Author: Kathie

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

So they say when you get married, you not only marry your chosen person, but you marry the entire family. I found out, years and years ago, then when you divorce your chosen person, the entire family divorces you, whether you want them to or not. It’s a hard fact of divorce, and one that hardly anyone ever talks about. I was reminded of it this week. And yes, it does lead to a moment of happiness, or at least, a moment of peace.

I met my first husband when I was sixteen years old. He was the first boy to tell me my eyes were beautiful. I’ve always been sensitive about my eyes – I was born with strabismus, a condition where the muscles of the eye don’t work quite right, and as a result, my eyes were crossed. I likely saw double for the first sixteen months of my life, and then between 16 months of age and 15 years, I had five eye surgeries. When I was sixteen, the surgeries were behind me, and it was clear my eyes would never be perfectly straight. I was playing in the band at a new high school, and at the first football game of the season, I was in the stands, waiting for the halftime show. This boy sat next to me and said, “I know you’re new here. You have the most beautiful eyes.”

I married him five years later.

We stayed married for 17 years, and produced three amazing children. Then for reasons I won’t disclose here, we divorced. Suffice it to say that I was the one who did the leaving, and it remains the hardest decision of my life.

I’ve been married to Michael for 21 years now, and away from that first marriage for 23. The first Christmas after my divorce, I asked my now ex-husband if I could send Christmas cards to the members of his family, members who I considered my family. He said no, they never wanted to hear from me again.

So I remained silent.

I saw them years later at my oldest son’s wedding. One sister-in-law spoke briefly to me. No one else did.

Then, a couple weeks ago, my daughter told me that my ex-mother-in-law was in the hospital with COVID. And then a couple days later, she died.

I will admit that my first thought was of my ex-husband. Is he okay? Can I help? Eventually, I sent a card. It felt like the only thing I was allowed to do.

But I thought of my mother-in-law. And whenever I think of her, one huge memory always comes through.

When we were first married, I would drive to my in-law’s house after work to pick up my husband, who car-pooled with his father. One day, on the way to their house, I was following behind a motorcycle. From the side of the road, a small cat came out of the field and began to cross. I watched, horrified, as the motorcyclist veered out of his way to hit the cat.

I can still remember to this day that little cat, flat out in the middle of the road, his head up, looking after the motorcyclist, as if wondering what happened and why did he do it.

I pulled over and parked, then stood over the cat to make sure no other vehicles hit him further. Eventually, he stood up and walked wobbling to the other side of the road. I held my hands on either side, so he could bump off of me and not fall back down. Then he disappeared into the cornfield.

I feel as if I was stone-faced when I got back into my car. I drove to my in-laws’ house. When I walked in, my mother-in-law looked up at me, did a doubletake, and she said, “What’s wrong, Kathie?”

I burst into tears and told the story. Before I was halfway through, my mother-in-law encircled me with her arms and held me so close, rocking me back and forth, and saying, “Oh, how awful. Oh, how awful.” Eventually, she sat me down at the kitchen table, brought me a cup of coffee and a cookie, and she hugged me again.

“Some people are just bad people, Kathie,” she said. “But you’re a good person.”

I’ve never forgotten it.

Because of COVID, my ex-mother-in-law died alone.

There was a memorial service for her this week, at her church. It was for family only, for the family I used to be a part of. If not for COVID, it would have been a typical funeral, and I would have slipped in and sat in the final row, so I could pay my respects and say goodbye. But I couldn’t. This was COVID era, and I was no longer family.

So I watched it on the video link.

When it was over, I headed out to Starbucks and then I had to go pick up a last-minute gift I’d ordered for my granddaughter. As I drove down the street, I suddenly had to grind to an almost-halt behind a very slow-moving vehicle. I saw that there were several, all moving really slowly. I thought maybe there was an accident ahead. And then I noticed the telltale flags on the antennas. And the flashing hazard lights.

“No,” I said out loud.

The cars turned at an intersection. I saw one son’s car, a bright red Kia Soul, and then my other son’s car, a little white Smartcar. I was at the end, the final car of my mother-in-law’s funeral procession.

I didn’t follow. But I watched them go up and over a hill. And then I said out loud, “Goodbye, Mom. Thank you so much.”

I felt at peace.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

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

Eons and eons and eons ago, it was discovered that I had a brain blip. I was in the third grade and we were studying zoo animals. For one assignment, we had to choose a water fowl to talk about. I drew a pudgy black and white bird with webbed feet and wrote a few lines about him. I called this literary masterpiece: “The Pelican”.

My teacher, Mrs. Campbell, studied it. “Kathie,” she said, “this is a penguin.”

“Yep,” I said. “A pelican.”

“Penguin.”

“Pelican.”

She wrote the word penguin on the blackboard. “What does this say?” she asked.

I looked at it, took a breath, and said, “Pelican.”

She frowned. Then she wrote the word pelican on the board. “What does this say?” she asked.

I repeated my process. “Pelican,” I said.

She used a pointer to go back and forth between them and asked me to say what each spelled.

“Pelican. Pelican. Pelican. Pelican.”

Finally, she pointed at one of the words. “Kathie. Take a deep breath. Say peng.”

“Peng,” I said.

“Guin,” she said.

“Guin,” I echoed.

“Penguin.”

“Penguin,” I agreed.

“So what does this say?” She pointed to the first word.

“Pelican.”

And thus the pelican penguin bizarre brain-fartiness was born. I didn’t do it with any other word, then or now.

