This Week’s Moment of Happiness Despite the News

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

When I turned eighteen years old in July of 1978, I was in a tough spot. I just graduated from high school and I was accepted into the school of my choice, the University of Wisconsin – Madison. More than anything, I wanted to major in English with a creative writing emphasis; that’s what they called a creative writing major in those days. My high school creative writing teacher wrote to the head of the department, Ron Wallace, with a sample of my writing, and assured him that I did not belong in a basic creative writing workshop. I was put immediately into the Intermediate Writing Workshop, and the next semester, into Advanced.

My parents, however, did not want me to major in creative writing. They said it had to remain a hobby, and that I needed to major in something that would pay the bills when I graduated into the real world. They were paying for my tuition and books, and since they said they would not support me unless I majored in something else, I had no choice.

In desperation, I wrote to the man I considered the Writer of All Writers: Ray Bradbury. I loved him, of course, for Fahrenheit 451 and Dandelion Wine and The Martian Chronicles, like everyone else. But my favorite was Something Wicked This Way Comes, a book I still use in lectures today to show how to do characterization. I told Bradbury that more than anything else in this world, I wanted to write. I wanted to be a writer. I felt I already was.

And he wrote back. Here is what he said:

“Dear Kathleen Thomas: Thanks for your letter. If you want to be a writer of course the answer is: write every day of your life from now on…write, write, write: On top of which, stuff your eyes with stories, novels, plays, essays from every field in the world. Get to it. Good luck! I enclose some research materials that may help you. Best from,

Ray Bradbury

August 31, 1978”

I showed the letter to my parents, but it didn’t move them the way it did me. Today, that letter is framed and hung in my office.

I went off to college and first, I majored in Special Education, with a focus on autism (which feels very ironic now, given my daughter Olivia). I nearly flunked out. First semester sophomore year, I changed my major to social work, and I challenged myself to a semester without any creative writing classes or literature classes.

I nearly flunked out again, and I also nearly died of boredom.

This just wasn’t Me.

So I changed my major again, to English with an emphasis in creative writing. I told my parents after the fact and said that if they didn’t want to support me, I would drop out of school and work until I could return. They continued to pay for my tuition and books, but whenever they were asked in my earshot what I was majoring in in school, they answered, “Oh, she’s getting married.” And after I graduated, whenever they were asked what I was doing, they said, “Oh, she thinks she’s writing the Great American Novel.”

She thinks.

Everywhere I went, Ray Bradbury’s letter went with me. I wrote every day (now, I no longer write on weekends). I stuffed my eyes with words of all kinds, and I still do. I live the life of a writer.

But lately, things have felt a little odd. Most people think of me as a fiction writer, and granted, I do write a lot of fiction. But I also write essays and poetry. Lately, my poetry has been getting a lot of attention, and people are surprised.

I have poems out in several current issues of magazines right now.

I won runner-up in Rosebud Magazine’s poetry contest.

I won first prize in the Wisconsin Writers Association’s Jade Ring Contest.

I’m in these places with writers who have devoted their lives to poetry. Who call themselves poets. I don’t call myself a poet, a fiction writer, a novelist, a short story writer, or an essayist. I just say I’m a writer. Because that’s what I do. But I feel sort of squinchy, being on the same roster as these poets.

And yet…and yet…well, I wrote the poems, didn’t I.

This week and next, I am on retreat in Waldport, Oregon, in my favorite little house by the ocean. I’m working on a new book. I have a novel coming out the end of the year. I have a poetry book coming out in 2022.

I’m living the life of a writer. But…squinchy.

I took a break two afternoons ago and drove into town. There’s a great used bookstore there, called Well-Read Books. I wandered around, made sure my books weren’t there (they weren’t), and glanced through the poetry. Then I looked in the collectibles cabinet.

And there was Ray Bradbury. A signed first edition of The Complete Poems of Ray Bradbury.

Ray Bradbury wrote poetry? The writer of Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine, and The Martian Chronicles?

He does. And fully unapologetically.

I bought the book, of course. During the day, it sits beside my computer. At night, I read it in bed.

Ray Bradbury is a writer. He writes it all.

And so do I.

Thanks, Ray. (And yes, before anyone tells me, I know he’s gone. But his words are as alive as they ever were.)

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Last weekend, Michael, Olivia and I drove into downtown Milwaukee to see the Beyond Vincent exhibit, a full immersion digital exhibit of Vincent Van Gogh’s work. I bought the tickets months ago, when they first opened for pre-sale, after watching the news articles about it and seeing the exhibit pop up on Facebook all over the country. In this event, you walk into the “immersion room” and Van Gogh is everywhere – the ceiling, the floor, the walls, on structures at random places in the room. The exhibit moves, strokes appearing as if Vincent himself is there, showing you how he painted the different paintings, how his mind worked, phase after phase, work after work. The whole thing was in motion, and interspersed throughout were quotes by Vincent from letters to his brother and to others.

