Category: General

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

Well, there are two moments. I had one all picked out, and then this morning happened, and then I had two. So I’m going to write about them both. One is sort of ego-y, but honestly, I think one of the good things about getting older is you don’t care anymore. I no longer look at things that make me happy and think, Can I talk about this? Will it make people think I’m bragging or snotty? If they do, well, that’s their problem, I guess. I’m going to revel.

So the first one, which is the ego-y one. Last week, I got my hair cut and colored. As I was getting ready to leave, I picked up my purse and immediately, the woman two chairs over began asking about it. I get a lot of mileage with this purse – it has a working clock on the front. People stop me to ask about it, and of course, when they ask where I got it and why, it’s a natural lead-in to talking about my first novel, The Home For Wayward Clocks. So I rolled into that explanation when the woman two more chairs over said, “I have that novel on my bookshelf, Kathie Giorgio, and in fact, I have all of your books there.”

My jaw dropped.

Turns out she was someone who bid on a basket of my books at a raffle. She wanted them, bid like crazy for them, she won them, she read them, they’re displayed in her home.

This sort of thing really doesn’t happen often. When it does, it’s just oh-so-good. Validating, Energizing. If it wasn’t for COVID, I would have hugged the stuffing out of her. I smiled all the way home.

Priceless. It’s said that the best thing you can do for a writer is leave a review. That’s true, from a sales perspective. But from an emotional perspective, the best thing you can do for a writer is contact them and tell them how much the book or books meant to you. It’s wonderful.

So then came moment number 2, which was surrounded by pretty high anxiety. I was due this morning for my routine breast MRI. Routine, since I had breast cancer in 2017. Because of heavy scar tissue, my doctors have me on an every-six-months cycle, alternating mammograms and MRIs. MRIs are very grueling. You’re stuffed in a tube, but the breast MRI adds its own unique bit of torture: you’re on your stomach, laying over a plastic mold that runs up through your sternum to your collar bones, dropping your breasts down into gaps below the table. Your back is arched a bit and your face is put into one of those cut-out circle pillows. Your arms are pulled up next to your head, so you look like you’re flying. Oh, and it’s hot, despite the fan they have blowing on you, and incredibly noisy. I know people who have to take calming drugs before they do this test. Calming drugs make me anxious – go figure – and so I just face it down.

I was a wreck going in. Even being prepared doesn’t help with this. They did add a mirror this time, somehow attached to the pillow, so I could see the room behind me. That helped – it felt a little less enclosed. But my right shoulder locked in place and was excruciating. I couldn’t move it because that would wreck the test and we’d have to start all over. Even with earplugs, it was very noisy. And of course, before, during, and after, I was worried about the result.

When they finally backed me out of there, I was soaked in sweat. They had to lift and move my right arm for me, to get it going again. It is now two and a half hours since I left there, and my body still bears marks where the plastic form was. I didn’t cry while I was there, but I did, all the way home.

And the moment of happiness? Within a half-hour, I had an email from my doctor, cheering that the MRI was all clear. Clear, clean, cancer-free.

The breast cancer road continues long after the cancer is removed. I’ve been talking with a friend who is newly diagnosed and now breast-deep in chemotherapy, with a double mastectomy marked in red on her calendar. She asked me this week if I hated seeing the ads for breast cancer, on TV, online, showing smiling happy women, wearing pink. If I hated the middle school humor around it, save the ta-tas, help the girls, and on and on.

“Yes,” I answered. “All of it.”

“I can’t watch it,” she said. “I turn it off. This is hell. This is hell on earth.”

It is. And while I no longer think about it every day, while I can now look at myself and not flinch at my grossly distorted, but still there right breast, it’s a part of my psyche now. I know women who are 25 years out who still worry when their yearly exam comes up. I know that my days of running in for a mammogram as just another errand on my to-do list are over.

But…I’m okay. Not only am I okay, but someone out there has all of my books on display in her house.

I smiled all the way home from the haircut and color. I wept all the way home from the MRI. But I’m cheering now. And refusing to look at the calendar for my next appointment. I’ll deal with it when it comes. And cheer then too.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Since early spring of last year, I’ve been visited regularly by many large, multi-colored cranes. Not birdy-type cranes. Huge, machinery-type cranes.