Fast forward years to when I was a young mom, at the zoo with my three kids. I think they were around eight, six, and five years old. One of the first things you see at our zoo after the entrance is the peli – I mean penguin exhibit. “Look!” I said. “There are the pelicans!”

Three pairs of wide eyes looked at me. “Mom,” the oldest, Christopher, said. “Those are penguins.”

“Right,” I said. “Pelicans!”

So if you’re a parent, you know you spend years trying to do right by your children. It’s not always easy, but you strive. You love them beyond anything or anyone else in this great universe. And yet make one mistake…and that’s what they remember.

Ever since that day, I have three children who call penguins pelicans. On purpose. They wrap their Christmas presents in peli—penguin paper. I believe that both of my boys at one point had stuffed peli—penguins on their televisions, because of the classic Monty Python skit, “There’s A Peli—Penguin On The Telly!”, a skit which never failed to put me into helpless giggles. One son, I believe, still has that stuffed bird by his television, though he’s soon to be 35.

At the zoo that day, my now ex-husband said to me, “Kathie. Penguins.”

“Pelicans,” I agreed.

Honestly, I don’t think that’s why we’re divorced.

I also don’t think the kids even remember anymore where this came from. Except that we have this peli—penguin thing going on in our family. And they know I say pelican all the time, with these lovely black and white waddling waterfowl. P-E-N-G-U-I-N spells pelican.

So last summer, deep in the pandemic, I was perusing through Facebook when I saw that a friend, a poet, was moving to Pennsylvania. He was selling some things, and there were six plastic peli—penguins for purchase. They were Christmas decorations. Some held candy canes.

So yes. A poet, moving to Pennsylvania during the pandemic, was selling plastic peli—penguins.

I bought them, strapped them into the back seat of my convertible, and laughed all the way home. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I was going to do something.

And then an idea hit. A trip to Etsy, and I found what I needed. A stencil. Of a pelican. Really. Not a peli—penguin.

The peli—penguins all got a nice soapy bath. I painted some rough spots. And then each peli—penguin got a tattoo of a pelican – a real pelican – on its white tummy. Beneath that, Michael helped me out with his beautiful penmanship and wrote out the names of the family, including in-laws and my much-adored Grandbaby Maya Mae, who knew nothing about Grandma Kaffee’s speech impediment.

Then I thought I had it all planned out, this pandemic paradoxical ploy of mine. I packed one plastic peli—penguin up and shipped him to Louisiana to my daughter and her husband. It was to arrive last Friday. So that day, I planned that I would show up at my boys’ houses when they were at work and leave behind the peli—penguins on their doorstep.

Oh, and one would appear outside Olivia’s door too. And one by my fireplace, for me and Michael.

Friday morning came. It was pouring. My pandemic paradoxical peli—penguin ploy was pulverized. I couldn’t leave them outside. The rain might wash away the tattoos. So one showed up on time in bright and warm Louisiana. One showed up outside Olivia’s room. One at my fireplace. But three more waited piteously in the back seat of my car.

Saturday. It snowed.

I let both boys in on the ploy. One, he of the peli—penguin still on his telly, came by to pick his up. He got it home and promptly sent me a photo with the peli—penguin checking out Virtual Reality.

When it stopped snowing, I snuck over to the other boy’s house and left one peli—penguin for him and his wife, and one, holding a candy cane, for Grandbaby Maya Mae. I hid in my car in the dark and watched as they came home and Maya walked up to the creatures. She stared. Then she picked one up and brought it inside. The one with the candy cane.

When I talked to her via Zoom later, I told her most of the peli—penguin story. I asked her if she liked her peli—penguin. “Grandma Kaffee,” she said, with her arm draped around a pelican’s shoulders. I mean, penguin. I mean, pelican. “I love him. I’m going to keep him in my room.”

When I asked her what she thought it was, she studied him for a moment. Then she said, “It’s a penguin with a pelican on its belly.”

Exactly. A pelican with a pelican on its belly.

Preposterous.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

My granddaughter, Grandbaby Maya Mae, lives exactly 1.2 miles away from me. This is a distance easily walked. During the course of a typical week, back before March 2020 when things were still typical, I drove by her home several times a week, and even if she wasn’t there, I waved at the house and called, “Hi, Maya!” She attended my book launches, always sitting quietly and politely, even when she was only a toddler.

Grandbaby Maya Mae has appeared in several of my Moments. One of my favorites is from when I was doing the Moment every day, in 2017. On October 10^th of that year, I wrote about this moment with Maya, when I told her she was making a fashion statement.

“I admired Maya Mae’s leopard-print dress draped gracefully over hot pink leggings, the leggings ending over beaded flip-flops. “You look beautiful, Maya Mae,” I said. “You make a fashion statement.”

She looked up at me, eyes wide. “Whaaaaaaaaaaat?”

Oboy. “A fashion statement. It means that you choose to wear what makes you feel beautiful. You wear stuff that you like and that makes you happy. You wear what makes you Maya Mae.”

She thumped her chest. “I am ME!”

Indeed.”

Maya is 7-soon-to-be-8 now. And she grows ME-ier every year, if not every day.

And right now, because of COVID, I don’t see Maya in person, despite the fact that she is only 1.2 miles away. Easily walked. I’m not out driving as much, but when I do, if I pass her house, I still wave and call out, “Hi, Maya!” though there is a significant catch in my voice.

