Author: Kathie

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

A couple weeks ago, when I was being interviewed on Karen Osborne’s podcast called What Are You Reading? What Are You Writing?, I found myself telling the familiar story of my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Fatticci. Karen, after listening to me, said she had goosebumps. I had goosebumps on the day this memory actually happened, and I have them every time I remember that moment.

Thinking back over time, there were three teachers that really meant a lot to me. The first was Mrs. Fatticci in fifth grade. Then came Gary Salt, in the eighth grade. And Duane Stein, in my junior year of high school. All three of them had one thing in common – they encouraged my writing. And really, that encouraged should have a capital E.

I’ve made attempts to find each of them. When my first novel, The Home For Wayward Clocks, came out in 2011, I searched for Duane. I was living again in the town where I graduated from high school, and where I met him. I couldn’t find him on social media, but I found an address from a Google search. Taking a chance, I wrote him a letter and invited him to the book’s launch.

He came. In the chatter and clatter in the bookstore before the launch, I looked into the stacks, and there he was. He had two of my books under his arm. He glanced over at me, our eyes met, and I was suddenly that 16-year old girl again, struggling to maintain eye contact when he told me I had a gift, and I had a responsibility to use it.

He’s remained in my adult life. We have coffee together (at least, pre-COVID), and we work together on the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books.

The other two, Mrs. Fatticci and Mr. Salt, I’ve not had any luck. I’ve searched the internet, I’ve contacted the schools. No one seemed to know where they were.

And then, during that interview, I told the story of Mrs. Fatticci again.

In fifth grade, I was living in way northern Minnesota, in Esko, a teeny community between Duluth and Cloquet. I can sum up the environment and the era in one sentence: The girls were only allowed to wear pants to school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And in this girls-in-dresses-and-fuzzy-tights community, a new teacher showed up. She had the exotic name of Fatticci. Her hair was swept up, she wore miniskirts and heels, and she had a smile that just wouldn’t quit. She taught English, and she announced that on Thursdays, we were going to have Creative Writing.

I chose a blue notebook just for that special day of the week. I wrote CREATIVE WRITING in block letters on it. On the first day, I walked with my friends from our homeroom to Mrs. Fatticci’s classroom.

She put a record on the record player. It was a song called “Oh, Shenendoah”. She said to just listen to the song and write our impressions. I swayed to the music as I filled my notebook with three solid pages of writing. When the song was done, she asked each of us to go one by one to the front of the room and read what we’d written. The other kids wrote things like, “There’s a boat. There’s a river. Somebody wants to see somebody.”

I got up and read my three pages. A full story. Characters, dialogue, setting, conflict, resolution.

When I was done, the classroom was silent, and boy, did that make me nervous. But from the back of the room, Mrs. Fatticci said in a hushed voice I can still hear today, “Oh my God, Kathie. You’re a writer.”

Bam.

I was eleven years old. I read avidly, anything I could get my hands on. I took my childhood picture books and early chapter books that were illustrated, copied the pictures using carbon paper, and rewrote the stories the way I felt they should be written. I drew pictures and wrote stories about them. But I hadn’t yet made the connection that I was doing what those authors in my beloved books were doing.

Oh my God, Kathie. You’re a writer.

Know how it feels when you go shopping for something, a new jacket, a new sweater, a new dress, and as you pull a certain piece over your head and it settles on your shoulders, you know before looking in the mirror that you’ve found the one? The one that most represents you, who you are, that fits with your definition of self, even if you don’t quite know yet what that definition is?

That’s how that felt.

I sat down two nights later and wrote my first “book”. It was about a deer that runs in fear onto a pier and then jumps into a canoe, knocking it loose, and off the deer sails down a river. I drew the cover, included an “About The Author” on the back, with a hand-drawn self-portrait, and shyly showed it to Mrs. Fatticci. She pulled me from my homeroom to hand it back to me. And when she did, she said, “Go, Kathie, go!”

I did.

After doing that podcast a few weeks ago, I cast about for Mrs. Fatticci again. Because I didn’t know her first name, I never looked on Facebook. This time, I did, just searching under the last name. I found several Fatticcis, but there was one in particular, who lived in Hibbing, Minnesota. Hibbing is even further north, by about 75 miles, but…it was Minnesota. This person was a man, but I took a chance and sent him a message via Facebook Messenger. I explained who I was, who my teacher was, and asked if he happened to be related to her.

Less than 24 hours later, he answered me: “That’s my mom!”

I found her. She’s 75 years old, and still working in a daycare center with toddlers.

It took me a minute to acclimate our ages. She’s only 14 years older than I am. But when I was 11, that would make her 25, which is exactly right.

Less than an hour later, her son called me. “She remembers you!” he said.

I found her. I found her. I found her.

“I want to say thank you,” I said.

Mrs. Fatticci is going to call me. We’re going to talk. And I’m going to say thank you for handing me my future when I stood in front of a classroom and read a story.

I found her. I am so happy.

Now where the heck is Gary Salt?