I was so excited. I was a little concerned about motion sickness, for both Olivia and me. Olivia can’t read or watch videos in the car, and she can’t look out the window of a train or a plane. I can’t do amusement park rides and I can’t look out the window of a plane, except at night, when I don’t have the impression of the plane dipping. But I figured it was worth the risk.

When we checked in, I asked the man taking our tickets if people were having issues with vertigo or motion sickness. “A few,” he said honestly. “But not many.” When I asked if there was an easy and fast exit just in case, he assured me there was.

And so we went in.

As we moved through the first part of the exhibit, which was mostly lit-up frames describing Van Gogh’s life, peppered with his quotes, I thought about how I had to carefully screen events like this for Olivia when she was little. Autism left her overwhelmed sometimes, too much sensory stimulation coming in, and so with each fun family event (Dora the Explorer LIVE, Blues Clues LIVE, the Care Bears LIVE, this, that, and the other thing LIVE) and school field trips, I had to consider the crowd size, the noise level, the lights and the darkness, where we would be sitting, could we make a fast getaway. I chaperoned on almost all of Olivia’s school field trips. In high school, when Olivia was a sophomore, her orchestra went on a trip to Florida and Disney, of course. We moved toward it cautiously, but the night before, both Olivia and I made the decision to pull out. I wasn’t convinced of her safety and neither was she. She was the victim of “mean girls” at that time, and I could all too easily see her being ditched in the middle of the theme park, where the kids were allowed to roam without adult chaperones.

And now…she is 20, soon to be 21. A college junior, majoring in art therapy and excelling in her studies. And we were about to move into an immersion room where Van Gogh’s bright colors and swirls and paintings that moved on their own, on the canvas, even before they were set to digital, would be all around.

And it caught me, as we were about to step into that room, how I hadn’t even thought about or considered Olivia’s autism before we came to this event. I only thought about motion sickness.

Wow.

When the show began, it was just so surreal. It didn’t matter where you looked, there was Vincent. Swirls and scrolls and light. It struck me, reading his story before we went in, how one biographer said that, despite the public darkness that we see of Vincent’s life, the sadness, the slicing off of his ear, the suicide, his paintings show a different story. They are lit with joy. They are thick with it. In one quote from a letter to his brother, Vincent implored, “…find things beautiful as much as you can, most people find too little beautiful.”

Vincent found the beautiful. Despite. Anyway.

As soon as I read this quote, I thought of Olivia’s current cover photo on Facebook. It says, “The world is ugly. But you’re beautiful to me.”

Olivia finds the beautiful.

At one point, I was turning slowly, watching as the entire room became awash in Vincent’s love of blue, when I saw my daughter. She was standing all alone, her back to me, and Vincent’s blue was all around her.  She was taking it all in, her face upraised, her hands at her sides, her eyes open, her ears open, her body open.

She was in preschool when we nervously took her to Dora the Explorer LIVE. It’s a kid’s show, we thought. How bad could it be?

And then the crowd of thousands of kids was encouraged to shriek, over and over, louder and louder, “Swiper, no swiping! Swiper, no swiping! Swiper, no swiping!”

Little Olivia’s eyes slammed closed. Her hands slammed over her ears. Her entire body curled into itself.

I swept her up and ran for the exit doors, Michael right behind me. After about fifteen minutes of soothing repetitive rocking, soft humming, Olivia unwound herself and opened again. We went back in, but remained standing by the exit doors, just in case.

And now, here she was. Standing by herself. Open. Taking it all in.

And I hadn’t worried at all.

She is all grown up. And she is so much more.

Vincent Van Gogh. And my daughter. I don’t know who moved me more that day.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Last Sunday, I sat in a field at Waukesha’s Expo Center, waiting for the fireworks to begin. I was surrounded by my husband, my two sons, my daughter, my daughter-in-law, and my granddaughter. We ate 4^th of July cupcakes and we chatted as the sun went down and it grew darker and darker.

My family has attended the fireworks in Waukesha for decades, going back to when they were done at the difficult-to-park Lowell Park, and now, at the much easier Expo Center. When I reminded my oldest son about meeting there this year, he shouted, “I want the twirly thing that never works!”

For years and years, there was a ground firework that looked like a stick. When it was lit, the top part would twirl, making a whooping sound, and sending off sparks of red, white and blue. But it would only go for a few seconds before it would fizzle out. It would be lit again, spark and whoop, fizzle. Over and over, before they finally gave up. My family would roll with laughter. It was a failure that was such a favorite. But it hasn’t appeared for years now.

As we waited, we talked of other times at the fireworks show. The year that the wind brought the ashes down on the crowd and a few got into my oldest daughter’s hair, freaking her out and creating what seems to be a lifelong hatred of fireworks shows. She lives in Louisiana now, and I doubt that she and her husband attended any Fourth of July festivities. The time we were in a drought, but the fireworks were attempted anyway. After starting two brush fires, grinding the show to a halt, but promptly put out by our fire department, the evening ended early, well before the finale, and we all went home to watch fireworks on television from some place that wasn’t drought-y. And the times of strange and wonderful comments from the crowd. The usual “ooooh!” and “aaaaah”, of course, but we were also treated to a repeated high-toned “Prettyyyyyy!” one year. And on another year, the incomprehensible, “I think it looks like Paris upside down!”

