Dissonance

Recently I began a new project that combines writing and painting. Since I am a comfortable writer but a novice, unskilled painter, I planned to write a series of short essays and then illustrate them with watercolor. My therapist suggested that I experiment with the reverse, paint first and then write an essay. It was a terrifying prospect, so I put it off until  two weeks ago when I had an idea for a safe test, a photograph of myself doing a cartwheel in my yoga garden.

The painting is ridiculous, much like the photograph, which I thought would provoke a funny essay about how bad I am at painting, how weird it is that I like being physically upside down, and how unusual it is to be a 57-year-old woman who can and frequently does turn cartwheels. But it was not a humorous essay, even as my right humerus bone in the painting is a hoot of disproportion. The essay had nothing at all to do with my joy of cartwheels and the good rush of blood to my head. The words that came out of me instead were an emotional outpouring of how upside down I have felt all this year. Not the good kind of upside down, like a downward dog or a cartwheel, but a bad upside down like discombobulated. Dizzy. Dazed and confused. The kind of upside down that makes me want to vomit.

Grief and loneliness and the uncertainty of this damned, crazy world always make me feel sideways. Feeling sideways is just life. Nothing special about me. We all have forces that knock us askew. I have learned to balance the kind of sideways that life inflicts upon me. I counter it with creative and calm remedies I daily employ to stay upright. I practice yoga. I write. I paint. I walk, cuddle my dogs, and watch birds. Yet all during this productive year, this contented, creative, cathartic year, a new and different force threatened my uprightness. Numbers. Stupid numbers. All in my head, but these seemingly real numbers had done a number on my equilibrium; 10, 30, 57, and 80 had turned me upside down.

Mack should have turned 30 in March, and on October 7, 2024, she will be gone 10 years. Mack has been gone half the time she was here on this earth, and it is a fact that astounds me. I cannot bear it. The truth of it has been impossible to face, and spending the past twelve months being the age my dad was when he died made it more difficult. Being 57 has been like having an anvil of death hanging from a thread above my head. My dad should have turned 80 this year, and though I know so well the sharp edges of living, year after year after year, without my daughter, I want to see 80. I need to keep Mack’s memories for so much longer than a decade.

A week after painting and writing the upside-down essay, I sat at my laptop to write this annual blog post to commemorate the anniversary of Mack’s death. I couldn’t do it. I was worked up by what the painting-first, writing-second process had unearthed and unleashed. It is not at all a bad thing to examine my emotions but looking for answers to my upside down made it hard to find the words to express my state of disorientation, my fear of the numbers.

But while I was stumbling and struggling to right myself, I got an unexpected email. A watercolor of mine was accepted for publication in a quirky online journal called Waves. It was a self-portrait I had done while recovering from the deep removal of skin cancer from my ear. I painted it to find humor in my fear about the plastic surgery I would have to repair the damage. The issue of Waves in which “My Left Ear” appears is entitled “Dissonance.”

Dissonance. Yes, that is precisely what I was feeling.

Dissonance: the lack of harmony among musical notes.

Dissonance explained my year, my numbers, and my false belief that I was upside down in a bad way. Some notes of my life this past year have been lovely chimes out of creative flurry, the completion of a new book, professional accomplishment, and the establishment of new friendships. Other notes clunked from fear, exhaustion, and physical pain. The note of those damned numbers clanked. The note of no yoga for five weeks of convalescence honked like an injured goose. The note of my trepidation of a new project I wasn’t sure I had the talent to do justice thumped a little too deeply to be good bass. And grief, oh my dear constant grief, is always an unharmonious whisper.

Dissonance is awkward and unpleasant, but it makes you long for melody. It makes you want to hear and see and feel your life differently. I had lost my tune. My song was, indeed, dissonant, but I was still singing.

In painting, perspective is one of the hardest skills to master, much as perspective in real life is almost always hard learned. Recasting my year as dissonance didn’t erase the worry that had plagued me, nor did it give me hope that the next year of my life will be harmonious or even a little less dissonant. It didn’t help me figure out how to write about what it means to me that I’ve passed ten years without Mack, either. A perspective of dissonance does, however, give me back my beautiful and necessary upside down, my downward dogs and my cartwheels. Oddly, too, the idea of dissonance is a gentle reminder that I am only human.

