This Week’s Moment of Happiness Despite the News

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

When the vice-principal of Waukesha North High School called me over my lunch hour on Tuesday, I had that immediate visceral reaction we all get when a vice-principal calls. All four of my kids went there, my three big kids graduating in 2002, 2004 and 2005 and Olivia just last year. I graduated from there in 1978. And so my first response was to duck.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. “You don’t have kids here anymore, Ms. Giorgio.”

Then he went on to tell me that “many people” nominated me to be inducted into Waukesha North’s Wall of Fame. The committee agreed that I should be there. To be put on the Wall of Fame, you “must have graduated from Waukesha North at least five years go and you must have demonstrated citizenship during and after high school, and must have made a significant contribution to the community and society.”

I laughed in response, that same laugh of surprised joy as whenever my teachers there told me I’d done a good job.

It’s easy to pick the Wall of Fame as my Moment this week. But it goes deeper than just getting an award.

Waukesha North was the third high school I attended. My father worked for the government and we moved frequently. I attended schools in Berkeley, Missouri, Esko, Minnesota, Stoughton, Cedarburg, and Waukesha, Wisconsin. I don’t remember much about Missouri, I was only there for kindergarten. But in Minnesota, the teasing started. I was born with a condition called strabismus, making my eyes cross in to my nose. My first surgery was at 16 months, then two when I was eight, and two when I was fifteen. I no longer see out of both eyes at once. My eyes aren’t straight, but they’re as straight as they’ll ever be. Unfortunately for me, in 1966 when I was in first grade, a TV show called Daktari premiered, complete with a cross-eyed lion called Clarence. I was immediately branded as Clarence, and Clarence I stayed until I moved to Cedarburg for the first semester of my junior year, a few months after my final surgery.

The teasing was about more than my eyes. I was a quiet kid, introspective, much preferring to be on my own as opposed to in a group. I spent most of my time with my nose in a book, or scribbling my stories in a notebook. I wore my hair long, down to the backs of my knees by senior year, and I curtained it over my face to keep the world out. Which meant I was an easy target. When I was in Minnesota, the school system had only just started allowing girls to wear pants to school, and only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. They couldn’t be jeans. So when I moved to Stoughton in 6^th grade, I wore a polyester pantsuit on the first day of school. Where everyone wore jeans and t-shirts. I just didn’t have a chance. My eyes, my clothes, my withdrawn personality – once again, easy target. Many years of misery.

Remember Ally Sheedy’s character in the Breakfast Club? I could have played that part without acting.

By the time I got to Waukesha North, in my second semester of my junior year, I was a profoundly sad, profoundly angry, wreck. But I found myself suddenly in a place with people who spoke my language, who heard it, who understood it. The arts were held in just as high esteem as sports. I kept hearing my name over the PA system during morning announcements for the things I did, right alongside the athletes. I joined the school newspaper and the school creative writing magazine. There was a creative writing magazine! I took classes that I never even knew existed: creative writing, journalism, Growing Up In Literature & Reality, Mystery & the Macabre, Science Fiction & Fantasy. And I suddenly had teachers who not only listened, they heard me. And I was no longer teased. No one knew me as Clarence.

And I wasn’t Clarence. I was just Kathie. I fit in, and I stood out, and I belonged.

Despite being in this safe place, or maybe because of it, I found the profound sadness and anger surging up. I didn’t know it yet, but I was three years away from being told that I was dealing with chronic depression. My creative writing teacher, my English teachers, and my psych teacher, along with the administration, were concerned and they called my parents several times, asking them to get me into therapy, or at the very least, allow me to see the school psychologist. My parents were firm believers that psychology and those practicing it were “shysters full of mumbo-jumbo and gobbledy-gook.” They “ripped hard-working people off, charging exorbitant prices, and putting all the blame on parents.” They said I was only looking for attention.

Which, of course, I was. But not in the way they said I was.

And so the teachers and the administration decided to take a heady risk. They got me in to see the school psychologist, without my parents’ permission. I was not yet 18; legally, I wasn’t allowed to make my own decisions. But that school had my back.

Waukesha North High School saved my life.

To this day, I am grateful for the amazing care and compassion of my teachers and staff.

So this being put on the Wall of Fame, to me, means I didn’t let them down. I’ve lived up to whatever it was they saw in me. I hope they’re proud. I’m pretty sure they are, as one of the letters of recommendation came from my high school creative writing teacher. It’s because of them that I’m still here.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

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

It’s been a weird week. Have you ever found yourself caught up in an externally driven moment, a moment where you’re doing something that you tell yourself will make you happy, because the world would expect you to be happy? And yet something in you is saying, Stop! This isn’t me!

I found myself immersed in that this week.

My 60^th birthday is coming up at the end of this month. I’d planned on spending it in Waldport, Oregon, in my favorite house in my favorite place in the world. I started putting the idea together in January, inviting my kids, reserving the house, getting airline tickets and a car rented. It made me look forward to a birthday I dreaded.

There’s just something about 60. I feel like I’m entering the final stretch, but that somehow, I missed some laps. I’m beginning to question if I will accomplish all that I set out to do, but in particular, the one life goal I set for myself when I was twelve years old, and still haven’t reached. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s impossible – or more clearly, if possibilities are disappearing from my life. If I was never capable of the goal to begin with.

