Author: Kathie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She writes stories!

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

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

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

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

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

Time is passing.

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

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

“Nobody talks about Bruno!”

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?” I said.

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

Ohboy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was lovely.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

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

Muse has always been a challenge.

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

Where she was instantly not calm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A much better sound than a bleating alarm clock.

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

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

For the last couple of weeks, my daughter Olivia accompanied me to the gym when I went in to swim. Bear in mind, I use the word swim loosely – I only recently took swimming lessons, and the 10-week program was interrupted after four weeks when my instructor, who was hugely pregnant, had her baby. The YMCA, which offered the lessons, couldn’t find anyone to fill in on the time slot that I needed, and so the lessons were discontinued. I was very disappointed, but felt I learned enough that I could join a gym with a pool and do enough that it would count as exercise (though I have to say, I did not join the Y).

Olivia is a natural swimmer. She started when she was in kindergarten and took to the water like the proverbial fish. She tried out for a swim team when she was in third grade, and the coach pronounced her exceptional. But the noise in the natatorium was just too much for her to handle. Even with earplugs, the constantly blowing whistles, the shouting coaches (shouting to be heard over the other shouting) and screeching kids sent her into a panic. We could only imagine what being at a meet would do, with bellowing parents added to the melee. So she didn’t join, but kept swimming. We talked about her joining a swim team when she got to high school. But when she learned the measure of commitment there, with early morning and after school practices, and meet after meet after meet, she worried about her academic performance and so she decided against it. Still, she swam whenever she could, and watching her body slice effortlessly through the water is a joy to behold.

As for me, well, I don’t slice. I chug. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to breathe while doing the front crawl or any stroke. On the side of the pool, when I practice the front crawl, my head moves the way it’s supposed to. But once in the water, my head takes on a life of its own and says, Nope, I’m looking down. I am not lifting to the side. Nope, nope, nope. And then, when I try, I get a mouthful of water. Bleah. So basically, I hold my breath as long as I can, then dog paddle with my head above water while I gasp, then plow my head in again and continue.

Hey, it works. It’s not pretty, but it works.

So these last few weeks, I’ve watched Olivia while I do my own thing. I walk forward in the water the length of the pool three times, then walk backwards three times, then dog paddle three times, do my version of the breast stroke three times, forward crawl six times, then reverse the order and finish with the walk. I did all this while I watched her head bobbing gently in the lane next to me. And I wished I could do what she does, all while admiring the grace and absolute beauty of my own daughter.

That wishing is sort of silly. She’s 21, I’m 61. She’s swum for practically her whole life, I’ve stuck with the dog paddle and flunked swim lesson after swim lesson. Though we do have one big thing in common: neither of us are scared of the water, and we both love it.

The last time we swam together, before she returned to college, she asked me about my goggles. We both bought some when we joined the gym, hers near her school, mine by me. This was my first pair of goggles. When I tried them in the pool, she was not with me. “I didn’t like them,” I said. “The water just came in and got stuck between my eyes and the goggle. It was like swimming in a fishbowl.”

She sighed, and at the pool, she tightened the goggles. And tightened the goggles. And tightened them again. When I put them on, they adhered to my face and I wondered if I would ever get them off.

But then I began to swim.

I could see! The world became aqua. Sound was gone. Even though I was in a pool with several other people, including my daughter, I was all alone and suspended and warm and surrounded with color and silence and my own movement. Following the blue line of tile on the floor of the pool was like following a chosen path. I felt at peace. My favorite place in the world is by water, and now I was not only in it, I was a part of it.

Until I had to breathe, of course.

And then I doggy paddled and breathed and admired my daughter before I plunged back in. There was beauty under the water, and there was beauty above the water.

While I will never swim like my daughter, I felt then that I’d joined into her world for a bit. I experienced what she did, even if it wasn’t for length after length of pool, but just for the time of a held breath.

And now, when she’s away from me and off at college and, eventually, off into her adult life, I will share her world then too.

