A Speckled Trout

Dear Mark,

This week marks eight years since you left this world for the next. I was recently telling someone that after you died and I went back to work, I was walking towards the bathroom from my office in the Student Union, glanced over to the other side of our floor, and reversed course. For months I had searched everywhere for you, and on that day I was certain you were hiding at the end of that darkened hallway and had decided to surprise me by showing up at my job. Instead, I found a group of students eating their lunch in the Student Government Office and I hurriedly turned around and hid in the back stairwell in shock. I don’t know if I was more stunned that you weren’t there or that I had completely lost my mind.

While that memory and others are so vivid, much of those early years are a blur. Everything seemed like it was in freefall and for the life of me I could not get a grip on a single thing to stop descending into blackness. I would count down one day without you, one week, two, three, a month, the holidays, six months, birthdays, our anniversary, and then the dreaded first year which is now shockingly times eight. For the longest time if felt like you were right there but now I can’t even remember the last time you were in my dreams. Photos of you pop up on my phone all the time. Sometimes they make me smile and other times I stare at them in disbelief. Were you even real?

But if nothing else since you’ve been gone your family has collectively forged on, of which there isn’t a single trophy or awards ceremony. The kids are doing well – genuine in their support, their empathy, their humor, and their outrage at all the stuff we distinguished as right from wrong when they were growing up. They live our values in everything they do which feels like an A+ on our parenting report card. Maggie is in her 16th year of teaching and her joy at being the school librarian and introducing literature no matter the age is something to behold. I have stood by and watched as the kids in her school flock around her like she’s Mary Poppins with a carpetbag full of just the right book for each of them. Will was the lead designer of a high school career center and last week he gave Michael and me a tour where he explained the thought process behind every inch of it. It was incredible and he wore one of your sportscoats for the grand opening which he didn’t tell me about until the next day because he said I already looked like I was about to cry. This summer Mallory graduated with a masters degree in clinical psychology and started a job as a therapist for a mental health clinic. Our family North Star and little guru is now out in the world being a beacon of hope for others. And after eight years, her and Rubin will be tying the knot. He’s perfect for her and I’m certain you would love him.

The grandkids, oh sheesh, they are a delight. Maggie and Nate are great parents, though currently master juggling all the commitments that come with three kids. They remind me so much of us way back when. Their littles are each their own brand of spitfire which brings me immense joy. They love coming over because I pretty much treat them like free range chickens and let them wander the house, the yard, and the refrigerator. I’m sure if you were here you would try to pump the brakes on that but you’d be surprised how easily they can make you fold.

As for me, I am convinced that you sent Michael to my doorstep like a stork dropping off a baby. You knew my affinity for those science types and he is one of the best. He loves me well – thoughtful, kind, and, most importantly, he makes me feel safe which I desperately needed after you died. Since last fall we have been engaged and every month we talk about getting married which, so far, we haven’t managed to do. My life with him is quiet and too cherished to reveal much except that whatever I write about you goes the same for his Marlene. We live in gratitude for what we were lucky enough to have and what comes next.

This date, your death date, always hits me hard. Like clockwork this year and every year before, I have been sick. Knocked flat by a virus and as you would so eloquently say, “I am coughing up a lung.” I never know what to expect other than for a few days my body will remember the day acutely and will come crashing down in spectacular fashion. You’d think by now I’d be prepared but I never am and doubt I ever will be.

The world is a catastrophic dumpster fire and I’m glad you and the bruised heart you lived with aren’t here to be a witness to it. But despite that and many other challenges, in your absence we found our footing and have remembered to live. Memento vivere, and however that looks on the other side I pray the same for you.

love,
k.

P.S. The moon these last few days, right?

The seasons here in the Midwest can whipsaw you with its extremes, but like most places in the last ten years, what that looks like is undergoing massive change. This spring was very cool and rainy which is not typical for us. Usually spring lasts a few short weeks at best and then we’re catapulted into summer without much of a getting-to-know-you honeymoon period. The heat and humidity is oppresssive come July and August zapping your energy, your patience, and your ability to do anything outside.

Coupled with that the thunderstorms seem to be more intense and damaging than at any other time that I’ve lived here. The trees are repeatedly sending out an SOS call. “They’re getting old,” I keep hearing, “they’re at the end of their life span,” and I don’t buy that at all. While some are weakened due to disease there are others that seem healthy until one day you’re walking in the neighborhood and a giant limb is laying in somebody’s yard. It happened last month in our front yard and it turns out the chainsaw Michael bought at Costco two years ago was not a bad investment.