Since March, I can count the times I’ve seen her in person on one hand. With less than one hand. I saw her on Memorial Day, when we had a socially distanced cookout. I saw her this past October, when she came to dinner to celebrate my being put on my high school’s Wall Of Fame. A couple days after that, she was at my home for several hours when we babysat because my son and his wife simply ran out of babysitting options, so I took a risk. And that’s it. She wasn’t here at Thanksgiving. We don’t know yet what Christmas will bring.

However, I do talk to her almost every night, via Zoom. We are reading our way through the Junie B. Jones series. I see her, hear her, and we laugh. She wiggles her loose teeth for me, and pokes her tongue out through the gaps where teeth have already been lost. She displays her artwork. She models her new clothes – she’s still making a fashion statement. She shares her toys with me.

It’s not the same, but it helps.

A few nights ago, I read the next chapter of Junie B. Jones. When I was finished, Maya sat straight up, crossed her arms and declared, “And now, I am going to read to YOU!” She stretched out her arms and two pointer fingers targeted me. I was delighted.

But then she got out a collection of sheets of paper, all stapled together down one side. She held the front up to the camera, where I admired a drawn picture of a cat and a dog with very grumpy faces. “This,” Grandbaby Maya Mae announced, “is a BOOK. And do you see who wrote it? Do you?”

I looked at the bottom of the cover, where there was a name in all capital letters. “M, A, Y, A!” I said. “Maya!”

“MAYA!” she shouted, both hands flung out in the best Ta-dah! ever. “I wrote a book!”

She wrote a book!

“And I’m going to read it to YOU.” She sat back down and I listened as she read the story. A cat and a dog lived together, but never got along. They fought a lot. One night, they went to sleep after barking and meowing at each other all day. In the morning, when they woke up, it was Christmas! They opened presents and then they smiled at each other. They became friends. The End. Throughout, Maya held the book up to the screen so I could see her illustrations, just like I showed her the illustrations in the books I read to her.

“Maya!” I exulted. “You did it! There’s conflict! There’s a resolution! There’s character development!”

“Gramma Kaffee,” she said (the “Gamma” is gone, unfortunately, but the Kaffee is still there), frowning at me. “I WROTE a BOOK.”

She did. With that pure unadulterated, well, let’s make that unadulted joy of just putting one word after another and seeing how they made a meaning and suddenly, there was a story. One of my first stories was “The Deer That Went Boating”. And I didn’t think of conflict, resolution, or character development either. I acted out the story that night in the bathtub, playing with bathtub toys. When I got out, I quickly dressed in my pajamas while whispering my soap-bubbled words so I wouldn’t forget them, sat down at my desk, and wrote the story. Then I tamped the pages all together and stapled them down the side. A book.

Just like Maya Mae. And Maya Mae, just like me.

1.2 miles. And hours, days, months of pandemic. But that face beamed at me from the screen and mine beamed back at her. I remembered the face that beamed back at me when I looked in a mirror that night after my bath, when I held my book and thought about showing my teacher the next day.

“Mrs. Faticci,” I said. “I wrote a book.” And she beamed.

“Maya Mae,” I said now. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Maya said. And then she sat down to read her book again.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

With Thanksgiving out of the way, Christmas is now looming. And I say looming, because pre-pandemic, I wasn’t crazy about Christmas, and this year, I’m even less crazy about it. The news is filled with dire warnings, warnings which I take very seriously, and so of course, it’s leading me to wonder if Christmas is going to happen at all. It will certainly not be the usual Christmas. It will likely be a Christmas spent staring at a computer screen at faces I love staring back at me.

Now I live in a 3-story condo, which does not have a basement. It also has only a one car garage. So storage is at a premium. Consequently, we rent a storage space off-site, and that is where all of our Christmas stuff resides. One of the reasons I’m not crazy about Christmas is that it just adds more to-do’s on my already overflowing to-do list. I have to:

• Drive to the storage facility.
• Probably forget the key to the padlock, have to drive back home, then return to the storage facility, where I will struggle with remembering the passcode on the keypad outside the locked gate. And where the gate will likely malfunction.
• Figure out which boxes marked Christmas are filled with the Christmas decorations we actually use – there are years represented here, and also several life situations. Michael’s life before us, our life before Michael, and all of us together. So we don’t use it all. But we don’t get rid of it either.
• Load the car.
• Reload the car with better organization so that it all actually fits.
• Drive home.
• Carry all of the stuff up to the second floor, which is where our living room is. Endure swearing and groaning and the required tripping over two cats and a dog.
• Move the piano so that there is room for the tree. Not easy.
• Designate the setting up of the tree and the decorating of it to Michael and Olivia because I have to get to work in my office upstairs.
• Listen to increasing decibels as Michael’s grumpiness grows and wait for the final, “I’m done! This is all yours now!” and the flump as he throws himself muttering into his recliner.
• Wait for Olivia to call me downstairs to admire the tree.
• Spend the rest of the season yelling at the cats to get out of the tree and picking up cat barf from their chewing on it and sweeping up broken ornaments that they knock down.
• Spend the rest of the season reassuring the scared-of-everything dog that the tree is not a monster and nothing she needs to be terrified of. Up her dose of CBD. Think about plying her with Fireball. Instead, ply myself.
• Christmas is over, do all of this in reverse, swear never to do it again.

Doesn’t that sound like fun? Oh, sing we joyous all together! But I have to admit, on Christmas morning, the tree sparkling, the kids under my roof, the granddaughter piping away in excitement, the aroma of cinnamon rolls throughout, well, for that moment, it’s all worth it.