A definition of dissonance might also have soothed my dread of those dastardly numbers.

No.

No, actually, as Mack’s spirit is reminding me as I write this, it is just that the year of awful numbers will soon come to an end. After breathing and sobbing through another October 7, I will turn 58 on October 9, and then I will fall sideways into whatever future starts for me on October 10.

There is precious little we can control. Life will blow us off our feet in terrible and beautiful directions we cannot predetermine. Dissonance is just the range of all emotions, the far and wide of the good, and the depth of the sorrow that life gives us. Dissonance keeps us awake and alive. It helps us appreciate the precious melodies. Mack is alive for me in my dissonance and in my melody. She is with me in the joyful upside down. She will be with me ever still, going forward, laughing at my ridiculous paintings, teasing me out of the dark hours, and singing be back into tune so I can keep her stories and continue writing and painting my own.

On painting Mack: I find it very painful to paint her face and to imagine her in watercolor. Watercolor is like a dream, and I long to paint her alive. I have tried and failed to capture her lovely spirit. When I paint anything else, I am fearless, but painting Mack opens a vulnerability that is terrifying. But, when I am brave, I will keep trying to do her justice. My painting, after all, is not art, it is therapy. It will remain a work in progress, just like me.

My Poor Ear and a Little Clarity

Awake under the surgical drape, I can see the torso and knees of the nurse monitoring my vital signs. She is sitting in a chair next to me, and I can read her badge. “Shirley, RN.” A middle-aged name. My age or older, I am guessing. There is another nurse behind her who leans down to peak at me under the drape. “You all right under there?”

“Yes,” I reply, but I don’t believe it. Given the tremble in my voice she probably doesn’t believe it either. She smiles at me with her piercing blue eyes. She is younger than Shirley and me.

I am lying on my right side with only my left ear and cheekbone exposed above the surgical drape, which is adhered to my face with sticky tape. There is a firm pillow at my back and a softer one between my knees. I would be comfortable if I wasn’t on an operating table about to be sliced up and stitched back together. I could be sleeping right now if not for the thumping beat of my heart and the nightmare of the full-thickness skin graft that will soon be cut from a healthy place on my ear to seal the wound at the edge of my ear caused from last week’s removal of a spot of basal-cell carcinoma.

Oh, no, my poor ear. My perfect, cute, little ear.

But this is what happens when you are a sun worshipper who spent the 1980s lathered up in baby oil and sunbathing on foil. This is what happens when anxiety keeps you away from doctors for ten years because the medical profession failed your daughter. Basal-cell carcinoma bores through cartilage if you ignore it, like I ignored it. How long did I know that spot was no bug bite? How long did I pretend it wasn’t there? So long. Too long. Long ago and away in my denial.

So here I am on a Monday morning in an operating room. Naked under a thin, cotton hospital gown, I am helpless in the hands of five medical professionals who do not know that I am a historian, a mother, a yogi, a lover of dogs and birds and Abraham Lincoln. How weird it is … how unreasonable … how crazy … how amazing … that we give ourselves over to doctors and nurses, human beings just like us, who sometimes burn their toast and forget to water that lonely Monstera adansonii on the sideboard, so far away from all the other plants that get watered on Fridays.

Be careful with me. I have two dogs at home, and I need to water that plant on my sideboard.

I am untrusting and petrified and scared like a wide-eyed child, but no matter my circumstances I am always compelled to be observant. My eyes dart around to see all I can see through the narrow opening of the drape, expertly tented to quell claustrophobia. A steel cabinet with drawers stands against a gleaming white wall. A gray power cord trails below a table. The black scrub pants of the blue-eyed nurse are cinched by flat, gray drawstrings with a single red stripe at each end. Shirley’s chair is a standard black office chair, which seems odd to me and makes me smile. There is a green light on the bottom of the monitor tracking my vital signs. I guess that means I am alive.

