This Week’s Moment of Happiness Despite the News

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

I’m on retreat this week and next, and so right now, my world has shrunk a bit. There’s just me, in a little house. This current little house (I’m moving to a different place tomorrow) is plunked smack dab in the middle of the middle of nowhere – and yes, the repetition is intentional. There is nothing here, not within a good half hour to hour drive.

Heavens, people, there isn’t even a television. Thank God for Netflix and Hulu. There is wifi.

So my first thought when I arrived here was, What in the hell am I going to do? I’m used to living in a city. My back yard is Walgreens, my front yard is a bus depot and parking garage. A block away is one of several fire departments and sirens can be heard any time of day or night. When I sit on my third floor deck to relax, it’s to the music of people singing in the bus depot to hear their own voices echo, the rumble of buses and trains, whackazoid city birds who call and call and never sleep and I have to tell you, I love it.

But here – While I’ve been here, I’ve looked up from my little writing table to watch Amish carts pulled by horses go by. I’ve wondered about their lifestyle, their quietness, and when I saw them in the only coffee shop for miles, their posture and their stride which just exemplifies humility and confidence all at once. I’ve laughed at a rooster who crows every day at six in the evening. The evening! There have been bleats from a goat or a sheep. And the constant sound of crickets and other bugs. One middle of the night, I couldn’t sleep, and I bravely ventured out to the front porch to sit in the silver dark of moonlight. When I heard a clip-clop, I wondered why the Amish would be out at three in the morning. But instead of a horse, a deer strolled down the road. She was more ghost than real, and she turned her head toward me and bowed, then kept on going.

The silence here is just as noisy and chaotic and wonderful as it is at home.

But it gave me something else too. I hesitated to write about it, because I was afraid it would make this post too writer-centric, but truly, I think anyone who becomes too busy to be mindful of dreams will get something from it.

My tenth book is coming out. Let me repeat that. My TENTH book is coming out.

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a writer. I remember when I was writing, but didn’t know that you could be such a thing, that it was possible to be the one who was putting those words down in books that I loved so much. I traced the pictures in my picture books with carbon paper and rewrote the stories my way, but I didn’t know that what I was doing was writing. My 5^th grade English teacher told me I was a writer and it was like putting on a custom-made jacket. It fit.

I was!

My whole life has been devoted to writing and to writers. And now my tenth book. I hadn’t really stopped to consider it. Ten.

There have been some rough spots. I’ve taken on some really difficult subjects, and as a result, while I’ve been called a brave, honest, edgy writer, I’ve also been called dark and disturbing. Which has always disturbed me. I’ve never seen my work as disturbing. I see it as redemptive. My characters always come out the other side. But still, the dark and disturbing tattoo stuck, and I’ve actually had the experience of seeing someone pick up one of my books, read the back, and put it down. When the person standing next to this woman said, “No! You have to read that!”, she shook her head and said, “Too heavy. I don’t want to be depressed.”

I have never intended to depress. I’ve intended to lift up.

And so there have been some dark moments for this “dark and disturbing” writer.

And then a switch began two years ago.

When In Grace’s Time came out in 2017, for the first time, I was called “delightful.”

Last year, when Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News came out, the book I never intended to write, and the book I didn’t write as a book, it was called “an absolute joy to read.”

And now, book #10. If You Tame Me. A novel. My fifth. This week, I received a 5-star review that proclaimed, “Above all, it is about doing something about your situation. Don’t feel powerless, whether it be at work, in a relationship or with whichever rather disappointing government you happen to live under – go and do something, big or small, go and live your life.

Yes, I loved this book. It is a joyous, life-affirming read.”

Joyous. Life-affirming.

That is all I’ve ever wanted. THAT IS ALL I’VE EVER WANTED.

“Oh my god, Kathie. You’re a writer,” my fifth grade teacher said.

Yes, I am.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Well, okay. I’m going to write about my daughter again. She’s on my mind a lot right now, and my moments of brightness and sadness are coming simultaneously from her as she starts on her college years.

You know, when you have a beautiful young baby, a child who arrived fairly late in your life (I was forty, and didn’t think I’d be having any more babies), and you adore her, and then you’re told that she might not ever speak and she might not ever see you as anything other than a “block of wood”, it’s so beyond devastating that there aren’t even any words. I will never forget that day, sitting in Olivia’s pediatrician’s office, Olivia’s wonderful pediatrician who loved Olivia too and loves her still and admires everything she’s done. But on that day, he told me we needed to have Olivia screened for being on the autism spectrum. And he spoke those words, “block of wood.”

