A Speckled Trout

On the first phone call Mark ever made to me when sight unseen he was going to ask me out on a date, he told me that there was a full moon that night and I needed to see it. I told him I would be sure to do that after we hung up and he said, “You have to look at it now. Put the phone down and run outside and then come back. I’ll wait.” I found that to be a little odd – his insistence that this couldn’t wait as if the moon wasn’t going to be there after I hung up. It was the first look I had into his deep love and curiosity of the world around him and how he could not rest until he shared it with others.

Several months after his death I started going to my neighbor’s house every Wednesday night. I found out from another neighbor that we were both watching the same show on Netflix and since her husband had band practice, we started watching it together once a week. A diagnosis of MS had changed the trajectory of her life and sudden death had changed the trajectory of mine. Sometimes we caught up on whatever we were watching, sometimes we caught up on neighborhood news. Other times we sat in the silence of our own swimming thoughts.

On the dark walk back after leaving her house, when I dreaded going into my own empty house, I’d always look for the moon. “You’re just on the other side of that,” I’d tell Mark which sometimes felt right there if only I could find a high enough ladder. At other times clouds obscured it and the outlook I had on my life and it ever getting better would plummet into another heaping dose of despair.

A week ago four astronauts in a spaceship started circling our moon and on Monday one of them announced that a crater, so bright it stood out among others, would be named for the deceased wife of his colleague. I’m not sure if it took my breath away because it was the moon of all things or because somebody said, “I see what’s missing here. I see how you don’t have her to share this with so I’m going to include her on our mission.”

While moving things out of the house last month, I found the brown manilla envelope that contained the letter Mark wrote hours before he died. I hadn’t read it in a while and the anguish within those two pages is beyond words. Also in that envelope was a copy of the eulogy his dear friend, Joe, wrote and read at his funeral. Two scientists who stumbled into each other at a university medical center and hitched their wagons together. A few days ago, I texted Joe about finding what he’d written and said, “I’m so glad he had you all those years.” He wrote back that he had also recently reread his words and that it made him miss Mark acutely.

Four scientists on a space ship introduced us to Carroll, her husband, her daughters, and now the crater named after her. Earthside, a scientist who worked with my husband confirmed for me what I had hoped was still true – that he is missed. Time and love have propelled me into a new life and I have haphazardly learned how to move forward, but I have never forgotten to run outside to look at the moon and whisper thank you for all those nights she kept the light on for me when everything seemed impossibly dark.

When I arrived in first grade as a freckled-faced six year old, I was immediately overwhelmed. Back then classes were huge – numbering 40+in desks lined up row after row that to my little eyes seemed to go on forever. While I was used to a lot of people in a small space these were all strangers to me and all I wanted to do every day was stay at home. I never raised my hand and asked a question, never acknowledged that I knew the answer to anything, I never spoke. Everything was scary to me and I have no memories of being outside at recess, laughing with classmates, or going to a single birthday party. The end of every school day when it was time to meet my brothers for the walk home was a relief. When that dreaded first year was coming to a close my mom was told that I needed to be held back to repeat 1st grade because, among many other things, I could not read. Mom would not hear of it which was a gutsy move back in those days.

It took a long while but eventually I figured out the puzzle to reading, found my footing, and learned the art of small talk and making friends. Living on a corner house in my old neighborhood and often working outside, people walking by would stop all the time to talk and I chatted with all of them. First grade me had graduated to befriending strangers. Fast forward a few decades and now I’m living four blocks away with my beau and nobody seems to want to talk to either one of us.

In the early days when Mike had just moved in he introduced himself to the next door neighbor who wanted to know where he was from. “Originally California,” Mike said to which the guy replied, “We don’t care much for their politics around here.” Last spring he moved out which we think was a pity ICE hire or maybe we’re making that up because he was crazy and kept a gun strapped in a holster around his waist to change the oil on his car. His partner is still there and she doesn’t talk to us either which may or may not be traced back to that California thing.

Things changed for the better on our first Halloween here which was packed with young families and their kids. Everyone was chatty and outgoing but to our embarrasment we ran out of candy within an hour. This past year I stocked up and we wrapped ourselves in blankets and sat on chairs in the driveway to a smattering of trick-or-treaters and disappointment.

We talk often about how we need to put ourselves out there to meet our neighbors and I have suggested we do a driveway happy hour. “That’s a great idea,” Mike says but then I think – what if nobody shows up and we look like losers? The idea gets shelved for another six months.