Despite the lack of the ever-failing twirligig, we always found a reason to laugh. This year was no different. Soon after the fireworks started, from behind us, we heard, “The atmospheric winds from high above must be very strong this year.” This was repeated several times throughout the show.

This year, of course, was different because of the return to familiarity. The pandemic killed the fireworks show last year, and family get-togethers.

But this year, here we were. Safe. Sound. Intact. Even though my daughter in Louisiana wasn’t sitting with us, I knew she and her husband were just fine.

It’s part of my routine to bring manuscripts to read while waiting for the fireworks to begin. Getting my work done has always been uppermost in my mind, and a couple hours out of the ordinary in my schedule could mean disaster in terms of deadlines and having time to sleep. This year was no different. I carried along my folder of manuscripts, got settled in my chair, and opened it to the first one.

And that’s when I looked around. I saw my granddaughter, no longer a toddler, but a striking 8-year old, and yet still giggling as she sat between my son and my daughter. My youngest daughter, no longer a kid, but soon to turn 21-years old. My boys, the one who wished for the twirligig, now 37 years old and a husband and father, and the other, 35 years old, no longer just eating the cupcakes, but bringing them from the bakery he manages. My daughter-in-law, as solidly a part of our family as if she’d been there since birth.

And none of us able to get together like this last year.

I closed my folder and set it on the ground. And then I joined the others in laughing at those atmospheric winds from high above.

The pandemic, as awful as it was, and continues to be, has taught us a lot.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Last Saturday, I taught for the first time since the pandemic at a “live” event. I actually traveled to Winona, Minnesota, checked into a hotel, then drove across the Mississippi river to teach in Fountain City, Wisconsin, a place that wasn’t on Zoom. I didn’t even bring my computer. I interacted with real people, walked among them, listened to them as they spoke with undistorted voices, but with their real voices, and watched as they worked. In the hotel, I had a lovely room that wasn’t in my house, I had meals in the pub, I swam in the pool and soaked in the hot tub.

It was amazing!

But what was even more amazing is how a sand dollar found its way into my life again, for the fourth time, and 2177 miles away from the Oregon coast, the setting for my three other sand dollar stories.

For those who don’t know the original, here it is:

In 2015, my novel Rise From The River was published. This was the book that forced the blood, sweat and tears out of me. It took me 20 years to be brave enough to say the things I said in that book, which is about a young single parent mother who becomes pregnant after a rape. The whole book takes place during her first trimester. At the time of publication, the world was in an uproar over 50 Shades. And I was horrified, at the state of literature, at the state of the publishing industry, and at my own gender. By the time I got to Oregon that year, I was pretty much a car wreck, ready to give up on writing altogether.  The day I arrived, I stood in the Pacific and I yelled, at God, at the Universe, at the ocean, to show me if I was on the right path. To show me there was a reason for my life. When I wasn’t surprised by a bolt of lightning or the sudden ability to walk on water, I went specific. “If I am on the right path, let me find a whole sand dollar while I’m here. A WHOLE sand dollar.”

And a week went by.

One night, it was foggy, and the fog on the Pacific is like nowhere else. It sparkles. My daughter and I walked in stars and stardust and glitter. In the distance, an older man came toward us, and no matter where I stepped, he moved himself so he was directly in my path. We stopped when we were practically nose to nose. I noticed I wasn’t afraid.

He looked right at me. He didn’t say hello or how are you. He said, “Have you found a whole sand dollar?”

I could have dissolved right there. “No,” I said. “I’ve been looking, but –“

“Choose one,” he said, and he pulled three out of his pocket.

I did. Then he told Olivia to choose one too. And he walked on his way.

You don’t have to hit me upside the head. I went home, painted a small canvas and glued the sand dollar on it to remind me every day to stay on the path. I would be all right.

That was story one. Then came story two. Right after I was diagnosed with breast cancer, a friend went to the Oregon coast, near where I stay. He said he was thinking about me as he walked by the ocean. And then he looked down. There was a whole sand dollar. He picked it up and brought it home to me.

“You’re going to be all right,” he said as he handed it over.

And then story three. A year after breast cancer, I returned to the Oregon coast. I ran out to the ocean and had another shouting moment. “You didn’t tell me my path was going to include breast cancer!” I said. “If I’m going to be all right, let me find a whole sand dollar. Let ME find it this time.”

On the last day of my stay, I walked out to say goodbye to the ocean. As I stood there, I felt something bump into my big toe. I looked down and found a whole sand dollar. It’s on a canvas now too, hanging on the wall behind my desk.

And now, this past weekend, story number four. 2177 miles away from the Oregon coast. While teaching at my first live class since the pandemic, I saw one of the women pick up Rise From The River. “That is the book that broke my heart,” I said. “That is the book that nearly made me quit writing.”