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

It seems funny that a week after writing the last Moment, one about Olivia, we run into a situation where Olivia had to deal with a jerk.

I’ve written often of Olivia’s love of the violin, her talent, her amazing connection with music. Olivia began playing in the fourth grade, a year before orchestra would be offered in the schools. She came home from school one day, after watching an orchestra play in the gym for an assembly, and declared she wanted to play the violin.  “I love it, Mama!” she said, her hands folded fervently in front of her heart. “I love it!”

The following weekend, I was participating in a poetry reading and Olivia came along. Before the reading, a string quartet played. Olivia sat on the edge of her seat through their entire performance. The eyes she lifted to me were enamored.

And so Santa brought a violin for Christmas and Olivia started in on private lessons. At just a few weeks shy of 21 years old, she is still with the same instructor, whom we adore. Olivia’s gone through three violins (the first accidentally fell down the stairs when she didn’t have the latches done quite right on the case), and has added acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and ukulele to her repertoire. She played in middle and high school orchestras, participated in the state competitions and came home with gold medals, and was asked to audition for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s youth orchestra. She politely declined, as she was worried that the time spent rehearsing would affect her academics.

When it came time for college, Olivia applied to four and got in to all of them. All came with attractive financial offers. When we visited these schools, we asked each one if they had a music program. While Olivia plans to become an art therapist, she still wanted to be involved with music too. All of the schools said yes. She chose Mount Mary University, the place I wrote about last week with the labyrinth.

And then we were disappointed to find out that their music “program” contained classes in beginning guitar and beginning piano and chorus. That’s it. No strings whatsoever. Olivia sighed and continued with her private lessons.

She told me once in her freshman year that a girl down the hall from her dorm room said that whenever Olivia practiced, this girl danced around her own room with her guinea pig. I think that’s just as amazing as being invited to audition for MSO’s youth orchestra.

So now in her junior year, Olivia felt comfortable enough with her time management to start looking around for an orchestra to participate in. She missed playing in a group. One of my students who also plays violin told me about her community orchestra, which was near the university. I reached out to the director, told him about Olivia, received an enthusiastic response, and then turned over communication to Olivia.

This director invited her to audition at the next rehearsal. Olivia chose her audition piece, practiced it over and over under her private instructor’s guidance, she dressed carefully for her audition, and she showed up.

No one was there.

Olivia called the director, who said he must have forgotten to tell her the rehearsal was canceled and rescheduled.

Strike one.

Olivia asked about rescheduling her audition. He told her to come to where he works, at a church, relatively late in the evening. No one else would have been there.

Strike two. I stepped in and said no.

Olivia scheduled the audition for a Friday afternoon, still at the church, but when others were around. At the audition, the director played some notes on the piano and asked Olivia to sing them. Sing. Not play the violin. Olivia sang and the director told her she was tone deaf. She’s not. Then she played and he told her her tonality was off and her rhythm was off. It wasn’t. He told her to come back in a few semesters. “Mom,” Olivia said. “He didn’t say one positive thing.”

Strike three. And she won’t be back in a few semesters.

Olivia was crushed. “I guess I’m not as good as I thought I was,” she said, all the positive words she’s ever heard, all the praise, all the honest and helpful critique, all her lessons, everything, going right out the window.

Mama Bear here had to pretty much sit on her hands. Nothing I could do would likely change this guy’s mind, his heart, or his attitude.

But I put my head together with Olivia’s private instructor, who was just as horrified and angry as I was. With some research, we found the Wisconsin Intergenerational Orchestra. I cautiously emailed the director. What I received back was phenomenal enthusiasm and a “Send her! Send her! Send her!”

This last Tuesday, Olivia walked in to her first rehearsal. It was her first time in a group setting since she graduated from high school two years ago. She spoke quietly to the director, who welcomed her. And by the time she left, Olivia was sitting second chair in the first violin section.

While she was there, I was teaching a class, but I was watching the clock. I knew when Olivia arrived, when she sat down, when she played. And then I ran upstairs and got to my computer just as she got back to her dorm room. “How was it?” I asked. “How did you do?”

“Mama,” Olivia said. “I loved it.”

Bam. Home run. Her doubts disappeared and it was the jerk who flew out the window, to fall a bajillion stories down, out of my daughter’s life forever.

Oh, what he missed.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

If you’d like to see information on the Wisconsin Intergenerational Orchestra: https://www.wiorchestra.org/

 

 

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

It’s amazing to me how things sometimes fall into place in such a way that it’s hard not to believe in kismet. Sometimes I think coincidence is so much more than coincidence. I think someone somewhere is maybe snapping his or her fingers and saying, “Look! Pay attention!” A whole story unfolded this weekend, but it was a story that presented its pieces to me over many years. Almost 21, in fact.

Oh, Olivia.

I will never forget my response to the doctor on the day I sat in his office and he told me that Olivia was autistic. Now please bear in mind that we all love this doctor. He’s been Olivia’s pediatrician since day 1. And he is probably Olivia’s #1 fan. On that day, he had to deliver the news from a specialist who tested and appraised and analyzed Olivia. Dr. Joe delivered the A-word, and then said, “This might mean that she will never speak. That she’ll look at you like you’re no more than a bump on a log.”