This week I was home on my regular day off when the doorbell rang. This is such a rare occurrence that it startled me. When I went to the door there was a woman about my age standing on the porch and I thought it was someone I had briefly met that first Halloween here. She was taking her granddaughter trick-or-treating and was so friendly as she pointed to her house down the street. When I saw her at my door I thought “oh she’s coming by to do new friend stuff” because isn’t that what we do when we want to make friends? Just go door-to-door and make suggestions.

She was not that woman but someone who used to live in the house before it was rebuilt. “My cat loved to lay out here and look out at everything going on,” she told me and I smiled and said I had a cat, too, and he preferred laying on the back deck. We chatted some more and I told her how I was awakened in the middle of the night a few weeks ago to the sound of high-pitched barking. “I couldn’t figure out what it was and when I turned the porch light on a fox walked by. Can you believe that? The next morning I googled it and it turns out foxes bark when they’re looking for a lady friend,” and then laughed too long as I watched myself flailing wildly at Making A New Friend 101. Then she said she had something awkward to ask and I said “fire away,” because you couldn’t get more awkward than the weirdo talking about barking foxes looking for a one night stand.

Long story short I do not have a new friend but the ashes of her dead cat are now buried beside our front porch.

If you were to ask me if I had a baby other than my three kids, I would tell you that I most certainly did and it was the house Mark and I bought 34 years ago. Months after moving to the Midwest from the DC area, where buying a house seemed to be for those with very high incomes or an inheritance, we’d get the Sunday paper, open up the classified section, map out scheduled open houses, pile our two kids into the car, and imagined one day owning a home of our own. The kids would claim bedrooms they’d never live in because we were as far from being homeowners as one could get on an annual income of $41,000.

But that was 1992 and we would find out that there were loan programs for 1st time home buyers with good credit and not much to put down. After getting very close to commiting to a split-level, we went a week later to another open house (this one for sale by owner) and found exactly what we were looking for – a four bedroom cape cod built in 1949 in a tree lined neighborhood with a shopping center we could walk to and a gang of young kids up and down the street. The next day we put an offer in and couldn’t believe it was ours. Two years later another baby arrived and our four bedrooms were full.

As older homes go it had its share of problems and no repair was easy. Often it involved undoing the sins of previous owners who either didn’t do it correctly or didn’t have access to newer options. It became my playgound of creativity and I was always tinkering with it – painting, moving furniture or flipping rooms, and desperately trying to make its tiny kitchen function better for five people.

Several years after we moved in I found someone (the classified ads again) who was a landscape architect. For $250 she drew us a plan in colored pencils for the front and side of the house that took us ten years to complete. It would have been much sooner had we had money to spare but we didn’t so it was the two of us trying to make the hardest, rockiest dirt ever suitable for plants, searching nurseries and home improvement stores for evergreens and small trees we could afford, setting them in the ground, mulching, watering, watering, watering, and turning it over to the landscape gods to deliver. They did and when we finally finished the English garden I imagined I was so proud every time I pulled into the driveway. With sweat equity, aching muscles, and dirt imbedded in our fingernails we had pulled it off.

Life ebbed and flowed in that house. Our kids left for college leaving their rooms empty and then came back for a time before launching off on their own. When it was time for Mal to make her move to California, she stood in the driveway for a long while. I asked her if she was okay and she said, “I just want one long look before I go.” The full nest emptied out for good and then a granddaughter arrived. How had time moved so fast?

And then tragically there was the day that Mark left it for the last time, getting on his bike and pedaling to his death. I often wondered if he looked back that morning as Mallory had done years earlier. Did he see all that we built together, the twenty one boxwoods that were miniscule when we planted them and were now big and full like our lives? Did he take it all in and have second thoughts? That is my own wishful thinking as the mind of someone planning their death is only working towards ending their pain. Those boxwoods, hostas, and hydrangeas that had made it through thick and thin were no match for what was happening within his own brain.

Two years ago I moved in with Michael and Will moved into the house he grew up in. He started with a partner and a few months later was on his own like I was after his dad died, picking up the pieces and trying to figure out how to move forward. The suburban life wasn’t for him and after a long search for a loft apartment in the city, he found what he was looking for and moved out last week. As luck would have it, a dear friend of Mark’s was in town last fall and looking to move back to the area. When he was over for a drink, I said my house might be available in the spring and he jumped at the chance.

