Category Archives: Living with Mack

Never 30

Mack should have turned 30 this year, but the world will pass another Mack-Day St. Patrick’s Day without her. I cannot picture Mack at 30, and it has cracked my broken heart wide open.

Mack in 5th Grade, 2004.

When Mack comes to me, tempting me to eat two donuts or telling me to be silly and stop it with the fretting, she is 10-years-old. Her freckled-face is dirty and grinning, her knees are scraped, her basketball shorts are five sizes too big, and her eyes are sparkling with mischief.

When I summon Mack for a chat, she is 20-years-old. Her hair is cropped short, her perfect eyebrows are framing the beautiful face she has only just grown into, and although her posture is casual cool, the cast of her gaze, straight into my eyes, is seriously wise.

When Mack comes to me or I summon her, she is never 30.

Mack and Me, 2014.

Mack will never be 30.

In October 2024, I will have known this fact for ten terrible years, but the truth of it hit me like blunt force trauma to my chest three months ago when the first of Mack’s best friends turned 30. Up until then, I was always able to imagine Mack living a life in her twenties, traveling, learning new things about herself, making new friends, and finding her professional path. Before three months ago, I could write stories of a life Mack might be living if the cosmos had given her the time she deserved. I could picture her as a junior writer for a sitcom, living a flip-flop life in Los Angeles with a St. Bernard and a Pomeranian, just a Mack-short walk from the beach.

Yet as time passed, I began losing the plot of every story I was writing for her. And now I have lost the plot entirely. Mack will never be 30. Not in life. Not in my stories. Not even in my dreams. I knew this failure of imagining would happen. I knew that time would buff out the sharpness of the future I envisioned for Mack as I coped with the loss of her. I knew it would be impossible to see any lines of time etched upon her beautiful face. I knew it. I knew it. I know it.

Mack will never be 30.

Recently, when I was walking my dog in the quiet of morning, listening to the birds and feeling the sun and the breeze upon on my face, I caught a glance of my reflection in a shop window. There was light all around me. My face was joy. My eyes sparkled. I was carefree, and it startled me. I had not been searching for joy or for peace when I set out on my morning walk, but both had found me.

The reflection I saw that day was not the face of a grieving, aging, lonely 57-year-old woman. It was the face of a 10-year-old, carefree girl. It was the face of a confident, easy-going, 20-year-old woman. It was the face of a bittersweet but hopeful middle-aged woman capable of finding simple joys and locating a moment of inner peace.

The 30-year-old Mack is not here. But the 10-year-old Mack is here. The 20-year-old Mack is here. I am here, too. And I will just have to do enough living for the lot of us. The spirits of that mischievous, fearless child and that grounded young woman will guide me, give me strength, and lead me ever onward to bloom joy and to paint my sparkle.

My two reasons for being: Mack and Savannah, 2004.

My Year in Books, 2023

Recently I was talking to a friend about books and reading, and she said: “Um, wait, you read a book a week?” I responded, “Yes, a little more, actually, but right now I’m nine books behind of my annual reading challenge goal of 60 books and I have become a reading slacker.” As soon as I said it, I realized it was bonkers to beat myself up for failing to read more than a book a week. Crikey. I work full-time, and this year I adopted a puppy and finished writing a book of my own! Ending the year at 53 books is hardly a failure. It is a triumph.

2023 was a terrific year of reading.

I read five exceptional books, two of which I added to my all-time list of favorite books (Demon Copperfield and Remarkably Bright Creatures) and another (The Keeper) that inspired me to think about my writing as art and to begin dreaming about a way to incorporate my newfound love of watercolor painting into a future book project. I read books this year that made me cry, made me laugh, and forced me to think differently about the world. I read three massive novels as well as a few light quickies. I read poetry, memoirs, two romances (what?!!!), a couple of thrillers, a biography, the eighteenth book of the Louise Penny detective series I love, and a book about quantum mechanics. In 2023, my brain was stretched by finishing a massive volume of the papers of Jane Addams for work and my own history/memoir, and so I let my reading for pleasure be lighter, choosing books and audio book for the pure joy of escaping into a good story.

Below I have ranked all fifty-three books of my 2023 reading list and provided the brief reviews I posted on Instagram throughout the year. It is an imperfect ranking. The muddy middle of books I gave three or two hearts were harder to sort, and I struggled a bit to weigh novels with nonfiction as well as books with excellent writing with books with important themes. The top ten is solid and the bottom six are well clear to my reading mind. But I will leave you to sort out the middle books you have read on your own terms and, perhaps, even offer comments.

I started keeping track of my reading four years ago, and I enjoy this annual reflection. Books are as important to me as breathing, and taking stock of what a read is as pleasurable as reading a delightful book on my porch, barefoot in the summer. It is a bonus to introduce people to a book I love, and there are many books on this year’s list to recommend. I mostly leave it to you to pick what sounds intriguing to your own reading brain, but EVERYONE who loves great literature and cares about humanity should read Demon Copperhead. Barbara Kingsolver is one of the brilliant writers of our time, but with this timely novel she has secured her status as one of the best American writers of all time.

Happy reading, and Happy New Year.

#1 Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️  Demon Copperhead is the kind of book that breaks your heart and makes you ask new questions about the world in which you live. Kingsolver’s story about rural poverty, the foster care system, and drug abuse (no, not drug abuse; rather the predatory drug pushing by doctors and coaches etc. onto society’s most vulnerable) humanizes the opioid crisis in a way even good journalism cannot. Don’t read this book if you hate to cry, and if you read this story and don’t cry, you need to go looking for a new heart.

#2 Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ My surprise book of the year, this imaginative and compelling novel about a grieving mother and a grumpy, articulate giant Pacific octopus made me chuckle and cry and hold my hands to my heart. This novel is not a silly story with the gimmick of a talking octopus. It is a gorgeous tale of love found in the most unlikely places; and trust me, when Marcellus starts telling his side of the story, you will not dismiss him because he has tentacles. Last year I loved a book with a sentient fig tree and another with a precocious dog. This year it’s an imprisoned cephalopod with a tender heart. It turns out I like a story with remarkably bright creatures, human and otherwise.

#3 The Bookbinder by Pip Williams (2023) ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ I finished this extraordinary novel under my yoga garden umbrella and an extraordinary blue sky. Fitting, a sky so big for the ending of story so illustrative of the hopes and dreams and beauty of women. Pip Williams’ second novel, brilliantly linked to the first (The Dictionary of Lost Words), is glorious; a story of women’s lives, work and class, family and friendships, the divisions of Town and Gown, the power of books, and dreams set in the context of war. So bold and so human, Williams leaves no emotion left unexplored, and history and the human heart are the stars, as bright as the summer sun.

#4 The Keeper by Kelcey Ervick ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ In this lovely and lively graphic memoir, Ervick offers her whole heart. Readers can read and see and feel her story, and so much of it is the story of every woman, conforming and then chafing and then becoming who she is on her own terms. This is a book you read and KEEP and buy another copy for a friend (which I did.).