Going to Oregon softened that for me. And then, of course, COVID took it away. I decided instead to go to an AirBnB on a lake in Illinois, but the city right next to it is now a hotspot, and so I canceled that too.

I think I was looking for a way to make my birthday special, and I was looking to the world to tell me what that could be. In literature, in television, in the movies, on Facebook and in other social media, people face momentous birthdays and they buy a car. A dream car. So I decided to trade in my cars and get a new one.

Here’s why this is crazy. I love my cars. My cars ARE my dream cars. I’ve written about my cars. I own a 2006 Chrysler 300C Hemi and a 2012 Chrysler 200 convertible. They’re named Hemi and Semi. And when I say I love them, I mean it.

I used to stop in the street and stare when a Chrysler 300 would pass. It always felt unreachable. About ten years ago, I reached, and Hemi came home. I call him my bodyguard. His seats adjust to me when I get in. The hemi engine provides me with great power. A little over a year ago, on the freeway, a car three up from me hit a deer. I didn’t see it because of an SUV in front of me. By the time the cars between me and the deer veered away, the only thing I could do was hit the dead deer. Hemi rode right over it. We felt the bump. But none of us were jarred or hurt. Hemi carried us smoothly to safety, and then he began to smoke. Most of Hemi’s undercarriage was torn apart. But my insurance company put him back together again. My insurance man called Hemi by name. I wept when I got him back.

Semi drove me back and forth every day to radiation. Top down, music up, he cheered me on as I went to each appointment, and he cheered me up on the way home. He was a four-wheeled partner through a difficult time.

And now I was trading them in, because it seemed like this was something that people do when they have momentous birthdays. They get a new car.

I found a beautiful BMW 430i. I drove my cars in one by one. As I handed over the keys, I sobbed. I told myself it would feel better when I drove home in the new car, complete with all the bells and whistles. Complete with the possibility for a new life, for realized dreams, for possibilities.

I didn’t feel better.

I drove the BMW home on Saturday afternoon. By Sunday, I was a wreck. I texted the dealer and I asked if I could return the car and get my own cars, the cars I love, back. And then I spent a sleepless night, waiting for their answer.

On Monday, they called me by 10:00. My cars were still there. I could have them back. That BMW couldn’t get me there fast enough. There was no Hemi under that hood.

After everything was exchanged, the dealer walked me out to the lot. The cars had been brought out and were parked, side by side.

“Oh, boys,” I said. “Oh, boys. There you are.”

And I drove them home. Several times on Monday, I looked out my window at Hemi. I opened the door to my garage and I peeked out at Semi. And I breathed a sigh of relief each time.

So what did I learn from this?

We have to honor our own versions of happiness. I was operating on what I believed would make most people happy – a new, shiny, state of the art car for a momentous birthday. But that just didn’t fit with who I am…it didn’t fit with how I feel or what makes my heart lift or what makes me smile or weep with joy. I went with a world view, over my own view.

What made me happy? Walking out of that dealer and seeing my two cars, my Hemi, my Semi, who have driven with me through some pretty rough times. Both cars have wrapped me with heated seats when I’ve been chilled (Semi even with the top down!). Both have driven me through silent roads on dark nights. Both have caused me to whoop with absolute joy at the beauty of our earth as I’ve crested a hill or swept around a curve.

Oh, boys. Oh, boys. There you are.

Maybe, in almost sixty years, I’ve learned to honor myself and my own heart.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Boy, I have to tell you – when I was doing Today’s Moment Of Happiness in 2017, the year that I dealt with breast cancer, I thought it was just the hardest thing ever. But now it’s 2020, I’m only coming up with one Moment per week…but there’s COVID and everything else that’s happening in the world. This is not easy. Not only is it hard to find something to be happy about, my interactions with the world have shrunk. I am home most of the time. Days go by without my driving my car. I was getting out for walks, but attacks by red-winged blackbirds have made me leery of going anyplace where there might be birds. Which is everywhere. Everything I do is online – write, teach, shop,  read.

So this is difficult.

This is now July. When COVID hit in March, I thought, Well, this is awful, but it will be over by summer. Yet here we are and it’s not over. July is my birthday month. I will be turning 60 on the 29^th. And I truly wanted to celebrate by going to my favorite place on earth, a little house in Waldport, Oregon. But like everyone else, I will just be staying home.

Again.

So many things are canceled. Music festivals. County and state fairs. One of my favorite flea markets, held once a month during the summer months, is still going on, but I think I’m too nervous to go to it. Fireworks for the 4^th are canceled, except for a few select communities who are still doing them, and they are being flooded with thousands of people who still want to see fireworks despite their own being canceled. This morning, when I signed on to the internet, the first thing I saw was an article saying that Wisconsin’s state health department is begging people to just stay home.

Again.

A recent joy in my life has been returning to the gym. I joined Planet Fitness in January, and from my first day until they closed for COVID in March, I only missed three days. Since they reopened over Memorial Day, I’ve returned, but sporadically. I find myself happy while I’m there. And then absolutely paranoid when I get home. Did I touch something? Breathe something? What about that guy three machines over who sniffled? Gyms in other states have started closing again. Today, I thought I’d be going to the gym during the afternoon. But I’m not.

I’m going shopping for a treadmill tomorrow instead. While wearing a mask. And observing social distancing. And looking online first at stock so I have a pretty good idea of what I want.

And then I will just stay home.

Again.