For the last two weeks I have been moving things out of the house that I never dealt with when Will moved in. I have had nearly every room repainted and the hardwood floors have been refinished. Yesterday when it was okay to walk on them again, Maggie and Will met me over there – the rooms vacant like the day we closed and got the keys. Every morning for two weeks I would bring the two of them and a car full of boxes that I would unpack while they would run through every room and up and down the stairs over and over. When Mallory arrived she would join in the mix of squeals, tears, laughter, and arguing that filled every corner of that house.

A few years ago I asked Will if he would want to buy it if I ever decided to sell it. “I don’t think so,” he said, “I think maybe we should turn it over to another family to love it like we did.” I’m still not ready to do that but I am turning it over and, whew, it’s been emotional. Yesterday Maggie got there before Will and I did and was in tears which I have been a time or ten these last few weeks.

“It was a good house for me to heal in,” Will told me after he made the decision to leave it. For a long time after Mark died I hated to come home to the hollow, lonely place that had always been so full of warmth and love. That slowly subsided as I began the very rocky process of building a new foundation. In time it became my safest haven again and I swear there’s some kind of magic within its walls. I knew it the minute we walked into it and whispered to Mark in the upstairs hallway, “This is it. This is the one,” and he whispered back “I think so too.” We played it cool and told the owner we’d have to think about it then got in the car and told the kids it was their new house before we had even pulled away. And while we didn’t live there happily ever after, we got to live there happily for a very long time, loving and being loved back by a sweet, old cape we found in the Sunday paper.

For months before Mark died I had been struggling with sciatica. I had it many times over the years but that time was the worst it had ever been. I did all the usual things – alternated heat and ice, took lots of ibuprofen, got massages, did stretching videos I found on Youtube, and went to a chiropractor who guaranteed it would be gone in six sessions. He nor anything else relieved it. Eventually my primary care doctor referred me to a pain specialist in the neurology department who prescribed muscle relaxers and prescription Tylenol. While it took the edge off it didn’t help enough and I made a return visit where he advised a nerve block in my lower back. I was scheduled to have it a week after Mark died.

I never made it to that appointment and the shooting pain in my back that traveled down my leg matched the pain of the sudden death of my husband. Months later I rescheduled the nerve block that I prayed would relieve it. I was told that it wouldn’t be a problem for me to drive home myself, so I told no one and went alone. I checked in for a 3:00 appointment and the waiting room was packed. Thirty minutes later a nurse came out and asked me my name. I told her and a man sitting across from me said, “She better not be getting special treatment. The rest of us have been waiting here a lot longer than she has.” I was stunned and the nurse explained to him that she was merely checking to make sure I was on her schedule and not moving me ahead of everyone else. I was so rattled by him that I debated between getting up and leaving or leveling him flat with sarcasm and the widow card.

I did neither and finally got called back – the last person they were seeing that day. The nurse told me that the portable xray machine for their department wasn’t working and they had to share one with the ER thus causing the long wait. The procedure itself took about fifteen minutes then I was put back in a room while they checked my vitals. Three hours from when I arrived, I told the nurse that I HAD TO GET OUT OF THERE and when I stood up my knees buckled and I had to grab the arm of the chair so I wouldn’t fall. She had her back to me entering notes into the computer and didn’t see me. I told her I was fine and got my stuff, held the handrail as I walked down the hallway, and cried all the way out the door.

The effectiveness of the nerve block lasted all of one week before I was back to where I started. Though not as bad as it was back then, my sciatica has gotten to where I can manage it but has never gone away. Some days it can ramp up for no reason and make me miserable but never enough to consider a repeat nerve block which at the time the doctor said I may need.

For the last two months I have had burning pain in my knees and the soles of my feet. Some mornings I would get out of bed and walk on the sides of my feet because it hurt too much to walk like a normal person. I chalked it up to years of retail jobs, concrete floors, and questionable shoe choices. I made a doctor appointment and then cancelled it. A few weeks went by and I made another appointment. I would have cancelled that one, too, but then it was too late so I went and felt like an idiot because it was probably me being dramatic.

I explained what was going on to the doctor and within minutes she said, “Oh that’s sciatica. The nerve goes down your leg and ends at your feet. The telltale sign is that the pain is burning. That means it’s a nerve,” and I was stunned because what the heck, I know plenty about sciatica. She gave me a muscle relaxer and presciption Naproxen, ordered physical therapy, told me to take a hot bath or shower every night, and then showed me two stretches to do afterwards when my muscles were nice and relaxed. That night I followed her advice and the next morning was so much better I could have cried.