At exactly that moment, Olivia, who was sitting on the floor, playing, placed her hand squarely on my shoe and looked directly up into my face and she smiled.

She was not smiling at a block of wood. She was comforting her mother and she was letting me know that she was there. She was also reassuring herself that I was there. And I was. I always am.

I’ve said that phrase countless times over the last 18 years. I am always here. I said it again last week, and featured it in last week’s Moment.

After that block of wood day, we just moved ahead. We moved through Olivia’s teaching herself to speak by memorizing lines from television programs and commercials. We lived through that frustrating time of script line after script line being thrown out in growing frustration as each one didn’t get her what she wanted, what she wanted to say. God help me, there were times I had to put her in her room while she cried so I could sit on the couch and cry too. We fought through touch-sensitivity issues (did you know that jeans could hurt?), connecting words with meaning (the reasnatolive was hospital, as we figured out when a commercial for our health care provider came on, accompanied by a song with the words, “I’ve got a reason to live”), irrational fears (loud noises), and so much more. We fought, we celebrated, we fought, we celebrated. She spoke. She grew a phenomenal vocabulary. She began telling stories, which she told us every night, flat on her back, legs, feet, arms, hands, flying in stimming behavior which helped to get the words out.

Now, she works on the second draft of her novel, sitting quietly at her computer.

Through it all, I was not a block of wood.

Are you there, Mama?

I am always here.

So now she’s in college. She’s won scholarships and grants to get there. She’s worked hard at her job, stuffing aside paychecks, to get there. And today, we found out that she’s won yet another grant, this time from the Department of Vocational Resources.

Moment of happiness? You bet. Moment of blow-my-mind pride too.

But not “the” Moment. That moment came from tears, which were hers. And later, mine.

On Olivia’s first day of orientation at school, she texted me at lunch, telling me that things were going well. Then five minutes later, she called me. Wailing. She’d returned to the orientation room, left to go to the bathroom, and then somehow gotten turned around. She was lost. Somehow, she’d ended up in the basement where there is an antfarm of tunnels, leading to all the different buildings on campus. She was lost. She was alone. She knew she was supposed to be in orientation, mandatory orientation, and she didn’t know where she was.

Are you there, Mama?

I am always here.

While I was talking to her on the phone and scrambling to get my car keys, frantically figuring I’d have to drive to the college (about 20 miles away), dive down those tunnels and start searching for my girl, two sophomores showed up and saved the day. They got her where she needed to be, and by the time I hung up the phone, her tears were gone and the shakiness in her voice was dissipating. She was welcomed back into orientation; everyone gets lost at least once.

So then it was my turn to cry. To sit on the couch and cry, much like I used to when I’d have to put her into her room to give us both a chance to calm our frustrations. But I wasn’t crying because of frustration.

I was crying because the first person she called when she was lost was me.

She listened. She knew.

Are you there, Mama?

I am always here.

I am not a block of wood.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

My daughter Olivia left for college yesterday. I use the word “left” lightly – her college is about 20 minutes down the road. She’ll be coming home every other weekend to work. Thanks to Facebook and texting and other ways of staying in contact, I will likely still be talking to her every day, at least for a while.

But still, she left.

Olivia is my fourth child. Well, technically, she’s my fifth, because I miscarried a baby at 12 weeks gestation before I became pregnant with Olivia. I never know quite how to count that little one. But I am grateful to him – somehow, both Michael and I know he was male – for stepping aside and giving the space to Olivia.

There is a significant age difference between Olivia and my three big kids. Christopher was 16 when Olivia was born, Andy 14, Katie 13. Christopher and Katie attended college at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, about an hour away, and my own alma mater. When I left each of them for the first time, I cried all the way home, and wandered the house aimlessly for days afterwards. Andy tried college at the University of Wisconsin – Waukesha, but found it just wasn’t his thing. He already had a part-time job, so he asked for full-time, got it, and moved out of the house to his own apartment. I remember that leave-taking too. While he and others unloaded the van, I put a comforter on his bed, set up lamps, put away dishes neatly in cupboards, hung things on the wall. Making a home for my boy who was no longer at home.

