A Speckled Trout

Last month Michael and I went away for a few days. Nearly all of the trips we have taken since we met have been work related for him so we decided that maybe a long weekend not structured around a meeting would feel more like getting away. Our criteria in picking a place was that it had to be cooler than the Midwest and near water. Bar Harbor, Maine won because of its proximity to Acadia National Park. Our first full day there we walked to town and down to the waterfront, went to a bookstore and touristy shops, had lunch, and wandered.

Prior to going, I had contacted Mark’s first boss in the science world – the young upstart professor who recruited him to work in his lab and guided him to a PhD. I knew he and his wife had been going to Maine every summer for decades and it seemed crazy to be in the same town as them and not reach out. It took a bit to be able to get a hold of them but when I did we had a tentative plan to meet for a drink. As regulars in the area, they suggested a place to go that was just outside of Bar Harbor.

“Try to get a table outside,” they said, and there we were on a lovely Saturday night overlooking the water with, Steve, who I last saw six years ago and his wife, Mary, who I had last seen 38 years ago. It turned out to be an easy conversation between three scientists and me – much of it around the current state of affairs with funding being slashed, the morale amongst students and junior faculty, and finding a way through the mess.

When that had been hashed out, they asked what we were going to be doing the following day. With the exception of going to Acadia, we never had a plan for any day of this trip. Being near water and nature was all we needed but they were clearly planners and we waffled. Mary then asked, “What do you like to do for fun? Do you like to hike? Bike?”

What do we like to do for fun?? I had no idea how to answer that except to say that people like me don’t have fun. We worriers can find a hundred reasons why either of those activities could lead to death. I faked it, though, and went with the hiking thing because everybody says they hike because everybody thinks it sounds cool. They had a lot of suggestions and I listened and nodded like a badass with a sturdy pair of Merrells and a CamelBack.

The next day Michael and I had breakfast, went to an antique store, then lunch, and headed back to our inn. A few blocks away was a sand bar that every day during low tide you can walk across to one of the islands off of Bar Harbor. There are warnings to pay attention to the tide because when it rises the sand bar disappears and you could be stuck on the wrong side until the next day and low tide.

We had gone there on our first day and I wanted to return. The sand bar is home to thousands and thousands of rocks of all sizes – most covered with barnacles. I loved them and wanted to bring some home so we headed over there and I began my rock hunt. This time, though, we walked across to the other side and though we were in no danger of being stranded there, my anxiety at the thought of it was off the meter. I had visions of being marooned, of weird birds pecking at my head all night, and mostly not getting back to our inn in time for their fresh baked coffee cake and locally brewed coffee. I shut that down (thanks anxiety meds!) and then hunted, picked up and saved, picked up and tossed, gave a yeah or nay to ones Michael found, and said more than once, “If I lived here I’d come with a front loader and get some of these huge ones for my garden.” We worked our way across the sandbar and filled a small backpack with the keepers.

The next day we crammed our rocks into our carry ons and suitcases and headed to the airport. Remember when Southwest let you check one bag for free? Well, they don’t anymore and my little rock haul cost $70. When we got home I unwrapped them along with the shells I picked up and thought it was a little crazy. But I had the same idea in Ireland, the beach a few years ago in Gulf Shores, the beaches in Florida more than once, and several national parks.

I am a long-time admirer of fun people who seek the next thrilling experience throughout their life. I love seeing their social media posts and photos. More often than not I want to be one of them, but every day I look at my dumb bowl of rocks and shells and remember where all of them came in case anyone asks.

Some adventures are a whisper.

When Michael’s new home was finished and closed on, he was moving from an apartment he had lived in for a few months, emptying a storage unit and moving the contents, and continuing to work. He had been juggling a lot for many months and I offered to unpack some of his things on my days off.

Much of his belongings had been sold in an estate sale. The things he wanted to keep from the house he and his wife, Marlene, had lived in for years was packed with the help of his sisters. Both of them would put professional movers to shame. There wasn’t a single thing broken – everything carefully wrapped in paper, bubble wrap, or both.