It’s a lovely place.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

Remember board games? And not board games recreated to be played on a screen, but actually lifted from a box, the “board” magically unfolded, pieces chosen and placed, cards shuffled, dice rolled to see who goes first.

So here’s the thing. First, for the last two years, I have been totally enamored of, not a board game, but a video game on Nintendo Switch. Animal Crossing. I’ve written about this game before. When the pandemic started and I was a nervous wreck, a friend who I’ve known since she went to school with my big kids told me I needed to play Animal Crossing. “It’s getting me through,” she said. My middle son, Andy, who also played, said he would buy the system and the game for me. I’d played Animal Crossing before, when it was on the GameCube and when it was on the Wii, and even when I had, for a while, the handheld Nintendo DS. In each case, there were other games bought for the system, but the only one I played faithfully was Animal Crossing.

This time, I’ve been playing it for two years. And I haven’t lost interest.

Right before my 61^st birthday, my son posted on our Animal Crossing Facebook chat. “Look!” he said. He showed us a photo of a board game – Animal Crossing Monopoly.

Which shot me backwards in time.

My first passion with a game was dominoes. And that was largely because of a set that I won. I was living in Stoughton, Wisconsin, and I was about twelve or thirteen years old. My friend Lisa and I heard that across Lake Kegonsa, there was a “fisheree” going on. An ice-fishing competition, but complete with games and prizes for children. Did we think to ask our parents to drive us there? No – we chose to walk across Lake Kegonsa, something which horrifies me now as a mom. By the time we got there, we were nearly frozen, despite wearing snowpants, boots, winter coats, hats, mittens, scarves. We ducked into a tent with a heater and attempted to thaw before we checked out the games. Among other things, there was a short race, where you ran back and forth, carrying an egg on a spoon, and the winner was the person who had the most eggs in their containers. I won. When I looked over the prizes, I saw a beautiful dominoes set. Each of the numbered dominoes had a different brilliant neon color. I selected it, brought it home back across the frozen lake, and still own it today.

My first husband and I loved board games. We often preferred to spend our Friday and Saturday nights at home, different boards spread out on our kitchen table, playing until late into the night. I loved Monopoly the best, and was wicked with it. He loved Risk, which I couldn’t stand, but the one time I played him, learning along the way, I beat him soundly. He never asked to play with me again.

With the dawn of the video game era, we resisted buying our kids the first Nintendo system, but finally capitulated with rules that they could only play for so much time every day. Until their father and I joined in and got hooked. One of my first published pieces, appearing in the Wisconsin magazine of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, was how we convinced the kids it would be so much fun to play in the new fallen snow, and as soon as they were in the back yard, my husband and I were parked in front of the television set.

And now, years later…Animal Crossing Monopoly. My most loved board game. My most loved video game. Together.

“I want it,” I said.

My son gave it to me for my birthday.

It’s a bizarre game, not like Monopoly at all, and really, not like Animal Crossing at all either. Yes, there are cards and figures and dice and a “Go To Jail” square, but that’s pretty much where any similarities end. It’s goofy…but it’s FUN.

Last Saturday, after we decided we weren’t going to go out for our usual Saturday evening restaurant meal, preferring to hunker down inside due to the Omicron variant, I quickly called my son. “When are you off work?” I asked. “Are you up for pizza and Animal Crossing?”

He was. And not only was he up for it, but he brought along a delicious cherry pie; he’s the manager of a bakery and has access to such things!

We put a different spin on the game-playing this time, though. We’ve always played in the kitchen here, which is awkward. We don’t have a kitchen table; we eat at the island, which has only 3 barstools. There are always four of us for this activity; Michael, me, Andy, and Olivia.  We typically pull out a stepladder for someone to sit on for this event, which isn’t very comfortable.

But on this night, I had a thought. “My classroom is downstairs,” I said. “Why not play there? On the big table?”

Duh.