My city finally decided to put a roof over a 3 ½ story straight-up ramp into one of our parking garages. Every winter, since we moved in here 14 years ago, I’ve sworn at that thing. If it snowed or iced, that ramp was impossible to get up, and unsafe to drive down. From my vantage point across the street, I watched through snowstorms and icestorms as cars and trucks fishtailed, smacking into the concrete walls on either side of the ramp, made it ¾ of the way up, then slid all the way down, hopefully stopping before they smacked into the concrete wall waiting for them at the bottom. I often wondered what enticed the designers to have a ramp of that sharp incline left bare naked to the elements. But now…a roof. And it’s been under construction for months.

Since summer, the cranes have visited, literally right outside my door, close enough at times that I was able to pat them. They lifted men and materials, and I’ve watched the work with fascination. As isolated as I am during the pandemic, the cranes provided an odd sort of company. The men on the cranes often turned to wave at me or give me a thumb’s up as I stood and sat, read and wrote on my deck. I happily waved back.

I’ve always had a fascination for things on wheels, especially those that pack power. When I was six years old, I moved from St. Louis to way northern Minnesota, where I lived in a small town tucked between Duluth and Cloquet. Esko. Our house didn’t yet have a garage, but it had a huge sand pile where the garage would be, and for me, that was the best part of the location. I unpacked all the toy cars I owned, plunked myself in the dirt, and began to play. I built roads and mountains, valleys, racetracks, construction yards and garages.

Vroom!

While I had my share of “girly” toys, Barbies, Breyers horses, I also collected and delighted in Matchbox cars and Hotwheels cars. I had the bendable bright orange tracks that looped the loop. I had the “supercharger” that shot cars out at what I believed to be great speed. But, being who I was, my play carried things one step further: my cars had names. They had families and relationships. The cars didn’t just race and crash, win and lose, they had LIVES. They were put away in a certain order, so that the families remained together. In my mind, the cars talked to each other. They laughed and they cried. And most importantly, they kept me company. They helped me write stories in my head. And as I learned to write, they gave me characters to put down on the page.

This love has extended to my vehicles, from my first car, a 1969 Chrysler Newport sedan named the Tank that I purchased from my father for a dollar in 1979, to a Nissan Frontier pick-up truck named Fronty, to the rest of the Chrysler family: LeB, the 1994 LeBaron convertible; SeB, the 2003 Sebring convertible; Hemi, the 2006 300C Hemi; and Semi, the 2013 200 convertible. Hemi and Semi still reside with me. And when I drive them, we talk. They keep me company.

And now, the cranes. They come and go in families too. Yes, they have names as well. Not very creative names, I’m afraid. Big Dawes (look at the photo – you’ll see why). Greenie. Tall, tall Orange Stretch. Big Blue. This morning, I was delighted to see two blue cranes out my window. Big Blue and now, Blue Bonnet. A dad. A mom. A son. A son. And now, a daughter.

It’s winter now, and we’ve had quite a bit of snow. I can’t go on my deck, unless I want to step knee-high through the drifts. I don’t. So as I watched this morning, I felt a bit cut off from my big blue metal company.

When I went downstairs to the second floor for lunch, I moved first to the floor to ceiling windows in the living room. They face over the street, and they put me just as near Big Blue as I’d been this summer on my deck. There was thick glass between us now, of course.

“Hi,” I said, and tapped on the window. I waved to the newcomer, Blue Bonnet, who was a little further up the street and would have been out of my reach even if I was able to get on the deck.

So maybe it was the movement in the window. Maybe someone somehow heard my tap. But the man on Big Blue turned and saw me. He smiled and he waved. I looked toward Blue Bonnet, up the street, and saw the man on that crane giving me a thumb’s up.

I laughed and waved back.

Good company. Small gestures make all the difference.

Vroom.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

On Monday, my oldest son and first child, Christopher, turned 37 years old. And today, his daughter, my only grandchild, Grandbaby Maya Mae, turned 8 years old. I love that they are attached to each other and both firsts for me – first child, first grandchild.