In the empty house during the cold and overcast days of December, I opened the boxes marked Kitchen, upwrapped every piece, and then gathered everything on the island until I had amassed all the wine glasses, all the plates, all the pots, the silverware. Then I would open drawers and cabinets and figure out where everything should go. The daily things next to the stove and the things used less higher up in the cabinets. The house was deathly quiet with no tv or music to distract – only me and the contents of a kitchen from a woman who had loved and built a life with the same man as me. It was unnverving, sad, and surreal.

When Michael came home he was apologetic. “We don’t have to keep any of this,” he said, “we can get all new stuff if you want.” It would be months later before I moved in so that didn’t seem like a logical decision. “It’s fine,” I said, thinking that him seeing the things of a life he no longer had in a kitchen with someone else in it had to be even more unnerving, sad, and surreal.

I moved in during late spring and added my own things, but much of what we use every day are things Marlene bought. She had very good taste. The dishes I reach for over and over are classic blue and white. There is a panini maker that had never been used. I always longed for a Le Creuset dutch oven but could never bring myself to pay for one. In the boxes I unpacked was an orange one that I have used many times. There is a rice maker, a Cuisinart toaster oven/air fryer, and spices that I have never used. All the belongings of another woman’s kitchen.

In this new life there are many times I think I don’t deserve any of this. Times when I look at this house and know this came to be because of what Michael and Marlene built not Mark and Kathy.

But when my grandson has a soccer game it is Michael and I that sit and cheer from the sidelines. When my granddaughter had a piano recital we sat next to each other watching her. On Sundays my kids come for dinner. When they leave all three of my grandkids hug us goodbye, often running towards Michael with outstretched arms. Children that are the result of a life Mark and Kathy built not Michael and Marlene.

Last month the two of us took a short trip to Maine. We have been using a car service to go to the airport whenever we leave town and have gotten to know the driver. He was very chatty on this last trip and told us about all the hobbies he dabbles in. Some we knew about but this time he told us about his love of biking and how he has taught himself how to sew and now alters his own clothes. Later Michael said to me, “Don’t you think it’s interesting that Robbie loves doing the same things as our late spouses? Marlene with the sewing and Mark with the biking?”

There are many things that feel foreign to both of us and probably always will, but then there is this driver who showed up on our driveway shining light and unbridled enthusiasm on what we thought we had lost.

If you were to lose someone you dearly loved tomorrow I would tell you that the veil between here and there is as slim as the eye of a needle. Time after time it beckons you to look through it, and when you do you could swear that everyone you ever loved has never left you.

My childhood memories of my mom during the summer are of her being miserably hot for the entirety of it. At no time did I ever hear her declare a love for that season – she was an unabashed fan of winter. Eventually her and Dad got a window unit air conditioner for the family room and since that was also where the washer and dryer were that’s where she would be most of the day. At night we would go to sleep with the windows open and the attic fan cooling us off like old-timers.

Summer temperatures back then were not as high as they are now but there were also very few homes that had central air conditioning. Being outside during the day under the shade of a tree was a far better option than being inside the stifling house. Now the climate has heated up and what has been inherited and brewing for years has come to fruition.

I am my mother’s daughter. I hate summer.

While I’m surrounded by summer lovers, I am a stewing in my own sweat waiting impatiently for a predicted cool front to move through. When it finally does and the temperature drops four degrees and the humidity level goes from 69% to 63% I AM APPALLED. A cold front? That’s a why-you-playing-me front. I want that Lake Michigan thunder and lighting show that rattles the house, keeps you up half the night, drops the temperature thirty degrees, makes you grab a sweatshirt the minute you wake up, and has your mom joyfully saying over a cup of steaming coffee, “Thank god.”

For reasons I do not understand, summer people think that eating outside is a given when the temperature climbs. In the meantime my hair grows like Fred Flintstone’s thumb when he smashes it with his bowling ball. This has been my reality for as long as I can remember only this year my big, fat, humid hair decided it wants to be in on the sweatfest. While I’m sitting on a lawn chair with a beer and a burger it’s hard to distinguish if the sweat is dripping from my face or my hair onto my paper plate. Good times.

Inevitably someone will say something dopey like, “It’s not bad out,” or “Can you feel that breeze? Now that’s what I’m talking about.” Are you really talking about that one branch that ever-s0-slightly moved two inches one way and then another? For that one time? Cuz what I’m talking about is that we cross the threshold into that air conditioned house to keep cool instead of being out here like a bunch of martyrs waiting our turn to be charred at the stake.

