A Speckled Trout

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 Netherlands. 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 found 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, and 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.

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.