So much of being a writer is being a witness to a story in another room, another dimension, another lifetime. 

It’s late on a Monday night when I push open the door to your room, my eyes following the orange triangle of light that slides under your desk on the way in. I am not trying to surprise you. I am here to say hi. I’m here to witness. The dim blue of your laptop falls across your shoulders like a halo as you pound the keys of your piano, sending the sounds directly into your ears. 

Your hands are doing vastly different things, your right one moving like you are trying to shake out some joint stiffness. Your left one plods up and down like a hammer, playing chords I can only assume. I watch, wondering what your chord hand might look like someday with a wedding ring. Would you wear gold or silver or titanium or black rubber? Would you skip the jewelry altogether and tattoo a ring around your finger to go with the collection you have going on your arms? Will a wife or child someday stand in a doorway and watch you create kingdoms with the music that you hear and write in your head?  These are not productive thoughts. But they are my thoughts in this small moment.

Something about the way you slump over your keyboard shows me the little you of yesterday inside the big you of tonight. I backpedal 9 years into a church parking lot when you were 10, barely out of 4th grade. We were freshly moved into the house where we still live, still looking for paring knives and toilet brushes in unpacked boxes. 
Unopened mail on our counter would have revealed the name of your fifth-grade teacher—another new teacher at another new school—if we’d opened it. 
You were starting over. 
Again. 

You were unsure of yourself. You looked with suspicion at your own shadow, amorphous and shifting in a late afternoon sun. You constantly searched for my shadow and then checked to see if it came with a body, too. To you then, shadows were an absence of light, not a proof that the light existed.  You did the only thing you could at the time, which was to track 100% of the people and things within your control 100% of the time. 

This night I’m remembering in the church parking lot is the night your tiny voice rewired our family. It changed everything.  I had forgotten my Bible inside and turned back toward the building. You had begun to climb into the car. When you saw me reverse direction, you reversed direction too. 
“Where are you going?” I asked, trying not to load the question.

“With you,” you said, as if it were as natural as blinking.

“Of course you are,” I said. My voice sagged with sarcasm, frustrated that you wanted to follow me everywhere. Why would I not want you to follow me everywhere? 

You looked at me with the dark eyes I cannot see tonight as you face away from me and said, “Mama, why does Dad respect me so much more than you do?”

Ouch. Over the clicking of my heels on the asphalt I heard my heart crack like a #2 pencil. I can still hear that sound. And your voice. I will never forget either of them. This moment is a core memory that sticks in my throat.

I floundered for an answer to your question. I had to have an answer.  Possibilities rolled through my mind. Valid answers, I thought. 

Because Dad doesn’t have you following him 24/7. 
Because Dad gets to come home the hero every day after I’ve answered 1000 questions and made 100 mistakes. 

But those were not the answers to your question. 
I owed you a real answer. 

“Because Dad is a good man. A good father. I’m sorry, boy. I’m going to do better.” 

And I did. 
We both did, you and me. 
We worked it out. 
You advocated for yourself.
I was open to change. 
I never spoke to you that way again. 
I made hundreds of other mistakes as your mother. 
But I never made that one again.  

In 3 weeks, you’ll be 20.  No longer squatty with straight blonde hair, the shadow that once scared you is 6’ 2” and crowned with dark, floppy curls and your signature cone-shaped beanie. 
As I stand unseen in the quiet blue crack of your room, I am thankful to be a witness. 
There is nowhere I wouldn’t want you to follow me now. 
There is nowhere I would not follow you. 

About a week ago, after 32 epic hours in New York City that included a tattoo, a concert, some really good food, and 1 hour of sleep, I then went straight to school from the airport and spent 4 hours of teaching. By dinnertime, I was a shell of myself. And that’s when I met Gio….

Shadows of Sycamore trees stretched like taffy in the late afternoon sunlight of my lawn as I rushed around finishing my laundry. I had 45 minutes before I needed to leave the house. I was waiting for Chick-fil-a to arrive. 

In a manic stumble down the stairs, I caught eyes with a man gliding up my sidewalk toward my front door. Oh, good, I thought. Dinner is here. And without verifying my first impression, I opened my door in a wide, welcoming sweep. 