Last weekend my grandkids spent the night and I texted my daughter and son-in-law an update on how bedtime went. I didn’t hear back from them until the next morning so I went to bed assuming that they were dead. Two nights later Mike took the dog out one last time and was gone too long. I looked outside for him and didn’t see him and threw some clothes on when I heard the garage door open. He decided to take the dog around the block while I decided that I needed to get dressed for when I would find him dead outside.

I have long believed that the sciatica that came months before Mark died was a warning shot of what was to come. Since then, trauma’s tentacles have wound themselves around every inch of me. I take meds for anxiety and try to talk myself out of fearing the worst which is planted so deep inside of me now that it is my normal. I am with someone who loves me and makes me feel safe every day and have every reason to believe that just around the corner pain no longer has its eyes on me. My back has never forgotten when it did.

When we were newly married and living in a small college town, Mark and I did our share of smoking illegal crops. I had more access to it after getting to know several car dealers (who took a wide assortment of drugs) that called their loan applications into the bank where I was working. It wasn’t hard for me to get it from one of them and since Mark was a grad student and had more at stake than me I became the designated buyer. Through those years I avoided arrest, stopped when we were trying to get pregnant, and thereafter went on a long hiatus.

What could get you thrown in jail for a night is no longer the case as more and more states have legalized marijuana. I didn’t know much about how that worked until we went to my nephew’s wedding in Colorado which was the first state to lead the charge. Management somehow kept the lobby fresh and smelling legit but the minute you stepped out of the elevator on any floor the essence of the Devil’s Lettuce could knock you out. Signs posted throughout forbid the smoking of it in rooms which was universally ignored.

The state I live in has not legalized marijuana but just over the state line is a different story. It has been three years since they made it legal and overnight it seemed that cannabis shops popped up everywhere. The local tv stations reported on it like it was the grand opening of a Disney resort right here in the Midwest, and for a solid week an assortment of old, gimpy hippies were happy to be on camera to tout the benefits of it.

Shortly thereafter I went to a happy hour with my coworkers at an upscale new restaurant in town. A large sign posted near the entrance stated their dress code – no ball caps, no offensive sayings on tshirts, no flip flops, and no excessive odors. Turns out they very much saw what was coming and didn’t want their fine dining establishment reeking of weed.

Nearby is a shopping center that I frequent often with a Trader Joe’s, Homegoods, Target, and a wide assortment of other shops. Retail suburbia at its finest and a designated rest area for those who just visited the weed shop and test drove their buy in the car before hopping out to get some Two Buck Chuck. You could get high tailing these people with your cart and I have never cared about any of that until now because GOOD LORD it’s everywhere. Why are these people smoking dope in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon? Don’t they have jobs, kids to pick up from school, taxes to file? Shouldn’t getting high be reserved for Friday night like respectable potheads did back in the day?

I was doing my regular run to TJ Maxx because, yippe-ki-aye, there’s something new there every day. I was flipping through the racks and minding my own maxxinista business, focused on my hunt for something to wear to January. Two younger women came in, and like the smokey skies from a Canadian wildfire, we seasonally depressed shoppers were enveloped in the smell of Mary Jane. I stopped mid Nicole Miller jeans with the patented booty lift and tummy control and looked up. There they were loudly laughing in The Sacred Heart of Consumerism Cathedral. I tsk tsked and wanted to say, “Girls, girls, girls. Do you see what is happening here? Do you see this assortment of middle-aged women who appear to be worn out by everything? We’re here being respectable adults buying shit we do not need which is The American Way and now we’re going home smelling like we’ve been in Joey’s basement all night smoking pot while his mom upstairs doesn’t suspect a thing because she’s polishing off a bottle of wine. We can’t afford this! Are you paying any attention to what’s happening outside these doors? These times require us to be on high alert, not high high alert.”

The girls partied their way through the Maxx but didn’t last long. You’ve got be in the zone for shopping there and they got a bad case of the giggles in the underwear section when they held up massive pairs of briefs that would easily fit most of the rest of us pushing our cartloads of crap. I watched them as they and their smelly cloud wafted out the door and let out a sigh. Was it relief from the intrusion? Or was it envy for my younger years that were so long ago it often feels like I dreamt the whole thing?