But this year…well, it’s different, isn’t it. We don’t know right now if there will be an in-person family get-together at Christmas or if I will be delivering presents to doorsteps and then we will watch each other open those presents on Zoom.

So frankly, I have absolutely no desire to go through steps 1 – 14 above. The three of us talked about it, and none of us were enthusiastic.

One night late last week, I sat in my recliner after everyone else went to bed. It was around two in the morning and it was dark outside. Inside, I had the fireplace on and the reading light over my chair and I sat in my circle of heat and glow, enjoying a very good book. I looked at the corner of the living room, where the tree would normally go. Where it should be, by now.

But I still didn’t want it. Just the thought of it made me moan with overload. But clearly, something was missing. As a nod to holiday glee, Michael brought home a small rubber ducky wearing a Santa hat and it sat on our piano, but it seemed more pathetic than gleeful.

Something was missing. Well, a lot would be missing this Christmas, but in that room, something was missing.

So I went upstairs to my computer and got on Amazon. I ordered a teeny tiny tree that came with lights, sparkly ornaments, pine cones, a star, and a piece of bright silver fabric to wrap around the base. It arrived just in time for Olivia to come home for Thanksgiving break, which will blend into Christmas break. Her college is going remote for the last few weeks of this semester, so she’s home through January, when the school will decide if face to face classes will resume or if it will stay remote. More uncertainty. I handed her the little tree to decorate. And she did a lovely job.

A few nights ago, I was alone in my recliner again, everyone asleep. The only one with me was a little gray cat who purred  on my lap. The fireplace was on. My reading light was on. A very good book was balanced on the cat’s back. And I looked toward the island which separates our living room from our kitchen.

The tree, tidy and small, glowed softly in the dark. It threw out little glimmers of red, blue, green, and yellow. The ornaments, sprinkled with glitter, reflected and sparkled. The star at the top glistened. At the base of the tree, I’d set a Christmas card a student sent me. It was hand-painted with watercolors, and inside, her message was written in calligraphy. I knew this was this student’s first attempt at both painting and calligraphy. It was beautiful. It was hopeful, a reaching out to the future with new abilities and talents and dreams achieved.

That little glow soothed me. It was enough, for this Christmas.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Well, this is a very different Thanksgiving, isn’t it. I know that my house is very quiet today, without the sounds of four kids, two in-laws, and one granddaughter. There are still the two of us and our Olivia. But everyone else is practicing smart COVID distancing. It’s sad, but at the same time, I feel cared for. And I care for them too.

Every Tuesday, on the AllWriters’ Facebook page, I post a writing prompt for, well, all writers. This week, I posted, “Write a list poem, please, of all the GOOD things that happened this year. Try.” A few hours later, a student posted, “You, for one.” Not a poem, Mary Ann, but it made me happy anyway. On Monday, I was interviewed by another student for her vlog on gratitude on YouTube. I’ve never been interviewed for such a thing before, and when she said she wanted to talk to me about my gratitude practice, I was really kind of floored. I don’t think of writing these Moments as a gratitude practice, but I suppose they really are. Noticing these sometimes small, sometimes big things that bring me joy does make me feel grateful, though I don’t know that I was conscious of that before. The interview was a very fun one to do, and you can see it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn3rrTm5v4o&fbclid=IwAR0JUDK9UgQo2gW1hUX1pbOcL3xs7n-QJ2xScMn8B3CH39WftI3jPR1sVwA

So I decided I would use this space to list what I am grateful for, in a sense writing my own prompt (though it won’t be a poem either!) and acknowledging my own practice. I think it’s pretty amazing that there can be gratitude in this awful year. In the interview, I said that one of the things I’ve learned is that happiness doesn’t just happen. You have to look for it. That’s especially true in 2020.

So here we go. The things I’m grateful for:

MY KIDS

Shortly after COVID started, my three oldest kids, all living outside of my home, set up a Facebook chat so that I can be in touch with them at a moment’s notice. I speak to them every day. I always thought that the easiest time of parenting would be when my kids were adults, but I’ve not found that to be true. I can no longer gather them together under my wings when there is trouble. Even Olivia, while still in college and not completely independent yet, is out of my reach for much of the time. But being able to talk to the kids every day, make sure they’re feeling okay, has helped a lot. And I have to think that they like to touch base with me too.

NINTENDO SWITCH’S ANIMAL CROSSING NEW HORIZONS

By extension from my family, yes, I am grateful for a video game. My son Andy has a close friend named Rayne, and I’ve considered her a part of my family since she and Andy were in high school. She lives in Portland, Oregon now. Soon after COVID started, when it was pretty obvious I was getting stressed out, she told me she was playing Animal Crossing and it was helping a lot. I played the GameCube version of this years ago and absolutely loved it. Rayne said the new game was very similar to the old one. I didn’t want to spend money on a game system right now, as I own and run a small business and, of course, COVID makes that business’ future uncertain. But my son Andy stepped up and bought me a system and the game and it’s been a lifesaver. I escape for hours onto my own island, building and decorating my house, talking with friendly animal neighbors, growing pumpkins, creating a coffee shop and an exercise center and a symphony and all sorts of places. Now, being a writer, you might think I can escape to other worlds pretty often. But the thing is, when you write fiction, it has to have a conflict, so no story or novel is completely peaceful. My Animal Crossing island, which I named Dreamhome, is peaceful.