And I told the class the original sand dollar story. I read it to them from This Week’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News. May 18, 2017, if you happen to have the book. That’s not when I found the sand dollar, but when I told the sand dollar story to women in jail. The woman who picked up the book, by the way, bought it.

Soon after, the class fell into quiet as they worked on the ideas they’d had while walking the labyrinth. I was teaching a workshop called The Labyrinth & The Creative Spirit, a course which defines the creative process and shows how walking a labyrinth can release your mind and produce wonderful ideas. As they wrote, I wrote too.

One woman had to leave early, and she quietly packed up her things. Then she came over to sit by me to say goodbye. She laid her hand on top of mine.

“Thank you,” she said. “I think you’re my sand dollar.”

And she became mine. Story number 4. I’m on the right path. I’m going to be all right.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

By the time this is posted, I will be on a road trip to Winona, Minnesota, to teach at a special event in Fountain City, Wisconsin. This is joyful in two different ways: first, a road trip! Second, teaching “live” at a special event! Neither of these things were possible during the COVID year. And now…well, here we go.

AllWriters’ on-site classes returned to “live” several weeks ago, so I’ve already actually been in the same room with some of my students, rather than looking at their Brady Bunch faces on my computer screen. But this is an event, a place I was asked to come and present, and I’ll be meeting people I’ve never met before. I’ll be speaking out loud, hearing my students’ responses, watching their faces, and just…TEACHING. Reaching out. And some of it will be outside! Walking a labyrinth! And I get to stay in a hotel! And a couple of my AllWriters’ students are coming and I haven’t seen them in forever! And…and…and…!!!

Needless to say, I’m excited.

As we all worked our way through the pandemic, many of us were filled with fear. Afraid that our families would fall ill, that we’d lose loved ones, that we would get sick ourselves, that our loved ones would lose us. For small business owners, there was an additional fear. Losing the business.

When I started my own business 16 years ago, I didn’t realize how much of a living, breathing personhood that business would become. For those with small businesses, these are more than walls and products and whatever else comes with it. The business, just like a writer’s characters in a novel, becomes real. The business isn’t a job. It’s family.

Last week, I was interviewed as a writer on the New York Parrot Literary Corner YouTube show. When I was asked about my studio, about AllWriters’ Workplace & Workshop, I heard myself say, “That place is my heart.”

My heart.

AllWriters’ offers classes, workshops, coaching and editing on-site and online, so the move to putting everything online during the pandemic wasn’t difficult, at least intellectually. Emotionally, it was so hard. My very first on-site workshop that instead appeared on my computer screen in a Zoom format was my Wednesday Afternoon Women Writers’ Workshop. Many of these women have known each other and me for years. We went a couple weeks without meeting while I figured out Zoom and, in turn, taught it to them. But our first day online, in the midst of that early fear and early isolation, I watched everyone’s face as they popped onto my screen. I saw that moment that they realized they could see each other, hear each other, in a different way, of course, but there we were. The joy. The relief. I could have wept, and when the class was over that day, I did.

Throughout the COVID year and into 2021, I worried. I often stood in the middle of my empty and dark classroom and I felt its sadness as well as mine. As more and more businesses staggered and went under, I worried more. There was some help – Wisconsin’s Governor Evers offered small businesses a “We’re All In” grant, which AllWriters’ received. And I applied for and received an SBA Disaster Relief Loan. Those gave me some moments of uplift, but still, I worried.

This place is my heart. And my heart was oh so scared.

One of my coaching clients used to own and run a small business. In writing about this experience, she said, “Small business people often have nothing to rely on except their intuition, their fierce commitment, and their refusal to allow themselves to openly doubt that what they are doing will somehow work out. They stubbornly in the teeth of crises use all their skills to reassure others when they are secretly fearful and wondering if they should just end it all.  In the face of possible disaster, we still forge ahead and follow the path we think is best without any concrete factual reason why. A person who hasn’t run a small business could never understand how there are stretches of time – days, weeks, months, years – when all one can do is get from morning to night.  When life is marked by mailing invoices, depositing payments, covering payroll and making sure the electricity is still on. Sometimes the way ahead turns into a ditch full of mud and shit where every step is a slog. An inch of progress is counteracted by two of failure.  If movement stops, sometimes it’s impossible to start again. In fear and dread, I followed through, and kept on going.”

Amen. I’ve done this for 16 years. And in the COVID year, my steps were the sloggiest ever and I experienced fear and grief like I’d never known.

But you know what?

I’m still here. AllWriters’ is still here.

My gratitude and my joy are an aura around me that I just can’t hold in.

This place is my heart.

The life I chose, as a writer, as a writing instructor, as an advocate for writers, as a business owner, is my heart.

I am so happy to be here.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

You know, this whole end-of-pandemic or fading-of-pandemic time has been on the odd side. I’ve had moments of anxiety, moments of sheer joy, moments of disbelief. I was thinking back over my almost 61 years, and I guess I can’t remember any other time of extended fear and worry like we’ve all just lived through, and so at least in my experience, this is also the first time of recovery.