Right before I came upstairs here to work on the blog, I said to my daughter Olivia, “I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to write about.”

She said, “Maybe take a break from it for a while?”

But that just filled me with grief. It felt like yet another loss, if I stopped the blog for now. One of the biggest things I learned while writing Today’s Moment every day for a year was that happiness doesn’t always come to you. Sometimes, you have to go looking for it. Sometimes, it’s not a miracle, but it’s a home-grown creation. Made with your own hands. Your own mind. Your own heart.

During this same passage of time 3 years ago, I was in the thick of breast cancer. What’s amazing to me is how the dates are branded in my brain, like my wedding anniversary or my kids’ birthdays. June 20^th, flunked mammogram. June 27^th, diagnosed with breast cancer. July 25, partial mastectomy. July 31, met with my medical team, all in one room at the same time, to discuss my future. Which was going to be fine. August 28, first day of radiation. September 25, last day of radiation. Every day since, still taking oral chemotherapy, for at least another two years.

All the way throughout, many of my blogs started with, “How am I supposed to find a moment of happiness in the middle of (insert horrific cancer detail here)? And you know what?

I always did it. I always found it.

And now I’m going to do it.

Again.

Happiness doesn’t always happen to you. Sometimes you have to go out and find it. What is the use of learning something, and learning it profoundly, if you don’t keep practicing it?

So one by one, I did the following:

Found Edgar, my big fat orange bowling ball of a cat. Hugged him. He purred.

Found Muse, my teeny tiny 5-pound mouse of a cat. Hugged her. She purred.

Found Ursula, my big 50-pound afraid-of-everything pitbull. Hugged her. She slurped my face.

Found my daughter. Hugged her. She hugged me back.

And then I sat down and wrote this. Beaming. Safe in my home. Surrounded by who and what I love.

Again.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

(I gave up on trying to photograph me with the cats. They went into hiding.)

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

When it comes to shocking moments in my life, being told that my child was autistic and would likely never speak and would look at me like I was a block of wood probably ranks highest. I remember the doctor telling me, and I looked back at him and said, “No, she’s not.” Olivia, playing at my feet that day, tapped the toe of my sneaker and looked up at me and smiled.

In her eyes, I was not a block of wood.

But we all knew she was different. The inconsolable, out-of-control, constant crying when she was an infant. The touch sensitivity, the difficulty switching to table foods, the repetition of playing with the same toys the same way every day, only allowing in space for a new toy after the old toys were taken care of. The need for routine. The not speaking. The absolutely profound temper tantrums and meltdowns that left her physically and emotionally exhausted, and her parents and siblings right alongside.

The early years were difficult. There were times I had to put her safely in her room, shut the door, leave her to scream and throw herself around, and I would go sit on the couch and shake.

But you know what? Always, through all of it, there was the tapping on my shoe and the smile. There was launching herself into groups of people because she just wanted to connect so much. There was speaking, the incorrect words with emphasis on the wrong syllables, words learned through television, scripts repeated and repeated until she connected the correct words and she found that their meaning matched what she wanted.

And that smile.

Certain moments will always stand out.

Being told our daughter was autistic. (No, she’s not.)

The moment of acceptance. (Yes, she is.)

Telling her preschool teacher that we believed that Olivia would live a normal life, go to college, have a great job, do great things, and receiving a condescending pat on the shoulder and a “Well, we can always dream.” The instant and complete rage I felt at this woman who worked with Olivia for three years and still didn’t know who she was.

And the moment right after when I realized that the only thing that mattered was that we knew. And that “we” includes Olivia. We all knew who she was. We know who she is.

The kindergarten teacher who was the first to say, “My gosh, she’s amazing.” The first grade teacher who said the same thing. The second, third, fourth and fifth grade teachers who became her chorus. The aides. The special ed teachers. The occupational therapists and speech therapists.

The connection with her violin. Coming home after seeing an assembly where a quartet played and announcing she wanted a violin. No doubt in her voice. “I can play.”

The connection to writing.

The connection to art.

“She’s amazing.”

She is. It’s not that she overcame autism, or burst through it, or destroyed it. It’s just a part of who she is. She has dark brown hair, the most beautiful brown eyes, a smile that never quits, and she’s autistic. We don’t fight it. It’s part of the Olivia package. We incorporate it.

Olivia finished her freshman year in college this past spring. It was a year filled with excitement and possibility, then chaos and uncertainty as the pandemic set in. Yesterday, while I was on the phone with a client, she forwarded me an email from her college, saying that she made the Dean’s List. In her freshman year. In a chaotic, unprecedented, out-of-routine year for a young woman who thrives on routine.

Dean’s List. 3.9 GPA.

I was on the phone and I couldn’t shout. I couldn’t cheer. I couldn’t stamp my feet and clap my hands and just howl. Until I finished with my client.

I hung up the phone and shouted, “Michael!”

He was napping on the couch. “What?”

“Olivia made the Dean’s List!”

“Ohmygod!”

Olivia flew up the stairs. And there was that smile. She beamed at me and I said, “This is WONDERFUL!” and she said, “I don’t really know what it means.”

And I began to laugh and laugh.

This girl, this young woman, hit a difficult goal without even knowing she was doing it. She just did it. Just like tapping my shoe and smiling at me at the exact moment when I was told I’d be a block of wood.

“We can always dream.”