Now annually we hear that it’s the hottest year on record and at some point in the not so distant future the bough will break. Mark and I were once buying a lawnmower off Craigslist and the woman selling it was a scientist. She and Mark started talking shop and when he said he was doing some work on Anthrax she suggested he contact the Defense Department for research funding. It never materialized but he did go to a conference that was predominantly attended by military officials. He came home wide-eyed saying, “You want to know what our goverment considers the highest threat to national security? Climate change.” That was fifteen years ago.

This summer started with wildfires in Canada and Minnesota followed by horrific scenes from Europe. While we have our weather challenges here, I can’t think of anything more terrifying than a wildfire roaring through the place you call home. Massive flooding is so common now it hardly garners more than five minutes on the news. Catastrophic weather fatigue is our new normal.

Michael and I just came back from Sonoma and a trip up the California coast to see his family. We visited a winery and in talking to the sommelier I asked about the wildfires in France and how that will affect their wine in coming years. Sonoma has had significant losses for the same reason and he explained that if the fire burns the vine you can start over but if it affects the root of the grape then you have a wine that tastes like an ashtray. The only way you know is after you’ve harvested the grapes, crushed them, and made the wine which gets dumped after the first taste.

Driving north we stopped many times along the way in utter astonishment, me saying, “Oh my god,” a hundred times. We went with his family to a beach close to their house at low tide to collect sand dollars where we came across starfish clinging to a rock along the shore which felt like stumbling into a sanctuary. On our last day we drove to see the redwoods and I could have cried under the quiet beauty of those stately woods.

The following day we drove two plus hours to the airport under a canopy of trees followed by our last look at the wild coastline of Nothern California. From the time we got there the same thought repeated itself over and over.

This is our home. Why aren’t we doing everything to protect it?

Early after Mark died when I was talking to my therapist, I asked how I could possibly fill the enormous hole in my life when so much of it revolved around the husband who was dead and what he did for a living. Many times over she told me that I would eventually build a new life and it would have meaning. It was all I could do not to roll my eyes and sigh at such nonsense.

She also told me that over time grief would loosen its grip and each morning after that I woke up expecting to feel a little bit sad instead of devastated. It did not work like that. Instead, I held a new grandson, joined a writing community explicitly for grief, expanded a garden, lost one job to Covid and got another, painted a bedroom and moved all the furniture into it because the one we had always slept in was too much every night. It took me so long to find my widow legs that I didn’t notice that incrementally I was building a new life and planning ahead.

Along the way, though, I fought my circumstances at every turn. I hated being around married couples with their cute banter, hated seeing family vacation photos on social media, hated hearing about the success of Mark’s coworkers, resented having to be happy for anyone for any reason. Behind the smile and “I’m doing okay,”rage simmered inside of me.

Most of the people I was mad at were always on the periphery of our lives and not worth the effort. Mark was never one to go out of his way to be nice to people he didn’t like and couldn’t understand why you would waste the energy trying. One night while laying in bed, I replayed a conversation where an acquaintance suggested I look into volunteering at a dog shelter to augment my sadness. “On your days off,” she said, “you could go there and walk the dogs. I’m sure it would help.” I got defensive and over explained myself (as usual) instead of asking, “Can you imagine a bunch of stray dogs taking the place of your husband?” And in the darkness I took a stroll down the road of all the dumb stuff that had been said to me that drove me nuts until I reached a dead end where the sign said Surrender. You have to surrender the life you no longer have, you have to surrender to a future that looks vastly different than the one you thought you were promised, you have to surrender the people in your life who don’t serve this new version of you, you have to surrender to what it can be and not what it was.

I’d say it was an overnight success but I’m not that fast of a learner. I had to repeat that word to myself a thousand times over. I still do. I still get jealous of long married couples, I still look back at what was, I still hate that Mark isn’t in the thick of scientific research. But in the surrender I found a new version of me, a new relationship, and a future I could not see for a very long time.

Last month a friend lost her father suddenly. As if that’s not hard enough, her mom has dementia and cannot be left alone so in one phone call her entire life got turned upside down. Everybody not in her shoes seems to know what she should do which is unhelpful in every way. We started working together a few years ago so I checked in with her several times before she came back to the office because, holy shit, that’s a lot to deal with. Figuring out next steps will be a long process and after a glass of wine with her the other day I said what I’ve said to others in the throws of unrelenting grief, “You’re going to be okay. I don’t know how or when but I promise you will be.”