Going out again. Eating in restaurants. Seeing movies. We’re planning on going to the Van Gogh immersion experience in July, and I’ll be traveling to Oregon in July too. Getting on a plane. Next weekend, I’m teaching my first live and public event in over a year. It’s really strange how odd normal feels. And I suppose that’s because normal isn’t quite the same either.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how on a Saturday, Michael, Olivia and I really immersed ourselves into our new freedom. Michael and I ate lunch IN a McDonalds, went INTO a grocery store, went home and grabbed Olivia and went TO a mall, then out to dinner IN an Applebees. By then, I was so giddy, I didn’t want to go home, so we went TO a movie theater and sat INSIDE of it. In the mall, I even dared to take off my mask. It felt so…risqué. And amazing!

From there, I’ve watched as, one by one, the on-site classes and coaching clients are returning to AllWriters’. Instead of looking at my local students Brady-Bunch-style on Zoom, they’re sitting around me. They’re smiling and laughing and talking, and their faces aren’t freezing and their voices aren’t suddenly turning robotic. The view behind them is the same as my own, not a manufactured pastoral scene. They’re REAL!

Smiles. I am seeing so many smiles. I’m feeling smiles on my own face.

But I think the best so far happened just this Saturday. Throughout the pandemic, I’ve been reading to my granddaughter, Grandbaby Maya Mae, over Zoom. She lives less than two miles from me, and not being able to see her was oh so hard. Since things have gotten better, I have seen her several times. She was here for Mother’s Day. I took her to the movies as soon as I hit two weeks post-second vaccine. And on this particular Saturday, we had a date to go to the movies again. It was just the two of us.

Popcorn. Soda. Sitting side by side in the red leather reclining seats at the theater. The big screen. Maya and Me.

Partway through the movie, I glanced over at her, and it turned out she was just glancing at me. As our eyes met, she smiled. And it was just the best smile ever. It was a Grandma, I’ve Missed You So Much smile. It was an Aren’t We Having Fun? smile. It was a This Moment Is Just Perfect smile.

And I beamed back.

You know those moments where it just seems like all the cogs fall into place? The past falls away, the future doesn’t matter, it’s just now and now is wonderful. That was one of those moments. I felt the pandemic and all its trappings fall off my shoulders.

What followed was a great discussion of the movie. Maya always has the best observations. And you know what? I’m still reading to her at night too. We’re going through all the Beverly Cleary books that I enjoyed as a kid, and so did Maya’s aunts and uncles and her father. Maya is laughing at all the same parts the 8-year old me laughed, and my kids laughed too. Connections across the generations, through books and through writers.

Oh, man. What a hard time it’s been. And how happy I am to be here now. There is a new caution to my step. But there is great joy at fresh air on my face.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

I’ve been feeling old lately. And I’ve been feeling old in the middle of a bizarre heat wave, and our air conditioner has broken down, and the fix-it guy won’t be here until Monday. I’ve been feeling old in a bizarre heat wave in an air condition-less house while I’m still taking cancer medication that throws me into hot flash after hot flash.

Yeah. It’s been that kind of week.

I’m not sure where the “old” is coming from. Maybe from knowing that next month, a 1 will be added after the 6 in my age, which means I’ll be over sixty instead of just sixty. Maybe it’s because my list of people I know who have died is growing faster than the list of new people I meet. Maybe it’s because my news feed is full of a variety of replacements, hips, shoulders, knees, heart valves, than it is with exciting new experiences. Maybe it’s because my youngest will soon turn 21 and my grandbaby is going in to the third grade. Lordy.

So I was in the middle of feeling old and hot and grumpy this week when I found myself home alone. Both Michael and Livvy were off to work. It was just me and the dog and the cats. I came upstairs to get some work done, and as I approached my desk, I passed the floor-standing fan I have placed in the middle of my workspace, so I can sit and work in a steady breeze in the middle of this new Wisconsin desert. I sat down, turned on the little desk fan I also have sitting to the side of me, breathed a dragon sigh, and opened a student manuscript.

Then I looked up at the floor-standing fan again, its white grill looking full-face at me from just over my computer screen.

And I remembered something.

I was twelve years old before I lived in a house with air conditioning. Before then, on hot days, I would disappear down into the basement, or I’d hop on my bike and go to a swimming hole. I’d sit under a tree and read or run through a sprinkler in the back yard, or better yet, I’d dance in a sudden cloudburst. Or I’d sit directly in front of a box fan.

When we moved to the house with the air conditioning (it was my arrival in Wisconsin), it was treated as a rare and treasured commodity. It had to be scorching hot to be flipped on. My father would run around the house, shutting windows, and my mother would chase after him, closing all the curtains. Our house became a cool nighttime dark in the middle of blazing sun day. We didn’t turn lights on, because they added heat and made the precious air conditioning work harder. I would usually sit in my dark room for a while, struggling to read in the limited light, but then I’d get up and go back outside into the heat. I’d ride my bike, enjoying the breeze that kicked up. We lived near Lake Kegonsa, and I’d go swimming off the boat landing or sneak behind the clubhouse at the country club to jump off their private dock into the water. Sometimes I’d go to a friend’s house that also had air conditioning, but it wasn’t treated as such a prized commodity. The curtains stayed open and I could still see. Or I’d go to a friend’s house that didn’t have air conditioning and I would sit…in front of a box fan.