MY WONDERFUL CLIENTS AND STUDENTS

AllWriters’ provides me with my extended family. Thanks to the miracle of the internet, I was able to completely move my business online. The majority of it was online already, but we had at least one workshop going every day, including Saturday, in the on-site classroom. It’s been dark since March, but my computer screen has been brightly lit. Seeing my students succeed is one of my biggest joys in life, and please bear in mind that success does not necessarily mean publication. For some of my students, success is their actually giving some time and thought to their own dreams. Putting a word down is a success. Writing a story, a poem, an essay, is a success. So is writing a book. And so is publishing. But the biggest success of all is acknowledging who you are and what you can do. I love what I do, and I love watching them learn that they love it too, and can actually say that out loud.

MY NEW PUBLISHER

My 12^th book, 6^th novel, is under contract with a new publisher. This publisher blew me away to the point where I had to call the acquisitions editor and ask her to sit down with me and go over the contract paragraph by paragraph because I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. The new book will have a hardcover edition, something I’ve never had before. There will be international distribution. And there was that magical word of all magical words – an advance. There is nothing that says a publisher believes in you more than their offering to pay you before your book is even released. Holy cow. This was massive validation.

I am grateful as well for my previous publishers, of course. They believed in me when no one else did and put me out there. Without them, I wouldn’t be here.

CONTINUED HEALTH

Three years out from breast cancer. Still taking the oral chemo pill every single night, but I only have two years left. Three years out feels good.

TECHNOLOGY

Lordy. Can you imagine going through this without Zoom, Skype, Facetime, and however else people are still getting together? I don’t understand the internet, I can’t see it or touch it, but I am ever so grateful for it.

So. Even in this awful, no-good, horrific year, there are things to be grateful for. While I’m not consciously aware of having a “gratitude practice”, I am aware of being thankful. We look ahead. We move forward.

We go have some pumpkin pie, fresh out of the oven.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

This may come across as an odd one at first. I’ve actually spent a huge amount of time today, trying to come up with another Moment instead of the one that keeps popping up in my head. I’m worried about this Moment coming across as I’m somehow happy that a friend has been diagnosed with breast cancer. I’m not. But the Moment is caught up in this.

So a friend told me on Monday that she’d failed her mammogram and was going for two biopsies on Tuesday. On Tuesday, she emailed me and said, “Radiologists can be wrong, right?” And on Wednesday, we spoke in the morning, while she was waiting for the result, and we spoke again in the evening, when she had the result. Positive. With the exact same breast cancer I had in 2017.

I’m three years out now, though I am still on oral chemotherapy, popping a little yellow pill each day that leaves me feeling achy and sweaty. Fun. I’ve never considered my breast cancer experience positive before. But now…well, this week, it showed me what that experience could do. For others.

When she told me she had to have the biopsies, I was able to tell her exactly what would happen and how it would feel. She walked in to the clinic with real knowledge.

When she emailed me, asking if a radiologist could be wrong, we were able to compare notes. My radiologist normally told women they had a 20% chance it was cancer, and an 80% chance it wasn’t, but with me, he was switching it. He was 80% sure I had cancer. In my friend’s case, her radiologist told her she was “pretty confident” it was cancer. My friend and I talked about this, talked about how we walked out, shattered, of the same cancer center, talked about our hopes…and then talked about reality.

When she called me with the result, she cried, and I knew where the tears were coming from. I told her not to try to stop them. We discussed the blank stares, the shock, the belief that it wasn’t real, that there would be a phone call saying that the wrong result, someone else’s, had been given. Her next step is an MRI, and we talked about that, and I told her things that the medical staff hadn’t told her to expect. How hot she would feel. How her lower back would ache because of the lay-on-your-stomach position, and how the required pose arches your back. The first time I had the MRI, I didn’t know about bolsters. They didn’t tell me about bolsters. But when I said at the second one that my back ached after the first MRI, they immediately pulled one out and eased the strain in my back by supporting my shins. Apparently, the bolsters are a secret.  “Ask for a bolster for your shins,” I said.

We talked about the well-intentioned, but inane things people say. “Oh, you’re so lucky! You have the good kind of cancer!”, because the cancer she has and I had was estrogen-based and more easily treated. But there is no good kind of cancer. “Keep a positive attitude! That helps in the healing!” Actually, stuffing your feelings of sadness, fear and anger makes you suffer more. I told her she would have negative days (like right now) and positive days. Accept them both. “Once you have the surgery, don’t say you have cancer anymore! That puts it out in the Universe and it will come back!” Oh, for god’s sake. I didn’t even have to explain that one. Our eyes rolled and our laughs were incredulous.

And I told her about the one thing that someone said to me that stuck. That resonated. I received the 80% news two days before I was to lead the AllWriters’ Annual Retreat for a four-day weekend. I am pretty sure I walked the halls of the retreat center for those four days with the cliché deer-in-the-headlights expression, that wasn’t a cliché because I never ever ever expected to have to face breast cancer. One of my students, a doctor, would stop me in my tracks whenever he saw me. He put his hands on my shoulders. And he said, “You’re going to be okay. No matter what. You might have a tough time for a while, but you’re going to be okay.” He didn’t tell me I wouldn’t have it, that it would be all right. He didn’t tell me it would be easy. He didn’t tell me to stay positive and to pull tricks on the Universe. He just said, “You’re going to be okay, no matter what,” letting me know that even if it was hard, there would be a time again when all would be well.

And he was right.

So throughout all of our conversations the last few days, I told my friend she would be okay. No matter what.