One of our local tv stations has something called the EOI during their weather report- the Eat Outside Index. In spring and early summer there are many days that are a 10 which is no surprise. That’s when everyone wants to be dining al fresco including me. They haven’t even had the EOI in the last month because eating outside would be at your own peril. Ya ding-dong.

So far this summer I have googled heat exhaustion, heat headaches, heat deaths, neck fans, and a real Hail Mary – Are Old People More Affected By The Heat? Yes. Yes we are. Then I googled heat anxiety because I swear on the cool side of my mother’s final resting place that when I’m sitting with a group of people who say they’re hot but aren’t sweating it makes me anxiety sweat.

Dining al fresco in the heat and humidity of the Midwest looks nothing like the pages of Have Your Best Summer Ever! magazine. It is beat red faces, mopped brows, pitted out shirts, stinging eyes from sweat dripping into them, slapping bugs, and barely being civil to each other because everyone is hot, cranky, and sitting on the opposite side of the most amazing invention.

A temperature controlled environment.

Between Michael and I we had three cars, and when a squirrel made a home in the one parked on the street and chewed through the wiring causing a tow to the repair shop, we decided that one of those cars needed to go. Mallory was driving a seventeen year old Honda and so I offered her my much newer Honda Fit. Will, who had already made plans to visit his sister, offered to drive the car out to her. Not one to be left out of a road trip I decided to tag along, and on a Saturday morning in early May we hit the highway.

Like all the road trips I’ve taken, I appointed myself Deputy of Snacks and loaded up at QuikTrip. The guy behind me said he approved of my choices and wanted to go wherever I was going. I told him I was headed to Los Angeles, he said he was from LA, and as we were discussing the route we were taking the guy behind him overheard and said he was from Pasadena. I was in the middle of the country in the middle of a reunion of West Coasters which I took as a very good omen.

Will mapped things out and had lofty goals. Our first stop for the night was going to be in Albequrque which was twelve hours away. We made our way south through the small farming communities of Kansas where we stopped and ate lunch at a local diner. Nearly everyone around us had ordered a burger and we followed suit. There we were in the corn and wheat fields of the Midwest in a gathering place that was likely the host of every event for miles around – wedding receptions to Kiwanis Club meetings to post-funeral luncheons. I found it both endearing and a little sad.

After that we traveled briefly through Oklahoma and Texas and then a long haul through New Mexico. Will had picked our next stopping point and when dinner rolled around we exited the highway. Part of this town’s claim to fame was being on Route 66 but its heyday seemed to have evaporated. We drove from one dilapidated area to another – every home with peeling paint, rusted cars in front, garbage and unused bicycles laying next to the road. After thirty minutes of driving without many options we found a place to eat though neither of us were excited about it. Mostly staffed with younger adults, I wondered if this was as good of a job you can get in a town like that. On our way back to the highway we passed a young couple walking their baby in a stroller past a park. The park was a bed of gravel that consisted of two swings, a metal climbing gym, and not a single tree to shade it. One can only imagine how hot that metal got in the New Mexico summer. We never saw a hospital, a school, a library, a doctor’s office, a church, police or fire department, even the ubiquitous mattress stores that are in every direction where I live. Every motel and restaurant along Route 66 were abandoned. There were more closed businesses than open. Like the small towns we had passed all day, Dollar General was the grocery store, Wal-Mart, hardware store, and Walgreens combined.

The following day we ended up in a different but equally depressed town for lunch – a place that claimed to have the best food in town plus antiques. The antiques were mostly old bikes that were covered in dust and likely hadn’t been touched, moved, or sold in years. The restaurant was half a dozen wood tables and chairs and two women taking orders and running food back and forth. When we went to pay the credit card machine was causing problems and they offered to get so-and-so on the line to walk them through it but I had cash and so we paid and left. The sky was foreboding and the wind was picking up when we walked outside and by the time we made it to the gas station we were in the middle of a dust storm. Though short-lived, it might have been the single most scary weather event I’ve ever experienced and a fitting farewell to New Mexico.