Pre-air conditioning or post, alone or with company, I did something else when I was in front of a box fan.

I sang.

Remember that? Remember the fan distorting your voice into an insect buzz? It made you laugh, it made those around you laugh if you weren’t alone, and laughing always made you feel better. It was like an internal air conditioner. About the only thing funnier was breathing in helium and turning into a Martian.

Oooo. That’s a thought. What would it be like to breathe in helium and then sing into a fan? Must remember that for later.

So I was home alone. Hot and grumpy. With a fan grinning right at me and reminding me of my past, now that I’ve reached this oh-so-old age.

I closed the lid of my laptop and walked around my desk to face the fan. It wasn’t a box fan, which is probably good, as I don’t know if I could have gotten back up if I sank to a sit on the floor. But I had to bend a little to get myself nose to nose, if you will, with the fan.

And then I sang. Old songs, that I could remember belting into other fan blades when I was a kid.

Rubber Duckie

Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head

Gentle On My Mind

American Pie (American Pie!)

You’re So Vain

Bohemian Rhapsody

That last song was particularly hysterical with my bug-buzzy voice. When I got to the “Galileo” part, I laughed so hard, I had to grab on to the bookshelf next to me to remain standing. And I discovered that while my home’s air conditioner might be broken, my internal air conditioner was still intact. A little rusty from lack of use, maybe, but laughing lubricated it right up. I laughed with tears streaming down my face, and the fan hit them and gave me a shiver (with every paper I’d deliver…).

Of course, I couldn’t hold that bent-over posture for long. My back, donchaknow. And my knees.

I spent the rest of the afternoon working on student manuscripts, but taking a moment every now and then to smile at my hew friend, the floor-standing fan.

And maybe, I thought, maybe I will get a box fan. And set it up on a table by my bed, so I can lay down on my stomach and sing into it without a care about getting back up.

(But there’s one thing I know, the blues they send to meet me won’t defeat me. It won’t be long til happiness steps up to greet me!)

Remember?

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

 

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

It’s really interesting, sitting down to write my Moment, when the current day, today, makes the book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day look like a romp with unicorns and rainbows. The blog was supposed to be posted by 3:00. It is now 7:47, and this is the first chance I’ve had to sit down and write this.

And this is my day off this week!

As a run-down:

I had my alarm set. But when I opened my eyes, my clock said it was 1:27 in the afternoon. I had a meeting set for 1:00 and another for 2:00, so I spent about twenty minutes running around, alternately screaming and swearing, sometimes both at the same time, until I happened to notice my cell phone’s clock. And then my computer’s clock. Which both said it was 11:25 in the morning.

Our power had gone out while I was sleeping. My alarm clock resets itself to midnight when the power goes out for more than a minute.

Breathe, breathe, breathe.

I made my 1:00 meeting (on my day off) and my 2:00 meeting (on my day off) and then got Ursula, my dog, into the car for her 3:30 vet appointment (on my day off) to trim her toenails and recheck the toe she seemed to hurt last April. Had to wait in the car because they’re still not letting owners in the clinic because of COVID. Then the vet calls me. Turns out Ursula didn’t have an injured toe. She has some kind of autoimmune disease called Lupoid Onychodystrophy, which I can’t even pronounce. It makes her toenails grow in weird, become brittle, misshapen, possibly crack or fall off, and it makes the dog’s feet hurt. She came home with a regimen of pills she has to take for the rest of her life, and possibly a procedure in three weeks where she will be sedated and her nails that are about to fall off will be removed.

WHAT?

I took her immediately to Starbucks and got her her very first “pupcup”, a free little cup of puppy latte – whipped cream. It seemed to make her feel better. Not so much me.

So I am more than a little bit crabby. More than a little bit dismayed. More than a little bit full of shrieks that sound like, “My dog has WHAT?”

But…today is Thursday. And it’s when I write my Moment of Happiness. Which made me think back over my week and remember:

• the amazing joy of Saturday when Michael and I ate INSIDE a McDonalds, went INSIDE a grocery store, picked up Olivia and went to a MALL (what the heck is a mall?), went out to dinner and ate INSIDE an Applebee’s (and had a vat of sangria), then went to a late movie INSIDE a movie theatre. In the mall, I even took my mask off (I’m vaccinated). Ohmygod, how normal.
• reading Ramona The Brave to my granddaughter and getting to a point where Ramona is so angry, she announces to her family that she’s going to say a bad word, and then she yells, “GUTS! GUTS!” and hearing my granddaughter dissolve into giggles over a book I read when I was in elementary school. And I giggled with her.
• seeing a student dissolve into happy tears when she realized she accomplished what she set out to do: write a book based on a family story, finish it, prepare it for submitting to publishers…and the only step left is to hit the “send” button.
• hearing another student say, “You are exactly what I need.”
• hearing an editor who accepted one of my short stories say, “I was going to send you the edited version for your approval, but your story didn’t require any edits. What the heck!”
• And just a couple hours ago, seeing my dog, who sat in the front passenger seat of my car, looking (forgive me) hangdog, and then suddenly perk up when I offered her a simple pupcup. Ears up, tail wagging, tongue going slup-slup-slup, and then licking my cheek in a way that made me think she was repeating what my student said: “You are exactly what I need.”
• And let’s not forget my hibiscus.