That was my first mistake.

“Oh,” I said without masking my tone, “You aren’t my dinner. I was expecting Chick-Fil-a.”

“Oh, no ma’am,” said a young man with a five o’clock shadow and a head full of brown curls, “I didn’t mean to leave you with the wrong impression.”

You didn’t, bud. I think I had the exact right impression from the moment I swung open my door.

“Are you a windows guy?” Let’s just get right to it. I could smell the sales pitch from inside my house. I would recognize a window salesman even if I were blindfolded and heavily medicated, because I’ve fallen prey to them on more than one ill-fated occasion. I have been forbidden by my family from ever opening my door to a salesman again. Like EVER. When I do, I bring disaster upon us all that can look like anything from setting formal appointments with 8×10 glossy pamphlets and a team of polo shirts to sitting through lengthy presentations about Cutco knives and timeshares in Fort Lauderdale. 

I cannot be trusted.
I am incapable of saying no.
I am also incapable of saying yes. 

I am the worst kind of person. 

Because I only slept 75 minutes the previous night, I tripped headlong into the following open-door conversation with a sales guy. I tried. I really, really tried.

Gio: What is your name, young lady?
Me: Missy. I’m not young. 
Gio: Nice to meet you, Miss Missy. I’m Gio. 

Oh, good grief.

Me: OK. Hi.
Gio: Well, Miss Missy, we are going door to door in this neighborhood because we are just finishing a window install on Montrose.

THIS CANNOT BE TRUE.

Gio: I notice you have older windows.
Me: Yep, they’re old, but we are not interested in replacing them right now, Gio.
Gio: I understand. I didn’t mean to leave you with the wrong impression.
Me: You didn’t. But I’m kind of in a hurry tonight and I’m not the one who makes renovation decisions, Gio. So if you want to come back on a different day, my husband would be glad to discuss this.

Sorry, Todd.

Time passed. More time than I can convey in the retelling of it. I was in pain, wishing for a Time Machine. At this point in the conversation, I saw a car pull into my driveway. I celebrated internally, because now I had an organic ending to this excruciating sales pitch. My eyes followed the delivery person up my sidewalk. 

Gio: Well, Miss Missy, how do you feel about the changed recipe at Chick-fil-a?

I couldn’t believe it. He was going to keep this going. 

Me: I feel great about it. I didn’t know anything had changed. And I’m about to eat it with no complaints.
Gio: Oh, I just couldn’t get on board with the new recipe. I still like the fries, though. So, Miss Missy, about how many windows does this house have?

The delivery driver handed me my food. I stepped back into my foyer. I thought Gio was going to follow me inside. 

Me: I have no idea. I don’t count windows. A bunch.
Gio: Oh, ok. I get it. I know you said window replacement wasn’t really on your radar right now.

Yes, I did say that. And apparently, you heard me say that. 
Gio: So, how many windows do you THINK this house has?

I could feel the heat of my dinner pressing against my right hand as I felt my dreams dying inside me. This conversation was sandpaper on skin. I didn’t know how many windows I had. He didn’t know how close I was to losing my mind. I had 14 minutes to eat and be out the door. 

Me: Gio, I’m sorry. I can’t have this conversation right now. 

And I shut the door. In his face.
Because he wouldn’t come another day and he wouldn’t take “I don’t know how many windows we have and we aren’t buying new ones” for an answer.
And as I shut my door, I heard him say:

“I didn’t mean to leave you with the wrong impression.”

For windows sales people at large, here is my succinct open letter:

Dear Person Selling Windows:

1. Why do you still go door to door?. The internet exists so that if I need to search for a windows company, I can. With customer reviews.  That is the only way I will ever buy a window. I will never, ever, ever buy a window from a stranger at my door. Ever.
2. If a potential customer tells you that they are waiting on dinner and that dinner arrives in front of your eyes, for the love of all that is good and right in the world, let the potential customer go into their house. Take one for the team. Ain’t nobody ordering windows with warm chick-fil-a in hand. 
3. No one cares how you feel about the Chick-Fil-a recipe. 

That is all.

