This Week’s Moment of Happiness Despite the News

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

Two years ago, we lost both of our beagles on the same day. Blossom was 15 years old and in the final stages of kidney failure. Donnie was 13 years old and had cancer that spread very quickly to his brain. It took some time, but all three of us, Michael, me, and Olivia, realized that we’d turned our home into a doggie sickroom. The dogs were only allowed on the second floor, in the kitchen and the living room. Both of them lost their ability to be potty-trained. Both of them were so confused – two years later, I still can’t erase the image in my mind of Donnie standing in his food dish and looking at me, as if he was saying, I know this isn’t right, but I don’t know what to do! Both were losing their cognitive abilities. It was a horrifying and sad time, and we finally made the decision to help them to the other side, together. Our veterinary clinic was very accommodating – the dogs were side by side, all three of us had a hand on each of them, and they were injected simultaneously. For them, it was a lovely and peaceful letting-go of life, surrounded by those who loved them. For us, well, our hearts were pretty much ripped out. Leaving them at the clinic for cremation and coming home alone was beyond hard.

I said no to another dog. And I said no. And I said no.

But the silence in the house. No jingling collars. No clicking of nails on concrete floors. No conversation – Donnie was a very talkative beagle. And the couch was really, really empty.

So I started looking, just glancing, dontchaknow, out of the corner of my eyes, at humane society websites that just happened to pop up on my computer screen. I don’t know how that happened. Then I went to see a dog, but he just didn’t fit with us. The humane society called me the next day. “Kathie,” they said, “we think we have someone here for you. Her name is Momma. She came up from Alabama in a truck with six other dogs.”

So all three of us went to see Momma. And all three of us found our hearts again. I like to think that she did too.

Within a week, we also all realized that she wasn’t the calm and collected dog she was in the humane society. She was scared of everything. EVERYTHING. The icemaker in the fridge. The microwave. Loud noises on the television, particularly gospel choirs, which, thank goodness, aren’t on that often. The buses going by. The cars going by. The flags flapping in the breeze. The ducks in the parking lot. Squeakers in dog toys. Holy moly. Everything.

It’s been a challenging two years. But we don’t give up easily. And when she’s not hiding somewhere, she gives back as good as she gets. We changed her name from Momma to Ursula – I named her after the writer Ursula LeGuin, as she was a strong woman, and I figured Ursula needed to be strong too, to get through whatever she went through.

So this week (and yes, this will connect!), I finished the first draft of a new book, a novella. And here’s a hidden secret about writers – we have a habit of hating what we’re writing. I see it happen to my students at the end of first drafts, and second drafts, and so on. With books, it happens around page 100, and 200, and 300. And, well, it happens to me too.

So I wrote the last sentence. Then I glared at the screen. And I thought. BLECH. This is horrible. No one wants to read this. Why did I just waste almost a year writing it? Why should I finish it? I should just hit delete. Blech. Blech. Blech.

And I groaned.

Ursula, snug on her loveseat in our bedroom, which is right next door to my office, came trotting around the corner. She ducked under my desk in her hurry to get to me and then her head popped up on my side. Clunk, her concrete head landed on my thigh. And she looked right at me.

Have you ever looked deeply into a dog’s eyes? I know I’ve read a lot about what people see there. Loyalty. Love. Even gratitude. But what I saw on that day was pure faith.

In me.

You’ve got this, Mom. You did great. You ARE great. It’s a really, really good book. I’ve heard every word. I love you, Mom.

Her head stayed there, solid on my thigh. I kept glaring at the screen. And then I took a deep breath and my hand slid from the keyboard to the top of my dog’s head. She let out a grumble – I think she’s learned to purr from the cats.

“You’re right, Ursula,” I said to the dog named after a woman writer who I admire for her strength, her courage, her honesty. “Let’s go get a treat. And I will start on Draft 2 on Monday.”

And that’s what we did. Ursula no longer slinks up and down the stairs. She skips. She doesn’t slink across the floor. She sashays and lives up to her southern heritage.

Thanks to Ursula, I skipped too. And I sashayed. In a Midwestern sort of way. She had a dog biscuit. I didn’t.

We miss our two beagles, Donnie and Blossom. But meeting Ursula two years ago – one of the luckiest days of our lives. Hers too. When this new book comes out, I may just have to write a dedication to my dog.

Thank you, Ursula.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

On January 4^th of this year, I joined a new local gym and made the decision that, come hell or high water, I was going to gain the strength back that I’ve lost through the breast cancer. Losing weight is a part of what I’m doing, but it’s not at the heart of it. The breast cancer I experienced in 2017 left me feeling betrayed by my own body. I no longer trusted my body, even if I was feeling good. I wondered what it was hiding from me. My right arm has been significantly weakened due to the partial mastectomy, to the point where when I fly, I can’t put my baggage in the compartment above my seat. There’s no strength to push it up there.