That trip was two months ago, and I think about those towns every day. I think about how impossible it must be to leave because that takes money and a U-Haul and a security deposit and how can you possibly save for that? I think about having a kid who’s autistic or dyslexic and what kinds of services they need and don’t get. I think about an appendix that bursts or a car that breaks down or needing a lawyer and none of those services are either close by or free. I think about how drugs can come in through the back door of any small town and infiltrate it to the point of collapse because when there is no hope you escape in whatever way you can.

I’ve taken many road trips over the years and seen so many towns like that but they never included watching a sweet, young couple pushing their baby in a stroller against the backdrop of a colorless landscape. They were chatting the whole time they were walking and I wondered what hopes and dreams they had for their young family. But this country, this land of opportunity, decided this week that it should wrap its hands around the ankles of those young parents who had the misfortune of being born in a lousy zip code and put them on notice that they will have to work ten times harder to stay afloat. And while all eyes are turned towards those stunning New Mexico sunsets, nobody notices those same hands are reaching inside their stroller and snatching their baby’s future.

I have vivid recall of the day John Kennedy was assasinated. I was in first grade when the news was announced over the intercom and our teachers openly wept while a class of six year olds sat confused and silent. My brothers and I were sent home early from school and we walked into the house to a stunned mom and my visiting grandparents and aunt glued to the television. A somber Walter Cronkite gave updates in black and white and my mom sent us off to play rather than subject us to what nobody could fathom. A few days later the funeral of a president was televised and our house was blanketed in sorrow.

Politics weren’t a nightly subject in our house but the importance of voting was always passed down to us and now to our kids. The thought of skipping an election was never a consideration and if you dared to think you had a valid reason you’d better not tell anyone. My dad would tell us that if you reaped the benefits from a fire department, a paved road, and streetlights then you were required to vote and pay your taxes.

I am a political junkie but with this administration I often have to remind myself to unclench my teeth, relax my shoulders, and breathe. Other times I have to stop myself from flinging my phone against the wall after reading another ridiculous headline.

Mark had a tendency to hyper-react to political news – often worried that the NIH was going to be handcuffed and that his research funding was going to be ripped away. He’d be livid about something we were watching and to him it probably seemed like I was under reacting but until I understood what was going on I tended to remain steady. I was always the calm in his storms. There were many stormy moments in his head and heart but none more than whenever his mom came to visit. He would be on a hair trigger – reacting to everything she said with an anger he never showed anyone else. When this would happen I would try to smooth things over and keep the peace with both of them. In different ways and for different reasons it was exhausting for both of us.

It took his death and a lot of therapy to understand that this was the result of childhood trauma. That the home and life we created was the safest place he had ever known and any threat to that was a threat to him and his family. Of course he never knew this about himself, and for me, understanding these things after the fact are painful.

What I know from what I witnessed and have since lived is that chaos shakes the earth beneath your feet. Even when you’re away from it you don’t trust that everything is calm. Years later you remain on high alert waiting for the shoe to drop, a dark closet, or for the unspeakable to roar back to life.

I think about Mark and Vicki and how both their lives ended, how they spent decades giving to and nurturing college students, how they went to bat for their programs and those intrusted to their care. On his last day Mark was unable to stand up for his own life because despite the love and admiration of us, of colleagues, friends, and family he never could shake the thought that he was a bad boy.

I feel that every day. I also can see that in the midst of this daily chaos we are living, where children are being taken from their homes, is the photo of these two smiling back at me. These two who desperately tried every day of their adult lives to get the ground to stop shaking.

I am more than willing to go a few rounds for both of them.

Last month Michael and I were at Costco because even men who are no fans of shopping love THE COSTCO. I don’t remember what we were there for except the tariffs are coming, and even if a product isn’t affected by them, we all know that prices only go up while the size goes down. We grabbed a cart, wandered into the store, and Michael asked what was on the list. The list? We don’t shop Costco just off a list. We gotta browse. My man, though, stayed focused while I rabidly scanned the aisles for things I didn’t need then headed towards the center where the high-end designer who goes by the name of Kirkland was calling my name.