There are many routes I can take to work but the one I use most often borders two states. On both sides are upscale neighborhoods – so much so that prior to his moving I passed by Patrick Mahomes house twice a day. As I was driving to work one morning I saw a man who appeared to be dead or unconscious lying in a bed of ivy in someone’s side yard. There was steady traffic on both sides of the road and I looked in every direction to see if anyone had stopped. It didn’t seem so and after driving a few more blocks I turned around and headed back to where I had seen him.

I had to park on a side street, and in a dress and shoes not suited for balancing on a curb alongside cars that were too close for comfort, I made my way towards him. Other than nudging him to see if he was okay I had no other plan except to call 9-1-1 if he was dead. As I got closer I heard the siren of a police car coming from the opposite direction and was only a few feet away when I saw an empty whiskey bottle. He was sleeping off a bender so I turned around and let the police do what they are far more trained to do than me.

When you find out your husband is dead at a police department, your life instantly becomes before and after. I have vivid recall of sitting at a white table in a white room, two detectives across from me telling me what I never imagined to be true, my hand flying to my mouth to stifle the screams. In the aftermath I was constantly asked, “How are you?” I had no idea how I was other than not fine. When someone instead asked, “Are you okay,” the door to how I was creaked opened – the question an acknowledgment that there were a multitude of reasons why I wouldn’t be and a safety net was there to catch me if I started to fall.

Last weekend we were home due to snow and freezing temperatures. I was under a blanket reading and decided to turn on the tv to check the news. Minutes earlier a nurse from the VA had just been shot dead after a woman near him had been thrown to the ground by ICE agents. He went to her aid and seconds later was riddled with bullets while a woman in a pink jacket recorded it on her phone and screamed through every terrifying second. The news was on for hours afterwards as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

Before I turned my car around that summer day to check on a stranger along the road, I told myself that it was a bad idea and I needed to let it go. I am not a good samaritan but rather someone who has been traumatized by a violent death and alone and on the ground will haunt me the rest of my life. For my own sake I needed to know whether the person I passed was okay or not.

On a frigid Saturday morning in a city eight hours from my own, a man whose job was taking care of others fittingly asked a stranger, “Are you okay?” Later two police officers would pull up to a house, knock on the door, and confirm to the people inside that their son was dead. Everything in their world would go dark while yellow tape marked his last minutes on earth – soon to be filled with flowers, condolences, a city paying their respects.

We watch this nightmare unfolding in our country and ask one another, “Are you okay,” already knowing that the answer is no, we are not okay. We weep for what we are witnessing while desperately trying to gather the most vulnerable into safety nets, our hands to our mouth to stifle the screams of grief.

This weekend I got a call from my bank inquiring about a $0.00 dollar charge from Amazon on my debit card. They asked if I made this charge and I said I didn’t and apparently nobody else had since it was, ahem, zero dollars. “Well,” they said, “if you didn’t make it then it is considered fraud and we have to freeze your card.” I tried to plead the case of my very-used debit card, that I get alerts for every transaction, that I have worked in finance for decades, that if anyone tried to use it I would know, then tossed a Hail Mary. “Please don’t freeze it just yet. I need it through the weekend.” A serious Mr. Fraud said, “Well, until it gets straightened out you’ll have to use a credit card or get cash from the bank to make any purchases. Or you can always borrow money from a friend.” Borrow money from a friend? What the….? “It’s not that I don’t have money,” I said,”It’s that I don’t have access to the money I have.” He was a man following a script and read accordingly, “You’ll have to call your bank on Monday to get it taken care of. We’re the fraud department. We shut cards down. We don’t open them back up.” I said gee thanks and he said, “Ope, I stand corrected. You’ll have to call the bank on Tuesday because Monday is a national holiday.” Then he wished me a good weekend and I wished him a pox on his finances.

This morning I went to Target to grocery shop because I have a card with them and we needed everything including an olive green comforter (Jeremiah Brent!) and a pink and red table runner because, duh, Valentine’s Day. When I got to the checkout, Mary, started ringing me up. I had been to her once before and back then as I was unloading enormous packages of toilet paper and paper towels for our office, she smiled and said, “You sure you’re going to use all of this?” When she couldn’t issue a free gift card with purchase for all those paper products I was getting she said, “Baby, I just don’t like how they’re treating my customers like that. It isn’t right.” She called a manager over and still nothing was working and I had to be on my way. I told her not to worry about it and when we finished up she said, “Now, baby, you enjoy the rest of your day and I want you to stay warm out there.”