When Christopher was born, I was only 23 years old; I would turn 24 in July. I was a stay-at-home mom, and Christopher is my only child (there are three more!) who indeed was my only child – for 24 months, before his brother was born. He was the best possible child to have as my first – he loved routine, still does, and before he was six weeks old, he and I established a daily rhythm that suited us both. At the time, in those dinosaur days, I worked on an electric typewriter, after hand-writing my first drafts. Christopher took a nap in the morning, so that’s when I sat at the kitchen table and wrote in my notebook. Then he took a nap in the afternoon, and that’s when I typed what I wrote that morning. Because he was born in January in Wisconsin, we spent most of his early months inside, and in between his naps, my days were all things Christopher. In between his naps, we played and we read books and I marveled at everything he did. I remember, since we were stuck inside, I would take time every late afternoon when the light began to change outside, to walk him to every window in our small 2-bedroom apartment. I talked to him about the view from every angle. About the snow and what was under the snow and what we would do when it grew warm out. About the sun, which was going down, and about the moon, which was about to rise. The light changing from gold to silver.

We had such a magical time.

Years later, when Christopher was getting married, I warned him not to make me a grandmother before I turned 50. It was hard enough, finding him at an age to be married and off into his own life, without being made into a grandmother, who I likened to Grandma Walton from the television show, The Waltons. I told Christopher that if he made me a grandmother before I was 50, I would remove the apparatus that made me a grandmother before I was 50. Grandbaby Maya Mae was born when I was 52, and I would turn 53 in July. My son listens to me.

My first glimpse of Maya was at an ultrasound. The moment that little face appeared on the screen, so much more clearly than my own ultrasounds years before, everything in me melted. Who cared if being a grandmother meant I was getting old? There was this little girl!!!!

I had the great privilege of being in the birthing room when Maya was born. I was there to support my son, who, like all the jokes made in TV movies and shows, would faint at the sight of blood. So while he stood at his wife’s shoulder, I watched down below and reported to him everything that was going on. Just like in the beginning, he and I worked together in a rhythm.

And I was there when Maya first slipped into the world. I can’t even write words about that moment.

It was such a magical time.

This child. The book, Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News, is filled with Maya Mae Moments. She told me that trees talk to her, trees pronounced as “srees”, because to her, that’s what T’s do. She loves “swocolate” milk. She confessed that mosquito bites make her hair fall out. She puzzled over how she has five toes here and five toes there, five fingers here and five fingers there, but only one head. “Why only one head, Gamma Kaffee?” she asked me. “I would wike 5 heads.”

I told her that would make just too much hair to brush and too many thoughts to think, and she thought about that, then nodded.

Her backseat rendition of Uptown Funk about caused me to drive off the road. The lyric is, “Uptown funk you up, Uptown funk you up.” Except in Maya’s world, the “funk” didn’t come out that way. I thought her mother was going to die when I told her. “Funk!” Amber exclaimed. “Funk!” I dropped them off at home and howled all the way to mine.

Recently, when I asked Maya, via our nightly read-a-book and discussion on Zoom, what she wanted for her birthday, she said, “I don’t know.” She put a finger to her chin. “I need to consider what suits me,” she said.

A few days later, she showed me a book of 101 knock-knock jokes that she’s reading. “This,” she said, brandishing the book to the camera, “is a torture device.”

(She’s getting a book of 101 Elephant Jokes for her birthday. I figure it suits her.)

Back in 2017, when Maya had just turned four, she sang another song in my back seat, and it ended with an unintelligible word. I asked her to repeat it, and when she did, I still couldn’t translate. “Oooookay,” I said.

She gave the mightiest of sighs. “Gamma Kaffee, you just don’t get it.”

“I’m sorry, Maya Mae,” I said.

Another sigh, as big as the first. “Nobody gets it,” she said in a very small voice.

But I tried, and eventually, I did, by Googling the song and then repeating the lyric back to her. And I will always try to get it. Always. Every word, every facial expression, every emotion, every moment. I had her amazing father as my only child for 24 months. We shared magic together. And I’ve had Maya as my only grandchild for 8 years. More and more magic. She is held tightly to my heart. I will always listen. I will always try until I get it.

Maya and I see each other through Zoom mostly, because of the pandemic. I haven’t seen her since October, when she came to dinner after I was awarded a place on the Wall of Stars at my high school. This Saturday, she’s coming here for lunch, for a special birthday cake, for presents.

To see me. And she’s bringing her daddy. My 37-year old son.

(And to get a torture device.)

I can’t wait.

Magic.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

Olivia is 20 years old now. She’s a college sophomore. I look at her and think about how I was her age when I married for the first time.

Yikes.