And I knew that I was giving her the one thing I really wished I had during all of my own experience – someone who would sit and listen and understand and say, “I know,” because the experience was shared. The “I know”, my “I know” comes from compassion, for sure, but it also comes out of knowledge. She can see, in me, someone who knows what she’s feeling, knows what she’s going to go through, and is still sitting, intact, right across from her. With a wonky-looking breast, for sure, but really, intact.

Before we hung up on Skype last night, she said, “Kathie, you are a really, really good friend.”

And for the first time ever, since the radiologist told me I had an 80% chance of having breast cancer, and it turned out he was 100% right, since going through the ultrasounds, biopsies, MRI’s, surgery, 20 rounds of radiation, what has been 3 years of oral chemotherapy, what will be a total of 5 years of oral chemotherapy, since tears and fears and anger and the world not only turning on its ear, but feeling like it became roadkill, for the first time ever, I am grateful that I had breast cancer.

Because I could be there. In the deepest way possible. For her.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Since the pandemic started, I haven’t been able to see much of my only grandchild, Grandbaby Maya Mae. She’s no longer a baby; 7 years old and in the second grade, she would be quick to assure you that she is not a baby at all. But to me, of course, she always will be, just as my kids are too. I can’t help, when I look at them, to see who they are now, but also to remember the little ones they used to be.

I was in the room when Maya was born. I saw her come into this world. It was an event I will never ever forget. When you’re a mother, you’ve had the experience of birthing, but you’ve never witnessed it from the outside. In the case of my kids, I’m pretty sure they were all born when my eyes were squeezed tightly shut and I was shrieking. When Olivia was born, my obstetrician had this obsession with having the mom reach down and catch the baby as it emerged. I clearly remember him yelling, “Reach down! Reach down!” and while I don’t think I said it out loud, I absolutely thought, Are you out of your freaking mind? My body was caught up in getting that child out, and reaching for her with my hands at that moment would have meant I unfisted my fingers from whatever it was I had my death grip on. Olivia was safely caught by my doctor and then placed on me as I collapsed back into the birthing bed. And that was wonder enough.

But Maya…I saw her pop into the world. I saw her daddy, my son, holding on to her and saying over and over, “I’m your daddy! I’m your daddy!” And I held her too, before she was ten minutes old.

Maya lives in the same town I do, so this new isolation because of the pandemic is hard. Soon after the initial shutdown, I set up Zoom calls with Maya, where I read to her every night and she tells me about her day. I’ve seen her in person less than a handful of times since March. I don’t know what we’re going to do for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everything is still up in the air. But thank goodness for Zoom. For letting me see her face and hear her voice.

This week, that little face and voice told me about a diary that she got from her Scholastic order at school. The diary is fuzzy and has cat ears, and Maya is the Cat Queen, just parading through Halloween dressed as the Crazy Cat Lady. This diary, true to diaries throughout the years, comes with a little lock and key, and Maya told me she writes her thoughts down in there, and then she locks them away.

I was delighted, and asked if she still has the journal I gave her last summer, to write stories in. In first grade, Maya began to write stories. I wanted to give her a special place to do so. The journal was purple and had purple feathers on it.

“Yes!” she said, and despite the gift of the journal being over a year before, she knew exactly where it was. She retrieved it, and then we spent a few minutes going over what she wrote way back then. “Wow,” she said. “I wrote sloppy when I was young.”

When she was young.

“I’m going to write another story!” she said, and sank right down on the floor with her pencil to do so.

“That’s excellent!” I said. “Read it to me tomorrow when I call you again.”

There’s something about your child, or your grandchild, connecting with something that you do. My oldest child, Christopher, wrote phenomenal poetry when he was in the first grade. I remember marveling over his instinctual knowledge of when to use repetition, and when to quit. As an adult, he doesn’t write, but he loves music and song lyrics. My middle child, Andy, was writing a novel for a while, and even took part in one of my classes. I will always remember when he came home in third grade, running in the door and shouting, “Mom! Mom! I started a story about a wizard!” And then he slouched for a minute and said, “But I think I spelled wizard wrong.” We spoke over an after-school snack of milk and cookies about how writers don’t worry about such things in first drafts. We worry about that later. He brightened, and he finished that story. My third child, Katie, she of the amazing math mind, also has an amazing mind for haiku. Every now and then, she sends me one, and each and every time, I marvel. And then there’s Olivia, the child of two writers. She writes poetry. She’s working on a novel. She’s had a poem published in a literary magazine already, and two articles in her college’s magazine.

And now, Grandbaby Maya Mae.

When I called her on Zoom the next day, she charged the screen with her purple feather journal. “Grandma Kaffee,” she said, the toddler “Gamma” gone, but the “th” still difficult, so Kaffee remains and I love it, “I’m going to write a chapter book!” And then she sat down and read to me. It’s all about a girl named Maya.

A chapter book.

That “something” about a child connecting with you with what you do…it somehow shows a respect, I think, an acknowledgement of who you are, beyond their mother, or their grandmother.

I treasure them. I treasure their words. Each and every one.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Well. It’s been a week, hasn’t it. I was thinking for a while there that I might have to beg off another week, because the mess that is the US since Tuesday (well, for the last four years, really) just stole the week away. But then I thought, Let’s take a moment here and go over it piece by piece.

On Election Day, I was planning on spending the day hunkered inside. There were threats and predictions of violence and emotions were running high. But then I received a notification from my library that books I put on hold to read to my granddaughter, Maya Mae, were in. Because of COVID, I can’t see Maya much, even though she lives only a couple miles from me. But I’ve been reading to her, via Zoom, almost every evening. We’re working our way through the Junie B. Jones books. Michael, aka Grampa Mike, somehow always manages to be in earshot when I read and so we enjoy the books together. I also had a couple errands I needed to run. So despite the threats and predictions, I ventured out.