And now, Oliva. It’s an adjustment when your child lives under a roof that isn’t yours. Olivia was a by-my-side child from the get-go. With the first three, I was primarily a stay-at-home mom. With Olivia, I hadn’t created AllWriters’ yet when she was born, but I was up and teaching, approximately 65 hours a week. I drove myself the hospital, I drove myself home, and then went to pick up her sister at dance class. I was on the computer within an hour of Olivia’s birth, checking on my classes. Olivia spent her early days in a little seat in the middle of my classroom table and she was passed around when she fussed. When I started the studio, she had a special place in a room off the classroom, with her toys, drawing supplies, a television, a VCR, a Little Tykes train set. She called the studio Mama’s Building. Eventually, we bought the live-where-you-work condo, which means my business is on the first floor and we live on the second and third. I was simultaneously mom and business owner, a hybrid of the working mom. I was at work, but I was at home, and Olivia was right there.

And now she’s at college and I’m here. It’s as it should be. The natural order of things.

Yesterday, we arrived in her dorm and found her room, a blank slate with a bed, desk, dresser, refrigerator and microwave. By the time we left, almost ten hours later, it was Olivia’s room. There were VW Beetle posters on the wall (and a white VW Beetle named Snowbug in the parking lot). There was a bright pink-spackled comforter on the bed, pink tables holding her television and CD player (she prefers CDs – so do I). Her pink music stand was set up, there was a pink flamingo piñata devoid of candy hanging from the slanted roofline, her instruments were carefully stored in her closet. Pink towels, red carpet. Pink bungee chair bed, mottled and fuzzy pink footstool. Plants on the windowsill and on her desk. And you can’t forget the blow-up green alien with a mustache who seemed to just bop around the room, not really settled in any spot yet.

And of course, Olivia was in the room, which made it the Olivia-est.

Before we drove away, I waited in the parking lot and watched her walk back to the dorm. I watched her go until she disappeared. And I cried.

But we talked last night, via the miracle of Facebook. She told me she was going to bed around ten, but then chattered until 11:15, at which point I reminded her she had orientation at 8:30.

She said, “I wanna text you. Well, Mama, I miss you. It feels really odd being on my own.”

And I said immediately, as I always have, from every moment since the day I went on the computer an hour after her birth, her sleeping in the little isolette by my side, “I am right here. I am always right here.”

Do you know how to tell if you’ve been a good parent? It’s something I’ve worried about since day one. It’s not about the kids’ accomplishments. It’s that they don’t want to be rid of you. Even as they move ahead, as they should.

I am always right here. So is she. All four of them are.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

And so today’s moment of happiness despite the news.

I know I posted yesterday. But today deserves its own moment.

The thyroid cancer scare is over. The biopsy came out benign. When my doctor sent me the test results on MyChart, before he even called me, he inserted into the first line of the report, YEAH!!!!!

Oh, yeah.

I had two biopsies in 2017. The first, on my left breast, indicated Stage 2 Invasive Ductal Carcinoma. The second one, on my right breast, was benign, but the radiologist inserted a little clip so that the spot could be watched. It made me feel banded, like those animals I used to watch on television’s Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

Then there was this biopsy, on my thyroid. My red flags started waving pretty quickly, with the ultrasound results shouting the words, “Highly suspicious!” Then, during the biopsy itself, I heard the doctor say, “Oh, here’s something.” He didn’t expand on what something was. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know, but it sure led to a mighty sweaty and sleep-deprived 48 hours.

When you hear the word benign, it’s like a cleansing occurs. Particularly when your body has been tainted before. You already feel like a sinner being punished. With the first malignant, I created a humongous list in my head of everything I’d ever done wrong in my life that was now bringing me to justice. When the cancer was removed, I felt reborn.

But then this next biopsy. Maybe I still had penance to pay. And again, I went through the list of all my possible sins. The things I’ve said. The things I’ve done. The things I’ve thought about doing, but didn’t.

And now, benign. Whew.

But what a horrible mindset. The mindset is what’s malignant. I am…well, I’m benign.

I don’t want to feel like I’m going into the confessional booth every time I go in for my now routine bloodwork and alternating mammogram/MRI. I want to get over feeling like everything in life (and death) is set on a reward/punishment system. Sometimes, nice people get sick. Sometimes, bad people live into their hundreds. The good or bad that happens to us doesn’t have anything to do, really, with who we are. It’s wishful thinking at its best; it’s self-flagellation at its worst.