It always goes the same for me when it comes to Costco clothes. I look at everything, find my size, hold it up, mull it over, and then carefully refold it because of all those retail years. I move from one table to the next and question every life choice I have ever made while a gigantic blow-up pool slide casts its shadow . Do I really need another sweatshirt? No. Do I need it if it’s $11.99? Maybe.

Michael found me and we headed to health and beauty where we actually did need something. Collagen peptides? Oil of Olay? Supergreens? Nothing that exciting. We needed toothpaste and it was there that my superstore mojo fell apart. When did toothpaste get so complicated? Why are there a hundred different kinds?

I stood in front of all those boxes there like a deer in headlights and my wonky tooth that has had a root canal, a crown, and so many appointments years ago due to some weird phantom pain started to throb. “I’m looking for a paste,” I said, “not a gel. The gel ones are a mess,” and waited for the paste ones to stand up and wave so we could wrap this up. All those tubes, though, sat there with their attitudes as if defiantly saying, “Figure us out, lady.”

When my kids were little I had a dear friend and neighbor whose husband was a doctor in the Navy. They got stationed in Italy for a few years and we would send letters back and forth to each other. She told me how difficult parts of a life abroad were with three young kids but that there were some things that she loved. Mostly, that her choices were very limited – that there were three TV stations, smaller markets, less places to get things. “It’s freeing,” she said. That was over thirty years ago and that may not be necessarily true anymore but I have thought of that often. How our lives have become a series of micro decisions that are annoying on some days and exhausting on others. It’s toothpaste, deoderant, mascara, detergent, frozen pizza. Canned tomatoes can now be seasoned for chili – firey hot or your basic hot, basil and garlic for spaghetti sauce, no salt, low salt, crushed, diced, whole, whole but peeled.

“I think we should go with this one,” I said grabbing a box off the shelf. It turned out to be what I wanted which was pure luck. I nixed the idea of looking at sweatshirts one more time and we headed to the checkout.

A simple life they say, aim for a simple life but I’m looking at a claim that my new toothpaste can provide 24 hours of antibacterial protection. The science can’t possibly back that one up and I’ve got five tubes of a marketer’s dream customer because wearing one out is also a strategy.

When I started my current job four years ago, I sat on the design side of the office between one of the designers and a design assistant. It was while sitting there that I discovered that I am a heavy sigher. From out of nowhere I’d hear Natalie say, “Kathy, are you okay,” and have no idea why she was asking. “You were sighing,” she would say, “I thought something was wrong.”

Last week Michael and I were laying in bed, the windows slightly opened to let the cool evening air in, when I sighed. Michael asked me what was wrong and I said in the dark what is so hard for me to say in the light. “Sometimes,” I said, “I cannot handle the sound of the trains.” I hear the nearby trains multiple times a day. Often they are barely heard background noise and other times an excruciating reminder of Mark’s final moments. There is no rhyme or reason why sometimes they don’t bother me and other times I want to cover my ears and scream the sound of them away. He inched closer, held me, and said, “There isn’t a time I hear them that I don’t think of Mark.”

I love my job 95% of the time. The environment is fun and creative, the work can be challenging, and I am paid well. But it is still a job and those come with obstacles and personality conflicts. A few weeks ago I was told that a person who used to work in our office was being hired back for a few months. I worked with her before, she trained me on some aspects of my job, and I liked her. I was okay with all of it and then was told that I would have to share my work space with her. It caught me off guard and as her start date got closer I kept looking at my space and wondering how two of us were supposed to make this work seeing as how I used all of my desk. I am part-time, though, and two days of the week my desk isn’t used so it seemed logical to everyone but me.

The day came and did not start well. I was trying to assemble an under-desk storage piece that had arrived the day before to hold things that used to be on top of my desk. My immediate boss arrived for the day, put her lunch in the fridge, came back to our work area, and said something about the situation that hit a nerve. The day was already brewing with emotional landmines as it was the first anniversary of my mom’s death. At 8:30 in the morning a year ago I was on a flight to Chicago. Now I was at work and at my limit for things being taken away from me that I had no say in including half my desk. Things got smoothed over later that morning and in a better version of me I’d say I was accommodating in defeat. But instead I sighed a lot and stored any grace I was capable of in the crappy Amazon storage piece under my desk.