Wow. This experience is almost cool. I mean, it’s not every day you get your ear reconstructed by a plastic surgeon. It’s not every day you are awake in an O.R. I pretend I am an attractive patient on Grey’s Anatomy. That gorgeous Dr. Avery will be here any moment to make me gorgeous, too.

I am ridiculous.

I inhale deeply and slowly and then count down my exhalation. Seven … Six … Five … Four … Three … Two … One.

Gasp.

My first surgery is plastic surgery! And I’m awake for it? I am so afraid of the cutting and the pain and the stitches. I want to go home. I need to go home. Now. Please.

“Hush. You are strong, and you are lucky.”

It is my inner warrior speaking to me now. That warrior born from the husks of a grieving mother has arrived to do battle for me. “The skin cancer is gone, and this is a simple repair. You heard the plastic surgeon; this is nothing in the realm of plastic surgery. And look at you. You made it to fifty-seven without surgery, major injury, or serious illness. You delivered two humans into the world. It is okay to be scared, but you can do this.

Oh, shut up.

Inner warriors are so annoying sometimes.

The surgical nurse is now cleaning my ear. I can hear her working, and I feel the cold saline when it arrives at the back of my neck, beyond the reach of the lidocaine. She stuffs cotton in my ear. I know it because I can hear it, THUNDEROUS and SMOOSHING. Now faded away is the jazz music I selected, because, did you know, that awake patients get music dibs over surgeons?

A bright light comes on above me, immediately hot like the Midwestern sun I have tearfully broken up with, because it has, like a cheating lover, betrayed me. I start to sweat under the heated blankets the surgical nurse had so kindly draped around my body to keep me safe from the blasting chill of the operating room, even as she pushed me so dangerously close to a silver tray of scalpels.

Damn. I wish I had not seen those scalpels.

My surgeon arrives and taps my shoulder. I struggle to hear what he is saying, his gravelly voice difficult to understand even without the cotton muffling. He has decided on a different approach, he says, to improvise a better repair. “Watch this,” he says to the nurse. “You’ve never seen this surgery before, because I just made it up.”

Do I look like a guinea pig to you?!!

Oops. I said it out loud. There is muted laughter. “Two incisions instead of three,” he says. “You’ll like it.” He taps my shoulder three times.

Blue eyes smile at me again. “You still okay under there?”

No.

“Yes.” This time I want to mean it.

Then the cutting begins. I hear it. I feel pressure and pulling. The surgeon gets traction or steadies his hand by leaning on my left arm. Then there is sewing. Loud, unapologetic stitching. My ear is a megaphone turning the slipping of delicate sutures into the sound of rope and tug of war. Slip. Tug. Slip. Tug. My face is pulled taught. I feel pressure, but there is no pain. I feel my heart in my throat, but I don’t stop breathing as I listen to Dr. Frankenstein making his monster.

I breathe with my eyes wide open. I breathe with my eyes shut tight. I think about the new walking shoes I need to order this week. I wonder what my sister is doing out in the waiting room. My stomach rumbles, and I think about what I will eat for lunch before the lidocaine wears off. I imagine Bug, at home, sleeping on the back of the couch. I hear the surgeon singing. Is that Jimmy Durante? The sound is deep and lovely, and I think how funny it is that a person’s singing voice can be so different from their speaking voice.

After a month or forty minutes, the surgeon taps my shoulder. “You did good, kid,” he says.

No yoga or strenuous exercise for at least two weeks, so I’ll be leaning a little more on watercolor. Painting my poor ear was oddly therapeutic.

He’s right. I did do good. I did not deploy my plan to secure the strings of my hospital gown and run like the wind for the Illinois prairie. I breathed through all the fear and the disconcerting vulnerability. I breathed through all the cutting and the stitching. I managed my anxiety like a warrior.