I can say that. I can feel it, when I apply it to others. I need to learn to apply it to myself.

And I will. But tonight, I’m just going to breathe easier. And I’m going to have a wonderful sleep. I won’t wake up in a panic attack, as I have for the last two weeks, especially in the last 48 hours.

I’m benign. I really am. I’m packing away my list of sins.

For now. Hopefully forever.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

The thyroid cancer saga continues. I had my biopsy yesterday – Wednesday. And now I’m waiting for the result. I was hoping my moment would be announcing that everything is benign, but I haven’t gotten the results yet and likely won’t until tomorrow. So maybe that will be my moment of happiness next week. Let’s hope so.

But I did still have a moment of happiness. Several, in fact. But the one I’m choosing happened while taking my daughter shopping for her dorm supplies. Olivia leaves for college on Wednesday. I suppose “leave” is a subjective word. Her college is 20 minutes away. But she is still staying in the dorm and will still be away from home and for the first time, I won’t know where she is and what she’s doing. That feels very strange to me, and while she might not admit it, I think it feels strange for her too.

So it was a nice day. We took Semi, the Chrysler 200 convertible. Olivia’s boyfriend Patrick came along for the ride. Semi is the kind of convertible whose roof folds up into the trunk when I’m driving topless. I didn’t really think about that. I mean, we were just getting a few things for the dorm room. Right?

Uh-huh.

We hit Goodwill and Target. I thought we would be running to Bed, Bath & Beyond too, but there was no need. At Goodwill, while I was pondering food storage containers and a plastic shower supplies organizer, Olivia, 18-year old Olivia, college freshman Olivia, about-to-be-independent Olivia, barreled down the aisle to me. She carried a blow-up bright green alien, who, somewhere along the way in his life, had grown a fuzzy black mustache. “Mom!” she cried. “Mom! I need him for my room!”

Of course she did. She also needed a bright pink flamingo piñata that was devoid of candy.

My oldest daughter Katie, now a fully graduated PhD in math, teaching at the University of Louisiana – Lafayette, reminded me that when she went to college at UW – Madison, I presented her with a table lamp that looked like a pudgy naked man (think Pillsbury Dough Boy), and whose on/off switch was a…well, let’s say it was how we knew he was male.

So all right. A blow-up alien with a mustache and a pink flamingo piñata it is.

At Target, I ended up needing two carts. There were under-the-bed storage containers, bed risers so the under-the-bed storage containers would FIT under the bed, a hamper on wheels, a three-drawer organizer, a carpet, sheets, towels, bathrobe…and then came the actual school supplies, like notebooks and folders. When we got back to Semi, I very quickly saw the error of my ways. The teeny tiny slit of a trunk was full. The back seat was full. The alien and the flamingo were shotgun. And there was no room for the college student or her boyfriend.

“Well,” I said, “why don’t you two go to McDonald’s and I’ll drive home and unload, then come back and get you?”

Made them happy. Off they went.

Before I drove away, I contemplated the alien. He was a blow-up. I drove a topless car. The 3-drawer storage container in the back seat was too tall for me to put the top up. I had to anchor the alien. So on went the seatbelt. Then, for extra safekeeping, I held his little green hand.

At each stoplight, I noticed some looks. Most people laughed. I waved. My car was piled high with obviously college-type stuff and I think they understood what was going on.

Then I got to the stoplight at St. Paul and Moreland. A car pulled into the lane next to me. A nice car. A slick Porsche. A man with slick hair and slick sunglasses behind the wheel. He looked over at me and there was just no expression there. Flat-faced. No smile, no smirk, no nothing.

So I raised my hand that held a little mustached green alien’s. I smiled at Mr. Porsche and said, “He proposed this afternoon. I think I’m going to say yes.”

Nothing.

But I howled. And then the light changed.

I’m sorry I didn’t make Mr. Porsche’s day. But I sure made mine. I laughed all the way home. I might not even allow Olivia to bring the blow-up alien with a mustache to school, because, well, we’re engaged now.

No, of course I’ll let her take him.

And yes, that helped. Despite. Anyway.

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

So what the heck do you do? What do you do when you have a week where:

*a horrible shooting occurs in El Paso, killing 22 and injuring 26, and

*24 hours later, another horrible shooting in Dayton, killing 10 and injuring 27, and

*fingers were pointed and blame was laid, rants and lectures abounded and

*I realized I could no longer describe these shootings as unimaginable, because they are as common as running to the grocery store for a gallon of milk, and

*a routine ultrasound of my thyroid showed two “highly suspicious nodules” and I have to have a biopsy to see if I have thyroid cancer.