#5 To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ This book takes you on a long long long wild ride, and where it ends is your own place to write. Wow. I’m reeling a little, I think, from the creative scope of the stories, settings, and characters. The author doesn’t answer all of the questions she raises in her breathtaking tale, and the loose ends are a part of the messy, beautiful mystery of her characters’ human realities (and so I’m not even mad!). I chose the audio book, which is beautifully narrated by a talented cast, who made me cry and scream and laugh.

#6 Winter by Ali Smith (2017) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ Ali Smith is the kind of writer who not only creates memorable characters but who make you see the world through their eyes, glazed with the quirky colors of their unique realities. And the characters in Winter are a hoot. Smith is a sensitive writer of crisp prose, spare but rich. Her stories are great and her writing masterful. I loved this second installment of her seasonal quartet. Fine farewell, Winter, I cannot wait until Spring.

#7 Horse by Geraldine Brooks (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ A racehorse named Lexington connects all the people and stories in this gorgeous novel, but the star of this book is Geraldine Brooks. She is so damn good. It takes an extremely gifted writer of historical fiction to artfully connect distant stories across 169 years. And Brooks is the best at weaving history into the present, in Horse covering 1850 to 2019, and illustrating every time for her readers that the past is never really past.

#8 Less Is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ To be human is to be awkward and out of step, to feel like you’re behind, that you may even be lost. No character in modern fiction more embodies this simple, beautiful truth than Arthur Less. Andrew Sean Greer is a wonderful writer. His style is crisp and delicious like a granny smith apple, sweet and good for you but just tart enough to make your lips smile. So funny. So warm. And genuine with a capital G. This novel is a fantastic follow-up novel to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Less.

#9 Her Lost Words by Stephanie Marie Thornton (2023) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ Thornton offers a lovely telling of the lives of two historically important women, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. This is excellent historical fiction, bending the story for drama but staying true to the language and contexts of the past. It is astonishing that the woman who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman gave birth to the creative woman who wrote Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft died just days after Mary’s birth, but as this novel is correct to suggest that these women were connected by words and writing and the spirits of all brave women.

#10 The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig (2021): ❤️❤️❤️❤️ A lovely, yearning search for words to define the bittersweet. An inventive dictionary for feelings too profound for common language, like: “harmonoia: n. an itchy sense of dread when life feels just a hint too peaceful—when everyone seems to get along suspiciously well, with an eerie stillness that makes you want to brace for the inevitable collapse, or burn it down yourself.”

#11 Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ I gave as a Christmas gift to myself this luxurious book of Kalman paintings of the simple, gorgeous act of holding. Art and wisdom and women holding the world. “What do women hold?” The home and the family. And the children and the food. The friendships. The work. The work of the world. And the work of the human being. The memories. And the troubles and the sorrows. And the love.”

#12 Autumn by Ali Smith (2016) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ This first installment of Smith’s seasonal quartet is lyrical and funny, loveable characters and a memorable relationship at its heart. Smith is a creative storyteller, her narrative here is a jumble of time frames and scenes, but somehow making more sense than strict chronology. I cannot wait to read the next three seasons.

#13 Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout ❤️❤️❤️❤️ Lucy Barton does the pandemic like she does life: imperfectly, but with humor and good intentions, no matter her doubts. “We are all in lockdown all the time,” she says, “we just don’t know it, that’s all.”

#14 The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ The Violin Conspiracy is a compelling novel about the heart and soul of a musician, a violinist for whom music is the North Star. This is a triumphant tale of talent and determination playing louder than the racism and the doubters trying to knock a Black musician off the path of his dreams. The writing is solid until the end, which feels a little stilted and rushed, but Ray’s reunion with his beloved violin is not as important as his beautiful journey of becoming.

#15 The Many Lives of Mama Love by Lara Love Hardin (2023) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ Hardin’s memoir is a page-turning, straight forward story about addiction, belonging, struggle, fierce motherly love, and finding a path forward through an awful imploding of a life. The writer’s story is remarkable, and her honest telling is a triumph. If it is this hard for a woman of privilege to claw her way back from drug abuse, crime, and incarceration, what our deeply flawed criminal justice system must do to the marginalized is heartbreaking. This memoir is a beautiful personal story, but it should also be a wake-up call to the failures of our society to rehabilitate human beings, who are worthy of a second chance to be a light in the world.

#16 Babel by R. F. Kuang (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ Slow burn this one (and LONG!), but in the way that makes you ponder. I am not going to try to explain the plot of this weird novel with footnotes, but this is a fun, funky and imaginative book about identity, power, knowledge, friendship, and the human consequences of colonialism.

#17 Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ David Sedaris’s latest collection of essays is one of his best. He tackles the pandemic, the death of his father, dental work, sibling love, and Hugh (always Hugh😍) with his characteristic snark and astute observations of human foibles. I listened to the audio version read by the author. I always do, because listening to Sedaris read his stories is half the fun—he is hilarious, and this batch of essays gave me an extra happy case of giggles.

#18 An Immense World by Edward Yong (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ This book was not an easy read for me, but despite the limitations of my own science brain it qualifies as accessible science. It is loaded with gob smacking facts about what humans have wrought upon the natural world and fascinating details about animals, both confirming my lifelong suspicion that animals are more complicated than we give them credit for being and cooler and more likeable than human beings. This book most importantly brings home that we are living in the Anthropocene Epoch. And that is not a good thing. If you don’t know what that means, look it up. It is important. No. It’s imperative. “Wilderness is not distant,” Yong writes. “We are continually immersed in it. It is there for us to imagine, to savor, and to protect.”

#19 A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny (2022) ❤️❤️❤️❤️ One of the best in the series, I think. Number 18, and still going strong. Classic Penny. Great characters, suspense, and fast-paced delight.

#20 Spring by Ali Smith (2019) ❤️❤️❤️ Spring starts out like a treatise on the shocking public discord in today’s western world, but it comes round to the stories of humans crossing paths. Smith is so good at bringing characters together, and this seasonal installment has a touch of mystery. The story screams and whispers and floats just a little bit beyond reality. I listened to this one, and the narrator’s voice was perfect, especially for the screaming.

#21 The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ ‼️ SPOILER ALERT ‼️ I love so much about this book: the melody of the writing, the details of India, the humor, the food, and the matriarch. But it is just too bloody long, and when Big Ammachi died on page 519, I simply could not face the remaining 200 pages without her. The book sat on the coffee table for two weeks glaring at me, but now it must go back to the library. Because I could not finish it, I can only give it three hearts (although the writing is worth four hearts). Verghese should have hired a good editor and/or ended the book with this lovey sentence: “It will take time, he knows, to begin to trace the outlines of the massive rent in his life, in the lives of everyone who knew the matriarch of Parambil, and who knew baby Mol. For now it is too large to comprehend, and he bows his head.”