But I realized, as we played, what moving to the classroom did for us. It turned back time to when the board game truly was the focus. As we played, there were no screens around us. No television, no computers. Yes, we had our cell phones, but those went almost completely ignored as we bent over the board and took our turns and counted our money and made our choices. We ate pie and drank good coffee, we rolled dice and flipped cards and counted out loud as we moved our little players. And we laughed.

So much laughter!

After we returned upstairs, Michael said, “That was so much fun!”

It was. And you can bet we’ll be doing it again, down in the classroom. Down there, only the game – and each other – are our focus.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

It’s that time of year again. That time that immediately follows the holidays from Thanksgiving through Christmas through New Year’s. We go from celebrating and partying to viewing constant pokes on all forms of media about how we should be eating better and exercising more…and at the same time, we’re besieged with commercials about comfort foods. Warm, satisfying foods that can melt snowmen, make a wintry blast feel like the tropics, and turn the heat up on our insides while we crank the thermostat for our outsides.

Which is why, a couple weeks ago, when Michael asked me what I’d like to have on the grocery shopping list, I answered, “Oatmeal.”

Oh, oatmeal!

Now I’m no stranger to the gym. Since the pandemic hit, I don’t often go two days in a row, but I do go. I joined a new gym a short time ago, one that has a pool, so I can use my new ability to keep myself afloat and call my frantic splashing and paddling exercise. I love it.

I eat fairly well, despite the fact that I have Oral Allergy Syndrome, which means I’m allergic to all raw fruits and vegetables, plus quite a few seeds and nuts, though I can still eat berries and green grapes. The allergy is spreading; this week, I reacted to a packet of taco seasoning my husband used when he made his famous nachos. I eat a lot of cooked fruits, but unfortunately, the most common place you’ll find cooked fruits is in pies and cobblers and crumbles. Yum.

But I try.

Lately, the temperature has dipped. It was two below zero when I left the gym last Monday night, and I was convinced my hair, still wet from the pool, would freeze and snap right off. We have snow on the ground. When I see that famous commercial of the snowman coming in from outside and slurping up a bowl of soup, which miraculously melts the snowman into a little boy, I immediately want soup. And chili. And hotdish and hot casseroles. And hot chocolate. Laced with crème de menthe.

And oatmeal.

Yum.

When I was a kid living in northern Minnesota, oatmeal was a rare treat in my house. There was no instant version yet, and so my mother had to haul out the large cardboard canister with the white-haired guy with the funny hat plastered on it. She didn’t make individual servings, but a whole pot, for all of us, and she had to stir and stir and stir before dumping the wonderful- smelling, but disgusting-looking, glop into our bowls.

Then my dad doctored it for us, in a way I’ve never seen anyone else do. First, he put several pats of butter into our bowls, and we watched it melt into golden trails through the glop. He sprinkled on sugar. And then he added just a bit of milk.

It was amazingly good. I started drinking coffee at a young age (third grade, I believe), and coffee and oatmeal for breakfast made me not care that I was about to walk to school in snowpants, a heavy winter jacket, a hat and mittens, hood pulled up and tied under my chin, a scarf around my throat, big clunky boots on my feet. I was warm the whole way, and it wasn’t the attire that made me so.

Yum.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was overcome with cravings for oatmeal. He was due on January 28^th, and at Christmas, I left my job as a secretary for Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Ozaukee County so that I could become a stay-at-home mom. Every morning, I hauled my very pregnant body out of bed, retrieved my own canister with the white-haired man with the funny hat, stirred and stirred and stirred, and then added butter, sugar, and milk. And then I made another bowl for lunch. And sometimes, a bowl before bed. Christopher was born ten days early, on January 18^th, and when I had breakfast in the hospital, I requested oatmeal. It came without butter and sugar and milk. Bleah.

It was my mom that made the oatmeal. It was my dad that made it good.

And so, when my husband asked, I answered, “Oatmeal.”

It’s the season.