I also had the realization a few weeks ago, as I read a poem called Sex After Breast Cancer at a poetry marathon that, while the cancer was removed from my body two and a half years ago, I can’t really say I’m cancer-free. I have to take a pill every night for the balance of five years (I’m in the middle of year 3) – this is called oral chemotherapy. Because of the staggering of appointments, I am still running into the Cancer Center every three to four months for blood work or a breast MRI or a mammogram. I do not feel cancer-free. It’s still very much a part of my life. I long for the day when my check-ups return to once a year and I no longer have to pop a little yellow pill at night that comes with side effects that far outweigh the tininess of the pill.

So I decided it was time to take matters, and my strength, into my own hands. I needed to feel strong again. I used to do weight training and seriously considered going on the amateur body-building circuit. I loved aerobics, but weight training showed me a concrete sign of my own strength. I was a strong woman, back then. This new gym in town was open 24/7, and it was staffed – I would never be walking into an empty gym. And so I began a regimen of working out late at night. I leave here around 11:30 or so and work out until just before 2:00. Then I come home, drink some juice and have some yogurt, and go to bed. I do cardio every day, usually the treadmill. And I lift weights, alternating upper and lower body, for five days straight, then give my body a 48-hour break to recover.

It’s been wonderful. Since January 4, I’ve only missed three times – the night of the studio’s birthday event, last Thursday, when I had a no good, awful, very bad day, and this past Monday, when I had a cold and felt horrible.

On Tuesday, to my great relief, I felt good enough to return to the gym. I sweated out my minutes on the treadmill and then returned to the locker room to put away my phone, water bottle and headphones, so I could be hands-free and distraction-free for lifting weights. There were two other women in the locker room, young women, standing by the row of sinks. They looked at me when I came in and then they giggled. I smiled at them, then went to my locker. I was reaching up to put away my water bottle when I saw, out of my peripheral vision, one of them slip right behind me. She tossed a piece of paper onto the bench and then she and the other woman ran out, laughing loudly. I puzzled over it as I turned to see what the scrap of paper was.

It was an advertisement for a weight loss program.

I froze.

Then I tore it up. I threw it away.

I will admit that during my whole weight circuit (I was working lower body that night), I had tears running down my face. There were very few people left in the gym and nobody noticed. I finished my work-out and went home, where I sobbed on Michael’s shoulder.

I am working so hard, on top of working so hard in my daily life. I’ve already lost 13 pounds, and I’ve been so happy to see the definition start to come back in my arms and legs. I feel better. I’m sleeping better.

And then this. In a gym that prides itself on being a “judgement-free zone”. That was more important to me than the 24/7 hours.

The next day, on Facebook, I discovered that there was a special group page for the gym’s members, nation-wide. So I posted what happened, and I asked them all, “I’m thinking about not going back. Do I go back? Maybe I just don’t belong there.”

Holy cow, the responses. Here are just a few:

“Don’t let anyone steal your joy.”

“The voice of truth says do not be afraid. They have bigger problems than you do. Cruelty is an extremely hard habit that makes you ugly no matter how great you think you are.”

“Love your heart. Hold your head high and return to the gym.” This one included an invitation to meet me if we worked out at the same place – unfortunately, she was in West Virginia.

One even called these two young women “twitwattles.” I think it’s my new favorite word.

The outpouring of support was incredible. As of this writing, there are 343 comments. And not one was negative.

I went to the gym last night. I will go tonight. And if the two twitwattles show up, I know there are a bajillion others who have my back and are supporting what I’m doing.

A friend told me a couple days ago that when I make up my mind to do something, I become a pitbull. And I do. But, as I’ve learned from my own dog, Ursula, even pitbulls can feel hurt. And isolated. And unworthy. But boy, does a good scritching and a “Whatta good girl!” ever help!

Last night, I worked upper body. I sat at a machine that has thwarted me since I started – an overhead lift, which showed me, every time I tried to raise it over my head, how much of my own strength was gone. Last night, the weights went up. It was a strain, and I couldn’t do more than a few reps, but they went up. And then there were tears for a whole new reason.

Thank you to the online Facebook community of Planet Fitness members. You made all the difference.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

Well, there’s been a new, and somewhat odd, addendum to the missing Little Literary Lion story. No, he hasn’t come home. But the people I suspect were the thieves did – and one of them was someone I know.

On Tuesday night, I teach a book-writing workshop in the AllWriters’ classroom. We were hard at it when we suddenly heard a knock. Looking up, I saw a man at the window. He knocked on the glass again, then went to the door.

“I think he wants to come in,” one of my students said.

But I didn’t recognize him, and I was teaching, and I figured he would have to wait. But then he stood in front of the window again and held up two fingers, then pointed to the door. I thought he was saying that he just needed two minutes of my time. I shook my head and pointed upstairs, trying to indicate that Michael was home and he could take care of things. The man moved to the doorway again and we heard the doorbell ring. Michael came down and we heard voices.