A few days later I had a therapy appointment. Prior to every one I think I should tell her that I am a-okay and she can move on to another widow via suicide. We started our session about my work drama, then to the anniversary of my mom’s death, to the sound of the trains rattling me, and how the past week had knocked me out emotionally. “And then the pope this morning,” I said increduously. “The pope? The only moral compass left in the world up and dies. I mean, how much more are we expected to handle?” “I haven’t been to a Catholic church in years,” my therapist said, “but I loved him. He was such an antidote to what we have been living these last few months.” I felt my throat catch and my eyes tear up. “The thing about grief,” Eileen said, “is that it can start with one little thing and then it takes you down a road where you’re adding another griefy thing and then another until it becomes this big pot of grief stew,” and this is why I will keep seeing her every other Monday until one of us dies.

When Michael and I moved in together I said that I had to be able to do something with the backyard, that I needed a garden. He said the whole backyard could be a garden as far as he was concerned and I knew he meant it. A few weeks ago the bed was cut and last Saturday we went to the nursery where I loaded a cart with plants while he pushed and said encouraging things like, “It looks like you’ve got a plan,” which was extremely generous considering there is a a lot of winging it involved.

I placed the plants in this new garden, moved them, hated it, and wondered why I even thought this was a good idea. Over and over I’d do it again, stand back, sigh, then move them again. A week later half are in the ground and the other half are still being moved around. I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m going to keep the faith that something good is going to shake out of this stew of living things.

The neighborhood I have lived in for more than thirty years consists of a combination of cape cods and small ranches. These homes were built in the 1940s and are under 2000 square feet which includes the basements that regularly get water when it rains a few days in a row. When I once told someone where I lived and raised my family he said, “It’s commendable that you were able to do that in such a small space,” which made me laugh because I never considered it all that difficult. Though Mark and I never considered moving, other families did as their need for a bigger home with bigger closets and dry basements grew. We loved our street and its proximity to everything, the huge trees that lined the sidewalks, and the ability to walk to a shopping center that included a Macy’s, a grocery store, hardware store, restaurants, and for several years a movie theater.

In the past ten years the area has become even more desirable for young families as one builder after another has bulldozed the existing homes for more modern dwellings that currently go for a million dollars. That is an eye popping number for us long-timers who paid less than 10% of that amount. While some of these homes needed to be torn down due to neglect, others have not and I have railed against these changes. I am a lover of quirky old homes and was sold on the house we bought within ten minutes of being in it. A lilac bush in the yard that reminded me of my grandma sealed the deal.

Fast forward a few decades and a tragic loss later, I met Michael and moved four blocks away into exactly one of the homes I have been so critical of for years. Never say never, right? On our street is a combination of new and old homes and one in particular I was in love with. It was one of the original ranches (two bedrooms and under 1000 square feet) that had been updated in many ways. It had a brick front porch where two rocking chairs sat and a beautiful and inviting wood door that I’m sure was custom made. It was the landscaping, though, that made it look like a charming cottage right from the pages of a story book. A stone path led to the backyard and I longed to see what it looked like. Only once did I see who lived there as they were walking in the front door. I wanted to yell, “I love your house!! It’s my favorite,” in hopes a conversation would start and I could see what they did in the back.

A month ago we got a certified letter stating that a home near us was going to be torn down and another built in its place. I immediately got on Zillow to see which one and it was the sweet cottage a few doors down that I loved. No no no not my house, I thought. The following day I went to work and was telling my coworker about it and pulled it up on my computer to show her. It turned out that she knew the owner, that he’d lived there for many years, had remarried, and was a builder. I told her how much I loved his yard, that I would love to dig up some of his plants before they got bulldozed, and she immediately texted him. She never heard back from him as I’m sure he was getting that same request from a lot of people who knew him far better than the nameless stalker down the street.

Last week we got back from a meeting Michael had in North Carolina and then to Florida for a few days to see two of my siblings. When we came home I was stunned to see the house. It had been stripped clean of the front door I loved, the windows, the garage door, and most of the plants in the front yard. It was a shell of what it used to be.