#22 Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen (2022) ❤️❤️❤️ This sweet, ghostly story about an island of misfit human spirits might not go with me far into the future. But the quirky folks and those magical birds were nice to know for awhile. Sometimes a comfortable story is what I need, not great literature. Sometimes I prefer a little fantasy to the sharp, hard edges of reality. “Not everything has to be real to be true.” It did not hurt that I got to finish reading this enjoyable book on my front porch!

#23 Zero Days by Ruth Ware (2023). ❤️❤️❤️ Pure escape on adrenaline and worst nightmares is the stuff of a Ruth Ware novel. Zero Days is a good one if you like spending time in the head of a desperate, terrified woman on the run, which I do, I guess, because in every Ware story my own nightmares aren’t so scary. I never used to like thrillers (and still only rate the good ones with three hearts); but Ware’s stories offer strong women as well as adrenaline and escape. I recognize the women she writes, even if I cannot imagine what those women are going through as Ware unravels their lives.

#24 Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ Cassandra Penelope Dankworth is a fusspot. And I love her. What a fun, silly, serious, human story about a lost young woman who finds herself in time.

#25 Justice for Animals by Martha Nussbaum’s (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ The beginning of this book made me sob, the middle made me stretch my brain, and the end gave me a little hope (but not much). Nussbaum’s philosophical argument is compelling, animals deserve justice for their own sake. I believe it, and as an animal lover and vegetarian, I celebrate any philosophy that will move our society and the courts to protect ALL animals. But in a world in which there are humans who do not even care about other humans, I am skeptical. Also, I know so many nice people who eat animals and are nowhere near to accepting the injustice and cruelty of the meat industry. After reading this book I am horrified I ate meat at all and that it took me so long to stop. A comment to my review posted on Goodreads read: “That the book did not make you consider veganism is a strike against it. All the nonhuman animals in the dairy and egg industries end up killed after they’ve been brutally exploited. The dairy cows and their calves suffer MORE than conventional slaughter cattle because of separation between mother and calf, lameness and mastitis.” I have not been able to get this comment out of my head, and I suspect I will get there. For now, I cannot live without butter.

#26 Victory City by Salman Rushdie (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ Rave reviews for Victory City were, I think, more for Rushdie than for this novel, but the sweeping tale of the woman Pampa Kampana and the city of Bisnaga she grew from seeds is compelling. It is a fable of the rise and fall of empire and the folly of men who even in the face of extraordinary evidence to the contrary insist upon the inferiority of women. The book sags a little in the middle, but I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a story that reveals the complex nature of human beings, a story set in an unfamiliar past with human characters that are oddly familiar.

#27 The Hurting Kind, Poems by Ada Limón (2022) ❤️❤️❤️ A collection of whispering poems for every season—spring, summer, fall, winter, and pandemic. Uneven, for me and my untrained eye, but this poet’s voice is so vivid and there were so many lines on which I lingered and lingered and lingered, such as: “The thesis is still the wind. The thesis has never been exile. We have never been exiled. We have been in the sun…” That is a wrap on my books of 2023. I fell seven books short of my goal, but I read several long ones and wrote a book of my own. It was a wonderful year of reading; stay tuned for my reading review blog post coming soon.

#28 Normal People by Sally Rooney (2019) ❤️❤️❤️ Rooney’s tale of two young people is spare but brimming with humanity. From diverse backgrounds defying trite stereotypes, they cling to each other as they awkwardly grow into themselves and come of age in modern Ireland. I particularly appreciated all the things left unexplained and unknown by the author, because life is never a Hollywood ending. The best stories are messy, the details not always so clear, and the nuance an invitation to imagine.

#29 Dinners with Ruth by Nina Totenberg (2022) ❤️❤️❤️ Part memoir and part treatise on friendship, this book is poignant and packed with fascinating stories. I am a legal historian and a close watcher of the U.S. Supreme Court and enjoyed this book more than the average person might, but if you appreciate Totenberg’s brilliantly concise and accessible reporting on the SCOTUS for NPR, you’ll enjoy her memoir (she reads it herself for the audio version). For RGB fans, there is a lot of Ruth to go along with stories of Totenberg’s dinners with other justices across five decades.

#30 Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution by Carlo Rovelli (2021) ❤️❤️❤️ Yes, I read a book about quantum mechanics. No, I did not understand it. Of course not. But. I kinda sorta think I got the gist of it, all thanks to the writing talents of Carlo Rovelli. There were sentences in this book that blew my mind. Others made me scratch my head. Some made me feel like a complete idiot. And this one, depressing as it is, was my favorite: “Reality, including ourselves, is nothing but a thin and fragile veil, beyond which there is nothing.” That’s my key take away? Yes, it is, but I’m not really here, so…

#31 The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (2022) ❤️❤️❤️ Far less compelling than Hamnet, The Marriage Portrait makes a lot of literary florins out of the very short life of Lucrezia, a little-known member of the famous de’ Medici family. The novel is more historically inspired than solid historical fiction, but O’Farrell’s details are thrilling. Particularly titillating is her description of male genitalia, from the imagination of her horrified teenaged narrator, and is all by itself worth reading the book.

#32 The Revolutionary: Samuel Addams by Stacy Schiff (2022) ❤️❤️❤️ It was interesting to lean more about the great American revolutionary about whom I knew the least. He was a deeply principled idealist, whose talents and personality and passion were for made for a specific moment in time. Now I like the beer and the man.

#33 Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney (2022): ❤️❤️❤️ I enjoyed this thriller, set on a stormy night in Cornwall, about a family from hell and the story’s surprising ending that I never saw coming.

#34 The It Girl by Ruth Ware (2022) ❤️❤️❤️ Ripped through this audio book fast and furious, unable to wait to hear the mystery unfold. Ware is a master at the page-turner, and this week in the winter cold I needed a good escape. Imogen Church was the reader, and she was brilliant as usual. I would listen to any book she reads.

#35 Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ Light, amusing, and sweet, Romantic Comedy is, well, um…romantic. Not my usual genre, but I’ve been letting Book of the Month Club broaden my horizons or, more apt, I suppose, lower my brow. This was my first Sittenfeld book, and I’ll read more; she delivered an enjoyable summer read with this one.

#36 The Vulnerables (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ A novel in one breath, held in the long dark night of the pandemic. Life and writing sputter and spin the narrator, a writer, fast, slow, and forward. Nunez is such a good writer, and this novel has beautiful sentences to recommend it. I found it, however, a little too spare.

#37 Taste: My Life through Food by Stanley Tucci (2021) ❤️❤️❤️ Minus the gleeful cooking and eating of animals, (including whales!) and an erroneous attribution to Dorothy Parker, this is an entertaining memoir about food as a way of good living.

#38 Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ A perfectly nice story about a nice woman and her nice family, the paths we choose, and the love and the people we leave behind. The writing is good, but for me reading this novel was only slightly more entertaining than watching the grass grow and not quite as interesting as counting the box cars on a train while waiting at the crossing.