Try teaching a class when you’re trying to figure out what the hell is going on. And try expecting your poor students to concentrate at the same time.

We heard the door close and the man walked by the window, stopping again to knock, and then to flash me two two-fingered peace signs. I smiled, not knowing what else to do, and waved. The man disappeared. Then Michael came in. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said. “That’s our Little Free Library thief.”

I think we all chorused, “What???”

“And,” Michael said, “you’re not going to believe who it was.”

When AllWriters’ opened in January of 2005, we were renting a space on Grand Avenue in Waukesha. During our first summer, in our notoriously boisterous Wednesday Night Workshop, we had a young man named Andy. Andy was a little different. Sometimes sober, sometimes not, he always had poetry to share. The poetry veered wildly around lyrics from Beatles’ songs, a rambling about three little piggies on Capitol Hill (which kept reminding me of Schoolhouse Rock), and assertions that drugs should be legal because God made them, and God only made good things.

One of the things I stress at AllWriters’ is acceptance of all writers, no matter what they write, no matter who they are. And so the class gently flowed around Andy. He never felt unwelcome. And even if we glanced at each other during his sometimes loud readings, he knew he had the freedom to express himself at the studio.

I think we all need a place where we are safe to express ourselves.

He disappeared when autumn came, though I would see him every now and then, walking his bike around the downtown. He always cheered a hello at me, told me he was coming back, and then he didn’t. I haven’t seen him in a long time.

Well, until he showed up at the door, flashing peace signs.

He told Michael that he and his wife were the ones who took the Little Free Library books on that late November night. “I know it was wrong,” he said. “And I’m very, very sorry.”

He let Michael know who he was. Michael hadn’t recognized him.

“I didn’t take your lion,” Andy said. “I don’t know where he is. But I didn’t take him. I promise.”

Michael reassured him that the police returned our Little Free Library books and then some. He told Andy it was all right. And then Andy left.

But not before he stopped one more time in my window, raised his hands in two two-fingered peace signs, and beamed at me in that same way he used to beam when he read his poetry in my classroom.

So.

I don’t know where Little Literary Lion is. It’s hard to accept that Andy didn’t take him – but I’ve decided this isn’t about that.

I don’t know if Andy knew who he was taking the library books from. But he did know who he was apologizing to.

It’s possible Andy was making amends. Maybe his wife too – she sat in the car across the street the whole time he was talking to Michael. It’s possible that he apologized because he remembered. He remembered reading his poetry, unabashed, fully accepted, in a safe classroom filled with safe, compassionate people who encouraged his love of words.

Maybe I’m naïve and totally a fool here. Andy didn’t have to come to my door to apologize. But he did. And he did it sincerely. He flashed peace signs and gave me that smile that reminded me of the poet within. I believe he really is sorry. And if he is making amends, I have to believe that he is finding his way to recovery.

And maybe, maybe, maybe, he’ll write poetry again.

Andy said God only makes good things.

God, grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

And always help me to find the ability to forgive.

(Though I still wonder where my lion is.)

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

The Superbowl was last Sunday, something which I go out of my way to ignore. I usually take advantage of the masses hanging around their television sets by going to the mall or some other typically heavily populated place and enjoying the lack of crowds. This year, I just pretty much forgot about it.

Afterward, there was the usual halftime show hooha. This year, it was over JLo and Shakira. The applause and derision ranged over their dance moves and their clothes. If I’d paid attention and known they were going to be performing, I could have predicted the fracas. There will always be people who think women should be dressed from their necks to their toes. There will always be people who are uncomfortable with those who can move their bodies in incredible ways. And there will always be people who are okay with it. Oh, and there will always be those who are okay with it for the wrong reasons – leering, making sexual remarks, etc. Such is the way of the world.

But there was a meme that caught my attention. It showed two pictures, side by side. One was of Rue McClanahan, in her role as Blanche from the television show The Golden Girls, which ran from 1985 to 1992. The picture was just of her face, her mouth open, and it was blurry. The other was of JLo, in her sparkly Superbowl performance outfit, swinging around a pole. The picture was bright and sharp. Over Rue, it said, “50 Years Old In 1985”, and over JLo, it said, “50 Years Old In 2020”.

I glanced down at my own self. I’m going to be 60 in July. I do not look like JLo. And while I don’t particularly look like Rue either, I definitely identify more with her.

Rue’s character, Blanche, in The Golden Girls, was a woman who was absolutely sure of herself. She had a strut that just wouldn’t quit. She exuded confidence. She knew what she wanted and she went for it. She wasn’t ashamed of her sexuality, her desires, or her sexual activity. She opened her house to two other women, and also allowed one of those women to bring in her elderly mother. At one point, she even allowed one of those women to bring in a chicken that played a piano.

I think Blanche is a pretty amazing role model.