We do have that fabled white-haired man canister in our cupboards, but that’s only brought out when I make my meat loaf, which requires old-fashioned oatmeal. What my husband brings home to me from the grocery store still has that man on it, but the oatmeal is instant, and made individual serving by individual serving. I open a packet, empty it into my favorite bowl, add water, and stick it in the microwave for one minute and thirty seconds. No stirring, stirring, stirring. No big pot. No waiting.

I keep myself busy during the one minute and thirty seconds by preparing to doctor. I get out the butter and the milk. I forego the sugar and even the Equal, because the oatmeal I favor is flavored – maple and brown sugar.

When the microwave beeps, I do my best Dad imitation. Butter pats. Golden trails in the glop. A little bit of milk. I pop it back in the microwave for 30 seconds, because the milk cools it down too fast. In that 30 seconds, I pour my cup of strong black coffee. And then I have breakfast, like I did so long ago, not caring about the snow on my deck, the temperature my cell phone tells me it is outside, the wind whistling at the windows.

My father didn’t cook much, except for stints at the outdoor grill. But the man knew his oatmeal.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

This past Tuesday, my novel, All Told, was released. It’s my 12^th book; sixth novel. I was asked if Book #12 is as exciting as Book #1.

I’ve known for my entire life that I’m a writer. I used to trace the pictures in my picture books and then rewrite the stories the way I felt they should be written. I didn’t apply the word “writer” to myself until the fifth grade, when my teacher, Mrs. Faticci, told me that’s what I was. I wrote about that in an earlier Moment. I didn’t connect what I liked to do – put words together with the pictures that rolled through my mind – with those wonderful books I read. When the word writer was given to me, I shuddered with joy. It was as much me as my name.

I started submitting to magazines when I was twelve years old. My first published piece appeared when I was fifteen as a four-part serial in the Catholic Herald Citizen, of all places. I rewrote the story of Christ in 70’s slang. When I went to college at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, I tried making writing my hobby, and I majored in special education (with a focus on autism – that was fortuitous) and then social work. But the only thing that lit me up were my literature classes and my creative writing workshops. Against my parents’ will, I switched my major to writing, and again, felt like my name fit.

All along, my most favorite thing to write was the short story. My stories began to appear here, there, and everywhere. But it felt like the way to prove you were really a writer, you had to write a novel. And so I began to try.

After college, I joined a community education workshop led by Waukesha writer Ellen Hunnicutt. She became one of my most impactful mentors and cheerleaders. She told me that what made a writer a writer wasn’t talent. It was determination and discipline. So I settled in to be determined and disciplined. I never questioned that I had the talent. Writing is the only thing about myself that I’ve never questioned. Everything else…hoo boy.

My first novel wouldn’t be published until I was fifty years old.

I went through four agents. My last two were top-notch New York City agents. The third represented the book that would become, much later, In Grace’s Time. We were told the book was beautiful, but too “quiet”. After a year of submitting, she told me to shelve the book and try the next one. That was The Home For Wayward Clocks. When she read it, she told me it was stunning, but that she didn’t represent “dark” books.

So I had the choice of keeping my top-notch agent and writing another book, or firing her. I fired her.

A short time after agent #4 started submitting Clocks, we heard from an editor at Scribner’s. She loved the book, but said it needed editorial direction. She also felt it was too early in the submission process to give that direction, that someone else might take it as is. So my agent shopped it for a year, before she said, in a distinct echo from agent #3, to shelve the book and write another one. When I asked about re-submitting it to Scribner’s, she said she didn’t want me to do that, because often the editor lost interest in the time that it took to rewrite the book, and it was just a waste of energy. I was lucky at that time to be asked to be a graduate assistant for a residency at the college where I’d received my MFA in fiction (yes, I returned to grad school) and Wally Lamb was there too, as a speaker. We went to the same school. So I pulled Wally aside and asked for his advice.

He said, “New York editors don’t give second chances. Tell your agent that she works for you. Then set up a meeting with the editor. Listen carefully to what she wants to do and decide if you can do it. Then do it.” And that’s what I did.