What’s more, I am still a kid, but not only a kid to my chubby, singing surgeon who is in his mid-seventies. At fifty-seven, I am still a kid to me. With every new experience, in the face of change, or when standing on the precipice of the unknown, we are all babies. In these moments of course we are scared, because in these moments we are actively learning about the terrifying, wonderful world and learning how to survive what life is throwing at us. In this particular fascinating moment in my ordinary life, I am, indeed, just a kid. Young and scared and hopeful.

Hell and My Next Big Project

Seventy-two hours to fill was daunting at 7 a.m. and took a turn for the worst when Dorothy Parker Doodle acted a fool at the farmer’s market. Wrapping the leash around by legs and jumping up on vendor tables as I purchased pea shoots and spring lettuce and an apple pastry, she wrecked my concentration on Zen. By 8 a.m., back at home, the colorful list of goals I had written on the white board on the fridge was laughing at me.

Ha ha ha, bah ha ha, silly lonely old woman, just try to make that lazy list last until Monday at bedtime.

I added “work ½ day Monday” to reduce the time by three and a half hours and to calm my nerves. I stood there, with marker in hand, thinking about what else I could add.

Shampoo the rugs? No, you did that last weekend, and it only filled an hour anyway.

Pull the weeds on the brick sidewalk? Really? You want to hang out with a million cicadas?

Promise to make three watercolor paintings, one for each day of this interminable Memorial Day weekend? No, hell no, you know you should not promise final paintings, that is too much pressure for art therapy.

 Ok, how about a long walk up to campus and back? Sure, that’s ninety minutes down and time to think up ways to take down a few more.

This is the dance I do in my head every weekend when I don’t have plans to travel or see people and don’t have a big project going. Such dancing is why I am sitting on my sofa writing a blog post about how messed up it is that I struggle so much to see my way to the other side of a lazy weekend.

When I was a young working mom with a husband and a big old house and giant garden, I would have sold my soul to the devil for a long weekend to do nothing more strenuous than trimming one bush in the yard. I can remember the regular dejection of facing even a two-day weekend with not one hour of free time to read a novel in a comfortable chair. Now that I live alone, have a job that lets me let go at the end of a reasonable workday, and a porch that is heaven, I struggle with down time for even a few hours on a Tuesday, let alone a three-day holiday weekend with no travel or social plans in place.

It is mental. I know it is mental. It is also the audacity of privilege to be so, um…privileged to fret about my lucky leisure. But this is the anxious, still-learning-to-live-alone-and-be-alone me, with best friends far flung, and sitting right now in the uncomfortable space between big projects. I’ve learned enough about myself these past five years to know that my peace is thwarted by a steep learning curve to feel at ease with all my leisure time. Though I try to let the spirit of my cucumber-calm, easy-breezy Mack be my teacher, she sees no passing grade in my near future. Unlike her, I am incapable of happily passing one hour with only a family-sized bag of Cool Ranch Doritos to entertain me.

Heaven may be waiting for me on my front porch, but hell is a lazy day not working.

In so many ways, I am a super woman with superpowers. I am creative and productive, confident, wise, and comfortable in my beautiful, wrinkling skin. I get to spend my workweek with Jane Addams earning a queen’s ransom to study and write about history, one of the great loves of my life. I’ve just written my third book; and I know that not just anyone can write a book, and I am so proud to be among those who can. I have also curated a home perfectly suited to the peaceful path on which I have set my own two feet. I am well, and yet too much time to think can undo me.

Welcome to life, says life and then she adds:

Come on now, super woman old gal, you know that life is a constant journey to find balance and to be at peace when your center of balance is shifting. You know it will always be a struggle for you to be comfortable living alone, even though you want more than anything to be a bad-ass independent king-free Queen. You know you are a work in progress like every life is a work in progress, and you know you don’t need straight A’s in every goddammed thing in order to make good progress.

Yes. I know it. I know it all, especially that I am well. This is just an anxious space between big projects. This is simply the passing through Saturday to Sunday and Monday and into my future. This is an imperfect me still getting used to living alone. This is the anxious me learning to be as comfortable with my growing-learning-becoming times as I am comfortable in my beautiful, wrinkling skin. Some day, I hope Mack will give me a B+ for happily spending an hour on the sofa with a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and doing nothing else and thinking about nothing else but eating those chips and enjoying them. I will dutifully and steadily march onward toward that day.