So my moment of happiness? That I write this blog, which forces me to look for happiness, even on the most terrible, horrible, no good, very bad of days. And not only look for it, but find it. And that I have readers of this blog, because otherwise, I might be tempted on some days to just run screaming to my bed, pull the covers up and over, and not come out til the morning (on my day off).

Thank you.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

It’s not a secret that I am scared of birds. I don’t even think the word “scared” is appropriate here. “Terrified” is much more accurate. Last summer, I believe the terror crossed over into the phobia department when I was attacked three times by red-winged blackbirds during different walks. Two occurred on Waukesha’s lovely Fox Riverwalk. I’ve only been back once since then, and my fear and constant scanning of the immediate area for those telltale red-striped wings ruined the experience. The worst one happened after I switched to walking on city streets, thinking that would keep the birds away. A red-wing on a street sign saw me and plunged itself into the back of my head repeatedly. I ran and tripped and ended up face down on the pavement with my arms over my head as the bird swooped and pecked. It was my nightmare come to life.

Last Saturday, while working on summerizing our third floor deck, I let my cat Edgar come out with me. Edgar is not a worry on the deck. At 18 pounds, he is too big to fit through the railings. He also has extra toes, extra kinks in his tail, a too small head for the rest of his body, and a distinct problem with balance, so he never jumps on anything. Our vet calls him a genetic anomaly. We call him sweet. Instead of being cat-like, he is a very special cross between a dog and a bowling ball. He is round, heavy, comes when he calls, and is very gifted at the plaintive silent meow. When he does make noise, he sounds like a raptor from Jurassic Park.

So Edgar and I stepped out, I checked on my hibiscus, and then I turned to go back inside. And there was a bird on my table. A black and gray fuzzy-ish bird. A bird that, granted, looked more like a baby than an adult. A bird that opened its pointy little beak and made a sound very similar to Edgar’s.

A BIRD.

I trace my fear of birds back to two distinct events. The first was watching Hitchcock’s movie, The Birds, at the tender age of eight. When that red-wing chased me flat-faced on the pavement, I became that little boy being attacked by a seagull. The other event was before I was afraid, when I carefully carried home a dead bird so I could have a funeral and bury it. My mother smacked that poor bird out of my hands, sending it on its last flight, then she pulled me down to the laundry tubs and scrubbed my hands for what seemed like forever in very hot water and strong soap. All the while, she told me how birds are full of diseases and bugs, crawling with maggots, and that I would be very lucky to not become horribly ill from touching the bird.

And now a BIRD was on my TABLE and it was only about a foot away.

I ran into my house and slammed the screen door shut. The bird lowered himself to his tummy. He seemed prepared to stay awhile.

And then Edgar, bowling ball-dog Edgar, became a cat. He stalked, his eyes zeroed in, his pupils widened to the size of marbles.

“No, Edgar!” I yelled. “Leave the bird alone! Come here!”

And Edgar ignored me. Like a cat.

I didn’t want the little bird to be hurt. But I didn’t want to go near it either. I yelled for Olivia, and I asked her to get Edgar to come in. Like me, she stood in the doorway and yelled. “Go get him!” I said.

“Mom!” she said. “I’m scared of birds too!”

Oh, no.

Edgar was now at the bench behind the bird. One ungainly, un-Edgar-like leap, and he would be within reach. I ran out and grabbed him, yelling the whole way. The bird, in a weird flutter-flappy fly, managed to get from the table to our outdoor light, next to the deck door. Livvy ran screaming into the house. I bowled Edgar inside too, slammed the door, then stood at the window and looked at the bird, who looked back at me.

“Hi,” I said.

It squawked.

I began a series of phone calls. To the humane society, to a bird rescue that turned out to rescue only domestic birds, to a wildlife rescue. I was on my way to the grocery store when a very nice woman at the wildlife rescue called me back. I texted her a photo and she said it was a fledgling grackle. She said it likely had just left the nest, got caught in an updraft and carried to my deck, and now it was trying to figure out what to do. “It’ll be gone, later today, I bet,” she said. “No more than a few days.”

By the time I got home, the bird was gone. I breathed a sigh of relief, that it was gone, and…that it was okay.

Which led me to my moment of happiness. I don’t like birds. But I don’t want them hurt or dead either.

Once, years ago, I got into an argument with my father. He yelled, “The problem with you is that you believe there is good in everybody!”