A few days later when Michael and I walked by, I convinced him to trespass with me and look at the backyard. It had a small deck, a shed, and a fountain. A bed of large, tall evergreens were in the corner and another bed bordered the fence line. Despite the upheaval it was as I imagined it – a lovely, peaceful oasis. On Saturday the excavator arrived and was parked in the front yard. Soon there will be a dumpster and what once was will be a giant hole. Someone passing by who wasn’t familiar with the before might think it was one of those rundown homes that had been neglected by a series of owners for years. But that wasn’t the case, that home was loved and nurtured and because of that I am sure that the new one will be equally beautiful and filled with many of the details that made the old one so unique.

These days the outside of my life looks like the lovely, new homes all over my neighborhood and the one I live in now. But for those of us who have grief as our steadfast companion, loss isn’t gauged only by befores and after. There is the in-between state where I was for so long doing brutal, emotional work where everything I knew for sure had been stripped away much like the house down the street. There are parts of that time that will never go away like how a phone call from an unknown number causes me to panic, how every time I tell my kids I have to tell them something I preface it with, “It’s okay, it’s not bad news,” how I have never made the assumption again that everyone I love is okay.

There is a closet downstairs in this house where I have stored my Christmas decorations. When I open it I can still smell my old house with the lilac bush and the memories of the many things it gave and took away over the years. Back then I was living a different dream and had no reason to believe it would end the way it did. But it did and here I am in this new house with this kind man – both of us daring to start something new while never forgetting how costly it was for us to rebuild.

On a stretch of road in the neighborhood I live in are four schools. Three are public – elementary, middle, and high school where all three of my kids attended. The other is a Catholic elementary school where my kids went to religous ed every Monday. It is sage, local advice that if you are in a hurry to get anywhere in the morning that you avoid this road. The chances that you will be backed up behind a long line of cars trying to get into the school parking lot, stuck behind a lumbering yellow bus, or pulled over for speeding in a school zone are very high.

I spent many years at each of these schools. At the elementary school, I volunteered often and was once asked to head programming for the PTA. I turned it down because I knew that whatever speaker was being featured I would have to introduce. At the time I was terrified of public speaking so instead volunteered to be treasurer. This had been known to be the hardest position to fill because it was so labor intensive but there I was throwing my name in without the slightest bit of arm twisting. I got rubber stamped immediately. It turns out the joke was on me because at every PTA meeting the treasurer was required to get up in front of everyone at every meeting and give a financial report. Besides that I was in charge of scheduling library volunteers for over ten years, started an all-school reading program. volunteered for classroom parties, the annual auction and carnival, field day, and the book fair. Like many other parents I was there a lot.

After my kids were grown and flown I’d drive by all of those schools and thank god I was done with that part of my life. Those years were a near constant whirlwind of juggling kids, schedules, and broken hearts from being slighted, frustrated, or exhausted. Sometimes it was me with the broken heart from trying to find my place in an environment that often felt cliquish and unwelcoming. We all managed to find our way, though, and ended up with a collection of dear friends and dear memories.

Last spring I moved in with Michael. The house he was having built was four blocks from the house I had lived in with Mark and the kids for over thirty years so my neighborhood didn’t change all that much. My route to work, though, did. Where I used to be able to cut across this road and be on my way, I now drive directly alongside the elementary school at the peak of the morning rush hour. At the traffic light the school crossing guard holds up her stop sign over and over, and like little ducklings a parade of kids with backpacks and water bottles cross the street.

Last week on a day I wasn’t working I changed up my route, walked past the school, and through the shopping center where an older couple was having coffee on the patio of the French restaurant. We said good morning and then the woman stopped me and asked, “Are you the school crossing guard?” I said I wasn’t but that it was funny she asked because I thought about doing that in my golden years until I drove by the week before and the winds were howling and the temps below freezing. We all laughed and she said, “Oh we see her every day and I thought it was you,” because the woman on the corner with her neon vest is our touchstone to the start of the day.

The next morning I drove to work and there were a couple of dads walking their kids to school which was a rare sight in the days my kids went there. I sat at the crosswalk as the yellow light flashed and watched them all in front of me – the kids bouncing along like Tigger, two golden retrievers wagging their tails, and the dads laughing about something. A block ahead was the traffic light and the crossing guard. I waved and she waved as we were both on high alert for the unpredictability of distracted drivers and little kids.