It was a beautiful day, stunning temps in the sixties, bright sunshine, blue skies. Weather that just makes the world feel positive. I wore my VOTE t-shirt and my Ruth Bader Ginsberg Dissent Collar earrings. I pulled out in Semi, my convertible, who I thought was tucked in for the winter, but not so! It was November Spring! Top down, music up (Heart And Soul by T’Pau), I buzzed around, picked up the books, ran my errands. Everywhere, everyone smiled. A woman and her kids in the library complimented my purse and we spoke for a while, six feet apart, masks on. In the car, I sang and I basked and genuinely enjoyed myself. I treated myself to lunch and then went home. I opened the windows of the condo so the sun could follow me inside.

As the night went on, it got uglier, of course. I didn’t go to bed until six o’clock Wednesday morning, and by then, my eyes were so bugged out from stress and staring at the numbers and the pink/light blue/pink/light blue/pink/light blue/blue/red of the states that I wasn’t sure if my eyelids would close.

Not a good time. And it’s been a jumpy time since, flying from joy and confidence to despair and distress in a single bound.

But through it all, I’ve been talking to my kids. I have four. Christopher is 36 years old. Andy is 34. Katie is 33. And Olivia is 20. This was Olivia’s first presidential election. And as I talked to my kids and listened to their thoughts and their worries and, well, their lives, really, I realized a few things.

First, I have four kids who never once questioned if they would vote. Of course they would. They consider it their responsibility and their right and their privilege. They know that voting is what makes this country a democracy.

None of my kids voted just willy-nilly. All gave it great thought and consideration, weighed and measured the issues, their own wants and needs, their beliefs and morals. Olivia researched every person running for any office. “I want to get it right, Mama,” she said.

Christopher participated in early in-person voting in October. Andy voted absentee, dropping his ballot off at our city hall. Katie, in a different state that didn’t allow absentee voting, but did allow early in-person voting, did just that. Her state only allowed 3 minutes for voting time, so she made sure she knew what was going to be on the ballot, researched her choices, and went in knowing exactly what she wanted to say. Olivia voted absentee, dropping her ballot off at the city hall, as Michael and I did.

All this adds up to one big moment of happiness. My kids (and I only call them kids because saying “my adults” just sounds wrong) have grown up to be responsible, knowledgeable, active members of our society and the world. They don’t look at voting as a chore or as something that can be blown off. They see it as the chance to raise their voices and speak out for what they believe.

And coming right on their heels…Grandbaby Maya Mae.

I don’t know how this election is going to turn out. I do know how I want it to. And I know that these threats to stop the counting of votes has sickened me, even more than so much of the previous four years has. We have the right to speak our minds through our votes. And our votes deserve to be counted.

All of them. Michael’s. Mine. Christopher’s. Andy’s. Katie’s. Olivia’s, voice lifted and strong in her first chance to select who she wants as president of the United States.

I am proud of my kids. I look at them and I can’t help but feel it’s all going to be okay.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

On Monday, at 1:00 in the morning, I was officially on my first day of my weeklong break. I was comfortably tucked into my recliner, fireplace on, blanket over me, watching several episodes in a row of The Gilmore Girls, when my daughter Olivia sent me a message on Facebook.

“Mama, can I ask you a question?”

One o’clock in the morning questions are usually a red flag. They’re usually something like, “I want to go backpacking this summer in Europe with a guy named Bubba McGee and he’s forty-two and he’s been unemployed for twelve years, it’s a thing with him, and we figured we’d just make money along the way by doing odd jobs and we’ll sleep under the stars and we’re going to leave our cell phones behind to fully appreciate the natural world and that’s okay with you, isn’t it, Mama?” So I immediately paused The Gilmore Girls and answered, “Sure.”

I couldn’t have been more surprised.

“So this week is spirit week for Halloween and it’s kinda like spirit week back in high school. Tomorrow is pink day so you wear something pink. I am assuming it’s for breast cancer awareness. Do you find stuff like people wearing pink annoying? Maybe romanticizing the disease? I don’t know, I am just debating whether or not I should wear pink.”

I am three years out from breast cancer. I still have a daily reminder, in the oral chemotherapy I have to take every night in the form of a little yellow pill. That will continue for at least another two years.

I knew where this question was coming from. I wrote a Today’s Moment about it, on 9/9/17, when I was right smack in the middle of daily radiation treatments and really not feeling well at all. We were in Home Depot, getting a key made, and Olivia found a keychain with a pink ribbon on it.

From that blog:

She asked if I was looking forward to Pinktober, the month of October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness month and many businesses turn their lights and signs pink. She said she would wear pink for me in October. She said she would show me support.

I told her that I wasn’t looking forward to Pinktober. That maybe I would next year, when this is all behind me. But that right now, everywhere I look, there’s cancer.  Turn on the TV, there’s commercials about cancer. Go on the computer, there’s articles about cancer. Go get a key made, there’s a keychain about cancer.

“I’m just so tired of it, Livvy,” I said. “I can’t get out from under it. Radiation every day. Cancer Center every day. Look here, look there, see pink ribbons and cancer. Cancer, cancer everywhere.”

Olivia said that she loves Autism Awareness Month and everything is lit up blue. I told her that this might be because she has such a good handle on her own autism, that she deals with it with grace and intelligence and compassion.