Damn straight. We always will. We know who she is. She knows who she is. And that’s the most important thing.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

So I was attacked by another bird this week. Another red-winged blackbird. A friend obligingly sent me a link to an article about these birds, with the very appropriate headline, “Red-winged blackbirds: Nature’s A-holes”. I wholeheartedly agree.

I was deliberately taking a walk away from Waukesha’s Riverwalk, where I was attacked two weeks ago. That attack was fast and furious – the bird approached from behind, dove against my right ear, and left. The Riverwalk is well-known for RWB attacks this time of year. People who run/walk/skate there wear helmets until mid-July, when the babies leave the nests.

So I switched to walking downtown, and through a few open areas in city parks that were nowhere near trees. On Friday, I hung up with a client and I had an hour and a half before the next. So I ran down the stairs, out the garage door, crossed my parking lot, crossed Walgreens parking lot, and headed down the little drive that connects Walgreens with one of our major roads. Very, very urban. Very city. And on the corner, far away from water, was one lone little tree. As I passed, I heard the RWB call and then saw him fly out from the little tree and perch on the street sign.

There was no escape.

I moved to the furthest side of the street and walked faster, but to no avail. He gave out an ungodly shriek and attacked my head. In a minute, I was in my worst nightmare. He was in my hair. I felt claws and beak. He kept shrieking. I shrieked too and swatted and then tried to duck and run at the same time. I lost my balance and went flat out and hard on the pavement.

The wind was knocked out of me and I couldn’t move. Still, the bird kept attacking. I finally got up to my hands and knees, crawled just a bit, and was starting to stand when I realized my phone fell out of my pocket and I had to backtrack to get it.

Cue the horror music. More bird attack.

I finally made it around the corner. My palms, elbows and knees were torn up and already starting to bruise. My knees and ankles and wrists ached. My back and stomach muscles clenched. I had to call Michael to help me home, even though home was only a few hundred feet away, because my legs were shaking so badly, I didn’t think I would make it.

The end result? I was always afraid of birds. Now I’m terrified to be where they are. I tried to take Ursula out to do her business, saw an RWB fly from tree to tree near her favorite spot, and had to drag her back in, pottyless. I couldn’t take the garbage out to the dumpster. When I drive, I’m in a convertible, but at stop signs and stoplights, I hunker down low and watch the trees. My fear has spread to all birds, not just the RWBs. I’ve put a fake owl on my deck and hung balloons with holographic predator eyes that are supposed to scare birds away.

This is not good.

But then I was looking through some photographs of my previous trips to the Oregon coast, my favorite place in the world. And I found a photo of a pelican. A big, brown pelican.

On my visit to the coast in 2010, I was walking the beach one late afternoon. I was almost back to the house when I heard an odd whirring sound, and then…WHUMP! On the sand in front of me, a pelican fell out of the sky. And I mean fell. He didn’t land. He came straight down and walloped into the sand. If I’d been two feet further on, he would have landed on me.

We looked at each other. His eyes did not look angry or threatening. He just looked tired. I waited with him for a bit, but he didn’t move. My cell didn’t work at the house, but I ran inside and used the landline to leave a message at the aquarium in Newport – they did animal rescues. When I went back outside, kids had surrounded the pelican and they were poking him with sticks and tossing stones at him. He didn’t move. I yelled and chased the kids off. The pelican’s eyes were sad.

I sat down close by and stayed with him until it grew dark. Then I said goodnight and went inside. I hoped by morning, he would be gone, taking wing and flying away.

He was gone in the morning, but he didn’t fly.

When I went out to him, he hadn’t moved from his spot. But he was stretched out in flight formation. His wings were at full span and I was amazed by their width. His feet were straight back and turned sole-side up, as if his legs blew behind him as he soared. His eyes were closed. He didn’t look unhappy. But I wept.

I stayed in vigil with him until the aquarium guys showed up. They identified the pelican and marveled that he was not from the Oregon coast – he must have been blown off his migration course by a hurricane near Florida. They took him away. I smoothed out the sand where he’d been, pretending I was putting his soul to rest. I hoped he was flying beyond the sky.

Looking at that photo, I remembered the warmth I felt for that big heavy bird that fell from the sky, and nearly hurt me, but didn’t. I remembered the admiration, the sympathy, my need to protect him.

I can’t hate all birds. I can’t judge all birds on the basis of these two RWB’s, especially that last one that really, really hurt me. I’ve discovered that falling at (almost) 60 isn’t the same as falling at 50 or 40. But I shouldn’t hate all birds. That’s just wrong.

Isn’t it interesting that this realization comes at a time when we are being encouraged to realize that looters are not the same as peaceful protestors.

And at the same time that we’re being encouraged to realize that while there are definitely bad cops, not all cops are bad.

There are bad people. But not all people are bad.

There are birds.

I might just take a deep breath. And go out for a walk.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

For a while today, I thought I was going to have to skip this week. I was thinking about this blog as I went to bed last night and still thinking about it when I got up this morning. I wasn’t coming up with any moments. None.

Part of the point of this blog has always been to watch for the moments. To look for them. And to be aware that they might not be big. There have been many times I’ve really had to search. I honestly don’t know how I did it as Today’s Moment, every day for a year. Now I have a whole week to sift through, and sometimes, it’s really difficult.

Especially in times of pandemic. And especially in horrific moments in our collective history.