I also thought about all of the eating disorders in this world. I dealt with one myself, in my late twenties and early thirties. If you’ve ever read an article about eating disorders, you’ve likely read that one of the culprits, if not the main culprit, is our constant lauding of rail thin models and celebrities, presenting bodies that are, first, next to impossible to achieve, and second, truly unhealthy. We place Barbie dolls in little girls’ eager hands, showing them bodies that are out of proportion and impossible and calling them beautiful.

And now, the 50-year old woman has JLo pushed in her face as the physical goal to shoot for.

No offense to JLo. She’s a lovely and talented woman. But frankly, I don’t want to attempt to look like her. I don’t feel like my life is bereft because I can’t swing and twist my body over and around a pole on a stage.

I think it’s more important to encourage women of all ages to be who they are. To be comfortable in their own bodies. To be secure in their own choices, whether it’s dancing on a stage at the Superbowl or enjoying retirement in a house in Florida. Or doing any of the other multitude of things we could be doing. For me, writing and running a creative writing studio.

Rather than showing JLo in that meme, with the “50 Years Old In 2020” banner, it should have been a broad photo of the audience, with all the different women in it.

Right now, I’m marching myself to the gym at midnight every night (and I have since January 4, only missing one night so far) in a quest to build my strength and my health. I don’t want to look like JLo. I love Rue McClanahan as Blanche, but I don’t want to look like her either.

I just want to look like me.

My moment of happiness? I’m no longer seduced or coerced by media manipulations that make me feel badly about being who I am.

And that’s exactly what we should want for all women.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

This morning, I walloped my alarm clock, staggered out of bed, got dressed, and went downstairs. I poured a bowl of Wheaties, then reached for my pot of piping hot and fresh coffee – thank you, whoever invented the timer for coffeemakers so that your coffee is ready before you are! I pulled the pot from its cradle, held it aloft over my cereal bowl, and poured.

And then I stood there for a moment, knowing something was wrong with this picture, but not able to say exactly what. As I watched the steam rise from my cold cereal, the realization hit. And I stood back and laughed.

We’ve all done this, right? It wasn’t a senior moment (I hope). It wasn’t even about still being half in the world of sleep, dragging myself reluctantly into the world of awake. My mind was just off playing somewhere. In a world where coffee over cereal made perfect sense.

I laughed as I poured the coffee-cereal down the garbage disposal. I laughed as I poured a new bowl. “No, no, no,” I said, wagging my finger at my coffeemaker. “You stay in your place. You’re not milk.” Then I laughed over my ridiculousness as I got the milk out and finished making my breakfast. I brought it upstairs, along with a big mug of appropriately placed coffee, to the computer,  read my email and posted on Facebook.

“So it’s going to be a poured-my-coffee-over-my-cereal kind of day…”

As I ate and had to stop several times to keep a fit of giggles from spitting Wheaties all over my computer screen, I thought back to the day Michael and I moved in together. He and his brother loaded up a moving truck in Omaha that morning, then drove the eight hours to me, at that point living in a townhouse in Menomonee Falls that Michael and I rented together. I spent the day nervously cleaning and re-cleaning the townhouse, wanting to make it look good for Michael so he would think moving away from his home to be with me was a good idea. And then he showed up and by the time all his stuff was unloaded, all he could see was boxes and boxes and disarrayed furniture. Then we still had to take the truck to my old home and get some of my furniture which I hadn’t moved because I didn’t have a truck, but instead drove a Dodge Neon.

By the time we fell into bed that night, into a bed that for the first time was both of ours, in a room that was both of ours, in a rented home that, even though it was rented, still felt like ours, we were exhausted. Right before that, I went into the unfamiliar bathroom filled with unfamiliar things, grabbed my toothbrush, which at least was something I recognized, found a tube and loaded those bristles and stuck it in my mouth and began brushing.

Only to coat my entire mouth with Ben Gay.

Oh, hurt! Oh, burn! The emanating smell went up into my sinuses and I thought my nose was going to fall off. Much like this morning, I began to laugh and laugh, while trying to spit the offending stuff out, rinsing my mouth, which, just as my cheeks pooched out, was a disaster because I began to laugh again and so coated our bathroom mirror with watered-down Ben Gay. In the background, Michael kept calling from the bedroom, “What? What?”

Sure. You make a huge step in commitment toward someone, and the first thing you do on your first night in your shared bed is to kiss the man you love with a burning mouth of Ben Gay.

I laughed myself into a full coughing, barking asthma fit, which may have been because of all the Ben Gay fumes too. What a romantic night. What a way to make an impression on my new roommate.

Well, he married me, so I guess it wasn’t too bad.

But the laughter. And then, when I checked back on my Facebook page, I found a pile of “likes”. And comments about coffee poured over a breakfast burrito, and oregano sprinkled into coffee instead of cinnamon. Sometime last week, someone posted about hairspray that went in all the wrong places. And boy, could I ever tell you a story about a jalapeno pepper that ended up in a spot it was never intended.