I am two years past the breast cancer diagnosis, the biopsies, the MRI, the surgery. I’m not quite two years past the radiation; that anniversary hits in September.

So it’s been a rough week. And isn’t it funny that, while I sat on my third floor deck and cried, wondering how I could send my daughter off to her first semester of college, loaded down with books and coffee and ramen noodle soup and anxiety about her mother, wondering if this would affect the retreat I have planned for myself in the beginning of September, wondering if this would affect the launch of my latest book and any events that are the result, another thought that bubbled up was What in the world am I going to write for my Moment Of Happiness this week?

Some weeks, I really have to search. But this week, it turned out, I really had to listen.

First, the story behind the thyroid. I was a sophomore in college when a nodule was discovered. I was put into a special room, swallowed radioactive pills, and then climbed on a table while they ran some sort of magic wand over my throat. This showed that the nodule was not cancer, and the doctors decided I was hypothyroid, and they put me on levothyroxine. Within six months, the nodule disappeared. After I married and I wanted to have a child, I went off the med on the advice of a doctor. In 1993, a doctor discovered my nodule grew back and decided I needed surgery. The left half of my thyroid was removed and the nodule declared benign. My levels have always remained normal, and so I was never put on synthetic thyroid hormone, despite outward signs of being hypothyroid again. Around 2007, a doctor discovered the nodules grew back on the left side. A biopsy was done and they were benign, and so the doctors adopted a wait-and-see attitude. In 2017, the day my mammogram tanked, I also had my routine thyroid ultrasound and at that time, everything was the same. Now, the nodules are “highly suspicious”.

All of which leaves me wondering why the hell they didn’t just take the whole stupid thyroid when they took half of it. But here I am.

So back to listening.

When I was given the results of the ultrasound, I was told that I would receive a phone call from the hospital’s radiation department, pre-registering me for the biopsy. So I waited. The first attempt, I missed because I was meditating. I swore and snarled, thus negating the positive effects of meditation. But then, in the evening, the call came in and I answered. An uncertain male voice stuttered a bit, then asked if I was Kathleen Giorgio. Yeah, I am.

“Hi,” he said. “This is PreHealth Care, calling to pro-register you for your thyroid biopsy.”

It was supposed to be PROHealth Care, calling to PRE-register me.

I have no idea why this mistake struck me so funny, but I began to laugh. In between guffaws, I said, “God, wouldn’t pre-health care be great? Then none of us would get sick. And I’m happy they sent a pro to register me.”

“Oh, dear lord,” he said, and then he began to laugh too.

It took about fifteen minutes for me to answer his few questions.  Laughter struck us helpless. When he asked me what kind of “assurance” I had, instead of “insurance”, we both were out for the count. “I have no assurance whatsoever!” I howled.

Finally, the questions were answered and we both took deep steadying breaths. “Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” I answered.

“No,” he said. “I mean thank you. Today was my first day and I was so nervous. You were the first call I made on my own. And I blew it right out of the gate. Thank you so much for laughing and not being angry or impatient.”

“Hey,” I said. “Thank you for being human and screwing up. You were the happiest moment of my day today. Probably even of my week.”

And there he was.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

(Biopsy on 8/14 at 11:00 a.m.)

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

On Monday morning, when I opened my eyes, my first thought was, Oh, god, I’m now 59 years old. And my second thought was, The next time I open my eyes when it’s July 29^th, I will be 60.

My inclination was to throw the blankets over my head and stay there for the duration.

Birthdays. I remember being overjoyed by them all the way up until the day I turned 29. My thought that day was very similar: The next time I open my eyes when it’s July 29^th, I will be 30.

And all the joy left.

I honestly don’t think much about my age during the rest of the year, unless something unusual happens, like the first time I was called ma’am, or when my obstetrician referred to me as a “geriatric mother” when I was pregnant with Olivia when I was 40. On the day of my birth, I hear the toll of bells…and then I get back to work.

I remember my mother crying on the day she turned 45. She was face-down on her bed, sobbing. I asked her what was wrong and she told me it was her birthday and she was 45 and she was old. I didn’t even know it was her birthday.