Today I got in Mary’s line and she looked at me and said, “Now, baby, what’s wrong? You look sad.” “On no,” I said, “I’m fine. I mean as fine as you can be when the whole world is on fire.” She looked at me, I looked at her, and then I said, “I hate him. I want him to have a Big Mac and croak because if I have to listen to his whiny little voice and watch him wave his whiny little fingers one more day I’m going to start screaming and never stop.” Mary nodded and said, “I know exactly who you’re talking about and I want you to know that this isn’t who we are. We didn’t vote for this, now did we?” Well, no, but here we are. We chatted some more, Mother Mary full of kind wisdom and hope. I told her the comforter and table runner were going to be a separate transaction and when she totaled it I said I’d skip on the table runner because who do I think I am decorating for every holiday? Mary said, “Hold on. I think there might be some kind of sale on this,” and she waved her magic wand and my table runner went from $20 to $3. I low-keyed hollered in joy and Mary said, “Now you listen to me, baby. That man is going to meet his maker and he’ll have to answer for a lot of things and I think you and I know how that’s going to go. We’re going to be okay just you watch.” And with that she waved me off until the next time.

I love stories. I love reading them, hearing them, writing them, and playing a part in them like this morning with Mary. Fifteen years ago today I posted my first story on A Speckled Trout. It had seven views. Many years later I had a story that had over 10,000 views. What connects and what doesn’t is a roll of the dice. Often times there were long gaps between posts and I regularly toyed with calling it quits. By some kind of divine intervention I didn’t and am still in this space that was named for what my dad always called me.

Today was just an errand until it became a story – the caveat being a black woman calling me ‘baby’ over and over which feels like being annointed by Mother Teresa. If you’re lucky enough for that to happen then you must believe that you have been blessed. I have been many times over.

Thank you for coming along.

***This fall I was contacted about doing an interview about my blog and last month it was published. It was such a privilege to be included in a conversation about writing. You can read it here.***

When Mark died and I spoke to his mom that night, the conversation was not what I expected. She obviously was in shock as were all of us, but towards the end said, “You know how he was with me. Whenever I’d call, he’d only talk to me a few minutes and then turn the phone over to you.” Considering what had just happened it was a cold statement to make at the time. A week later she came to the church for the funeral and left as soon as the luncheon was over. After three weeks had gone by and I had not heard from her I called and she said she had been thinking of me and added, “But what are you going to do? You can’t sit and cry every day, can you,” which is what I was doing all day every day.

Everyone who knew Mark wanted to know what happened on the awful day he took his life. Had he been struggling? Had he taken something that altered his brain chemistry? Did he have an undiagnosed physical condition that may have caused this? I recounted the days of that Labor Day weekend and told what I was comfortable letting people know and protected Mark from the rest. All the people in his life who were stunned by what happened never included his own mother. She never asked about his mental state, his demeanor, or the days leading up to a decision that altered the course of our family. It was so unnerving to me that over time I stopped contacting her in order to protect my fragile mental health.

I’d get updates on her from the kids and when my niece got married we all went to Michigan to celebrate. There was my mother-in-law walking up the aisle – older, thinner, and walking with a cane. I cried when I saw her. Mark had her eyes and oh to see those again. After the ceremony she cried when she saw us and said she missed Mark and his sister so much and that this was a hard day for her. Later we all danced and I brought my mother-in-law out onto the floor with all of us to celebrate.

I missed her many times over the years as my own mom slipped further into the abyss of dementia but never enough to pick up the phone and call her. Her memories of her kids’ childhood had enormous gaps that she filled in with a Leave It To Beaver scenario that Mark and his sister would wildly dispute. I knew much of what she chose to leave out and in Mark’s retelling of many events from his early years I was often stunned by its cruelty.

Last summer Will and I planned a road trip to California and would be driving through Arizona where she was living. He said he thought he should see her and I agreed that we should both go. She had recently moved in with her niece after a series of falls and was using a walker. She was frail but mentally very sharp. We stayed a couple of hours and the anger I had for so long started to dissipate. Her connection to life seemed tenuous and she no longer had the energy to keep hold of it and stories of an idyllic family life that I didn’t recognize. When we left, she hugged me and said, “I know exactly how you feel,” and I felt the anger rise right back up to the surface. In the many years since her son had been dead she never once asked me how I was feeling.