When you can’t see it you have to believe your way to it. For me it was, and continues to be, the hardest work I’ve ever done so if it helps you to have someone show up with some street cred and a flashlight give me a call. I’m your girl.

When Mark and I moved to Kansas City 34 years ago, we thought of it as a 5-10 year stay and that once he got his career established we’d move to a city with a bigger university. In those first few years if he’d have said, “Let’s blow this joint,” I would have had the kids and the house packed up in two days. Except for the two biggies of less traffic and affordable housing I was not a fan of the place.

Over time that changed as I found my people and it began to feel like home. Mark would often talk about moving, mainly due to frustration over his job, but after three moves for his career I flipped my mindset and was dead set against it. Our kids were in good schools, we had an established network, and living in a smaller city was so much easier than the east coast or Chicago. When family would come to visit I’d always say, “The longest it takes us to get anywhere is 20-30 minutes tops and we rarely have to pay for parking.” The badge of honor in a smaller city.

Over the years we got a world class performing arts center, our baseball and football teams started to get noticed, and two years ago the first stadium built specifically for a women’s professional sports team opened. By that time Kansas City had become an established soccer town and FIFA deemed us to be one of the host cities for the World Cup. My kids were excited. I thought oh how nice as I had very little knowledge of the World Cup or what it meant for my adopted hometown to be a host city.

In preparation for all the expected visitors, our streetcar got extended, roads filled with potholes got a rehab, and there were daily news stories about getting spiffed up for company. I did not grasp how big of a deal it was until we were in the airport a few weeks before the start of the games. It was blanketed in welcome signs for travelers coming to the cup and a FIFA pop-up shop selling merchandise.

Michael and his son are big soccer fans and I offhandedly suggested that he should try to get tickets for one of the games. Two of the people who work in his lab are a married couple from Argentina and they walked him through the process which was basically a lottery. Months later he found out he got two tickets for two games. My daughter and her husband got four tickets for the same two games.

June came and we were surrounded by professional soccer players – Argentina was using the Kansas City area as their base as was Netherland. England bought out a hotel for the last month that is ten minutes from where we live. Algeria was in a college town forty minutes away. On a whim, Michael bought two tickets for us for the first game of the match here – Argentina versus Algeria. We got jerseys, drove by our shopping and restaurant district where Argentinian fans had taken over, and 24 hours later hopped on a bus to Arrowhead Stadium for the game. It was the craziest, most electric environment I had ever been in and I was hooked.

We consumed a daily diet of soccer and it was all anyone talked about. The retired owner where I work asked me what shows I’ve been watching. “The soccer show,” I said, “only the soccer show.” My coworker went to the KC Current stadium with a friend and their sons for a watch party. It was miserably hot so they ended up watching in a restaurant then boarded the streetcar to head home. “I’m letting you out here,” the operator said, “because I can’t go any further.” They stepped onto the street and were swept up in a swarm of fans from Columbia and she said it was the highlight of the night.

Last week I took my grandson to the pool. He lives and breathes sports with soccer being his favorite thanks to his parents who have had season tickets for him and his siblings since they were babies. He showed me how each of his favorite players celebrates when they score a goal – Ronaldo, Messi, Haaland, Yamal, Bellingham, Mbappe, then went underwater and mimicked it and I had to guess who it was. I couldn’t keep any of it straight and was throwing out guess after guess when he popped up out of the water. After many failed attempts he said, “Mimi, you’re really bad at this,” which was 100% correct. We came back to the house, had popcorn, cheered for England versus Argentina, and ended up disappointed. I took him home after that and we talked some more about the World Cup, the stickers he has collected, the England players he got to see and get their autographs, the soccer he’ll be playing next month.

What I wanted to say to that sweet boy on the cusp of 2nd grade was that this summer, the summer of ’26, was one that will stay etched in his heart and head forever. That he was lucky to live in a place that the world came to visit, that in the stifling heat of the Midwest we left our houses to be a part of something special, that at a time that feels so dismal for the adults in his life we got to have fun, and that even when he’s as old as his Mimi is now he’ll remember every minute of it like it was yesterday.

Thank you, Kansas City.

