Month: January 2026

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.