#39 A Wing and a Prayer by Andrea and Beverly Gyllenhaal (2023). ❤️❤️❤️ A sobering tale of the shocking decline of bird populations around the world. Two bird lovers set out to explore North American efforts to save endangered birds, protect bird habitats, and encourage people to watch birds and to do simple things to protect them. The writing is not great, but the message is important.

#40 Throw the Damn Ball, Classic Poetry by Dogs (2013) ❤️❤️❤️ A very appropriate Christmas gift from my niece, this is a silly, clever, fun little book filled with hilarious pictures of dogs. And, of course, a play on a Dorothy Parker poem made it into the collection!

#41 The Half Moon by Mary Beth Keane (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ The Half Moon is not a terrific book, and I wouldn’t recommend to my most discerning reader friends. However, it’s a surprisingly good anatomy of a marriage from both sides, all guts and no glory, and the shit that happens that opens our eyes or leads us astray. It’s a he-said-she-said narrative, which makes the miscommunication a character on its one, equal to the wife and to the husband and to the neighborhood bar they own in the middle of all of it.

#42 The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff (2023) ❤️❤️❤️ Ugh. This was not an enjoyable read. The writing was good, and the descriptive quality and suspense was superb. However, I struggled to cope with the horror of a story about what happens when human beings are reduced to base survival. Not a novel for the softhearted. I appreciate the creative perspective and the writing in this book, but I chafe at the subject matter and bleak landscape of the story. I have enough nightmares of my own.

#43 Cake: A Cookbook by Maira Kalman (2018) ❤️❤️❤️ I bought this book for a baking friend but read it first, before I wrapped it. Kalman’s illustrations are enchanting. And who doesn’t love cake?!! I’m only ranking it at the end of the three-hearted books because I did not assess any of the recipes (although I read them all and they looked amazing).

#44 The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell (2019) ❤️❤️ This book is dark and witty, and the character Henry diabolically (and delightfully) so. I’ve come to appreciate the ability of a good thriller to take my mind away from my hum-drum life for a time, and I find Jewell’s stories an enjoyable short vacation.

#45 The Hotel Nantucket by Elin Hilderbrand (2022) ❤️❤️ This was a mindless, mildly entertaining read, chosen to get my mind off of my busy life. I would not recommend it to anyone who enjoys serious literature. It was a little too Hollywood-happy-ending for me, but it took me away for a little while and accomplished what I asked of it. I would have enjoyed it better had I actually read this “beach read” on a beach.

#46 The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox (2023) ❤️❤️ Fox’s novel was a fast and fun read. I liked the mystery in the beginning of the book, but I was less enamored with the answer to the mystery and the smoochy, romantic, happy ending. Good to sappy in 334 pages.

#47 The House Is on Fire by Rachel Beanland (2023) ❤️❤️ This novel tells the story of a historic theater fire in Richmond, Virginia, in 1811 from the perspective of four characters affected by the fire. Although it is a fairly well-told story, based on good research, I didn’t love it. The tone was off and the dialogue too modern. P.S. I listened to this book, and the uneven narration may have diminished my enjoyment of the story.

#48 Trust by Hernan Diaz (2022) ❤️❤️ I suppose I can admit the structure of this book is interesting. Sort of. But the story is BORING. Duller than dirt, which is an insult to dirt because at least dirt grows flowers. I do not recommend this book, and I am at a loss to understand why Barbara Kingsolver’s superb Demon Copperhead had to share the Pulitzer Prize with it. One star because I finished it (out of respect for the Pulitzer Prize, although why I respect the Pulitzer committee for fiction I do not know, as it is frequently off in outer space). Another star for the last part of the book, which is weird but interesting, although hardly worth the slog through the pages leading up to it.

#49 Canary Girls by Jennifer Chiaverini (2023) ❤️ Disappointing. Maybe because soccer is boring. But probably because the author failed to make me care about women munitions workers during WWI, a subject that should have been easy for a historian of women’s history to enjoy.

#50 Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano (2023) ❤️ Meh. Actually, quite a yawn fest if I am honest (which I am, of course, honest like Lincoln). If I read this book instead of listening to the audio version, which helped me go to sleep for several nights, I doubt I would have finished it. Surprise, surprise, I’m sideways on yet another NYT bestseller, but this slow-moving family saga, covering the years 1960-2008, is a drag and told by four of the family members, not one of whom I would care to befriend.

#51 Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett (2022) ❤️ Meh. Not a fan of Checkout 19. Or perhaps I am just dumb, because all of the reviews I read about this book could not have been written about the book I just read. It was weird, incoherent, and jerky. The narrator has the habit of telling the reader something and then saying “yeah, that’s right. That’s right. I did.” Annoying and distracting. And disappointing.

#52 Thrust by Lida Yuknavitch. ❤️ Oh boy. Whoa, okay, so, what to say about this one? In the beginning, I thought it was strange but brilliant. In the middle the doubts were creeping in. By the end I felt duped by weird for the sake of weird and structure thrown out the window with no good purpose. I am perplexed. How do books like this get published? There are a handful of astute statements about inequality, colonization, and violence, I suppose, but for what? Do I care for the characters—including a time traveling girl, a talking whale, and the Statute of Liberty? No. No, I do not. Do I understand anything I just read? No, because the author has failed to convince me that I should try. Run away from this one, people. Run TF away.

#53 The Fraud by Zadie Smith (2023) zero hearts, because I did not finish it. The Fraud is a fraud, sorry. I wanted to like what everyone else seems to like in this novel. Alas, I failed to get into it. Boring is all I can say. And bummer.

That is a wrap on my 2023 reading. Now bring on the great books for 2024.

I Am Flexible

Yoga in the park this morning was all about the spine. My soft-spoken teacher stretched and twisted and cooed us into shapes that make the back-body purr. The rising sun cast majestic shadows on the concrete of the pavilion. Shadows of my body, reaching and breathing into beautiful movement in the already-warm breeze of a Midwestern day in late summer.

This stretching reminded me that I am alive, like yoga always reminds me that I am alive. These shadows made me grateful. I am able-bodied. I am here. I am breathing. Imperfect and grieving and uncertain, yes; but also accepting and peaceful and hopeful that life might still bring me gifts. That I am deserving of those gifts.

The mantra of my first yoga teacher, more than two decades ago, was: “You are only as young as your spine is flexible.” I didn’t appreciate her mantra back then, because my spine was flexible. It was also young and supple and strong. I was in my early thirties. I did not yet know that my body would change and that life would make me rigid. Back then, I could still do flips in the backyard with my daughters, the muscle memory of competitive gymnastics still lithe in my muscles and bones.

Not so much today, now that I know the weight of living. In my fifties, I am starting over and feeling green, despite my graying hair. I am unbending, even though life has done its damnedest to bend me. I am strong, in spite of all I have endured. But I know all of this, and that is the difference. Knowing is what makes me flexible.