My retail background started years ago when I was shopping at my favorite store and the manager came up to me one day and asked me if I would be interested in working there. I was a stay-at-home mom at the time and the idea of getting out of the house for hours at a time was the lifeline I needed. Eventually that store closed and I went to work for another store owned by the same company. While working there one afternoon there was a commotion and the manager and general manager went flying out the door. A few minutes later they breathlessly came back in and that’s when the rest of us found out that they had been chasing a shoplifter into the parking lot. “You should have seen Stephanie,” my coworker said. “She jumped on the hood of the car to stop them.”

Years later I was at a different store helping two women who said they were Christmas shopping. I was chatting with them as they looked at a table full of men’s sweaters. They were remarking on the price and I said, “In case you’re interested this table here has some great options and are 30% off.” One of the women looked at the other and said, “Can you believe this bitch? She thinks we can’t afford these,” and they both started laughing. I was so rattled, so stunned that I had totally misread and offended them that I told my coworker I was going off the floor for a few minutes. I went to find the manager to tell her what happened when I heard my coworker yelling. I ran back onto the floor and those two women had lifted an entire rack of leather coats off a display rod and ran out the door.

It has been awhile since I have worked a retail job. The last was in a shopping and restaurant district where shoplifting was an ongoing but hush-hush problem as to not disrupt the bougie vibes. On a Saturday afternoon a family came in and the two young daughters were wreaking havoc in our busy store. It was a beautiful spring day and I couldn’t understand why the dad didn’t take them into the courtyard just outside our doors. I was walking towards the back of the store when I saw the mom frantically stuffing clothes into a tote bag. On the headset I described her so the two employees working the front of the store could stop her. As she approached, the dad stood nearby and said to his daughters, “Why don’t you ask these nice ladies if you can smell the candle,” while the mom and her stolen clothes slipped out the door.

While that happened more times than we probably knew, the bigger problem with shoplifting over the years was how pervasive and organized it had become. We had a couple who came in regularly who were masters of distraction while outside a car would circle the block. They’d walk out the door with their arms full of stolen merchandise, the car would pull up in front of the store, they’d jump in and speed off, and the whole thing happened in minutes. Neither security or the police were interested in these crimes even though every store was dealing with it. As an employee those incidences shook you. During the course of a week you steamed, hung, folded, and moved those items dozens of times and there is ownership in that. But once a thief crosses the threshold of the doorway you could not confront or pursue them. “It’s a liability issue,” we were told over and over. You could only stand in disbelief at the blatant audacity while the manager would try to rally the troops and say, “We’ll figure out what they stole and write if off. Don’t let it get to you,” but if you were an honest person hustling clothes for a paycheck it got to you plenty.

For eighteen months we have watched the most blatant of thefts happening in the highest office in our country. Absurd amounts of money changing hands in no-bid contracts, people stolen from their families and placed in detention centers with no charges, no trial, or no oversight to the conditions they live in, theft of fair elections, theft of services for kids in public schools, theft of food benefits for the poor, theft of money earmarked for science and clinical trials, theft of careers in public service, theft of decency and empathy, theft of an entire wing of the White House. And like what any practiced thief does, distraction is the method used to make sure that what’s really happening isn’t noticed until it’s been slipped into a very large tote bag.

At my favorite retail job in a small shop I worked at minutes from my house, one of my coworkers saw two teenage girls steal a dress. Against all protocol she followed them into the drugstore nearby and said, “Hand over the dress you stuffed into your backpack or I call the police.” They did and on the way out she said, “Don’t even think about coming into that store again. Do you understand,” and they nodded in stunned silence.

Since the threshold between right and wrong seems so murky lately, the first place we need to draw the line is in the People’s House, our house, where even the suggestion of we’ll just write it off is a crime against every one of us who looks at a paystub, looks at photos of a reflecting pool that resembles the above ground pool in a run-down house that has been on the market for a year, and has yet to witness any accountability for who is helping themselves to all that money as if were their own.

Then we need to make sure they never set foot in there again.

Since the spring I feel like I have been living my life on a non-stop carnival ride. First it was getting the house ready for a renter then that blowing up followed by getting it ready to be put on the market to be sold. Post sale there has been paperwork and banking to take care of and a whole lot of crap from the house to figure out what to do with. A few weeks ago Mike and I spent a rainy Sunday putting together shelves and organizing the storage space in this house, and while that looks much better there is still plenty of stuff in the garage that needs a permanent home. I have been trying to figure things out for the better part of the last eight years and for the time being I need a hiatus.