Although I spent the first morning of this long holiday weekend wobbled by the unfortunate trip to the farmer’s market, I realize upon reflection that this long holiday weekend feels a little less angsty than the last one. The list I prepared to survive this long weekend is more balanced. This time I feel more willing to give myself grace. And as I write this blog post (and knock off one of the items on my survival list), I feel considerably calmer. I am still afraid I have too much time on my hands and am worried so much leisure time will result in too much thinking and overthinking and anxiety. However, I am feeling freer to lean in the direction of leisure and, who knows, maybe I will pass this planned lazy, three-day weekend and almost like it.

Especially if I succeed with the most important item on the white-board list: “settle on my next BIG PROJECT.”

And there it is. The pressure. Right back on and screaming. I really am a long way to those lazy Doritos and a Mack passing grade, aren’t I? I said I was a super woman, not Superwoman. I can only promise to find a little heaven during this hell of a three-day weekend; and if I succeed in selecting my next big project, I’ll have enough good work to get me through at least the next year or two of long weekends.

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.

Out of Words

I have not been writing much this year. I am not quite myself, and I feel a little adrift.  Writing has always been my creative outlet, and since my daughter died my emotional release valve. Writing is how I understand the world, process pain, document joy, try out crazy ideas, and express thoughts I could never say out loud. It is frustrating to lose a tool that keeps me sane, but it occurred to me the other day that there is a good reason why writing is eluding me. I know why it took me the better part of a day to write a blog post for work and why when I sit down to write in the evening the blinking cursor stares me down.

I am out of words.

Writing is giving me a holiday because my brain is tired. I spent the last half of 2022 and all of 2023 preparing a 900-page edited volume for the Jane Addams Papers and writing my own book about women and Abraham Lincoln. Of course I am out of words. I used them all up!

And it is true I am not quite myself without them. I am adrift. But I am only a little adrift, which is to me, to quote Lincoln, a matter of profound wonder. I have been doing okay without writing for these first two months of 2024. I have been calmly weathering my missing words because I have a second tool to keep me sane. Watercolor.

Last July, my therapist suggested watercolor. We are working on my obsession with control and the anxiety that overtakes me when I don’t have it. She believed watercolor might help me feel the power of letting go, that learning to go with the flow of the water and the color making their own way across the paper might show me how calming it can be to loosen my grip. As a bonus, she was certain watercolor could compliment my writing.

I was skeptical. I am an old dog and afraid of new tricks. I assumed painting would frustrate me. I am not artistic, I said. I can’t draw, I said. Failure will make me sad, I said.

On my first day of painting, I ate all those stupid, doubting, self-defeating words.  And I have been painting ever since, completing, thus far, nearly 100 small watercolors. I do let the water and the color have a say, and I love the imperfect paths and the unexpected visions they reveal to me. I admit I try to control the water and the color more than my therapist would like, but I am learning to let go, becoming chill with imperfection, and laughing all the way. When I sit down to paint, I am as calm as I am when I sit down on my yoga mat. For a half hour or so I express myself in color instead of words; and there is so much joy in every silly, little painting I produce. In fact, I laugh deeper down in my belly at my failures.

I haven’t been writing this year, this is true. But I have been painting. And I am learning that expression is sometimes silent. I am discovering that painting is another way for me to understand the world. In my watercolors, I have documented joy, tried out a couple of crazy ideas, expressed some thoughts I could never say out loud or even write, and processed a lot of pain about by daughter, my dad, and my dog. Painting has become a part of my soul.

But enough already, missing words. I want to pursue the idea that watercolor might compliment my writing. Come back now please. I need to write. I feel you close as I write this post, and I want you back. Now, please. I want to introduce you to watercolor.

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.