And this is, precisely, the point of yoga. To practice. To learn. To bend. Not just in body, but also in spirit. To remind us to breathe. To make us sit in our moment with all of the crap life heaps upon us. To witness our shadows. To know the beauty of our bodies to bend without breaking.

Sometimes, I think I am old and inflexible. But in reality, I am young and bendy. I am strong. I am human. I am flexible.

Mack with Me

By myself, I am walking,
Mindfulness in all my steps,
Heel to toe, toe to earth.
Purposeful, with measurement.
In the walking, in my presence,
I find solace out of sorrow.
Unaccompanied, I walk in silence.
Yet I am not alone.

Mack is here.

Her presence in my present
Is my permission.
To breathe. To see.
To find my feet.
To find my peace.

By myself, the mornings
Are coffee and worries.
Blurry with my future,
Foreverness of loneliness.
Caffeine anxiety
For future years of misery.
I lose myself in the tyranny
Of incapacity for grace and dignity.

Mack is not in this state with me.

Her no-show no surprise to me.
To fret. To sweat
What I cannot change and cannot know
Just wastes precious time
She did not get.

By myself, in bed at night,
I fight to sleep.
To be at rest.
I toss and turn through history.
Through memories of who I was
When Mack was here.
When tragedy was unforeseen.
But when I wish upon the past,

Mack will not reminisce with me.

She sees no good
In glances back.
To dwell on loss, forget what’s not.
It breaks her heart
To see me lost.

By myself, I need to breathe.
To learn to sleep.
To find my dreams. To stay awake.
With every step. Through every task.
Through every day.
I need to learn to live for now.
To be content with me
And how to be right here,

Where Mack will be.

Where joyfulness can walk with me,
And Mack with me.
How I can laugh
And hope and see
All the life in front of me.

For you, my dear Mackenzie, on your birthday.
I am here. With you. In the present.

Me and Mack in the Garden

I was in the garden yesterday.

I was there to seek the company of the dawn redwood trees, upon the deeply fissured trunks of which there is written an ancient wisdom and under the branches of which I often find comfort. I was feeling a great deal of anxiety, as I always do at the end of a project that has consumed much of my creative energy and intellect over a long stretch of time. Instead of embracing a contented feeling of achievement, my mind was restless from the release of its previous intensity of purpose; my body was stiff and sore with the lingering memory of the labor, hanging tight and clinging heavy to my bones. It is a regular, and peculiar, ritual with me that the completion of a piece of writing about which I feel so damn good also leaves me, in the bargain, feeling so damned lost. It is similar to the sorrow that overcomes me when I read the last word on the last page of an extraordinary book. It feels something like the loss of a friend, or a missed opportunity, or a misplaced treasure. To complicate my trouble with endings, I also frequently feel a little off-balance within the uncomfortable and uncertain space in my mind that occupies the time between the end (or death) of one creative project and the beginning (or birth) of a new one. It makes me feel quite lonely, very sad, and sometimes a little crazy, too. Usually I can conquer on my own any negative energy that should never cling to a successfully completed project in the first place, but sometimes I need a little outside help to do so.

The Missouri Botanical Garden has become for me not only a physical sanctuary but an emotional and intellectual one. It is a place where nonjudgmental spirits reside and where I find both relief and inspiration. The garden has become my happy refuge and a cherished friend. It grounds my restless spirit to the earth, provides solace to my broken heart, and refreshes my tired mind. It is where I go to be uplifted by the songs of birds and to be renewed by the wondrous, ever-changing colors and shadows of all of the seasons of nature. It is where I go to walk with my memories, my sorrows, my hopes, my worries, and my intellectual and creative ideas. It is where I go to conquer the uncertain and uncomfortable in-between spaces in my mind. Yesterday, the latter was my need for the garden, and to be in the presence of the majestic Metasequoia was my singular purpose. I made a brisk and determined path to the redwoods in the back of the garden, noticing neither the birds nor the colors and shadows along the way. So eager was I for those trees to release me from my burdens, I had ignored all other greetings of the garden and offered my happy refuge, my cherished friend, no greeting of my own, either.

But, thankfully, Mack was in the garden yesterday, too.

As I followed the path, curving around the Victorian section of the garden and leading toward the stand of the dawn redwood trees, Mack popped up in my mind at precisely the moment that a single snow crocus, poking up through a carpet of old autumn leaves, popped into my peripheral vision. “Slow down, Mamma Bear,” she whispered. “Walk with me.”

It was then that I first noticed the warmth of a long-missing sun and the crisp breeze upon my face. It was then that the nurturing characteristics of the garden began to work their magic upon my tired body and to ease the discomforts of my restless mind. We started walking, Mack and I, under the branches of the dawn redwoods, and for more than two hours we mindfully strolled. Along every path, we spied chipmunks scurrying in bushes and we looked for the shiny blades of new-born leaves peeking up through the dirt and promising the coming of spring flowers. In the Japanese garden, we chatted with some turtles sunning on rocks and laughed at the awkward and silly cypress knees randomly jutting up out of the ground. We lingered at every statue we passed, we found some pansies in the home garden, and we sat for a spell on a bench in the woodland garden, enjoying the soothing sound of the water gently falling over rocks on its way down the stream. Everywhere we walked, we listened to the songs of the birds and took in all of the colors and shadows that a glorious pre-Spring day in the Midwest has to offer.

I did not think about the past. I did not worry about the future. I did not think about the end of my completed project. I did not contemplate the challenges of my new one. I just walked, with Mack, breathing easy and settling my mind upon the present. When I finally made my way to the exit, the in-between space in my mind had closed. I whispered my gratitude to Mack and to the garden, and I headed for home, basking in the satisfaction connected to rewarding work and the successful completion of a creative project and happily looking forward to a new creative project on the horizon.

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Better Angels

Three things. Each of them from my heart and through the raw edge of my emotion. But each of them also from my conviction that America got this election horribly wrong and that the mistake may cost us more than we can right now even begin to comprehend.

First, in his inaugural address on March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln appealed to the “better angels of our nature,” choosing to believe that Americans, north and south, were not enemies but rather friends, bound by a shared history and unbreakable bonds of affection. In the early days of the American Civil War, Lincoln continued to doubt the intensity of racism and hatred in the hearts of so many of his fellow Americans. Even the swift rebuke from many voices and regions across the country in angry response to his Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863 did not dampen his hopeful resolve. While I can today still see Lincoln’s good and true heart, unlike him, I am loath at this moment in American history to believe in the better angels of our nature. Bloody Civil War, Segregation and Jim Crow, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese Internment in WWII, and the turbulent Civil Rights Movement have, apparently, provided no lessons. Instead, we now find ourselves here, one hundred and fifty-five years after Lincoln appealed to those better angels, witness to the election of Donald Trump, a man who played to the devils in our nature, to the worst in America—to our bigotry, our sexism, our ethnocentrism, and our hatred and fear of the “other.” Yesterday, we betrayed Lincoln’s belief in and hope for America, and in this devastating realization I am bereft.