It is remarkable to me that only a few blocks from where I lived for decades I am able to watch an entire neighborhood descend upon its elementary school every morning. I am long past those years and plopped right back into them by geography. On the way to work I watch it unfold before me while the morning news tells me that the Department of Education needs to be abolished and a president says those people don’t work very hard. Those people? You mean the ones who taught my kids read? Lost in the discussion and rage of such an absurd idea is a community that has been built brick-by-brick for years by teachers, parents, janitors, paras, a principal, a nurse, a librarian, a crossing guard, bus drivers, the lunch ladies, volunteers, and the school admin.

What I knew in the years my kids were in school and maybe even more so now is that people care too much about their school communities to sit idly by while the uneducated try to dismantle it. Ducklings are able to cross the street only when someone stops traffic and everyone else participates in ensuring their safety as they make their way in the world.

Tomorrow morning the crossing guard will be on the corner where she always is but this time she will be waiting for us.

When I would go to visit my mom, depending on the time of year, we would rotate her favorite TV shows between The Young & The Restless, The Bold & The Beautiful (where she would always make fun of how bad the acting was), lots of local news, Cubs games if it was summer, and QVC. She had a pattern of when she would watch her shows – like recording her soap operas and not watching them until later even if she was home when they were airing.

QVC was always at night. She would flip it on and say, “Oh good, this is one of my favorite hosts,” and we’d watch really long stretches of time devoted to a single sweater. If it was Isaac Mizrahi’s line of clothing if would be very, very dramatic. He fawned over every garment and when a customer would call in he’d ask her name and say, “Lorraine, darling, tell me why you love the spring cardigan, item #42-2084 selling at $38.99?” And Lorraine would gush and say she had two and was going to buy three more and Isaac would say, “Oh my dear, I wish I could see how you are going to style them because you sound very fashionable.”On the other end of the line you could imagine how much Lorraine was blushing and dying to tell her friends that THE ISAAC MIZRAHI talked to her. The host would chime in that they needed to cut things short and then remind viewers that there have been 12,000 of these cardigans sold and they were down to their last 8,000 SO YOU BETTER HURRY and even very skeptical me found myself gulping that QVC kool-aid.

Mom and I were watching one night and the featured item was a combination tote bag, cross body bag, and wallet by none other than Joy Mangano of the Original Miracle Mop. The mop was a miracle for the homemaker because it was self-wringing meaning you never had to put your delicate hands into a bucket of filthy water. Joy became a millionaire many times over off that mop and was a QVC Queen. Her new product was a line of bags for women with built-in technology that thwarted stealing credit card numbers from inside your purse. According to her (and the incredulous host who had never heard of such a thing!), someone could merely walk past you with a credit card reader and steal your info while you’re picking out tomatoes at the grocery store. By the time you realize it they have hit up Wal-Mart with a couple of 55″ tvs that will leave you on the hook. Problematic? You bet it was but if you wanted to be protected you needed the patented, magnetic blocking technology of one of her bags. Like a lot of things on QVC, I thought, well that’s a crock of shit but Mom and I kept watching, my wine glass kept getting refilled, and I found myself saying, “You know, I could use a new bag for work.” Mom perked up and said, “Oh you should definitely get it then. Joy makes good products so I’m sure it will last forever.” But despite the conversion therapy and wine I was having trouble pulling the trigger. Mom offered to pay and I said, “It’s not that,” as I mulled over the idea that maybe this was the start of turning into a Lorraine, a lonely lady with a closet full of cardigans desperately hoping an Isaac notices her. Mom handed me the phone. “Just call them,” she said, “those gals are so nice. I talk to them all the time. And don’t forget you can always do easy pay.”

A few weeks ago was my mom’s birthday and I thought of how I would call her on her big day and she’d say she loved my gift and couldn’t wait to use it, how her phone had been ringing all day, and that my siblings and her friends had her booked all week with plans to celebrate. I was unanchored on the first birthday without her and wished for one more of those phone calls, one more chance to hear the sound of her voice. Now her birthdays are over yonder with Dad having a scotch and soda and a twirl on the dance floor which is the natural, unfair order of things.