I went to my room and pocketed what money I had saved in my bank, then left the house and climbed on my purple bike. It was a Schwinn Hollywood that I always referred to as my steed. I was ten years old, just turned a little over a month before. Hollywood and I rode to the Minute Mart, where I searched for anything I could afford. I bought her a scarf – not one you wear around your neck, but one you tie over your hair. My mother wore those all the time when she was out and about, to protect her permed curls. The scarf was sheer, the word that came to my head was chiffon, and it started as a deep reddish orange and then faded to a cream when it got to the middle of the material. I couldn’t afford to buy a card as well, so I decided to make one when I got home. She was still on the bed, though I didn’t hear her crying anymore. I quickly folded a piece of paper in half from my drawing tablet, drew a picture of flowers, started to write, “Happy 45^th birthday, Mom,” changed my mind, and just wrote, “Happy birthday, Mom.” I tucked it in the brown bag from the Minute Mart, went into her room, and gave it to her.

She said thank you and that was all we ever said about it. I know she still wore that scarf up until the day she died in 2006. I kept it for a while after her passing, along with the ratty white sweater that used to be mine that she wore for years, before I finally put those items to rest.

But I remember looking at her that day and thinking, Okay. So that’s old. She didn’t strike me as old; my grandmother was old. But you believe what your mother tells you.

So on the day I turned 59, I felt pretty ancient. I was tired. My body ached with fibro. I was a cancer survivor, but still, it rocks your view of yourself when cancer becomes part of your bio. My last child is heading off to college in three weeks. My oldest child is 34. I’m a grandmother.

Throughout the day, I was just inundated with birthday wishes. And I heard the usual – people older than me told me I was still young. 60 is the new 40, which means, I guess, that 59 is the new 39. I look young. One very honest student, when I said I was now 59, said, “Sorry to say it, but Oh my. And I am right behind you.” And you know what? That actually made me feel better. Someone, like my mother crying across her bed, acknowledged how I was feeling. And felt the same way.

And then Olivia.

Olivia called me from work, Farm & Fleet, asking me what I wanted for a present. I gave her a few ideas. But when she came home, she handed me the bag and said, “I didn’t get you what you asked for. I picked stuff out.”

A lovely scented candle. A windchime with the moon and the stars on it. And a little teeny stuffed whale.

A teeny stuffed whale. Do you know how many years it’s been since anyone has given me a stuffed animal? A gift for a girl? A gift for someone young?

Well, not since I was young.

I’ve hugged that little whale I don’t know how many times now. It’s sitting next to me on my desk, looking at me with whaley blue eyes. And you know what?

I’m not old. I’m not young. I’m just me.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

On Tuesday night at 9:00, after I finished teaching a class, I came upstairs here to my office, on the third floor. Typically, I would curl up behind my computer, a cup of coffee in my hands, and settle in to reading student manuscripts. But on this night, I picked up my computer and coffee and moved out to the deck.

On one side, we have a big corrugated steel wall, with a flat top, like a counter. Look over it, and you see the parking lot, three stories below. I put my computer on the “counter”, my coffee too, then opened the next file in line. With one eye, I read the manuscript. With the other, I watched the intersection of North Avenue and Brook Street.

I wasn’t out there to enjoy the weather. The earlier heatwave was broken, leaving behind a familiar summer night, just warm enough, with a slip of a cool breeze. There were fireflies. There were stars.

But I watched the street.

Twenty minutes later, just as I was getting antsy, a white VW Beetle turned onto Brook Street. I quickly crossed to the front of the deck and watched the car as it tooled past the condo, then turned into the parking garage. It steadily climbed the three story ramp to the top, putting the car at my eye level, but across the street. I looked at the face behind the wheel.

My daughter. 18-year old Olivia.

Earlier that day, at 1:30 in the afternoon, Olivia passed her driver’s test. It was her second time taking it. Between test 1 and test 2, Olivia practiced off 20 points worth of mistakes that cost her her license the first time. This test put her far below the limit where she would have failed.

When we met her tester, it was the same man who flunked her three weeks ago. Olivia was stoic. She calmly led him to the car. And then she calmly nailed her test, though she didn’t know it. She calmly came back, followed him to the cubicle where they met me. She stood calmly as he told her the things she could improve on. When he said, “But that’s all. You passed!”, she lost all calmness, all stoicism, and leaped into the air with a little girl leap and shrieked, “YES!!!”