A new school year is underway. For me, that usually means quiet mornings with my planner and my bible, Nickel Creek playing on a loop, and a fresh set of goals. It means time to think and regroup after a fun summer at home with my kids. It means watching long shadows in the afternoons and wandering sleepy aisles in Target as I think about updating my fall decor. 

This year it means something different. 

In May, I accepted a job as a part time teacher. I’ve since discovered that no such thing exists. There is no such thing as a part time teacher. I can be part time standing in a classroom, which in my case means Tuesday/Thursday/Friday. But I am not part time anywhere else. I’m not part time at 1 a.m. when I’m sitting at the dining room table trying to set up Canvas or relearn Civil War history for the literature we will read the first nine weeks of school. I’m not part time when I’m reading every novel, writing lesson plans that I will share with the AP, or grading crisis-level spelling and grammar.

It’s full time.
Until May.
And I’m okay with that. 

I’m always off on Mondays. And on Mondays, I often find myself meandering through Publix, trying to figure out a week’s worth of meal planning. Meal planning is not my spiritual gift. I manage food like I managed potty training–it had to be done, but I took no joy in the process. I wish I could say this is different. I like sugar and I recognize good food when it hits my gullet. But I don’t require it and I don’t pursue it. I don’t watch what others order in restaurants. I don’t second guess my food choices. My mouth never waters. There are exceptions to this and there are types of meals and events that I enjoy preparing. But for the most part, I would IV feed if that were a viable option. 

None of this is actually pertinent. But it does explain why I people watch when I’m in the store. The food part does not interest me.

On Monday of last week, I ran into Publix late in the afternoon for a forgotten item. I needed fresh parmesan so I headed to the back left corner of the store. When I rounded the corner with my arms full of cheese, I noticed a small boy goofing off in the main aisle while his mom perused the dairy section. He had an empty basket, probably given to him to keep him busy. His mother was pushing and filling a cart. In the moments it took me to pass him, he hoisted the basket up from the floor and extended it over his head. His eyes got big and he called out for his mom. 

“Mom, look what I can do! I can pick up this bucket!” 

I loved that he called it a bucket. He continued because his mom had not yet looked over

“Look at this! I’m holding the bucket! I’m strong!” 

She finally broke gaze with the milk and glanced over at him. Sometimes these things don’t go well for kids. Sometimes moms get frustrated and knock the kids for a loop, whether physical or metaphorical. Sometimes the kids get no response at all. 

From what I could tell as I moved past, this kid got what he needed in that moment. He had worked so hard to press that basket to the sky, like a barbell deadlift that was a new personal record. He was excited about it. He knew in that moment that he had achieved something and wanted validation from his mom. 

He was strong. 

She agreed. 

But what if she hadn’t? What would happen to that kid if he had deadlifted a basket in some other place on some other day and there was no one to notice? Or what would happen if he went 5 pounds too heavy and dropped the bucket in the aisle, leaving him with the echo of plastic clattering on tile? What would he think about himself then?

What happens to that kid if a parent dies? Or a friend gets mean and cuts him off at the knees?  Or he gets too husky for uniform shorts? Or he doesn’t make the grades or the team or his goals?

What then?

I haven’t stopped thinking about that boy. Or the little part of him that is me trying to keep my own bucket in the air.
Hoping I can.
Hoping it matters.

Telling myself that who else sees it is not important. As long as I don’t let go.

Flying as a family of six has always been an adventure that bordered on the macabre. When the kids were little, we could dictate everything but control nothing. Now we don’t even have the power to dictate. They are grown. We have improved our system of traveling but not our results. Something always happens. Either we get flagged for a fishing knife in a backpack or wanded for metal hidden in someone’s unmentionables. Though most of the traveler-error incidents that have occurred are because they are related to me, I have learned not to make eye contact with other travelers and have mastered the “whose kids are THOSE?” look, which is a mixture of shock and disdain when I do it right. 

We did everything right yesterday. And yet, I wouldn’t be writing if that had rendered the intended results. Instead, I found myself sitting on a plane with a full bladder and no dinner, stewing over both. We had been notified earlier in the afternoon that our flight was delayed. I have no idea why. But the messages kept changing, so we went on to the airport with plenty of time. Time to kill. Time to set up shop and charge devices. Time enough to be super annoyed by the strangest music blasting from speakers 2 tables away. Time to split off and scope out food and stagger our food orders.