Work is busy, Mike is busy, and for the last week I have had a constant ache in my neck and shoulders. Stress, I thought to myself, surely this is stress from these last few months and then I looked at the calendar. I knew Father’s Day was coming up even though I try every year to ignore it as best I can. But this year Father’s Day and Mark’s birthday were on the same day which explains the neck and shouders that felt like they’d been pounded with a sledgehammer. I couldn’t decide if it was a good thing to get them over with in one day or if it was a double whammy.

Yesterday was a flood of posts on social media about great dads, funny dads, and wise and loving dads that felt like a turn of the knife for those of us with dead dads and/or dead husbands who were dads. I have perfect attendance for making it through these kinds of days but some years the making it through is ugly, exhausting, and so unfair I want to scream through every minute of it. This was one of those years.

In a spur of the moment decision last Monday, Mike bought two tickets for us to see Argentina play here in the World Cup. I tried to pass as my soccer knowledge is extremely limited but he insisted. Monday night we went on a quest to find jerseys to wear to the game. The legit ones were over $100 and I said for a likely one-time wear I’d go with the cheaper version. He did, too, and the next day we were on a bus to Arrowhead stadium where we would join 69,000 other people to watch Lionel Messi score three goals.

Beside me was a father and son from Japan. Behind us a father and son from Argentina. By the look in those little boys eyes they couldn’t believe their luck in getting to see their hero play. By the end of the match the boy next to me was exhausted and slumped in his seat. The other had spent the entire game coughing and if I knew any Spanish I’d have told the dad that this allergy season has been a doozy and his kid needed an inhaler.

When I asked Mike how much the tickets cost he said, “A lot.” I can’t imagine what those around us paid with the added cost of travel, food, and lodging. But good dads do good things for their kids. My kids still need theirs but that’s not how things went, and if you were to ask them how often they miss him the answer would be every single day. Especially so when they can’t give him a dopey card, some new spandex biking shorts, or something for the grill he’d say he loved and then never used.

Then and now. Night and day.

Remember that story I wrote in March about making the decision to rent my sweet, little cape cod? The one I fell head over heels with the minute Mark and I saw it? Turns out that short-lived experience was a disaster in many ways and in the immediate aftermath I realized that the landlord life was not for me.

A week after the renter moved out I met a realtor and started the process of selling it. For the last six weeks I have woken up every morning ticking off an endless list of things I needed to do, going to the house multiple times a day and hiring people for mulching, painting, and hauling. When I went to bed every night I mentally added things to the list, slept awful, and never felt like I would get to the finish line. Last week while I was cleaning sinks and toilets in a final push, Mike was outside mowing. I was running on empty – physically and emotionally. Spending every day there alone with decades of memories swirling around me and not a single magic wand hidden in a closet to bibbety-bobbety-boo things back together had taken its toll.

The listing went live on Friday and on Sunday afternoon I signed a contract. I didn’t know what to feel except an overwhelming combination of sad and relieved, so I did what I always do when my feelings were colliding- I puttered in the garden. I had an assortment of shovels to choose from but was missing my favorite spade and drove over to the house to see if I left it there. The whirlwind of the past few months and the stream of people seeing it for the first time and passing judgement on it was gone. It was just me in my quiet house of staged furniture and every neglected thing for decades finally addressed. “Don’t cry,” I told myself as I walked through every room (again) because how would I ever stop if I did? My shovel and I came back to the house Michael and I have shared these last two years and I tended to my fledgling garden which has been filled with new plants, ones I transplanted from the house last summer, and more within the past few weeks.

I moved things around, cut back two blue star plants that were trying really hard to die, and placed the plants I had just bought at the nursery. While in the midst of my digging I unearthed a plastic horse that looked to be from a kid’s cowboy set. I picked it up, wiped some of the dirt off of it, and marveled at the fact that despite its years underground it was in perfect condition.

Finding small treasures happens to be in my wheelhouse. There was one a few blocks away with a for sale sign in front of it that saw me through the happiest days of my life followed by the darkest and loneliest. In a few weeks new owners will move into it. There’s no telling how life will unfold under that roof, but my wish is that she wraps her arms around them and carries them gently through all their days.

As for the things that have clawed their way out of the darkness, maybe it’s time for them to turn their faces towards the sun.

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 I 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.