Peppered (yes, that was deliberate) in between these comments were Been There, Done Thats.

And that’s when I felt it. The community formed by simple human acts. In this case, doing something so totally brainless that you can’t help but laugh. We’re all connected by simple human error.

I spent the morning laughing, and knowing others were laughing too. It doesn’t get much better than that.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

You know, fiction writers live weird double lives. And truly, they’re not double – they’re whatever the equivalent of double would be with a million. I live my life every day, of course, but in a certain part of my brain and my consciousness, I’m also living the life of whatever character I’m writing about right now, and usually developing the life of whatever character I’m going to write about next. I don’t know how many of these hidden lives I’ve lived, or how many there will be, but they’re just a part of the way things work. It’s always annoyed me when people assume my fiction must be about me, because  it really isn’t. It’s about these other people that show up in this special place in my head (I think it’s somewhere above my right ear) and start doing things and thinking things. Things I would never do or think myself, but they do, and so I write them down. I believe fiction writers have a special form of empathy – something that allows us to stay distant from what we’re imagining, but also allows us to get into the heads of others without losing our sense of self.

For non-writers, I know this sounds really weird, but I’ve yet to meet a fiction writer that this doesn’t happen to. And I’m so glad it does. It’s responsible for the creation of literature that goes back to the world’s beginnings. The word was created, and then the writers began to create worlds.

So I’ve been working on this new book which is basically centered around an affair, and how that affair affects way more than just the man and the woman and their immediate families. But the man in this case is decidedly the instigator, the mean one, the liar. His wife enters into it too, but she has her (maybe forgivable) reasons. As I’ve written the stories, which are chapters in this book, about the people who are affected, watching that ripple spread wider and wider, in circle after circle of deceit and manipulation and narcissism and misogyny, I’ve felt myself growing angrier and angrier. Not at the Other Women and other people involved. But at the man. And sometimes his wife, who is fully aware of what he’s doing.

Now add to this that I’m writing this book in the middle of a world that seems to have gone crazy. Every day, I’m lambasted, just like everyone else is, with stories of school shootings and mall shootings and store shootings and temple shootings and shootings and shootings and shootings. For everyone, whether you’re for gun control or not, whether you’ve shot a gun or not, it seems like the air is just full of whistling bullets and explosions. I’ve found myself worried at times, especially on busy mornings when I barely have time to read a headline, let alone react to it, that maybe I’m becoming hardened. Maybe I’m becoming jaded. Maybe the day-to-dayness of this is becoming so routine that I will start feeling removed, dispassionate, as if a shooting is as common and easily forgotten as a report on the latest style of jeans.

And maybe that worry has been in the room next door to the room in my brain where the characters hang out. This room next door is where I silently ruminate on things. Those silent ruminations sometimes come out as stories or poems. But mostly, they remain silent. But I think maybe there was a secret window between the two windows, and the current characters in my head opened it. Because it seems I had more to learn about myself in writing the latest chapter than about my characters. It seems I needed to provide myself reassurance.

I finished the first draft of this latest story/chapter this week. In it, the first woman that my mean man hurt shows up in a diner, lifts up a gun, and blows him away.

I have never ever ever written a violent gun scene before. Never.

And I will admit that when I wrote how she pulled the trigger and how he fell, for that brief moment as those words came out and I pounded my finger on the period to end that life and end the sentence, a thought whipped across my mind: Good. He deserved it. It’s about time.

And in the very next moment, my hands flew off the keyboard and smacked themselves across my mouth in that universal expression of sheer horror. Not horror at what I’d written – following this storyline for almost a year now, there’s no question in my mind that this is what would happen.

But horror at what I thought. Even for a moment.

And in that moment, with my own thoughts still ringing in my ears and with my eyes on my words on the page, I had my moment of reassurance and the wiping out of that ruminating thought. I am not becoming dispassionate. There is nothing day to day about an event that leaves innocent and sometimes not so innocent people dead. Despite the news around me (“This week’s moment of happiness DESPITE THE NEWS”), I am hanging on to my humanity with every bit of strength that I have. The needle on my moral compass hasn’t moved, despite what we’ve all been exposed to.

Whew. I’m still me in here, in my own skin, despite what’s happening in the news and despite what has happened in my own life and despite what I wrote this week and despite the things that happen in that special little room above my right ear. Most of what shows up in that room is for the reader – but every now and then, it’s for me.

Teacher, teach thyself. Writer, write it down.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

Yesterday, I had a breast MRI. It’s no secret that I dealt with breast cancer a couple years ago, and a year after the surgery, the surgical site became severely infected. No one knows definitively why – the infectious diseases doctor thinks that since the mammogram I had right before was particularly vicious (I cried – I’ve never cried during a mammogram), it caused internal bleeding. The right side of my breast collapsed – there was more damage from the infection than from the partial mastectomy. Now, there is so much scar tissue, the 3-D mammograms aren’t as effective, and so my doctor wanted me to start having MRIs.