The editor said she wanted me to change it from first person to third – EASY! – and she wanted me to bring out the “fairytale nature of the book.”

Say what?

For six months, I rewrote the book. In that time, we were contacted by an editor from Algonquin who saw one of my stories and wondered if I had a novel. So now I had two waiting editors.

Both of them rejected Clocks. Scribner’s because she’d moved to a new publishing house and was no longer interested in literary fiction. And I honestly don’t remember why Algonquin said no.

So I was back to square one. Shelve the book and keep the agent? Or fire the agent?

I fired her. And I went out on my own. And then I sold it on my own. To a publisher who took it as is, no changes, and who said to me, “New York missed out on you.”

Determination and discipline, doncha know. Thank you, Ellen.

When The Home For Wayward Clocks came out, I was fifty years old. And then came Enlarged Hearts (short story collection), Learning To Tell (A Life)Time (novel, and the sequel to Clocks), Rise From The River (novel), Oddities & Endings; The Collected Stories Of Kathie Giorgio (short story collection), True Light Falls In Many Forms (poetry chapbook), In Grace’s Time (novel), Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News; A Collection of Spontaneous Essays (the first year of this blog, in book form), When You Finally Said No (poetry chapbook), If You Tame Me (novel), and No Matter Which Way You Look, There Is More To See (full-length collection of poetry). I’ve had three publishers.

And now…All Told. A novel. And my fourth publisher.

Throughout this time, many, many short stories, poems, and short memoir, were published in magazines and anthologies.

In August of this year, my poetry chapbook, Olivia In Five, Seven, Five; Autism In Haiku, will be released. Book #13.

I am putting the finishing touches on Book #14, a novel.

I am my name. Kathie Giorgio. Writer. It is not a hobby and never has been. It’s a life. A lifetime. I am never more happy than when I’m writing.

So back to the question at the beginning of this blog. Is  Book #12 as exciting as Book #1? Yes, yes, yes. And Books #2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. Book #13 to come. Book #14 in progress.

Yes. It’s my name. It’s who I am. And there is nothing like feeling like you actually belong in your own skin.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

All Told is available pretty much everywhere. Look for it at your favorite bookseller. It will be launched at a special event for the Southeast Wisconsin Festival Of Books on January 27 at 7:00 p.m. central time. It is a Zoom event, so anyone from anywhere can come. I will be reading from the book, and then I’ll be interviewed by Jim Higgins, the books editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It’s a free event, but you need to register. Here’s how: https://www.booksco.com/event/kathie-giorgio-virtual-author-event-sewi

All 11 books.

 

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

Christmas, of course, brings with it presents. And usually, there’s one or two that really stand out. That happened for me this year, though I have to say…the present that really stuck out and struck my heart is one I picked out myself.

A few weeks ago, when we were watching Olivia at her concert with the Wisconsin Intergenerational Orchestra, my mind couldn’t help but wander to the music I loved to listen to, and the music I loved to make. From sixth grade through tenth, I played the trumpet, which I hated. I don’t even know where that trumpet is now. I lent it to someone somewhere along the way, and have long since lost track of it. I have always loved to sing, and for quite a while, I partnered myself with an instrument that became mine by pure happenstance.

I no longer remember if I was living in Minnesota or if I’d already moved to Wisconsin when my parents decided to replace my brother’s Wurlitzer organ with the mighty Hammond. But I do remember standing in the music store, growing increasingly bored as my parents hemmed and hawed over whether or not they would actually buy the organ. I wandered away and looked in a showcase at the front of the store. Inside, I saw an instrument I recognized.

An autoharp.

It looked just like the one my music teacher in school, Mrs. Lindstrom, used when she came to our classroom to teach. (This is why I’m pretty sure I was still in Minnesota; that’s where Mrs. Lindstrom was.) From time to time, Mrs. Lindstrom let me come to the front of the class and strum the autoharp in accompaniment to the songs we were singing. I loved that instrument. It was like playing a guitar, but I didn’t have to figure out which fingers to use on the strings. I just pressed a button and strummed and the chord was right there.