Olivia was three, and she hadn’t said much, that was for sure. But that day in the office, she played on the floor, and as Dr. Joe told me these things, she tapped my shoe. When I looked down, she looked me right in the eye, a very un-autistic thing to do, and she beamed. I, in turn, looked back at Dr. Joe and said one word.

“No.”

I wasn’t denying the autism. But I was denying what its effect would be on my daughter.

Dr. Joe looked at the two of us, beamed at me as brightly as Olivia did, and said, “She’s in there, Kathie.”

And that was the truth.

After her diagnosis, I was sent a big packet of forms to fill out by an organization, I don’t even remember who, and these forms were supposed to lead us the right way down an incredible number of possible therapies. It took me days to fill out those forms. Then I brought the big fat envelope to the post office and mailed it. Weeks later, I hadn’t heard a thing, and so I called the place the forms came from. “I’m sorry,” the person on the phone said. “We never received them. You’ll have to fill them out again.” And I said that word again.

“No.”

We didn’t search out therapies. In school, Olivia received speech therapy and some occupational therapy as needed. That was it. We looked at Olivia, we learned Olivia, and through her, we found the right paths.

When she started kindergarten, which she did with a queenly wave and a “You can go now,” to both me and Michael, I went down the hall after school to tell her preschool teacher how well she did on her first day. I told the teacher, “We expect Olivia to live a full life. We expect her to go to college and become whatever she wants to become.”

The teacher hugged me and said in the most patronizing tone, “We can always dream.”

Guess what word came out of my mouth again.

“No.”

We didn’t dream. Well, we did, but we also knew.

So you could call that the prologue to the story.

Then, on September 12, 2010, about a month before Olivia would turn ten years old, the three of us went to the Starving Artist Show at Mount Mary University. Olivia ran ahead of us through most of the show, and she exclaimed over all the different types of art on display. “I want to do that, Mama!” she crowed. “And that too!”

People smiled at her. Her exuberance and joy was contagious. She beamed back. She didn’t see bumps on a log.

I’d been told that there was a labyrinth on campus, and so once we finished with the art show, we went in search of it. When we found it, I was delighted. It was simple and well-maintained. I walked it, but Olivia danced through it. One photo I took of her shows a shower of sunbeams falling all around her. As she approached the meditation bench, she flung her arms skyward into the sunbeams and she shouted, “I’m going to go to college here, Mama! I’m going to go to college!”

See, she dreamed too. And she also knew. She was no longer “in there”. She was everywhere. She talked with a vocabulary of a college student. There was no silence. There weren’t any bumps on a log. She saw everything in life as vibrant. She was vibrant. She still is.

Years passed. She developed interests in music, art, and writing. She decided to become an art therapist and she was accepted, with fine financial offers, at all four colleges where she applied.

In August of 2019, she moved into a dorm room at Mount Mary University.

“I’m going to go to college here, Mama!”

She has been a Dean’s List student every semester but her first.

Last weekend, on September 12, 2021, exactly 11 years since we attended our first Starving Artists Show at Mount Mary University, we attended it again. Olivia didn’t run ahead of us this time, but she still looked and examined all the art with an avid interest. And she still said, “I want to do that, Mama.”

And she will. We dream it. We know it.

We stopped at the labyrinth on the way out, before Olivia returned to her dorm room and we returned home. I wanted to take a photo of her there. She rolled her eyes, but she sat for the photo.

A story told over years. “We can always dream,” said to the declaration of a college expectation. “I’m going to go to college here, Mama!” shouted during an exuberant dance in a labyrinth. And eleven years later, a Dean’s List student, supported by scholarships and grants for her academic and intellectual achievements, at that exact same college.

And there’s so much more to come.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

(And by the way, my poetry chapbook, Olivia In Five, Seven, Five; Autism In Haiku will be released on 8/22/22 by Finishing Line Press. The book has a series of 31 poems about Olivia, and concludes with a poem by Olivia. There is even a “blurb” by Dr. Joe! More details as we get closer!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They have all been companions of the highest order.

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

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

“Hi!” I called. “Hi, Ursy! Hi!”

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

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

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

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

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

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

I look at my granddaughter and I worry.

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

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

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

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

Silence, please, silence. The noise is exhausting.

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

I froze. Was that…?

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

An owl.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope he’s still there tonight.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My daughter missed me.

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

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

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

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

She said, “I know, Mama.”

My heart was so full.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now, that’s where they are.

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

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

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

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

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

And yes, that helps. Despite Anyway.

 

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

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

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

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

It was crazy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I knew how she felt.

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

She looks happy. I’m happy too.

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

I’m not a plant-killer.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

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

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

The pandemic.

The election.

The insurrection.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then she died, before her birthday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I listened. I heard.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

The embroidery art Carla made of my book cover.

 

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

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

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

Happy birthday to me! See you all next week.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.