She’s been on break from school since right before Christmas. It’s been an odd break. Usually, college kids are out and about, seeing friends from high school, going to movies, going bowling, meeting at each other’s houses, dating, goofing off, having fun. COVID has meant a very limited supply of these things. Mostly, she’s been in her room, drawing, writing, watching videos, interacting with her friends via social media. When she returns to school at the end of January, she will wear a mask and attend some classes in plexiglass-partitioned classrooms. She’ll attend other classes from her dorm room, sitting at her desk, staring at her computer screen. In the dining hall, she will eat at one end of a six-foot table, and one other person will eat at the other end. There are very few social gatherings, but some are held, mostly outside around a bonfire, or inside, masked and distanced. Last year, when she was in her first semester freshman year, pre-COVID, she was the friend with a car, and so she was always out and about, going to the mall, going to Target, going to Starbucks.

Not so, now.

So this week, her best friend from college came over for a good old-fashioned sleepover. It made me think of sleepovers of the past…

*elementary school, probably second or third grade, a group of girls gathered for Olivia’s birthday. Michael and I hid out upstairs, and one little girl, who constantly wanted something, a drink, something to eat, a different show on television, world peace, stood at the bottom of the steps and yelled, over and over again, “Olivia’s mom! Olivia’s mom!”

*middle school, sleepovers with two best friends, one whose voice we didn’t hear for over a year, and the other, who made up for it with statements like, “I think I would like to have blue hair when I grow up, and I want to sparkle.”

*high school, a variety of friends, sleepovers disappearing behind Olivia’s bedroom door instead of out in the living room, whispers about boys, coming out in wild make-up, songs played off YouTube. When I woke up at 4:00, the giggles, the whispers, still rose from the floor below.

And now this new sleepover, with a best college friend, in a time spent mostly inside.

They did go out for a bit, to spend the friend’s gift cards from Christmas. They wore masks, they paid attention where they stood, they came home.

Michael and I hid out again. From the living room came the sound of video games and movies, cabinets opening and closing, the fridge flapping like a revolving door.

And giggling. Lots and lots of giggling. No matter where I was, that lilting sound drifted up the stairs and followed me.

When I shut down for the night at 3:00 a.m., the lights were still on, the giggles still rose.

I went to bed that night, feeling surrounded by the familiar. There is still laughter. There is still a daughter who smiles.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

 

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

I’ve never been much of a plant person, likely because I tend to kill them. My mother was very into plants, and I grew up in a jungle, with plants on every table and windowsill and in every available spot outside. My parents once received an aerial view of their house, taken without their knowledge by a pilot flying overhead, and there in the front yard, was my mother, bent over her flowers, weeding.

I’m more the type that likes to walk through gardens, admire them, and then go home.

But there are some plants that have managed to tug at my heart, including one that will be this week’s moment.

For the last several years, there has been an orchid in the AllWriters’ classroom. I don’t remember why I bought it, other than I likely thought it was pretty and maybe I was having a down day at the time. But it blooms regularly and always makes me smile. Before COVID, I gave it its three (not two, not four, but three) ice cubes once a week. Then, when the studio was forced to go remote because of the virus, I began to teach from upstairs in my office and the classroom remained dark. I remembered to water the other plants in there, but the refrigerator, with the three ice cubes, was on a different floor. I would tell the orchid, “I’ll get you later, I promise,” and then I promptly forgot my promise and the ice cubes. When it began to look sick a while ago, I brought it upstairs to our living room, adjacent to the kitchen with its refrigerator, and now it gets its cubes regularly again. I love this little plant, and its leaves, once limp, are raised once again in glory. I’m waiting for the first time it blooms in my home and not my classroom.

A few winters ago, when I’d just gone through breast cancer, my husband surprised me by coming out of the grocery store and handing me a bag. “Who wants to see something pretty?” he asked. This is a line from The Homecoming, the original made-for-tv movie that birthed The Waltons, my favorite television show. Olivia Walton (yes, that’s why our Olivia is Olivia) comes up from the root cellar and says to the children, “Who wants to see something pretty?” and then she pulls out her Christmas cactus, in full bloom. When I looked in the brown grocery bag, there was a Christmas cactus. It was a riot of color this Christmas, and I love the darn thing. Every time I water it, I whisper, “Who wants to see something pretty?”