Walk with Me

Please do not tell me that I am lighter than I was a year ago or two or nine. Do not call me strong or inspirational or a survivor. I am not lighter and, if I am honest, I am heavier because I know the worst can happen and that a person can live with profound grief. I am not strong for surviving the death of my precious Mackenzie. I survive because there is nothing else to do when you know how precious life is, how fragile and fleeting is our time to breathe upon this earth. I do not want to be an inspiration for the sorrow with which I have no other choice but to cope. I just want you to walk with me so that I am not alone and that you know you are not alone.

I do not always know where Mack’s spirit soars, but I hope she always has a lovely view.

Nine years of living without Mack has not made me brave, but it has made me different in all the ways that human beings are remade when life throws them something hard or unexpected. I am not better; I am simply better at coping. I am still in pain but today I better balance my pain with the good bits of being human. I no longer find myself in the fetal position on the shower floor, sobbing and late to start a day, but every time the warm water hits my skin, I remember everything. Her death. My loss. The burden of every milestone collected in her absence. The pain in my bones. The throbbing ache in my heart for missing her. And then I wash myself with soap and memories and start a new day.

Because I am here.

Because I have two lives to live. One for myself and one for Mack.

I have rewarding and challenging work to keep my mind supple and give me purpose. I walk outside every single day and appreciate the fresh air. I practice yoga. Family nurtures me, and I have brilliant friends to share this life. I have my darling Savannah. I have my cozy bungalow. There are my dogs, birds chirping on my porch, and great gin with fresh lemon. I have books into which I can escape; and I have my writing to push me into a future I did not imagine was possible nine years ago. And a newfound joy of watercolor has awakened my inner child. And when I paint, Mack sits on my shoulder giggling with me at the hilarious results of her Momma Bear’s creative efforts. Watercolor is a new joy for me to share with the spirit of Mack in the quiet of my little archive room, sitting at the childhood desk she inherited from her big sister, the morning sun streaming in through the large windows.

I am okay. I can locate laughter. I know love, joy, and peace. I am melancholy, yes, but I am also beautifully bittersweet. I can hold love and pain, the quintessential qualities of being human, and be well in the knowing that this is precisely what it means to be alive.

I am productive and creative and content most days. I am here. And Mack is with me.

I visited Oak Ridge Cemetery on the eve of this 9th anniversary of Mack’s death. I took flowers from my yard and spent the day held up by lovely humans who keep me sane and make me whole.

The Work of Writing

On the 1,253rd day of living in the fog of my grief, I walked into the Walgreens at Lafayette Square to buy a bag of candy and a Dr. Pepper. My plan was a sugar coma for another shitty Saturday in my devastated life. Inexplicably, however, I did not beeline for my baseline in the candy aisle. Instead, my body began a slow stroll up the first aisle of the store, down the second, and up the third. Too worn down to resist this compulsion to browse each aisle, I mindlessly scanned the shelves for nothing. In the middle of the row of office supplies, I spied a thick journal with a geometric pattern in blue and a bright green strap to hold it closed. Without thinking, I picked it up, the weight and feel of it in my hands felt comfortable and natural. It felt like it was meant to be mine. The next thing I knew, I was at the cash register purchasing the journal and a packet of pens with purple ink. Mack’s color.

The candy and the Dr. Pepper forgotten, I had a new plan. It came to me like a whisper from the cosmos to stop wallowing in my broken old life and start writing a new life. This journal and these pens were my first provisions for a long journey, which would begin at Chava’s Mexican restaurant just a few blocks south in Soulard. I took a seat in the sunny front corner of the restaurant. I nibbled on a few chips. I took note of the late-afternoon light streaming in the windows of the quiet restaurant. I recognized the calming rhythm of my breath as I pressed open the journal. I sipped half of my strawberry margarita and licked most of the salt off the rim of the glass while staring at the first blank page. And then I picked up a pin and started writing. By the time I left the restaurant, the fog was beginning to lift. I could see the hope in the light that was supplanting the fog. I could see a little glimpse of where I was going.