Second, today Mack, like me and half of my fellow Americans, would be devastated, as the shocking result of this hateful election flies in the face of everything she believed in her heart. But she would, no doubt, do what she always did: offer a crooked smile, tell a stupid joke, and deliver Big-Mack hugs all around. And, most importantly, she would never let the bitterness I am feeling on this terrible day to pass a shadow over her generous heart.

Finally,  I’m not sure I will be capable of Mack’s grace in regard to this election; and if I am ultimately capable, it is going to take a good while and considerable effort on my part to get there. While I take some comfort in the fact that the qualified and correct choice in this election won the popular vote, it will be a very long time before I am strong enough to forgive the part of the country who supported Trump. As I wholeheartedly believe in our country’s democratic ideals, I must accept the outcome of this election. But I will never accept Donald Trump’s vision of America; I choose Abraham Lincoln’s vision instead. I choose an America that is diverse, tolerant, open-minded, true, and kind. I chose an America that stands up against lies, that protects the rights of minorities and the LGBT community, that welcomes immigrants, that lifts up people with disabilities, that treats women with decency and respect, and that believes the American dream is big enough for all of us. While my soul is buoyed by the 59,731,599 souls who voted with me and with my Mack yesterday, the election cost me my faith in the better angels of our American nature. Yesterday was, truly, the third worst day in my life, only losing Mackenzie and my dad eclipsing my heartbreak for this country as the returns came in late into the night. Today I am grieving, and my faith in humanity is in question.

Since losing Mack, I have sought to channel the better angels of her nature. Mostly, I have been successful in drawing strength from her wit and her grace and her unbounding optimism. But at this moment, as we face potentially disturbing and historic consequences of what this election may have wrought, I am failing and, I dare say, might fail for a long time to come. Because in truth, the depth of my disappointment lies not only with the result of the Electoral College and with the dysfunction of the Republican Party, but also in the failure of the Democratic Party, my party, to understand the disaffection of its own base and to include the very people it always claimed to protect. As it was in Lincoln’s time, so it is also in our own, that we each bear some responsibility for our failure to get history right and to understand the depths of the differences between us. I can only hope that somewhere in the chasm that divides our country, reside the angels we will need to bridge the dangerous gap that threatens to swallow us all.

The Best Idea Ever

Halloween was definitely a Mack-holiday. Costumes and candy are a winning combination for every kid, but Mack set the quintessential example of how best to celebrate and to seize the day with the most kid gusto. She believed that the collection of a giant bucket of candy and the permission to gorge yourself into a sugar coma was simply the best idea ever in the history of the world. She saw selecting the perfect costume and then putting your whole kid heart and soul into it as a moral imperative of childhood. And trick-or-treating through heavy fall leaves in our historic Washington Park neighborhood—where most of the houses were spooked out with deadly decorations, creepy lights, and haunted music—was her favorite night of the year.

I miss Halloween with kids, and last week I purchased a giant $15 bag of candy even though I will not host a single trick-or-treater. Those Halloween sweets sitting in a big bowl in the kitchen all week have reminded me of the Halloween memories I have of Mack. While Kevin, Savannah, and I enjoyed Halloween before Mack joined our family, Mack’s enthusiasm for the holiday inspired us all to make it family favorite. Over the years, the four of us celebrated Halloween with themed baked goods, truckloads of candy for trick-or-treaters, decorations (including an expensive porcelain haunted mansion), and regular costume parties. So on this Halloween day, 2015, I want to celebrate Mack’s love of Halloween, to pay homage to her exuberance for costumes and for candy, and to illustrate her wholehearted embrace of America’s best kid holiday. As per usual, photos speak more loudly than words where Mack is concerned, and the following images exemplify Mack’s enthusiasm for Halloween, illustrate her sense of humor, and reveal something of the evolution (or, perhaps, de-evolution?) of her chosen costumes.

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Mack would never have chosen a mermaid costume herself, but baby Macko had no choice. Mack was always horrified that I had dressed her in such a way, but I have no regrets; because I absolutely adore this Halloween photo of me and my girls!

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Little kid Mack from clown to witch to kitty to devil…

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03-kitty 04-devil

Our old neighborhood was full of young families, and Halloween was a serious event…porches were transformed, lawns became graveyards, and there was one house where Count Dracula invited kids up to a scary porch through mist, spooky sounds, and haunting music. Trick-or-treating in our neighborhood was magical for my girls, and Mack always insisted we do some porch decorations. We were not the best house in the neighborhood by a long shot, but at the very least, we always had jack-o-lanterns and a mechanical bat that flew around the porch.

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Halloween costumes were almost always an easy way to tell my girls apart and to perfectly illustrate the differences in their personalities, as well.

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One year, Mack did not let a badly broken arm stand in the way of her and Halloween; and even dressed as a vampire, she was still the cool kid on the block (Word!).

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One year, Mack was a leprechaun, and it is my all-time favorite Mack-holiday costume. She was a leprechaun every day of her life, so playing one on Halloween was likely her most comfortable Halloween role. (A previous blog explains this perfect costume: https://macksmommabear.com/2015/03/17/mack-day/).

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I’m not sure how Mack came up with this one, but with her Dad’s movie makeup skills, she certainly looked just as awful as she had hoped.

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Mack trick-or-treated in our neighborhood her freshman year of high school against my protestations that she was too old. She argued quite emphatically that it was cruel to deny her one final participation in her favorite childhood pleasure. When she returned home that night, I watched her dump out the fully loaded pillowcase with the wild eyes of a ten-year-old, and I was glad she had convinced me to allow my high school girl to hang on a little longer to her childhood.

Here’s a costume from Mack’s junior year of high school, where I believe she was channeling her inner self…

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And here Mack is in college, where she brings us back full circle, dressing like a baby…

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The Prom Plot

Mack did not attend her junior prom, and in the opening months of 2012, she was showing absolutely no signs of interest in attending her senior prom, either. I tried to talk her into going. Her friends tried to talk her into going. But she was not hearing it. She kept saying things like, “school dances are lame,” “I’m just going to go to after-prom in my skinny jeans and a t-shirt,” and “I look weird and feel awkward in a floofy gown.” Of course, she had never worn a gown in her life, so there was no way she could have known how she might actually look in one. I was certain she would look just gorgeous in a prom dress, given her long and lean physique, but Mack was not hearing that, either. She had never enjoyed getting dolled up, she disliked dresses and makeup, and it really was not that surprising that she was being so stubborn. By February, I was resigned to her decision and gave up trying to change her mind.