“I might feel better about Pinktober when I get to that point too,” I said. But right now, I’m not there. I wish I was. But I’m not.

And then Olivia said, “Oh, Mama,” and she flung her arms around my neck. This almost-seventeen year old young woman, who typically walks ten feet in front of me in public, who won’t hug me outside of our house and who rolls her eyes if I hug her, well, she threw her arms around me in the middle of Home Depot and hugged the stuffing out of me. She planted a solid kiss on my cheek.

And that was just what I needed.

It was just what I needed. And now we were three years later, and she was asking me about wearing pink. If it bothered me when people wore pink.

So I answered her, “Not so much anymore. When I was in treatment, it was too much of a reminder.”

She said, “So it doesn’t bother you anymore?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, cool,” she said. “Then I am gonna wear pink.”

It’s not the first time I felt grateful to have such a kind daughter. Such a NICE daughter. In this case, someone whose life has been touched by breast cancer and who wants to show support for her mother and for others who deal with this, but only wants to do it if her mother is comfortable with it. She could have been part of a pink-wearing pack and I would never have known. But she wasn’t going to do it without making sure that I felt okay about it.

She’s twenty years old. And she’s amazing. This won’t be the last time I feel grateful.

“I have a pink sweater, so that will work,” she said.

At 1:30 in the morning, I answered, “I have a pink sweater!”

“Oooo,” she said. “Wanna wear it tomorrow?”

“Sure!”

“Cool beans!”

So on Monday, I didn’t see my daughter. But I knew she was wearing pink. She knew I was wearing pink too.

And I felt her hug, just like I felt it that day in Home Depot, all day long.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Generally, I like to choose moments that have a sort of blanket connection – something that pretty much everyone can relate to. But this week – well, I can’t ignore what happened this week. Writers will understand my joy and excitement, but I hope others will too.

I’ve really been a writer for my whole life. Before I could physically write, I told stories. As soon as I could hold a pencil, I was off and running, or, more accurately, writing. I traced the stories out of my picture books and rewrote the stories the way I felt they should be written. When I ordered books from those wonderful Scholastic orders given to kids in elementary school, I often chose the books more for the pictures than the storyline because of the story that erupted in my own head when I saw the sample illustrations. My fifth grade teacher told me I was a writer after the first story I wrote for her, and I agreed, and that was all she wrote (I crack myself up sometimes).

Except it wasn’t all she wrote. I wrote and I wrote and I still do. Everything is a story.

While I published for the first time when I was fifteen (I rewrote the story of Christ in 70’s slang and it was published as a serial in the Catholic Herald Citizen – really!) and I was well-known as a short story writer by the time I was in my early thirties, my first book, a novel, wasn’t published until the year I turned fifty. Since then, I’ve published four more novels, two short story collections, an essay collection, two poetry chapbooks, a full-length poetry collection – and the book I’ll talk about in just a minute. My work has always been traditionally published, meaning that I go through the process of submitting to publishing companies and the publisher chooses me and then creates and markets the book. I’ve never considered self-publishing because – and be prepared for ego here – anyone can self-publish. I’ve never wanted to be just anyone. In the exact opposite of ego, I always wanted someone else to tell me that my work was worthy of publication, that they believed in me enough that they would put their weight behind my words. It was never enough for just me to say, “This is good enough.” I went through four agents and finally sold my first book by myself.

I’ve been with small presses and I love them. Their work is personal, they get to know who you are and I get to know who they are. While there might not be an advance with the contract, while the distribution might be smaller, while there might not be much in the way of promotion, small presses still back you with everything they’ve got. My books are out there because of small presses.

And now there’s the newest book. A novel called All Told. It is very different, very experimental in terms of its format. I was nervous when I turned it in to the publisher who published my last three books. I became more nervous when he didn’t respond as quickly as he did in the past. Worried that he was going to say no, and not receiving any reassurance when I asked for an update, I decided to submit the book elsewhere, as a fallback.

And then there was more quiet.

Honestly, that opposite of ego I talked about up above began to hit me in full force. No one will like this book. You’re done. It’s over. This book was a stupid idea. You should have stayed with something more traditional. Your previous eleven books? All a fluke. Now the truth will come out. You’re a failure.

Man, my inner voice is a naysayer.

And then…and then…

Last week Thursday, a contract from a publisher floated into my email box. By Friday, there were two more. And when I told my previous publisher, the one who hadn’t answered me yet, he told me he’d had a contract made ready for me two weeks before, and he just hadn’t sent it out yet. So suddenly…four possible contracts.

I was floored. And overwhelmed. And out of my head delighted.

I spent the weekend poring over the contracts, comparing, contrasting…and really, there was one that stood out. It was fully traditional, not hybrid (in hybrid, the author pays a portion of the publishing and promotion costs). It offered the opportunity for my book to be in hardcover, softcover, and ebook. I’ve never had a hardcover before! There would be international distribution. And there was that word, that word so rarely seen now – an advance.

An advance means something beyond the monetary. It means the publisher has enough faith in you that they’re going to give you an advance on your royalties – a payment before your book is even published.

And THAT was all she wrote. After talking with the acquisitions editor on Monday, I signed the contract. All Told will be published in late 2021.

There will be champagne this weekend.

But I want to stress that this would never have been possible without:

all of the editors from the literary magazines that have showcased my stories and poems

the publishers who published the first eleven books.

And that fifth grade teacher who told me I was a writer. And all the other teachers.

The year 2020. What a strange time.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.