This fall my mother-in-law had a series of health events and passed away in November. The expected arrived and I felt nothing and everything. When I married Mark she told me I was perfect for him. “You let him be exactly who he is,” she said. “You have never tried to change him.” When the kids came along she told me frequently that I was a good mother. I am grateful for those compliments. I am grateful for how generous she was to my kids. I am grateful that she was the reason I had Mark in my life for so long. But it wasn’t a fair trade and I was a mess of swirling emotions that I didn’t understand until I was talking to a friend.

“She just had to walk in the front door of our house for Mark to be triggered by her,” I said, “and I was always the buffer between them. Wherever he ended up is where she is now and I cannot protect him from her.” This dear friend who knows so much of the history of my life with Mark and his family said, “I don’t think you have to worry about them being in the same place,” and it was the most helpful thing anyone could say.

For decades I fiercely held the line of defense on behalf of a husband who lived successfully with trauma and depression until it collapsed one summer morning. When he died I still held the line. Now they are all gone and I don’t know how to let the line go, but I am exhausted and praying that resting in peace isn’t only for the dead.

Just before Thanksgiving, Michael and I bought a Christmas tree from the garden center at the hardware store I’ve been going to for many years. Over that time I have gotten to know one of the employees who always works the late afternoon and evening shift. This summer as he was loading mulch into my car, we had a long conversation and I found out that he was also the full-time groundskeeper at the university I worked at for five years. We got caught up on all the new and/or renovated buildings on campus and threw names back and forth of people we both knew. After that conversation, he became my preferred personal assistant for all things outside. On the night we went to buy our tree, though, he wasn’t working. Instead a younger guy was working the lot, probably college age, and even though he seemed well-versed in Christmas trees he wasn’t my guy and I immediately had trust issues. We circled the lot and selection of trees, Michael holding one up and me saying what was wrong with it which got repeated over and over. I have always bought a Frasier Fir but in the 7-8′ range they were much smaller than in years past. To go larger was an $80 jump in price which I thought was holiday blackmail. I asked about the Balsam Fir which looked full, healthy, and the perfect shape. Our tree consultant gave us the deets, and though I had my misgivings, we decided that would be the one. He sawed off the end and then he and Michael loaded it into the car while I went inside to pay. With a coupon for $15 off, our 2025 Christmas tree cost a whopping $35.

We got it home, cut the rope surrounding it, and put it in the stand. The branches relaxed and the following day Mabel and I decorated it. It was lovely, probably my best tree ever, but after a few days I noticed that it wasn’t taking in water. Every day I would get on the floor, scoot under the tree, and check the water level which never seemed to be going down. I became obsessed with our tree’s health. Was it turning brown? I couldn’t tell if it was the lighting or the fact that there were brown velvet ornaments on it but it seemed to be on life support. Michael suggested we get another tree but I had already decorated a tree and didn’t want to do it again. I went to a different nursery for some greenery for the pots on the porch and asked the guys on their tree lot if this tree could be saved. They told me I needed to cut some more off the end and immediately stick it in boiling water. “It opens it up so it can take in more water,” they told me. “It’s already decorated,” I told them, “can’t I just spray something on it?” Well, no, I couldn’t so I decided that this tree was going to have to do.

The first Saturday in December we had a party for Mike’s lab. Twenty plus people in the house and our tree shedding needles like a retailer with an abundance of Christmas sweaters. “It’s beautiful,” someone said to me and I smiled and said, “Thank you, it could go up in flames at any moment.” The next morning we assessed it again. Michael said we should bite the bullet and replace it which I still did not want to do until a few hours later when I read on Facebook that the Boy Scouts selling trees at a church nearby were breaking down their lot and everything remaining was free. I flew upstairs and breathlessly said, “We have to go get a new tree!! A FREE tree, spit spot, let’s go before they’re all gone,” and Jethro and I put on our galoshes and warm woolen hats and hitched up the wagon.

We drove over and I exclaimed, “There they are!!,” when I spotted them on the curb and jumped out of the car. The first half-dozen were too small and I thought we were going to shoot craps on a free tree until we spotted a Frasier Fir that was just the right height. A few dead branches on the bottom that needed to be trimmed but otherwise a decent tree. One of the scout leaders came over to offer his help and I said, “Thank you, this is so helpful. We already bought a tree but it is drying out so fast that we need to replace it.” Why did I feel the need to say this? Because I didn’t want him to think we WERE THOSE KIND OF PEOPLE who go around nabbing free stuff because we’re cheap even though that was exactly what we were doing.