But Mack’s boyfriend Abhinav did not give up, although he knew Mack well enough to understand the challenge he faced. Abhi was a very bright kid, and he realized that much ingenuity on his part would be necessary for success. It just so happened, though, that Mack was a writer for the high school newspaper, and one of Abhi’s best friends, Emma, was the Senator’s editor. So Abhi hatched a sneaky plan, sought out some tight-lipped co-conspirators, and crossed his fingers for a little luck. Emma was very fond of Mack, so she was immediately on board with Abhi’s plan to use the Senator to invite Mack to prom; and the newspaper’s good-humored advisor Ms. Negele was happy to be involved in the conspiracy as well.

The devious schemers believed that a printed, very public invitation would certainly give Abhi the “yes” answer he was seeking, but that success demanded total secrecy. It would be imperative that Mack remain in the dark, and since she was a senior member of the small newspaper staff, keeping the plan hush-hush until the March issue of the paper was printed, delivered, and distributed throughout the school would certainly be a trick. The newspaper staff always worked as a group to layout pages, copyedit, and finalize each issue before sending it out for printing. Therefore, Emma and Ms. Negele had to work carefully to make certain Mack did not see any early versions of the page on which Abhi’s invitation would appear. But, in the end, the newspaper issue was finalized and sent off to the printer, complete with the bold prom invitation, and Mack was none the wiser. On the morning that the paper would greet more than 1,300 Springfield High School students, Mack would see the invitation to prom from Abhinav, and she would have no choice but to say “YES,” right?

But for Abhi, some doubt crept in, and he started to worry. In fact, he started to agonize over what he and his co-conspirators had done. He began to question his judgment. He now wondered if the plot had not only guaranteed him a “NO” answer from Mack, but might also have set her up for school-wide embarrassment that might even jeopardize his relationship with her. His cold feet got the best of him, so he arranged a breakfast date with Mack before school on the day of the newspaper’s distribution. Now Mack always showered the night before school and rolled out of bed just in time to throw on sweats and a t-shirt and then speed the one mile up Washington Street to the high school in her old Jeep.  Frequently, she even failed to make the first bell. Therefore, convincing her to get up in time for breakfast must have been a challenge. Apparently, though, Abhinav was persuasive. But when he picked her up that morning an hour before school, I was shocked. I do not remember how he had lured Mack out of bed that early, but I think it may have been the promise of free Mel-o-Cream donuts!

At breakfast, Abhi presented Mack with a copy of the newspaper, and this is what greeted her on the FRONT page…

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I would have done just about anything to have seen the look on Mack’s face when she stared down Abhi’s printed invitation. I have no idea what she immediately did or said. What I do know is that she agreed to be Abhi’s date for the prom, and the two of them went on to the high school to face the student body together. Abhi’s decision to let Mack in on his secret before arriving at the school was, likely, wise. Throngs of students had already seen the paper by the time they arrived, and Abhi’s prom invitation was the topic in the halls and in the classrooms all day. Mack handled the attention with style and a great deal of humor, as she did most everything else in her life, and she laughed and joked with the multitude of friends, teachers, coaches, classmates, and teammates who greeted her throughout the day.

The plot had worked, and I never heard Mack express anger or even displeasure at Abhi or Emma or Ms. Negele. Yet I do think she was a tad embarrassed that day, being the topic of conversation and facing all of that attention. But I believe it was one of those rare moments in her life that Mack quietly admitted to herself that she was deserving of a little extra attention, that she was special, and that special people in her life were willing to go to extraordinary trouble just for her.

And so, together, Mackenzie and Abhinav attended their senior prom, and I was so pleased to have the opportunity to see Mack in a gown. She let me spend a little time on her hair, but she wore no makeup and had chosen a very sensible pair of flat sandals. And just as I had predicted, she looked gorgeous…a divine image of natural beauty. But, hey, I will let you all be the judge of that…

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Here is a fun little video of Mack posing for pictures before prom. The quality is very poor, but it is good enough to see Mack doing her thing. She is dancing a silly little Irish jig…her goofy way of rejecting any pretense or pomp that might creep in when one is wearing a floofy gown! http://youtu.be/TjDxFJ1P_Ps

Note from Emma (Co-Conspirator Extraordinaire): “We usually laid out all the pages of the newspaper before sending them to the printer so everyone could see what it looked like. The front page “still wasn’t finished” when we laid out this issue. I’m surprised she didn’t know about it before. She was a really good sport about it, as she was with everything that came her way!”

Note from Abhinav: Thank you for putting up that video and blog post, definitely one of my favorite memories in my life and will never forget her face when she found out. Still have multiple copies of that [newspaper] in my room.

Mack Day

Twenty-one years ago today, a leprechaun came dancing into our little family, bringing Irish magic, charm, and shenanigans to our lives. Mackenzie Kathleen McDermott loudly introduced herself at 3:05 in the afternoon on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1994. She was wearing a full head of dark hair, weighed in at 7 pounds, 14 ounces, and was 21¼ ̎ long. She had perfect skin, sparkling dark brown eyes, a sturdy frame, and a strong little grip. It was the capacity of her lungs, however, that was most impressive to me. As I wrote in her baby book: “she has a lusty cry…temper, temper! Alert from birth, looking around.” I took one look at her little Irish face, all scrunched up in a powerful yell, and I immediately knew that I was in big, fat trouble.

After Mack arrived, St. Patrick’s Day for us was never the same, and I suppose we should credit to some extent the magical day of her arrival in the world with her zest for life and the mischievous quality of her zany personality. The more Mack grew and the more freckles that emerged on her face, the more we all knew that she was a force of nature as vigorous as the Irish surf crashing on the Cliffs of Moher. She was a terrible toddler who engaged with gusto in constant mischief. She was an active and exuberant kid, always running and roaring and making a mess. And throughout her teens, she was a one-girl comedy act, always successful in making everyone who knew her laugh and laugh and laugh some more. Mack played hard, lived loud, and was impossible to ignore. From infancy to toddlerhood and from elementary school to college, she was a bundle of energy, she was a spirited sprite, and she watched for folly and fun around every corner. She was, indeed, our family’s Irish mascot, our own little leprechaun, our jolly little elf.

My Irish imp was ever a handful of trouble, but her sense of humor was infectious and her giggles had the power to melt her momma bear’s heart. Mack learned early on that she could make as much mischief as she wanted to as long as she finished it off with an Irish jig, or a silly joke, or a dimpled grin. Mack was always quick to remind me that she was an Irish daughter who came by her mischief naturally. She embraced her Irish heritage, and she gleefully used it as an excuse for any trouble she caused. She loved the Irish cadence of her full name, wore her freckles with pride, and always believed that having a St. Patrick’s Day birthday was the coolest personal detail of her life.Leprechaun

Throughout the year, Mack was always happy and ready to play the role of our family leprechaun. One year for Halloween she even dressed herself for the part. After school, she went into her bedroom to prepare for trick-or-treating, disappearing with a tub of holiday props I kept underneath my bed. When she emerged, she was wearing what I think is the best Halloween costume she ever had. It was so damn good, in fact, that I was not even mad that she had cut up a perfectly good shirt to make the vest. That night, she skipped and jigged through our neighborhood, collecting her candy and having a blast.