Every year, I have two big events that I really look forward to. One is the AllWriters’ Annual Retreat, which I’ve often described as my favorite weekend of the year. And the other is my own retreat, usually two weeks, and usually on the Oregon coast. I have often said it’s the only place where I feel fully like myself. I don’t know what it is about the little house I go to, in the little town by the great big ocean. But when I go, I don’t say I’m going on vacation or I’m going away. I say I’m going home.

And this year, both of these events are now canceled. In my Facebook feed, under the everyday reminder of Memories, I am being inundated with photos of previous AllWriters’ retreats. There are also reminders of posts, where I counted down the days to Oregon. My next book, a full-length poetry collection called No Matter Which Way You Look, There Is More To See, features a cover filled with the photograph I took the first time Olivia came to Oregon with me. She was seven years old and she was dancing with the ocean.

I am surrounded with reminders of what I’m missing.

We’re all missing something, of course. One by one, we’ve seen vestiges of summer set aside for at least a year. Summer festivals and fairs. Fourth of July parades and fireworks. We’re also adjusting to special hours and special methods for things and activities we’ve always counted on – the library, the mall, flea markets.

But the absence of these two things, the AllWriters’ Retreat and my own personal retreat, have laid me pretty low. They encapsulate, animate, really, the two great passions in my life. My own writing. And teaching.

So when I set out for a walk today, it was in a sad mood. The malicious red-wing blackbirds kept me away from the Fox Riverwalk, and so I wandered up and down the streets of our downtown area, through one park, down more streets, into another park, and then home. The first park holds my town’s bandshell. As I approached, I saw a man sitting there, facing the empty stage. His image struck me as poignant – we’re all looking at what we’re missing, and we’re all waiting.

As I continued, I took deep breaths and I was grateful for them. It was a bad asthma day yesterday, requiring me to take two doses of my emergency inhaler. As someone with asthma, I am always deeply grateful for being able to take in the air I breathe. Something most people don’t hear about is that asthmatics often have trouble with the exhale as well. We feel like we can’t empty our lungs, which causes us to breathe in again, just so we can try once more to exhale. On my walk today, my breathing was easy.

My breathing was easy. And I thought about that as I walked up a hill, then up the slope of a picturesque bridge over another section of the Fox River, and over and down.

It wasn’t the first time I contemplated the irony of our two big issues right now. COVID-19 steals its victims’ breath, sometimes requiring ventilators. The victims can’t breathe.

And George Floyd, as he lay dying under a police officer’s knee, said repeatedly, “I can’t breathe.”

George Floyd said it. Victims in ERs and hospitals said it. Protestors chanted it.

And walking up and over a bridge today, and all the way home, I began to chant with each footfall, “I can breathe I can breathe I can breathe.”

I can.

I am so grateful.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

It’s weird being friends with a hibiscus. Like I said last week, I’m not a plant person. I don’t like digging in dirt. While I love looking at plants, going to botanical gardens, and I love the Domes in Milwaukee, actually caring for plants just isn’t high on my priority list. I tend to forget they need things. Like water.

But near the end of April, a hibiscus in a grocery store waved one of its leaves at me and said, “C’mere.” So I did.

This isn’t my first hibiscus. We moved into our home almost 14 years ago, after going through the painstaking process of having it built. We moved in on my birthday, July 29, 2006. The next summer, after we were settled in, I was out buying a few pots of flowers for the deck when I saw a hibiscus. I didn’t know what it was until I read the label. But its braided trunk and huge orange flowers caught me. I brought it home, and until last winter, the hibiscus first spent the warm months greeting students at our front door and winter months listening to students read their work in my classroom. Then, when I added a Little Free Library to the front niche, the hibiscus moved upstairs, to my third floor deck and spent the winters in my office. I decorated it at Christmas, with little lights and tiny Starbucks coffee cup ornaments. It listened to me work with students and read my own work out loud. It was company. And then, last summer, it died.

I left the pot sitting out on the deck and all winter long, I looked out at those bare branches.

So then, of course, the pandemic hit. In late April, I was making my way nervously into our MetroMarket. I doused myself in hand sanitizer and strapped on my mask. There were plants right outside the door and that is when the hibiscus flicked its leaf and caught my attention.

Braided trunk. And the most stunning pink flower. I stopped and looked. I think I said out loud, muffled by my mask, “Well, aren’t you pretty.” And I took a deep breath.

My mother always told me to never ever ever buy outdoor plants before Memorial Day. But that day in April, a hibiscus, and hope, rode home with me in the back seat of my car. And yes, we had frosts and freezes, so the tree was carried in at night, then carried out again in the morning if it was going to be warm enough.

And I began to talk to the darn thing.

Maybe it’s the isolation of Safer At Home. I’m not going out much right now and haven’t for months. I talk to my students and clients and family on screen or on the phone. I go out for walks sometimes on Waukesha’s Fox Riverwalk, but as I was attacked yesterday by a red-winged blackbird, I don’t think I’ll be going back there anytime soon. I think a lot about the baristas I used to talk to, and the guys at Planet Fitness when I went there at midnight every night. I think about talking to passersby and people in stores and, well, the whole world. Now, talking in person seems to be a dangerous thing to do.

So I talk to my hibiscus.