At 4:00, two and a half hours later, she left on her first solo drive: to work. And now, I stood on the deck and watched as she came home.

I watched the Beetle move through the parking garage and choose a parking space. I watched as it backed in and out of that space three times before the driver was satisfied with the car’s straightness. I watched her get out, beep the car locked, walk a few steps, turn and beep the car again, go a little further, beep the car, and then turn toward the elevator.

That’s when I called her. “Did you turn the lights off?”

“Oh, no!”

I admit it. I laughed. I watched her walk back to the car, turn the lights off, beep, beep, beep her way to the elevator, come out on the first floor, and walk toward home. She looked up at me and waved. I waved back.

Was there any better picture of watching my daughter enter adulthood? And step back? And enter adulthood? And step back? The adult took and passed the test. The little girl cheered and jumped. The adult drove to work and back and made sure the car was parked correctly and locked safely. The little girl kinda forgot to turn off the lights.

And through all of it, as I watched that Beetle come home, driven well by my daughter, I thought, This is the little girl who wasn’t ever even supposed to speak.

Look at her go.

And that is what she’s doing; Going.

But there will always be steps back. Always.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news. And I really struggled with this. I hope I said what I wanted to say.

Eons ago, when I was in high school, I was out to dinner with my family. I was a kennelworker at the local humane society at the time and I chattered about the dogs I worked with that day, the cats, the rabbits and guinea pigs, and yes, even the birds. Suddenly, my father interrupted. “I hope that someday, you love people as much as you love animals.”

I don’t remember answering. I do remember being dumbfounded. I’d never thought about love in that way before…I didn’t love animals more than people, and I didn’t love people more than animals. I just loved. Was that wrong? Was I supposed to love some more than others?

I was reminded of this in the past week.

My dog, Ursula, was diagnosed with heartworms, likely picked up before she came to us from Alabama. She seemed to be responding well to treatment, and then suddenly, late Sunday night, she vomited and went non-responsive. She was blinking, but not responding to anything, she couldn’t stand and she couldn’t walk. We rushed her to the emergency vet, and that’s where she stayed until Tuesday night, when she finally came home. She’s on two different heart meds and an antibiotic. The hope is that this was all caused by the heartworm treatment, and that she will be able to be weaned off the meds.

During her time there, we didn’t see her. We asked if we could bring in her pink security blanket; we were told no, that they would likely lose it. From Sunday to Tuesday, I grieved, wondering if my dog was scared, if she thought she’d been abandoned, if she was in pain. Ursula is a rescue dog. Her first three years of her life are unknown, but she is terrified of everything. We’ve worked really hard to make sure that she always feels safe, that she knows she can trust us, that she’s going to be fine. And now this. It was a long, long time from Sunday to Tuesday. For now, we are waiting for the heartworms to continue dying off. For now, she is on heart meds. But she’s home. And she has her blanket.

In one of my classes this week, I was asked about Ursula. Then a student said she couldn’t help but think of the kids being separated from their parents, kept in cages at the border. “You were worried about your dog with her blanket,” she said. “Think of those kids with just those aluminum blankets they’re given.”

I felt like I was at that dinner table again. I am horrified by our border situation. I’ve signed petitions, donated to resources, raised my voice. But did it mean I wasn’t supposed to be worried about my dog, without her blanket?

A few months ago, I was talking about the issues I’ve had with the breast cancer and our medical and insurance industries. We had to refinance our house in order to pay medical bills. Which is ridiculous. A student who recently did a mission trip said, “Now imagine being in a place where there are no medical resources at all.” I did. But I don’t see much difference between not having resources, and not being allowed access to resources unless you earn a certain income. Either way, people are doing without.

So was my choice to feel bad about my situation, or bad for the other country’s situation? I couldn’t feel bad for both?

I can’t help but wonder when compassion and love became an either/or proposition. Where does it stop? Are we supposed to constantly weigh our challenges with others, and as long as there is someone worse off than us, our own challenges then become unimportant or invalid? I actually overheard a conversation between two women at lunch once, where they were talking about grief. “I mean,” one woman said, “this really put it into perspective for me. My mom just died. But Karen just lost her son!” I sat back in my chair. Did that mean that the woman couldn’t grieve her mother?