At Barrelhead, our favorite neighborhood bar and grill, where Kevin and I raised our girls on whole, deep-fried catfish and burgers and fries, there was a sign just inside the entrance that counted down the days until St. Patrick’s Day. The sign had chunky wood block numbers that sat in a frame, and the staff religiously updated the numbers each day. We ate at Barrelhead about once a week for something like fifteen years, and every time we entered the bar, Mack would go over to that countdown sign, turn around with a big grin, and shout “275 days until my birthday!” or whatever the magic number was that week. Mack never tired of this ritual; and I always laughed at her, so I guess I never tired of it either. Mack owned St. Patrick’s Day. It was uniquely hers. It was more than a birthday for her. It was a celebration of her Irish self, her inner child, and her devotion to all things silly.

For everyone who knew her, St. Patrick’s Day became Mack’s day. Mack made sure of it; and everyone seemed willing to oblige her. I miss my leprechaun oh so very much. I miss her every…single…day. And my sorrow today, on this first birthday without her, is overwhelming. But I find some solace in knowing that for all of us who loved her so much, St. Patrick’s Day will always be Mack Day.

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Mack and Abraham Lincoln

Mack, the poor little devil, spent her entire life with Abraham Lincoln. She grew up on Lincoln Avenue in Abe’s hometown of Springfield, Illinois, made very frequent visits to all of the Springfield Lincoln historic sites on school trips and with out-of-town relatives, and practiced with her high school golf team at Lincoln Greens, where Lincoln’s face is plastered on the golf carts. Springfield kids have a hard time escaping Lincoln, but Mack had it worse than most, because for most of her life I was an editor at the Lincoln Papers.

Mack always told me that I knew way too much about Lincoln, that I talked about him more than was normal, and that I really needed to get a life. Mack and her friend Justice called me a Lincoln stalker, and they had a lot of laughs at my expense. From a young age Mack had a healthy amount of skepticism about Lincoln; and like she did with most things that were a tad kooky, she viewed the whole Lincoln mania thing with a great deal of humor and dramatically raised eyebrows. Lincoln 1She was always quick to point out the absurdity of seeing a Lincoln impersonator on the Old State Capitol Square in downtown Springfield, even though it was a very common occurrence. She cackled whenever she saw ludicrous advertising using Lincoln’s image to sell some modern product like a car or bag of potato chips. And she relentlessly teased me when I talked about Lincoln in the present tense. “He’s dead, Mom,” she always reminded me. “He. Is. Dead. You know that, right?”

Over the years, Mack, like hundreds of other school kids in Springfield, created artwork and essays for school projects each February in celebration of Lincoln’s birthday. I was always particularly enthusiastic about seeing those projects when they made it home. Mack’s adorable kindergarten drawing and essay occupied a prominent spot in my Springfield office at the Lincoln Papers for more than a decade and it now hangs in my home office in St. Louis. Lincoln2But a project for fifth grade was particularly exciting to me. One of Mack’s fifth-grade teachers at Dubois Elementary conducted an annual living history program in which the students studied various aspects of Illinois history throughout the fall and winter. In the spring, the kids chose one of those topics to research in depth and then they created skits, dramatic readings, or historic re-enactments to present their findings at an outdoor living history event, which was open to the public.

On the day the students selected their topics, Mack arrived home from school excited to tell me that she had chosen the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. “That’s so perfect,” I said, and then I asked: “so who are you going to be?” She looked at me like I was a gigantic idiot who had just uttered the most stupid question ever in the history of mom questions. “Well, DUH,” she answered, annoyed. “I’m Lincoln, Mom. Like anybody else could be Lincoln? I told them I had to be Lincoln.” And so, in May 2005, Mack played Abraham Lincoln to her friend Anna’s Stephen Douglas. I was so tickled to watch Mack Lincoln enacting the debate on that spring day in the historic Lincoln neighborhood, just a block down from the Lincoln Home. Hands down, she was the best and the absolute cutest Lincoln I had ever seen or will ever see again.

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I have spent most of my professional life with Abraham Lincoln, and I was always happy to share him and my love of history with Mack. She indulged me…a little…feigning interest while I rattled on about a Lincoln document I was editing or a new book about Lincoln. And, frankly, I needed her sharp wit to yank me out of the nineteenth-century when I went a little bit too far. In middle school and high school, Mack habitually chose Lincoln for her essay or research paper topics. While I am sure she mostly did so because it was easy and because we had a lot of Lincoln books in the house (which saved her a trip to the library), I was always giddy about helping her. She even used Lincoln as a college essay topic; and her humorous take on Springfield Lincoln mania set the stage for a memorable interview with her admissions counselor at Truman State, who met with Mack just a few months after giving birth to her son, whom she had named Lincoln! Good old Abe even followed Mack to northern Missouri.Lincoln5

My most treasured Mack and Lincoln memory was made in the summer of 2012, when I had the honor and the privilege to call Mack a colleague. The Lincoln Papers had a little grant money to process digital images of Lincoln documents that we had received from the Library of Congress. Mack was one seven teenagers selected to do the work. Her quiet, sweet charm and her dry wit with my colleagues and our project’s group of volunteers made me proud, and I beamed at her success with the work as well. She learned quickly, multi-tasked brilliantly, and ended up processing more documents than anyone else that summer. It was a lucrative summer for Mack, but it was an expensive one for me. I had to buy two rounds at Starbucks every morning, but it was so worth it. I am not sure I ever told Mack how much it meant to me to have her in the office every day that summer as I prepared to give her up to college. But…oh…how very much it meant, indeed. Sometimes now when I am using our project’s database, I will come across a document that Mack processed, and there is her name. It forces a little air out of my lungs and frequently results in some tears; but mostly, it makes me smile. It is like having a little piece of her connected to my professional work; Mack, Lincoln, and me, together forever at the Papers of Abraham Lincoln.Lincoln database

I am really happy that Mack knew something of what I do for a living, and I am so grateful for her playful indulgence of my historical interests, even though they were not her cup of tea. Always a trooper, Mack let the Lincoln thing fly; chiming in with her brilliant comedy, yes, but accepting Lincoln as an important part of her upbringing as well. In one of her college essays Mack wrote: “The weight of Lincoln’s legacy is a heavy burden to bear,” but I know that she was just exercising her deft hand with sarcasm and hyperbole. Deep down, Mack appreciated that Lincoln gave her hometown a little pizzaz, and I am confident that she believed it was kinda cool that her mom made a living studying the guy who made her hometown so special.

Mack with her summer colleagues at the Papers of Abraham Lincoln…

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Psst…in case you can’t figure it out, Mack is the one behind and slightly to the left of Mr. Lincoln.