Whether it’s coincidence or not, she’s putting forth an amazing array of blooms. Her first few weeks, maybe in response to the cold, she kept her branches tucked close, like a Christmas tree that is still wrapped in string. But as time went by, she’s relaxed and the buds just keep erupting. This week, I figured out how to write outside on my deck – previous attempts at dimming the glare have always failed. But a sudden thought about putting my laptop into a box tipped sideways was all the brainstorm I needed. So this week, the hibiscus also listened to me reading out loud as I worked on what I hope is the final draft of my new book. She responded by giving me three more flowers.

I call her Hibby.

This week and last, unthinkable events that began in Minnesota added a layer of hate and anger to what was already layer after layer of stress and fear. Like many, I was left speechless with the shock that what happened to George Floyd could still be happening in this day and age, when I would expect the world to be at a certain level of kindness, compassion, and intelligence. Apparently, we’re not. Before, with the pandemic, every time I stepped outside, it was like walking into a fog of fear. Now, it’s a wall of anger.

And on my deck, the hibiscus keeps blooming. Every morning, I look outside to celebrate her blossoms. I carefully pluck spent flowers (I refuse to call it deadhead) and then admire what has come out wild and alive overnight. Wild, alive, and bursting with exuberance. If a hibiscus could dance, this little tree is dancing. And laughing. And saying, “Look, look, look! See it all.”

The hibiscus reminds me that there is still beauty in the world. With each new bud, I see hope. In her green leaves, I see health and robust joy. I talk to her. She listens. And then she blooms some more.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

I am just not a plant person. One big reason for that might be that I tend to kill them. But really, while I don’t like to take care of plants, whether they’re indoors or outdoors, I think it’s more about my not liking to dig in dirt, and it’s also connected with my fear of birds. You have to dig in dirt, no matter if a plant is in your house or around it. Birds, well…that’s for the outdoor plants.

Back when I was living in my first house, I actually took care of a lot of outdoor plants. I had a huge bed of lilies of the valley lining the back of my house. I really did love them. When those little bells bloomed in the spring, they were just the prettiest things. My daughter would always cut a batch and bring them in to her teacher. I also had geraniums which grew to enormous sizes and a variety of pots and flowering bushes. My lilac bush was the envy of the neighborhood.

One day, I was weeding the lilies of the valley. I was not wearing gardening gloves. I reached under the crowd of leaves and found what felt like a big rock. I pulled it out…and found myself holding a very dead bird in my very bare hand.

Now for most people, this would likely elicit a shriek and maybe even a pitch of the bird over the head and as far away as possible. I did shriek, though I think my neighbors probably thought of it more of a blood-curdling scream. And as to how far I threw the damn thing…it was never found again.

But that’s not where it ended. See, when I was eight years old and still liked birds, I found a dead robin. I very carefully picked it up and carried it home. I was going to ask my mother for a shoebox and I was going to give the poor thing a decent burial. But when my mom saw it, she gave a shriek that was remarkably similar to the one I would let out decades later, and that bird flew too, in a very dead way. Then I was hauled down to the basement where she scrubbed my hands in the laundry tubs in water so hot, I could barely stand it, and she yelled the entire time about how birds are covered with mites and bugs and fleas and worms and how we had to get them off my skin. She used one of those scrubbing sponges, and by the time she was done, I was beyond tears and my hands were bleeding. I was bandaged to the point where I couldn’t play for about a week.

As this was the same year I watched Hitchcock’s The Birds (I don’t remember which came first), I’d say that’s where my fear of birds started. Right now, I won’t walk in one of my favorite places, Waukesha’s Riverwalk, because the red-winged blackbirds are having babies and the parent birds are dive-bombing people’s heads. I’ve seen runners wearing biking helmets. I freeze when I see geese. I just can’t do birds. And that day when I was weeding…there was a dead bird in my hands again. Consequently, digging in dirt to take care of plants means dead birds. No more gardening for me.

When we moved here, I was relived there wasn’t a yard. I have a teeny strip in front of the AllWriters’ big window. I have hostas there and some big red lilies that come back every year. Thankfully, this doesn’t require much weeding and it’s such a slim space, if a bird bonked off the window, as they have, it would bounce onto the sidewalk and I would see it. I place two pots of flowers around my concrete lion, a pot of flowers on Olivia’s little deck on the second floor, and two pots of flowers on our third floor deck. This year, we added three little pots that hang from an outdoor clock. None of these require weeding. I can stand above them and just water.

This year, the plant-shopping was a little more frazzling. I like to get my plants from Home Depot, as I’ve had great luck with the plant-longevity there. When I arrived this year, I was shocked at the number of people not wearing masks (I had one on). I very carefully wound my way around the crowd and dove in when there were blanks to look at and select my flowers. When it came time to check out, they had lovely markings on the parking lot, keeping us all six feet from each other. The check-out person was masked and gloved. I breathed a masked sigh of relief, paid for my plants, and brought them home. I made a quick pit stop at Stein’s as I wanted some outdoor statuary of – believe it or not – peacocks or cranes to put around my water fountain. She’s a large nude woman, and a couple birds around her, birds that have never given me trouble and these birds would be fake, so they’d be fine, seemed appropriate. Surprisingly, in Steins, people were masked. And most people were outside. The fake birds were inside. I brought home two peacocky-craney things and one definite peacock.

At home, I spent the rest of the afternoon getting things set up. The plants went into the pots. The fake birds got set up. My hibiscus tree, bought a few weeks earlier, was blooming as if joy ran through its planty veins. We had a new little table and chairs. I filled and turned on my fountain. And then it was all done.