The woman standing behind the showcase smiled at me, and I smiled back. “That’s an autoharp,” I said. “My music teacher lets me play hers.” The woman opened the showcase, drew the instrument out and handed me a felt pick. I was delighted and began to strum.

The salesman working with my parents noticed. He said to my parents, “If you decide to buy the Hammond, I’ll throw in the autoharp for your little girl.”

I still didn’t pay any attention to what was going on with the sale, but when we walked out of the store, I was carrying the box with the autoharp.

For years and years, that autoharp and its box resided under my bed. I would go upstairs to my room, shut the door, pull it out, and play. I played the songs in the book they gave me and I made up songs of my own. I played it when I was sad, and I played it when I was happy, and I played it when I just wanted to surround myself with music that included me in it.

There are no photographs of me playing the autoharp. I was always behind my closed door.

Whenever I moved, whether with my parents, or later, with my first husband, the autoharp came with me. But when I packed up to leave that first husband, I brought very little with me. My autoharp, at that time, was still in its box, but on a shelf in a storeroom in our basement. I didn’t think of it when I left. When I did think of it, and I asked my ex-husband about it, he told me it was gone.

Just gone.

All of this passed through my mind as I sat, listening to Olivia play her violin with the orchestra.

That night, I went onto a website that sells used instruments. When I put autoharp in the search bar, I was amazed at the number of instruments that came up. And so many of them looked like mine! They were the same brand. Some of them had the years listed that a particular model was made, and so I searched through the years that covered when I most likely received my autoharp. When I found one particular one, I picked it out because it looked so much like mine.

I went downstairs and talked to Michael. I asked if he was okay if I chose my own present this year.

“You want a what?” he said.

When I told him about it, he sent me back upstairs to my computer with his blessing.

I bought the autoharp. The seller contacted me and said he’d be sending it out the next day. Then, the next day, he told me that snow prevented him from getting out. “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s a Christmas present, but it’s for me.” I explained that I was now 61 years old, and I wanted to reunite with this instrument that meant so much to a much younger me.

He sent it out the next day.

I asked him if he included picks and a tuning fork. I mentioned that the pick I liked most was a felt pick, because it didn’t make the metallic pinging sounds against the strings.

A day later, he emailed me and said I would be receiving a package from Amazon, with a tuning fork and felt picks. “Merry Christmas!” he said.

I tracked the package until it finally showed up at my door. When I unwrapped it, it was in its original box. And I couldn’t believe it.

My original autoharp had a puncture hole in the lower right of the box. So did this one.

Now, I know that it’s most likely not mine. But I’m happy to believe that it could be.

I don’t have a room here where I can close the door and sit and play, so I haven’t played it yet, other than quietly strumming the strings sometimes when I pass it. But I will play it. And I will sing. I don’t think I’ll be sitting on the floor pretzel-legged though. Those days are long gone.

For now, it’s enough to look at it. And remember singing and playing.

A part of me has come home.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

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

It’s amazing to me that, right after writing about how a young friend’s handheld game system was returned to her in a lost and found, and how that event restored for me a faith in the simple goodness of people, that lesson would come again. But this time, directly to me and to my husband, Michael.

Last Sunday, when Michael returned home from grocery shopping at Woodman’s, he walked slowly up the stairs to my office. “I have to tell you something,” he said.

The tone of his voice instantly alarmed me. I imagined his losing my bank card, which I sent with him to pay for the groceries. I imagined his newly healed lack-of-toe suddenly aching with a new ache and bursting into a blood fountain. “What now?” I cried.

“I lost my wedding ring.”