Which are downright miserable.

To do a breast MRI, they place a molded plastic tray on the sliding table that goes into the MRI machine. Instead of being on my back, I’m on my stomach. The tray arches me into a small cat stretch, and there is an opening above and below my breasts, so they hang down and free. My arms are stretched forward, so I look like a flying superhero. And then they stuff me into the machine. The mold is only padded minimally – it’s hard and uncomfortable.

At first, they arched me so high, I actually pressed against the opening of the machine. This made it impossible for me to breathe. So they pulled me out, adjusted, then stuffed me back in. And there I stretched, for the next half hour, as the contrast burned through my veins and the machine racketed all around me. All I could see was the floor of the machine through my little face pillow. A fan blew on me to keep me cool, and in about five minutes, my hips began to ache and so did my shoulders. But I couldn’t shift my position.

As I said, miserable. And very claustrophobic.

But the Moment of Happiness happened right before the procedure.

Two women technicians helped me. When I walked into the room with the machine, they prepared me, pulling off the robe and opening further the gown I was told to put on, open to the front, of course. I was standing there in all my breast-cancer-beaten-up glory when they turned away to get the plastic mold ready.

“So how are you today?” one of them asked.

“Well,” I said, “I’m standing here bare-breasted, about to climb onto the largest vibrator in the world. It looks like it’s going to be that kind of day.”

I was puzzled when they froze, and then even more puzzled when they looked at me, their eyes wide and their mouths hanging open.

And then I realized what I’d just said and slapped both hands over my mouth.

That’s when all hilarity busted loose. One technician laughed so hard, she had to drape herself over the mold. “Geez, that’s uncomfortable,” she said when she straightened.

I had to sit down, the laughter weakening my knees.

“We’ve never had anyone say something like that before,” the other technician said.

“You just made our day,” the first one said.

I was still laughing when I climbed onto the largest vibrator in the world and stuck my breasts through the opening. It took a while to get settled because I kept returning to the laughter and then they would laugh and we’d have to start all over again.

It helped to think about the laughter as I suffered through the procedure. But I couldn’t think about it too much because then I’d laugh all over again, and I wasn’t allowed to move once the process started. So instead I switched my thoughts to their saying I made their day.

I’m glad I was able to do that for them. What they do can’t be easy.  I hope they giggled throughout the day and then retold the story to their co-workers and other patients and to their families that night. I hope there was lots and lots of laughter.

Within an hour of the MRI, my doctor emailed and told me the MRI was clear. So of course, that’s a Moment too. Two and a half years cancer-free!

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

New Year’s resolutions are all around us right now. Articles on the internet talk about how they fail. Television commercials are all about weight loss and fitness. I usually pay very little attention to resolutions, but this year, I decided to bring about change. In my case, though, I’m not moving forward. I’m moving backward.

For several years, I worked as a weight loss consultant for three different weight loss companies. I’d lost a substantial amount of weight myself and the step into mentorship seemed a natural one. I actually kept the weight off for over ten years, which meant that I was a “success” – but all successes can be reversed. In my case, I became too successful.

Everything in my life became about my body. I weighed myself over 25 times a day. If I sneezed, I weighed myself to see if that little explosion caused a loss. I kept a constant magnetic food diary on my fridge and everything that went into my mouth went onto that diary. If I made a mistake, it was devastating to me. My shame was exposed on the refrigerator. I worked out every day of the week, doing advanced step-aerobics and body-building. My platform in step-aerobics teetered high on two risers, putting my knees at dangerous angles, but I didn’t care.

Everything else fell to the wayside. My writing. My family. My daughter, who was in afternoon kindergarten, would come with me to the gym in the morning, sit in the daycare and cry, then come home with me to have lunch. She’d help me apply my makeup, standing next to me like a surgeon’s assistant, handing me the next tube or brush or powder. Then I’d walk her to school and she’d cry while watching me drive away. I saw my boys at breakfast. They were asleep by the time I got home. I worked seven days a week.

Monitoring. Checking. Weighing. Measuring. At work, we had to weigh in once a month in front of everyone, and if we hit five pounds over our goal, we had one month to lose it or lose our jobs. I lived in constant fear of the work scale. Even when I sunk to almost twenty pounds below my goal weight. Even then, my mother, an incredibly tiny person who spent her life shopping in the girl’s department (not juniors – the GIRL’S) told me I was still fat and needed to lose more, so I dropped an additional fifteen. I simply stopped eating. I ramped the workout schedule. I fainted.

I was so sick, and I didn’t even know it. I thought I was healthy. I thought I was beautiful. I thought I was a role model.

And then I broke.