And that was true. Even when I write my novels, and I’ve written some pretty difficult characters, I try to write a separate short story in the “bad guy’s” point of view, to better understand, and to find something that is redeeming, that is human. When I wrote Rise From The River, I stepped aside to write a short story from a rapist’s pov. Hardest thing I ever did.

But I did it.

In the last few years, with all the divisiveness going on, from race to guns to masks to presidents, I’ve wondered if I lost that need to find good. If I was starting to hate too. To condemn. To judge. To see life only through my glasses, whatever color they are, and no one else’s.

But now, there was this bird. Who scared the holy hell out of me. And who I wanted to live and be okay.

Someone said to me last week, “You always want to see the good in everyone. That’s amazing.”

Amazing. Not a problem at all. And yes, I even extend it to birds. Just don’t make me touch one.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

It feels like I got a promotion. Not at work; I own my own business and I’m the person who hands out promotions, and I’m very hard on my employee, who is me. But the promotion is in my cancer afterlife.

On June 27^th, it will be four years since my breast cancer diagnosis. On July 25^th, four years since my partial mastectomy. On September 25^th, four years since my last day of radiation. On September 27^th, three years since the infection that showed up in the surgical site a year and two months post-surgery, that nearly put me in the ICU and caused my right breast to collapse on one side.

Do I remember these dates? Yes. They seem to be forever burned into my memory.

When cancer is presented on television series or in movies, we often see the cancer patient sit down at the “end” of her ordeal, and her doctor says, “You’re cancer-free!” There is much cheering and happy dancing, and then the patient, no longer a patient, skips out of the cancer center and on to a new bright life that has nothing to do with cancer whatsoever.

Well, in reality, it’s not quite that way.

Yes, I am cancer-free, at least as of my last MRI last February. Four years strong. But the thing is, every cancer patient lives with a regimen of reminders. Doctor’s appointments. Tests. Procedures. The cancer is gone, but we need to make sure it stays gone.

The first year of recovery, this meant visits every three months with my radiation oncologist, my medication oncologist, and my surgeon. I loved my team, though I was horrified at needing a team. I was told many times I had a dream team, and I agree with that. At the end of the first year, I said goodbye to my radiation oncologist and I was down to two. I looked forward to the eventual stepping away of the surgeon, and then the medical oncologist, somewhere in my future.

But the infection brought things to a halt. One night, I felt like I had the flu. In the morning, I got up, stripped to get in the shower, and discovered my breast was as red as a tomato. Off to the clinic, and then to the ER. Massive infection. I had to pass two out of three tests to stay out of the ICU. The first one, I passed. The second one, I flunked. The third one…took forty-five minutes, but I passed. I was put on massive antibiotics and my surgeon called and told me to go to the mammogram department at the Cancer Center. There, an ultrasound determined the infection was in my surgical site. The radiologist inserted a syringe into that site and withdrew the fluid, and my breast promptly collapsed on one side. You know how balloon animals can sometimes lose their inflation in one part, but not the other? That’s what my breast is like. Then a drain was inserted and I had to live with that for several weeks. It lived a lot in cupholders. In my car, in my recliner. Around the house, I tucked it into the back pocket of my jeans.

An infection specialist decided that when I went for a mammogram a couple weeks earlier, the particular picture that focused on the surgical site clamped down too hard and I was injured, causing internal bleeding in the surgical site, which then led to the infection. I remember that this was the only time I cried at a mammogram. I was up on my toes and sobbing with the pain.

Eventually, after being on antibiotics for about three months, they were stopped, the drain was gone, and I was left with a collapsed breast. It has never re-inflated, so to speak.

But because of that, I didn’t continue down the shrinking path of doctor’s appointments. I saw both my surgeon and my medical oncologist every three months, alternating. I also alternate mammograms and MRIs every three months, because of the scar tissue built up from the infection and subsequent collapse.

So when my reminder came up that I had an appointment with the surgeon in early August, I sighed. Again? And again and again and again?

And then I thought, Why am I still seeing the surgeon? It’s been four years since surgery, three years since the infection. I’m fine. I have no intention of having reconstructive surgery. So…why?

I gathered my courage and called her. It’s a hard thing to challenge a doctor, especially one that was part of a team that saved your life. But as we talked, she said, “You know what? If the medical oncologist is willing to oversee your mammograms and MRIs and future decisions regarding those, you can just see him. That’s not a problem.”

So I asked my medical oncologist. And he said yes.

And just like that, I went from three doctors, to two doctors, to one. Just like that, I went from seeing doctors every three months to every six. I will still have the alternating mammograms and MRIs, at least until February when I sit down with the medical oncologist and discuss this. My next mammogram is in August. I’m still on the oral chemotherapy and will be for at least another year.

But…movement. Movement that I haven’t seen since my radiation oncologist stepped away three years ago.

I hung up the phone and whooped. I’ve been promoted! I’m not quite so cancery as I was.

Trust me, that’s a reason for joy.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.