Now I have to admit, my response was a lackluster, but relieved, “Oh, okay.” His news wasn’t either of the above scenarios. And I was also in the middle of doing the studio’s ledger, which I hadn’t done in two weeks because I’d been sick. When I do the ledger, it’s like four very close walls and a low ceiling come down around me, and all I can see is my computer screen with the numbers. Even after 17 years in business, I am terrified of doing the ledger. I am not good at math, and I am convinced that I will do some huge mistake that will bring the studio to its knees in one strike of the keyboard. The actual walls of our home could fall down around me, and I wouldn’t notice, while I’m doing the ledger.

And so I said, “Oh, okay,” and returned to my work. Michael went downstairs. And it wasn’t until I was done with the ledger, when I closed the file, that I looked at my blank screen and said, “Oh, no!”

We’ve been married for 22 years. Those rings have rarely left our fingers. Recently, when Michael was in the hospital with his foot infection, he handed me his ring as he was taken off to surgery. I took off my own ring, put on his, then put my ring back on next to it. It seemed right that during that time apart, our rings would be together, on my hand.

I went downstairs and got the rest of the details. Michael has lost a lot of weight. He didn’t try to; it’s the result of working at a job that has him constantly on his feet and walking at least 7 miles a day. His ring had become very loose and we’d talked about getting it sized. At the grocery store, Michael had the ring when he began bagging at the self checkout. When he was done, the ring was gone. As he began to search, the manager came over to see what was wrong. Then the manager checked the video and confirmed that at the start of bagging, the ring was on his finger. At the end, not. So the ring had to be right there somewhere.

Michael tore apart the bags he’d packed. The manager tore apart the register. They looked over and under and into everything in the area.

No ring.

Michael left with a promise from the manager that they would keep looking and would call if it was found. Olivia told me that when Michael got into her car, he was in tears.

Apparently, my husband was more upset over this loss of the symbol of our marriage than he was over the recent amputation of his own toe.

I began to do what I could. I went on the NextDoor app and posted what happened, and asked anyone going to Woodman’s to look for the ring. I thought maybe fresh, and unpanicked, eyes might see better. I contacted Rogers & Holland, where we originally purchased the rings, to see if there was any chance they still had the same ring in a vault somewhere.

The folks on the NextDoor app were amazing, sending well wishes and hopes that we’d find it. Rogers & Holland responded, asking for a description and picture of the rings, so they could look for it.

On Tuesday morning, when I got up, I found a message on the NextDoor app from the same nice man who repaired our Little Free Library. He said he went to Woodman’s to take a peek under the belt of the register. And then he said, “Somebody returned your husband’s ring at Woodman’s!! They have it!”

Ohmygod.

I instantly woke up Michael, who had the day off. “They have it!” I said. I’ve never seen him wake up so fast. His breath rushed out with a whoosh and he hugged me so hard, I toppled into the bed.

I called Woodman’s, and they confirmed that they had it. As soon as I was done with morning clients, we went there to retrieve it. The women at the customer service desk cheered.

Then we drove directly to Rogers & Holland to get the ring sized. The women at the customer service desk cheered.

The people on the NextDoor app cheered.

We felt like the whole world cheered. And so did we. The ring isn’t back on Michael’s finger yet, but it will be soon.

And so my moment of happiness? There are two.

One, I have a husband who, even after 22 years of marriage, was heartbroken at the loss of a simple piece of jewelry that represents our union.

And two, despite the Big Bad News, there are still many good people in the world. Someone returned that ring, instead of keeping it for themselves or selling it. I wish we knew who it was. And so maybe, instead of focusing on all the Big Bad News, created by and spouted over by Big Bad People, we should be paying attention to the Everyday Good. Because it’s out there. And while the news might be Big and Bad, the Good still overcomes it.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

And so this week’s moment of happiness.

In the mail today, there was a package from my sister, Marilyn. She’s long since given up writing a note on it, saying to not open until Christmas, because I always ignored that anyway. I tore in and found a beautiful pair of earrings and…a Grinch hand towel. A bright, Grinch-green hand towel, with the Grinch’s face glaring on it.

Perfect.