March 2018

During the next seventeen months I filled the pages of that journal and several others. Reflections and observations. Bad poetry. Eavesdropping. Curses. Checklists. Questions and answers about who I was, where I was, and what I wanted. Pipe dreams and possible plans. Agonizing arguments with myself about what I needed. What steps I must take to regain control of my life, to put myself back together again, to move forward with grace, and to become the human being I needed to be to survive the death of a daughter. I made notes of what I would have to leave behind and let go of in order to go forward. I made predictions. I anticipated mistakes. I had been writing about my grief since Mack’s death, but this new writing was intentional. It was not sorrow spilled out in sobs onto the page. It was determined, mindful writing. It was a sketched out new plot in my story. It became the rewriting of my life, the work of me, in progress. It became a second job of sorts, a sorting out and a reckoning.

That writing of the rewriting of me gave me courage. It gave me license to prioritize the reimagining of my life at just past fifty. It helped me chart and navigate an independent course, to shed my failures and regrets, to choose quiet contentment over the unsustainable, exhausting pursuit of bliss. It helped me through my divorce, my painful departure from the city I loved, and my terrifying replanting in a new place. It led me to the cozy 1919 bungalow, where I have curated peace on my own terms in a sleepy college town I am finally beginning to call my home. Some would say the letting go and the moving, the settlement in a new place, and the determined redirection of a life out of profound grief was the work I did. But for me, the doing was the easy part, the simple implementation of a plan. For me the work was in the writing. The work is always in the writing. It fuels everything that is necessary for every journey I must take in this life. It points me in the right direction. Nothing I have accomplished in the past four years would have been possible without the work I put into my writing.

In my professional work as a historian and in my personal work as a human being, I am a writer. Writing pays my bills and paves my path. It is how I make sense of myself and the world around me. It is the way I best express myself, heal my wounds, and move forward. Like any job worth doing, it is hard and it is frustrating. A blinking cursor on the screen or a blank page in a notebook has the power to make any writer go mad. It is work that requires overtime and underpay, most of the words not making the cut. There are days when you cannot muster a single sentence, and then the next day you yawn and realize you have been writing for hours and are three hours past bedtime. Writing is, it seems to me, exactly like life.

During the past eighteen months, I have done little else but write. I spent more time writing and rewriting and deleting sentences and paragraphs than pulling weeds, preparing meals, or dusting the furniture. It has been a challenging, thrilling, exhausting time, and, perhaps, the most productive months of my entire life. It has been good, bone-tired-at the-of-the-day work. I completed the editing and writing of a 900-page volume of the papers of Jane Addams, a collection of essays about Abraham Lincoln, maintained an irregular personal journal, kept a detailed engagement calendar filled with thoughts and random ideas, and posted a lot of nonsense and a little wisdom on Instagram. I was so mentally and physically depleted after submitting the 340-page manuscript of essays to my publisher in the middle of August, I tried to take a writing break. I did not last one day. Writing is so engrained in the woman I now am that I simply cannot breathe without it.

September 2023

So if I say I am taking a little break from writing, do not believe me. I am lying. It is a rare day when I do not write at least a little something: a footnote for a Jane Addams document, a sentence in my engagement calendar about something strange I saw on a walk, a short book review posted on Instagram, or the scribble about a fear, entered into the journal by my bed, just before turning out the light. Even if I am staring at that damned blinking cursor on my laptop screen, I am working at writing, and I am grateful and content to be so employed.

Since that day in Walgreens five and a half years ago, the work of writing has sustained me. It gave me hope and led me into the light. It keeps my sorrow in balance with love and with joy, and it makes the darkness less frightening. I have become one of the lucky ones. I know precisely what I need to be doing. I get to do what I love and spend my time writing. Facing this ninth anniversary of Mack’s death (and all of the anniversaries in front of me), I am relieved to know I will always have writing, the nourishing and rewarding work to see me through them. Writing is my remedy as well as my journey. Writing is my life’s work, and from it I will never retire.

It Is Not Just the Birthdays

It is not just the birthdays.