Fast forward to now. I never returned to the gym or to formal dieting, afraid I’d hurt myself again. I threw myself into an intellectual life, ignoring the physical. Writing and my business keep me always busy. As the pounds came back on, I told myself I couldn’t go to the gym – there was no time. And there really wasn’t. After my bout with breast cancer two years ago, the oral chemo I’m on for five years exacerbated my Oral Allergy Syndrome, making it impossible for me to eat raw fruits, raw vegetables, seeds, or nuts. I go into anaphylactic shock. I now have an epi pen in my purse and on every floor of my house.

But through it all, you know what I missed? The movement. The weight lifting. The feeling strong. I loved aerobics, but the weight training had a whole different impact. Once, before I went off the deep end, I was working the circuit in the weight room and two men came up to watch me. I ignored them and just kept on lifting. Eventually, one guy looked at the other and said, “I guess women just aren’t delicate anymore, huh?”

Bear in mind that at this point in my life, I was quiet. I didn’t speak back, I didn’t speak out. I was pretty darn submissive. But I carefully lowered my weights (don’t clang!), turned to the men and said loudly and clearly, “Fuck you.” With those weights in my hands, I was strong.

So as 2020 approached, I sat and gave myself a talking to. I’ve been very focused on what I can’t eat – not what I can. I can eat cooked vegetables and cooked fruits. A new gym opened up in town that is open and staffed 24/7. I could go work out after midnight, when I was done with work for the day, instead of sitting in my recliner and watching television. I wouldn’t lose sleep –  I’m awake at that time anyway.

It’s been years – since the early nineties – since the eating disorder. I am now no longer just a strong woman when I am lifting weights. I am a strong woman. Period. My life used to be all physical. Then it switched to all intellectual. Now – I believe I can do both. I can be strong in mind and body.

I can do this.

So I joined the gym and started attending this past Saturday. I’ve been there every day this week. And my moment of happiness?

Sitting down at the first weight machine. Grasping the handles. Lifting. The weights were set lighter than years ago, but I could do it. And it was still there, the lyricism of muscle, the contraction, the release, the rhythm. Breathe out while lifting, breathe in while releasing.

The strength. And yes, the delicacy of a body with muscles and tendons and sinews all working together. Like a clock. Like a machine. But with heart.  There is poetry in words. But there is poetry in the body too.

I could have cried with the sheer joy of it.

I can do this. Watch me.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

And Happy New Year!

When my daughter Olivia came home for her first Christmas break from college, it absolutely stunned me that she returned without her three best friends since her very young childhood:

Maxie: a beanie baby-sized blue and white bear or dog, depending on who you talked to, representing some drug (apparently a giveaway from a pharmaceutical company), picked up at a rummage sale by Olivia’s grandmother when Olivia was about a year old. I honestly don’t remember why Maxie was named Maxie.

Norman: a kangaroo with a pouch, but a male name. During my first residency at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where I earned my MFA, they held a fundraising auction of items donated by faculty and students. Olivia was born in October of 2000, and I left for my first residency in December of 2001, so Olivia was only 14 months old and I was full of grief and guilt over being so far away from her for 15 days. I missed her first steps, and by the time I came home, she was running. When the kangaroo came up for auction, my hand shot up so fast, I don’t think anyone dared bid against me. I named him Norman because that’s what he looked like, despite the joey-less pouch, and he sat on my bed in my dorm room for the rest of the residency and rode with his head sticking out of my backpack when I flew home.

Teddy: a homemade teddy bear with a cliché name, purchased during my second residency in Vermont.

These three have accompanied Olivia from her bedroom in our first house to this one, from sleepover to sleepover, to Oregon and Myrtle Beach, on college tours, and back. Wherever she goes, they go.

And she came home without them. They’re on her bed in her dorm room.

“Mom,” she said, when I expressed surprise at their absence, “do you want me to go back to get them?”

I’m not sure why I was so stricken. Maybe it’s just another sign of her growing up. Maybe it’s because I feel like she always has a source of comfort when they’re around, even if I’m not.

Maybe it’s because, at 59 years old, my own special stuffed animal, Rontu, is still in my closet. I’ve never grown up enough to leave him behind.

I was either seven or eight when I met Rontu. My mother took me to the S&H Green Stamp store to make some purchases, and while I waited for her, I wandered to the storefront window. On a rocking chair was a black and white stuffed dog with a big nose and floppy legs and jingle bells in his ears. I climbed into the window, sat in the chair, rocked, and listened to his bells ring. And fell in love.

I told my mother I wanted this dog. She said she didn’t have enough stamps. So I said I’d ask for him for Christmas. On Christmas Day, as soon as I picked up the box, I heard the jingle bells. No present was ever opened faster.

I named him Rontu, after the Aleut dog in my favorite book at that time, The Island Of The Blue Dolphins, by Scott O’Dell. Karana, the main character, nurses Rontu back to health after she shoots him in the chest with an arrow. She says that Rontu, in her language, means Fox Eyes. Well, my Rontu didn’t have fox eyes. He had cloth black and white eyes and jingle bells in his ears. And I loved him to distraction. It didn’t matter the time of day or night, he was there for me. When I cried, it was into his ears. When I was happy, I shook him and he sang with jingles. For the longest time, I played out an imaginary story in my head where scientists blended my ovarian eggs with a black and white dog’s sperm and Rontu was the result. He was my baby. I know, that’s weird. But my imagination has always been just slightly off the tracks. Ronto was way more than my baby. He was my partner, my security blanket, my forever companion.