We got it home and Michael sawed off the dead branches and a few inches off the bottom. I put the kettle on to boil water then poured it into a bucket, plopped the new tree in, and undecorated the original tree. When I finished and Michael had unscrewed it from the tree stand it popped out and you could carry it with one hand it was so dead. In went the new tree, with lots of water, and we stood back to admire our new tree.

After its grooming, our new tree was a dwarf that had a hole in the back and a gaping dent on the side. The kind of tree that sat on a Christmas tree lot for weeks because it was so ugly, so deformed, a dog of a tree. A few hours later when Will came over and saw it he said, “Just turn this side around so it’s in the back,” and I said, “This is the good side.” My sister said I should stick a stuffed animal in the dent, “Something Christmasy like a polar bear.” Michael suggested we fold some of the branches over to fill in the holes like a bald man with a combover then proceeded to demonstrate. “Or we could just go buy another one,” he said, but I had faith that lights and ornaments might make this dumpster fire better. It didn’t.

The next morning I went to the curb to bring the garbage cans in and in the gutter was a lone silver ornament – a castoff from our original tree that had just been hauled away. I brought it in and hung it on the tree, stood back, and said, “You are by far the ugliest tree I have ever owned,” and 2025 Christmas Tree said, “Hundred percent, girl, but I drink water like a camel.”

Merry Christmas to you and yours. May it be an oddly shaped mess of light and love.

If you are like me and on social media too much, then you have likely seen your share of influencers (a.k.a. people who have made a career out of shopping) sharing their Christmas shopping guides. It runs the gamut from beauty products to age appropriate gifts for every person you could possibly know including your kid’s hamster. If gifts are your love language, Instagram has you covered for the holiday season.

After the Thanksgiving break when I went back to work, my coworker and I compared notes about our dinner. Mostly about how stressful it is to get several dishes done and hot at the same time with a kitchen full of hungry family and friends. I told her that it seemed like I was standing at the stove forever and about to lose my ever loving shit because the gravy wasn’t thickening. It eventually did, and hours later when everyone had left and I was laying in bed, all I could think about was whether or not I had seasoned it. I couldn’t remember. Was it bland? I ate it and it tasted fine but was it? Or was I so glad it finally was the right consistency that I called it done and never paid attention to how it tasted? My last thought before falling asleep was that next year I needed to pay attention to that as if that was something I’d actually remember.

I crashed the next day and did nothing until the weekend and the kickoff to the holiday shopping season where I mostly deleted hundreds of emails. The overload was intense and I’m not sure how to get off the rollercoaster of accumulating stuff. I often dance between cutting back and a running movie in my head where I am sitting on the sidewalk of a Paris cafe wearing the perfect outfit. So perfect the French say mon ami where did you get that and I say at Loft for 40% off. Can you believe it? And they say, “Oui oui, of course, isn’t your Loft always 40% off?” Then we chuckle and I sip red wine and run my fingers over my faux pearl necklace layered on top of a polyester sweater that’s supposed to mimic cashmere.

At the start of the new week a front had moved in and it snowed all day. I was off and Mike worked from home. As is typical of the first snow of the season, the roads were a mess and drivers forgot that this is what happens in the winter. Though I have no qualms about driving in the snow I never left the house, never made a Cyber Monday purchase, never saw a reason for a mad dash to the grocery store. I did some writing and laundry and looked out the window a lot like a true Midwesterner and said, “It sure is coming down.”

At 10:00 that night I leashed up Ernie and took him outside one last time before we all went to bed. Michael had spent hours cleaning off the driveway but the dog stopped on the threshold of the garage and froze. He was freaked out even though he’d been in the snow multiple times that day. We stood there a few minutes until I stepped out and coaxed him into doing the same. It was so quiet – the snow and darkness blanketing everything in an unmatched calmness that was the antithesis to the previous few days. As if it was a scripted movie, an owl started hooting and this dog who finds a reason to bark at nearly everything stayed as silent as the night.

Reluctantly we had to come inside and break the spell but those few minutes of winter magic live inside of me now. For too many days too many unimportant things were holding out their carrot sticks wanting my undivided attention. Then nature showed up and said, “Mon ami, nice sweatpants. The bleach that discolored them when you were scrubbing the shower are especially striking. Now hold my Pinot Noir I’ve got to give you something.”

What a love language.