Pulling on a warm, cozy sweatshirt from the dryer on a winter day can do it. Sunshine on my face. A Jeep Wrangler passing me by on the street. The sound of laughter, far, far off in the distance. The color of Cool Blue Raspberry Gatorade. An ordinary Tuesday can do it.

Pepper, who was her dog first, can do it. Does it most days these days, now that she is fifteen and her health is failing. Bug barking at the FedEx truck idling in front of the house can do it. Can do it despite never knowing the girl I lost. Can do it because she will never know the way that girl loved animals.

It is not just the birthdays.

The old days and the new days can do it. Joy or longing. The known or the unknown. The love or the loss can do it, and the yet to be found will do it, too.  

Everything, anything, and nothing at all can breathe a memory to life. And every memory has the power to undo me. Or to soothe me. Or to bring me peace. No particular time, setting, or frame of mind makes me more or less susceptible to the undoing or to the soothing. And goddess knows my grief has never followed any rules to bring me peace. 

It is not just the birthdays. 

But it is the birthdays.

The birthdays and the death days and the holidays. Milestones are a cumulative burden upon the hearts of the grieving.

On March 17, 2023, the day Mackenzie would have turned 29, I face another milestone. Another birthday, another her day, another Mack Day. And all I can do is lean the way the memories make me. All I can do is surrender. Bending is so much easier than breaking.

Maybe this year I will be lucky. Maybe this year the memories will arrive gently, possessed with the kindness to soothe me as well as the grace to bring me peace.

My Father’s Hands (but not his soda)

I have my father’s hands. My knubby-knuckled fingers upon my keyboard are his knubby-knuckled fingers, our pinkies, inward crooked, brave in their stretch to meet the A and the L. My manner of typing is just like his was, my short fingers tapping furiously like the bones of ancients punching out words that refuse to be quiet. The backs of my small but sturdy hands, are, like his, bony and painted by prominent veins, weathered and textured with life. Since my father died, when he was barely 57 as I will turn myself this year, I have not wished for the smooth perfection of the model hands in skin cream advertisements. My hands are far more lovely, freckled with memories of my father.  

Shared, these hands of ours, like our flagrant foreheads, forceful minds, and fierce opinions, delivered through thin lips, not pursed so much as certain in the forthrightness of the words they breathe. I miss my dad, especially since Mack died, the loss of them entangled in a knotty central ache that resides in my solar plexus. Whereas Mack’s spirit sits upon my shoulder every day pointing me in the direction of joy, my dad’s spirit rides shotgun on my conscience. Mack reminds me to giggle in the present, and my dad reminds me to do right and plan for the future.

Every year since Jim Pratt left this earth, I have honored his joyful life by drinking a Pepsi on his birthday. He was passionate about Pepsi, a Pepsi zealot really, preaching its virtues over godless sodas like the Dr. Pepper I favored as a child, although it was not allowed in our household where Pepsi was religion. Even though I no longer drink soda (my dad called it pop), and despite the fact that I observe a tradition of no-sugar Januarys, for love of him I have a Pepsi every January 17. It has been my Pepsi-for-Pops tradition.

Although I have my father’s hands and his forehead, I do not share his love of Pepsi. I never have. I hate it, in fact. It is too sweet, too syrupy, or too something I’m not sure what. My dad was right about a lot of things—like the wonder of words and baseball and candy and ice-cream drumsticks and showing off while shooting pool. (Thanks to my dad, I can still make a great shot with the cue stick behind my back, my ass perched up on the edge of the pool table).

But my dad was wrong about Pepsi, poor dear. And after twenty-two years of consuming 250 calories of the wretched liquid in no-sugar Januarys, I’ve decided to alter the tradition to make it a more palatable one for me. I will still break the sugar fast and have a soda in honor of my dear old dad, loved and missed like the dickens. But henceforth it will be a delicious Dr. Pepper that I consume. I trust my father will appreciate the sentiment of my continued sugar-fast-breaking-soda toast to him on his birthday and also approve of his daughter’s newfound sugary beverage independence.

A Pop for my Pops, a new tradition that honors us both.