In high school, I worked for a humane society. Now, I want to live in a humane society. When I looked up the definition of humane, I read, “showing kindness, care, and sympathy toward others, esp. those who are suffering.” It’s not specific to animals. It’s not specific to humans. It’s to show kindness, care and sympathy toward others. Others. Everyone.

I am sickened by the things that are going on in our country, and in other countries. I am very aware of them, and I do what I can to try to help. But my moment of happiness this week was when that door opened and my dog walked in, saw me, and came right over to put her heavy concrete head on my lap. My moment of happiness was bringing her home, seeing her lay down on her bed, and, after I covered her with her ratty pink blanket, watching her heave the biggest sigh and fall into a sleep that lasted for hours. My moment of happiness is my dog, who I do not love more than people. I just love.

I don’t believe that compassion should be a privilege, only offered to those who have reached a certain level of suffering. I believe it should be offered to all living beings.

I’m so happy Ursula is home.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

When a moment of happiness is caused by a dead bird’s skull looking in your front door, well, I suppose you just gotta wonder. I sure have been.

I’ve had a lot of odd things happen around animals, especially when I’m traveling. In Oregon, I walked the beach one morning and a pelican fell out of the sky and landed two feet in front of me. And I mean fell and I don’t mean nice gentle typical feet-first bird landing. I mean WHUMP. If I’d been walking a little faster, I likely would have been killed. This was a big, big bird. And bear in mind I’m scared of birds.

As I skittered away from him, it became clear that this pelican wasn’t well. He was alive, but no matter how close I got to him, he just sat there. I called the local aquarium and left a message. The rest of the day, I sat by the pelican and protected him from curious children. When night fell, I wished him well and went inside. In the morning, he was dead, but he was stretched out in the sand in full flight formation. Wings wide. Feet flying behind him. Amazing. The aquarium showed up and told me it was a pelican that wasn’t natural to the area, but must have been thrown off course by a hurricane. They took him away. But he remains in my mind.

In Maine, I grew frustrated with the rocky beaches. I was recovering from a back injury and sciatica and the rocks just made it too perilous for me to get to the water. There was a sandy beach at a state park close by. It necessitated my walking about a mile through a forest, and well, like birds, I am scared of forests. But I did it, just to set my feet in the ocean. On the way back, I heard a sound I’d only heard on a television show before, specifically, The Waltons. A bear. Walking beside me, just a line of trees between us, was a bear. Aching back and hip and all, I did the exact wrong thing. I ran. Thinking back now, I don’t believe the bear meant me any harm. He was escorting me through the woods.

There have been others. And now…a dead bird skull, looking up at me when I opened my front door. What the hell? There were no other bird parts. Just a tiny white skull.

I posted a photo of it on Facebook and people didn’t believe it was real. “It’s plastic,” they said. Hopeful, I went back downstairs and picked it up. No, it was real. Ew, ew, ew. I brought it in and put in on my desk. I was told it was illegal to keep it and illegal to throw it away. So what the hell was I supposed to do with it?

Late that night, I sat at my desk and stared at the skull and it stared at me. And then I remembered a This Week’s Moment from 10/11/18. We’d been experiencing a bunch of dead sparrows on our front sidewalk, caused, I believed, by the drunken flying after eating intoxicating berries, which were in full ripeness. On that day, I found a bird obviously near death in our parking lot. I couldn’t stand to think of it sitting there, a sitting duck, if you will, for a car to run over. So I pulled on a pair of gardening gloves, held the little bird at arm’s length from me (ew, ew, ew, ew!) and carried him down the block, across a street, and over a parking lot to the river, where I set him down under a berry bush that his kind loved so well. It was a peaceful place to die. Like the pelican, I wished him well and I left.

A peaceful place to die. And now this skull. Just sparrow size.

Maybe a cameo appearance to say thank you? So I said, “You’re welcome,” picked up the skull, carried it down the block, across the street, over a parking lot to the river and the berry bush where my little bird died last fall. I placed the teeny skull down, wished him well, and returned home.

It felt right.

I was called superstitious earlier this week. I wonder sometimes how superstition and faith differ. They both rely on believing in something we can’t see. I remembered there being a bible quote about sparrows, and so I looked it up. In the book of Luke, Chapter 12, Verse 6, it says, “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.”

I haven’t forgotten either. Not pelican. Not bear. Not sparrow.

It felt right.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

(If you want to see the post about the sparrow, look at the menu to the right and click on October 2018, then scroll to October 11. )