I sat down in one of our rockers. Michael sat in the other. Olivia perched on the wicker loveseat. And in the middle of a city, all was peaceful. Sure, there was the sound of cars going by. But we were high up on the third floor. There was flowing water. There were cushioned seats. And there were flowers.

And no birds. Not real ones, anyway.

It was peaceful. I breathed a sigh of relief. Without a mask.

Sometimes, facing a fear doesn’t mean overcoming it. Sometimes, it means learning to live alongside it. I have my flowers without digging in the dirt. I even have my pretty birds, without having to worry about mites and bugs and fleas and worms, and without having to wash my hands to the point of bleeding. Despite fear, I was able to create a sanctuary, using some of the same things, in slightly different versions, I’m afraid of.

Bliss.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Recently, we had to go to Olivia’s college to move her things home for the summer. Olivia herself has been home since spring break started in March. COVID-19 was just gaining steam then, and by the end of spring break, her school, like every other school, decided not to bring students back on campus. Olivia stayed home – her things remained in her dorm.

We worked solemnly that day to pack her up. I think all of us were remembering the day in the fall that we brought her and managed in just a few hours to turn an empty room into an Olivia room, filled with her personality and style. Now – we were de-Oliviaing it, and she hadn’t been in it for months.

And I kept thinking about how, despite this challenge, Olivia made it through her freshman year with amazing composure and strength and grace. Her grades: excellent. Solid friendships were made. She spoke up for herself when she needed extra attention or help. She had a feature article published in the literary magazine. She joined the music club, continuing to play her violin despite the fact that the school doesn’t have an orchestra. She excelled.

“Oh, Mama,” she said to me, “I feel like I’m someplace finally where I belong. Where I’m accepted.”

Moving Olivia’s stuff home, we quickly became, well, overstuffed. I redid her room after she moved out, so suddenly, we had double everything. Olivia lived amongst extra furniture and backpacks and artbags and boxes during the last of her online final exams, and then, without my asking, she threw herself into her walk-in closet and began purging. By the time she was done, my trunk and entire back seat of my car was filled with discards. And there were still more bags waiting in the hallway. I’ve already made one trip to Goodwill.

At one point, Olivia brought us a stack of her early artwork and stories. Nestled in there was a small photo book put together by the teachers in her Birth to Three program. Olivia started there because of feeding and sensitivity issues, and then the concern grew to autism. Michael and I both paged through the little book, and at one photo, we both froze. “Oh,” I said. “She’s come so far,” Michael whispered.

It is a photo we don’t remember. Autism isn’t a visual thing – you can’t look at someone and say with absolute certainty, “That person is autistic.” But in this photo…Olivia looks autistic. She is with Santa Claus, and she is totally turned away, her eyes averted. Her hands are in full stim. She’s talking Livvyonian to her fingers – the name we gave to the way Olivia used to speak, when she spoke at all. Mostly, she was silent.

She looks autistic.

When I went to college in the fall of 1978, I intended to major in special ed, with a focus on autism. This was pre-spectrum – not much was known about autism yet. In high school psychology, I read a book called Dibs: In Search of Self, about a boy who was autistic. I was enamored. In my first (and only) special ed class in college, I watched a movie about autism, and it showed something called dance therapy. A dancer mimicked an autistic child’s stimming movements and what happened was magical – the child looked up, locked eyes with the dancer, and leaped into her arms. She “spoke” his language. I didn’t stick with the major – I became a writer. But that scene has always stuck with me.

Then, in the year 2000, I had Olivia. She was my fourth child, and clearly, she was different. But I never thought autistic. She wasn’t the boy named Dibs. She wasn’t the boy in that video. When the A-word came up with her, both Michael and I resisted. As I sat in an appointment with her doctor, and as he told me that Olivia might always see me as no more than a block of wood, she played at my feet. But throughout the conversation, she tapped my shoe. When I looked down, she’d look full in my face and just beam.

I was not a block of wood. Olivia was there. She knew who I was.

You do things sometimes out of a sense of intuition, out of a deep knowing of what is right. Olivia was formally diagnosed as high-functioning autistic when she was three. We were told to take part in all sorts of services and therapies. I dutifully filled out the mountain of paperwork, and I mean mountain. I put it in its already addressed envelope, brought it to the post office, and mailed it. Weeks later, I found that it was lost – it never made it to its destination.

I looked at Olivia then, and she looked up from lining up her massive number of bright-colored counting bears and she smiled at me. This was a daily activity. Our house was filled, right after breakfast, with a straight-lined path of counting bears. It was what she did. It was Olivia.

We didn’t fill out any other paperwork. I remembered that long ago movie, with the dancer reaching out to the autistic boy in his own language, his own movements.

And so we reached. We listened. She told us in her own way what she needed and we provided. She learned language from television – we kept it on constantly. She learned from repetition – we repeated and repeated and repeated. She reacted to music – we put her in a music class, and later, when she demanded a violin in the fourth grade, she got one. We followed her. We listened and we watched.