Grinch pretty much describes me during the Christmas season. It just seems to add to my already overdone to-do list. I love shopping, but I don’t love “having” to shop, to purchase things by a certain date. I don’t love online shopping, but with COVID, that really seems the best way to go. Putting up decorations entails a drive to the off-site storage unit, because we don’t have a basement, and so all Christmas stuff, among other things we probably don’t need, are kept there. Then we have to load up the car and haul it all upstairs. So that I don’t have to drive back to the storage unit, all of the boxes are kept stuffed in my car until everything is returned when the tree comes down on New Year’s Day. I don’t have time to wrap presents until Christmas Eve, and it is a day of bending, twisting, cutting, taping, until my body aches.

In other words, work. Work, work, and work. When I talked with Eva, my student who lives in Australia, this week, I asked her to walk down her street to the ocean-front beach and enjoy a beach Christmas for me. Christmas is a summer holiday for her. Barbecues on the beach. Warm weather.

We had 70 mile per hour winds last night. One of our lit outdoor spiral Christmas trees is gone.

But, oh, last Christmas. Christmas 2020, the pandemic Christmas. Because we were doing it all on Zoom, we didn’t make a trip to the storage unit. We didn’t put the tree up. I dropped wrapped presents off at different houses, and I mailed them to my daughter in Louisiana.

I felt sad. I didn’t miss the work, but…I did. I missed my family.

At the last minute, I bought a small countertop Christmas tree and shipped it to myself. It came complete with ornaments and lights and garland, and Livvy and I decorated it. I found a small wooden ornament of the nativity scene and I shipped that to myself too, and it sat beneath the tree, as nativity scenes have been under Christmas trees since I was a child. Presents for Michael, Olivia and me nearly buried the little tree. But in my home, there weren’t any presents for Christopher, Amber, Andy, Katie, Nick…and Grandbaby Maya Mae. They were waiting at their homes, and I would watch them open these gifts on a computer screen, while Michael and Olivia watched on their screens. Late, late, late that Christmas Eve, while Michael and Olivia slept, I went downstairs, turned on the tree to see the glow behind the presents, sat in my chair, and wept.

This year, the pandemic still rages on. But we’re vaccinated. And we’re getting together. Last weekend, Michael, Olivia, Andy and I went out to the storage unit and loaded up the Christmas stuff. There is a beautiful tree in my living room. Michael and I watched as Olivia and Andy decorated it. Andy took special care to find the ornaments that featured photos of my kids. As brand new babies. Toddlers. Children.

Christopher. Andy. Katie. Olivia.

My daughter Katie and her husband Nick will not be here. They live in Louisiana, and the pandemic still feels too threatening to them to travel. I haven’t seen my daughter in three years. Even with the others around me, the ache I feel is often unbearable.

The big tree is up. The stockings are hung. The presents are all locked in my convertible, waiting to be wrapped on Christmas Eve. The little wooden ornament nativity scene is at the foot of the little tree. The nativity scene I picked out and purchased in 2019 when I was trying desperately to make myself feel something, anything, positive about Christmas is under the big tree.

The other night, when I couldn’t sleep, I crept downstairs, like last year’s Christmas Eve. I turned on the lights on both trees. Standing in front of the big one, I let my eyes rove from ornament to ornament.

New babies. Toddlers. Children.

Christopher. Andy. Katie. Olivia.

Carefully, I unhooked the ornament that shows Katie on her very first Christmas. Snoopy holds an oval that encases her baby face, capped with a white bonnet. I held it clasped tightly in my hand, the way I used to clasp her little hand, sat in my chair, and admired my two trees, the only lights in this brand new morning.

Yes, I wept.

But the tree is up. The ornaments are here. And on Christmas day, my home will be filled with laughter and exclamations, my son Andy will hold the garbage bag and my son Christopher will throw crumpled-up wrapping paper and miss the target every time. Olivia will play the elf and wear the jester hat that works as an elf hat. Grandbaby Maya Mae will rip with abandon.

I’ll miss the one that’s not here, again. But Christmas will not be on a screen this year. It will be at home.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.