. I bought the tickets months ago, when they first opened for pre-sale, after watching the news articles about it and seeing the exhibit pop up on Facebook all over the country. In this event, you walk into the “immersion room” and Van Gogh is everywhere – the ceiling, the floor, the walls, on structures at random places in the room. The exhibit moves, strokes appearing as if Vincent himself is there, showing you how he painted the different paintings, how his mind worked, phase after phase, work after work. The whole thing was in motion, and interspersed throughout were quotes by Vincent from letters to his brother and to others.

I was so excited. I was a little concerned about motion sickness, for both Olivia and me. Olivia can’t read or watch videos in the car, and she can’t look out the window of a train or a plane. I can’t do amusement park rides and I can’t look out the window of a plane, except at night, when I don’t have the impression of the plane dipping. But I figured it was worth the risk.

When we checked in, I asked the man taking our tickets if people were having issues with vertigo or motion sickness. “A few,” he said honestly. “But not many.” When I asked if there was an easy and fast exit just in case, he assured me there was.

And so we went in.

As we moved through the first part of the exhibit, which was mostly lit-up frames describing Van Gogh’s life, peppered with his quotes, I thought about how I had to carefully screen events like this for Olivia when she was little. Autism left her overwhelmed sometimes, too much sensory stimulation coming in, and so with each fun family event (Dora the Explorer LIVE, Blues Clues LIVE, the Care Bears LIVE, this, that, and the other thing LIVE) and school field trips, I had to consider the crowd size, the noise level, the lights and the darkness, where we would be sitting, could we make a fast getaway. I chaperoned on almost all of Olivia’s school field trips. In high school, when Olivia was a sophomore, her orchestra went on a trip to Florida and Disney, of course. We moved toward it cautiously, but the night before, both Olivia and I made the decision to pull out. I wasn’t convinced of her safety and neither was she. She was the victim of “mean girls” at that time, and I could all too easily see her being ditched in the middle of the theme park, where the kids were allowed to roam without adult chaperones.

And now…she is 20, soon to be 21. A college junior, majoring in art therapy and excelling in her studies. And we were about to move into an immersion room where Van Gogh’s bright colors and swirls and paintings that moved on their own, on the canvas, even before they were set to digital, would be all around.

And it caught me, as we were about to step into that room, how I hadn’t even thought about or considered Olivia’s autism before we came to this event. I only thought about motion sickness.

Wow.

When the show began, it was just so surreal. It didn’t matter where you looked, there was Vincent. Swirls and scrolls and light. It struck me, reading his story before we went in, how one biographer said that, despite the public darkness that we see of Vincent’s life, the sadness, the slicing off of his ear, the suicide, his paintings show a different story. They are lit with joy. They are thick with it. In one quote from a letter to his brother, Vincent implored, “…find things beautiful as much as you can, most people find too little beautiful.”

Vincent found the beautiful. Despite. Anyway.

As soon as I read this quote, I thought of Olivia’s current cover photo on Facebook. It says, “The world is ugly. But you’re beautiful to me.”

Olivia finds the beautiful.

At one point, I was turning slowly, watching as the entire room became awash in Vincent’s love of blue, when I saw my daughter. She was standing all alone, her back to me, and Vincent’s blue was all around her.  She was taking it all in, her face upraised, her hands at her sides, her eyes open, her ears open, her body open.

She was in preschool when we nervously took her to Dora the Explorer LIVE. It’s a kid’s show, we thought. How bad could it be?

And then the crowd of thousands of kids was encouraged to shriek, over and over, louder and louder, “Swiper, no swiping! Swiper, no swiping! Swiper, no swiping!”

Little Olivia’s eyes slammed closed. Her hands slammed over her ears. Her entire body curled into itself.

I swept her up and ran for the exit doors, Michael right behind me. After about fifteen minutes of soothing repetitive rocking, soft humming, Olivia unwound herself and opened again. We went back in, but remained standing by the exit doors, just in case.

And now, here she was. Standing by herself. Open. Taking it all in.

And I hadn’t worried at all.

She is all grown up. And she is so much more.

Vincent Van Gogh. And my daughter. I don’t know who moved me more that day.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Last Sunday, I sat in a field at Waukesha’s Expo Center, waiting for the fireworks to begin. I was surrounded by my husband, my two sons, my daughter, my daughter-in-law, and my granddaughter. We ate 4^th of July cupcakes and we chatted as the sun went down and it grew darker and darker.

My family has attended the fireworks in Waukesha for decades, going back to when they were done at the difficult-to-park Lowell Park, and now, at the much easier Expo Center. When I reminded my oldest son about meeting there this year, he shouted, “I want the twirly thing that never works!”

For years and years, there was a ground firework that looked like a stick. When it was lit, the top part would twirl, making a whooping sound, and sending off sparks of red, white and blue. But it would only go for a few seconds before it would fizzle out. It would be lit again, spark and whoop, fizzle. Over and over, before they finally gave up. My family would roll with laughter. It was a failure that was such a favorite. But it hasn’t appeared for years now.

As we waited, we talked of other times at the fireworks show. The year that the wind brought the ashes down on the crowd and a few got into my oldest daughter’s hair, freaking her out and creating what seems to be a lifelong hatred of fireworks shows. She lives in Louisiana now, and I doubt that she and her husband attended any Fourth of July festivities. The time we were in a drought, but the fireworks were attempted anyway. After starting two brush fires, grinding the show to a halt, but promptly put out by our fire department, the evening ended early, well before the finale, and we all went home to watch fireworks on television from some place that wasn’t drought-y. And the times of strange and wonderful comments from the crowd. The usual “ooooh!” and “aaaaah”, of course, but we were also treated to a repeated high-toned “Prettyyyyyy!” one year. And on another year, the incomprehensible, “I think it looks like Paris upside down!”

Despite the lack of the ever-failing twirligig, we always found a reason to laugh. This year was no different. Soon after the fireworks started, from behind us, we heard, “The atmospheric winds from high above must be very strong this year.” This was repeated several times throughout the show.

This year, of course, was different because of the return to familiarity. The pandemic killed the fireworks show last year, and family get-togethers.

But this year, here we were. Safe. Sound. Intact. Even though my daughter in Louisiana wasn’t sitting with us, I knew she and her husband were just fine.

It’s part of my routine to bring manuscripts to read while waiting for the fireworks to begin. Getting my work done has always been uppermost in my mind, and a couple hours out of the ordinary in my schedule could mean disaster in terms of deadlines and having time to sleep. This year was no different. I carried along my folder of manuscripts, got settled in my chair, and opened it to the first one.

And that’s when I looked around. I saw my granddaughter, no longer a toddler, but a striking 8-year old, and yet still giggling as she sat between my son and my daughter. My youngest daughter, no longer a kid, but soon to turn 21-years old. My boys, the one who wished for the twirligig, now 37 years old and a husband and father, and the other, 35 years old, no longer just eating the cupcakes, but bringing them from the bakery he manages. My daughter-in-law, as solidly a part of our family as if she’d been there since birth.

And none of us able to get together like this last year.

I closed my folder and set it on the ground. And then I joined the others in laughing at those atmospheric winds from high above.

The pandemic, as awful as it was, and continues to be, has taught us a lot.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.