Olivia burst fully into language when she was seven years old. Her speech therapist, as a reward for a good day, gave her chalk and told her to draw on the board. Olivia drew a story. They had to get her a stepladder so she could reach the entire board. And the most amazing thing – not only did she draw it, she jabbered it. Non-stop. At the end, the therapist took Olivia’s picture, and she stood there, arms upraised in victory, looking right at the camera. The therapist met me at my car that day, pulled me into the classroom, saying through tears, “You have to see this!” And there was Olivia, who calmly told me the entire story again. And smiled.

This week, Olivia was featured in the Waukesha Neighbors magazine. Her photo is on the cover and there’s a full article about her inside. At one point, Olivia said, “Our family motto is ‘Don’t give up.’ I was born autistic, for me personally, it has meant pushing through and showing that I am successful despite my diagnosis. I have grown from these struggles and I know I’m going to make it.”

She already has. From that moment of tapping on my shoe and smiling at me while I was being told I was a block of wood, she made it. There was never ever any doubt. Why don’t we remember that photo? Because we were already seeing past it. We saw her. And she was looking right back at us. Smiling.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

This week’s happy moment starts with a sad moment. A couple weeks ago, my Moment was about a happy face painted on plastic, covering a window in a building under construction. Waukesha’s new City Hall is being built right across the street from me, and the sudden appearance of this smiley face just brought me moment after moment of uplift. I looked at it several times a day, and I’m sure others did too. You can read about it here, or just by looking back to 4/30/20:

www.kathiegiorgio.org/4-30-20/

But right after that blog appeared, the construction moved into a new phase. First, the 24-hour lights were shut off at night and the smiley face no longer glowed with a yellow background. It was okay, though – when you live in a city, nights are never truly dark, and so city lights kept those two white dots and curved smile visible, no matter what time of night I looked out.

Then I noticed some of the plastic was coming down. On Tuesday, I watched the steady creep of windows being opened, heading toward my smiley face. That day ended with the window just before mine, and I breathed a sigh of relief that night, right before I went to bed, when I could look outside and still see the face smiling at me. I smiled back.

For the weeks it was there, even if I read horrible news articles right before bed, I went to sleep smiling.  And in the mornings, before I turned on my computer, I stopped at my deck door and grinned good morning at the smiley face. It grinned back.

It was silly, I know. But the fact that a construction worker found a way to send a positive message to the downtown area, and that positive message just kept greeting me throughout the day and saying goodnight to me at night, just HELPED. There’s no other way to say it. It helped.

Then I got up on Wednesday morning. I walked to my deck door, looked out…and the smiley face was gone.

I knew it was coming. It’s a City Hall, for heaven’s sake. They’re not going to build a lovely new building for government offices and keep up a smiley face painted onto a plastic sheet, protecting the inside from the weather. There would be glass. The whole building will shine and sparkle with newness.

But the smiley face. There was no one smiling at me. And so I didn’t smile back.

I glumly got my breakfast ready, then returned to my desk. I looked outside again, just to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. I wasn’t. And then I sat down at my computer.

And here we go. I looked up the email address for the mayor of the City of Waukesha. His office is in the old City Hall, which will be attached to the new City Hall. So somewhere in there, behind my missing smiley face, was the mayor. I sent him a copy of the blog. I told him what that silly smiley face meant to me. And I asked if they could, first, find the plastic that held the smiley face and let me have it. If it couldn’t be put back on the building, I could hang it from my third floor deck, and he would continue beaming at those of us who live and work downtown, and those of us who go on and off buses at our transit center. Second, I asked if the construction worker could be found and thanked. I hit send, I sat back, and I truly didn’t expect to hear anything.

At the end of the day, the opened windows were covered with plastic again. But none of them held smiley faces.

I didn’t go to bed last night with a smile.

Then this morning. And an email from the mayor. “Kathie,” he said, “please see the email trail below.”

Ohmygod.

First, the mayor contacted a city engineer. He asked her if she could find anything out about the smiley face. “I wasn’t aware of this until I read the email!” he said.

The engineer contacted the construction company. “What do you guys think?” she asked. “And thank you for making a citizen very happy!”

The project manager of the construction company answered, “We believe it is still wrapped up on the floor in the building, but I will need to verify. If we find it would you like us to drop it off?”

The engineer said I lived across the street and would walk over and get it. (Yes, I would!)

But then the project manager came back with, “Unfortunately the plastic had already been taken to the dumpster and we weren’t able to find it. We did forward on the message to the worker who made the smiley face so he knows the impact it had on this citizen, and I will leave it up to him if he wants to be “known” or contact her. Once the glass is installed I can look into options for getting another smiley face on a large window if you would like.”

Ah, well. So of course, the happy ending to this moment should be that I have the smiley face. I don’t. He’s in a dumpster somewhere. And yes, I was tempted to go over to the site and dive into every dumpster I could find. But I’m sure they were thorough.

But here’s the thing. I think there are many people who feel that the government, at any level, doesn’t listen to the citizens. Maybe we feel ignored. Or maybe we feel like we don’t matter to anyone on an “official” level. I know I’ve felt that way.

But you know what? The mayor listened to me about a simple painted-on smiley face on a piece of plastic tacked over a window on a building under construction. And he set things moving. Then there were other people who tried their best to find that smiley face and put him back in place.

That’s amazing.

And…I know there’s a construction worker out there who knows he made a difference. Not just for me. But for anyone who looked up at that smiley face and grinned in the middle of all this chaos.

And…there might be another smiley face!

I’m watching. I’m smiling. And I’m looking out my own window with hope.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.