He came with me to college. He sat on my bed during my first marriage. He was nearby on a chair for my second marriage. And now he resides in my closet, where I see him every day when I get dressed and I smile at him.

He’s fragile. Hardly any fur left. But he still jingles.

This week, I had the stomach flu. And it was a horrible version of it. During the worst of it, when Michael moved downstairs so I would have instant access to the bathroom and I was wracked with unstoppable nausea and body aches that wouldn’t let me straighten my body out, I got out Rontu and curled my body around him. My cats were annoying nursemaids, insisting on getting in my face or laying directly on a sore joint. Not so Rontu. He lay quietly pressed into my belly and I felt better. If I shifted even a little bit, he still jingled.

Sometimes, you can reunite with pure childhood happiness even in the middle of a bout of the stomach flu.

I hope, when Olivia returns to college, she swoops down on her three best friends and lets them know how she missed them. I hope they are, to her, what Rontu is to me.

Everyone needs a Rontu.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

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

And Merry Christmas!

Now I know I could have said Merry Everything, or Merry all the different practices in the world, but I’m not. To me, Merry Christmas covers it all, not just Christians (and in fact, I get quite perturbed when I hear a Christian retort, “Say Merry Christmas! You liberals aren’t taking that from us!”, because there’s nothing to take). Any story with Santa Claus ends with him saying “Merry Christmas!” The classic Dickens tale A Christmas Carol isn’t about Christianity.

Christmas is giving. I find that to be the simplest definition.

BUT…that’s not what this blog is about. This is about my moment of happiness this week.

On Christmas day, after everyone who was going home went home, and Olivia was in her room, and Michael was cleaning up the demolished kitchen, I mentioned to him that I didn’t understand why I kept seeing Facebook posts about the movie Die Hard. “Why is everyone discussing watching Die Hard?” I asked. “What the heck?” Now I will admit I’ve never seen the movie. It’s not the sort of film I enjoy.

Michael explained to me that many people consider it a Christmas movie. When I asked why, because I understood it to be an action movie, he said, “Because it takes place at Christmas.”

So I pondered that for a bit. Is that all it takes to be a Christmas movie?

When I think back to all the movies and TV specials I watched as a kid and even now that I associate with Christmas, I came up with the following list:

A Christmas Story

A Charlie Brown Christmas

Frosty The Snowman

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (only the original please)

A Year Without A Santa Claus

The Night The Animals Talked

Santa Claus is Coming To Town

A Christmas Carol (I have particular fondness for the musical version)

How The Grinch Stole Christmas (animated)

The Little Drummer Boy

And of course, of COURSE, The Homecoming, the made-for-TV movie that resulted in the TV series, The Waltons.

Ever since it came out in VHS (whenever that was) and now in DVD, I have watched The Homecoming on Christmas Eve. My brother calls John Boy John Boob. My ex-husband teased me and the show mercilessly whenever I watched it. And Michael, my current husband, holds his tongue until the Walton family is sitting around the radio, listening to Fibber McGee and Molly. Michael sputters that the particular episode they’re listening to was actually aired in 1940-something, not when this particular TV movie takes place. But I watch it avidly, settling in whatever couch or recliner or chair I have at the time, and I turn out all the lights and I refuse to talk to anyone. My shoulders relax, I take a deep breath, and I sink into that world. Either out loud or in my head, I recite each and every line.

The movie takes place on Christmas Eve in the Great Depression, and John, the father, is late getting home from his job far away, where he stays during the week to provide a paycheck for his family. There is a bus crash and Olivia, the mother, is sure John was on it. Eventually, Olivia sends out her oldest, John Boy, to look for him. Before then, she asks John Boy what he’s hiding in his mattress, and it turns out that it’s a tablet, where he’s been writing. He says,

“Things stay in my mind, Mama. I can’t forget anything. And it all gets bottled up in here, and sometimes I feel like a crazy man. I… I can’t rest or sleep or anything till I just rush off up here and write it down in that tablet. Sometimes I think I really am crazy. If things had been different, Mama…I could have done something with my life. What I would have liked, Mama…was to have tried to be a writer.”

Olivia reassures him that he can, of course he can.

And every year, I sucked those words in, those words I didn’t hear from my own family, though I did hear it from the most wonderful line-up of teachers. I listened to them and I listened to Olivia and I listen to her still and I believed her.

And then…I believed in me.

Best Christmas gift ever. Year after year after year.

I won’t watch Die Hard, just because it takes place at Christmas time. Just give me The Homecoming. I accept its gift.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.