And then, of course, there’s the hibiscus tree. That little tree, whose branch snagged me in that same grocery store at the start of the pandemic, carried me through the summer. The blooms were incredible and there were so many. I talked to it whenever I was outside. I took all of the photos of it and put them into a book, so I could admire them over the cold winter.

The hibiscus is inside now, and sadly, it’s not doing well. It lost all of its leaves. I haven’t thrown it out, telling myself that it’s dormant, not dead, but I’m pretty sure I’m just in denial. I water it faithfully and hope, but there is a vein of reality running through me. I look at the photo book often. I bought a baby hibiscus plant and it sits on a table in my office. It’s doing well, but I have a hard time connecting it to that magnificent little tree that seemed to know exactly what I needed.

And then this week. I was back in the grocery store. It was a gray Saturday, with more snow predicted. COVID is still with us. The vaccine roll-out has been a disaster. The mob insurrection at the Capitol was days away. We didn’t know that, of course, but there was a tension in the air. Anyone who has been paying attention to the news knew that something was coming.

I felt gray like the day. I went in to the store, picked out our Sunday doughnuts, then headed for the self check-out. On the way, I suddenly saw a small white garden table set off to the side. It was filled with primroses.

Hot pink. Purple. Red. Yellow. The colors were so bright, I felt like summer blew in through the doors and waited just for me on that table. I stood and admired them. I started to walk away, but then went back. “You’ll kill it,” I said to myself.

But there was one. Bright pink. It had one leaf curled like a beckoning hand and it beckoned for me. I thought of my orchid, the Christmas cactus (who wants to see something pretty?), and my hibiscus which got me through a difficult summer.

We are heading into a difficult winter.

I picked up the little pink primrose. And I brought it home. I transplanted it into a bigger pot and as I tucked the new dirt around the little plant like a blanket, I heard a plane fly overhead. I wondered if the pilot would take a picture, and if it would somehow capture me, not weeding, but bent over a little plant.

It made me smile.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

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

So Christmas is over. It was an odd one, for sure. We did it via Zoom, with Michael, Olivia and me in different rooms in the condo, on our own computers, Katie on her computer in Louisiana with her husband by her side, Andy in his apartment a couple miles away, on his computer, Christopher with his wife by his side in his house a mile away, and Grandbaby Maya Mae on her own iPad.

All these faces on the screen like the Brady Bunch. Weird. We had a few glitches, of course, but thank goodness for technology. It allowed me to see my kids and my granddaughter and watch them as they opened their gifts. So the holiday was…different. But not devastated.

Whew.

And now, New Year’s Eve.

Without a doubt, 2020 has been an awful year. The pandemic has been a major part of the awfulness, but of course, political issues have run hot too.

One of my favorite Christmas presents this year came from my husband. It’s a beautiful Christmas ornament, made out of wood, backed in red, my favorite color. It looks like a snowflake. But when you look closer, you see that the “arms” of the snowflake spell a word. The ornament says, and pardon the language if you have sensitive ears and eyes, “Fuck 2020.” It made me laugh.

But it also made me want to cry. I could only hold it up to the screen to show my kids and watch them laugh. We weren’t able to pass it hand to hand.

What a year.

At 12:01 a.m. this coming morning, we will cross into 2021. I think that most of us have the common sense to know that change isn’t going to be instantaneous. 2020 isn’t a skin we’re going to shed. But I know that many of us are also dreamers, who hope-hope-hope that something magical will happen and our country and this world will suddenly snick back into shape, as of God or a Higher Power was a chiropractor and adjusted us into our proper posture.

So we need to prepare for waking up tomorrow morning, without much changed.

Yet. We need to celebrate the Yet. Change is coming. But change is rarely fast.

My moment(s) of happiness this week came from watching people post what was good about their 2020. I saw lists of job triumphs and health triumphs and personal triumphs and births and moves and glorious sunsets and sunrises and on and on. And my moment(s) came from watching people reach with hope toward the New Year. Hope!

Hope still exists. And I still have hope too.

Lots of good things happened in 2020, amidst the chaos. I managed to come up with a moment of happiness for every week of it, except one. This was a challenge, let me tell you. But I did it, and I’m better for it.

Better.

My friend who is going through breast cancer during this time ends every email with one word: Onward! And I stand with her.

And now…on to 2021. Happy New Year, everyone!

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

Onward!

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.