Brady and Jenna and I had decided that we would walk to the hamburger place at 5. It was a little early for dinner, but we hadn’t eaten lunch. We were hungry. The others had already consumed some pizza and were holding down a pretty cozy fort next to the terrible music. After we ordered the burgers, Brady planned to hit an airport newsstand so they could “pound the snacks” on the flight. 

Because the schedule had been a little erratic all afternoon, I called Todd before I ordered and asked him if we had time to wait on the burgers. We did. We weren’t boarding for another hour. I ordered two meals and a side of fries and spent $57. They sent us across the main walkway to wait for our food. We chatted for 4 minutes before my cell phone rang. It was Todd. He didn’t wait for me to even say hello.

“Hey, the story changed. They are boarding us right now!” He said.

“What? Why? What happened?” 

“I don’t know. I’m walking over there now to find out.”

I scrambled to think through my options. I was still waiting on 3 meals. The kids were wearing their confusion on their faces. 

“I’ll send Brady and Jenna back and I’ll wait here for the food. Call me back if it becomes desperate.” With that, I sent Brady and Jenna back to our belongings. Two minutes later, Todd called me back.

“They want us on the plane now. Ditch the food and come.”

Without a word to the hostess, I took off running like I was on the chalk-lined field of my elementary school again. As I picture this scene in my mind—me running in a full sprint, wearing my jeans and Birkenstocks—I picture Chariots of Fire or Rocky. Reality probably looked more like the McAllisters in Home Alone. Either way, I found Todd and Andrew inching forward in a line, babysitting 6 people’s luggage. The others were in the bathroom, lucky ducks.

We weren’t the only people on our flight that were baffled by the delays and boarding process. After I buckled in, I looked over at the younger three across the aisle. Brady looked shell-shocked. I knew he was thinking about the turkey club that we’d left behind. Once I got past my stomach rumblings, I was able to relax into my memories of our week with family. When we travel to Texas, I always share a room with Jenna. Todd bunks with Andrew. Brady and Lucy bunk together in the office. It has been this way as far back as I can remember, because of beds and back pain and toddler needs that no longer exist. Sharing a room with Jenna this week was one of the highlights of my summer. Every time one of them chooses me or seeks me out or invites me into a group chat called Demon Hours or asks me to take a walk, I realize that I’m standing with these kids in a sweet threshold between childhood and adulthood. They have one foot on each side of the line. On a tube in Lake Travis, they flop and laugh like children. When a car needs to be loaded or unloaded, they help like adults. At 2 a.m. over a baggie of Golden Grahams, they munch like kids and converse like adults. I’m writing these things down because I know I will forget. I don’t want to forget.

During the “flight delayed” portion of our travel day—before leaving for the airport—Todd’s mom popped in some old home movies. The first three we watched were compilations of former trips like this one, showing young kids doing the same things we did this week with less skill and more baby fat. When we ran out of kid montages, Carol popped in our wedding video from 1993. I’m not sure I’ve seen any part of it since the day we said our vows. If anyone had asked me if I wanted to watch it, I’d have said no. I didn’t think I wanted to see it. I most certainly didn’t think the kids would want to see it. It didn’t take me 90 seconds to hunker down on the couch and watch like it was Season 6 of Stranger Things. There were people no longer living. People I miss terribly. People I wished hadn’t cornered me at the reception for an awkwardly long time. People who still had hair. People who now have multiple children of their own. My mother. Jennifer. And bridesmaids dresses from the 90s.

The biggest surprise was the two fresh faced babies getting married. Our kids kept a running commentary as they neglected the packing we all needed to finish. 

Dad sounds the same. Your voice is higher. Y’all sound like children. You look terrified. Aww, look at Grandmama’s dress. Granddaddy walks the same. Why do you look so terrified?

“Probably because we were terrified. At least I was,” I said. 

If I could have seen 30 years into a future where 4 kids were scattered like marbles in the Southwest Terminal of the Austin airport, would I have been less scared? If I could have seen a future with late night CVS runs and Wordle competitions that I win without effort, would I have run toward it all like I ran away from my hamburgers last night?

I closed my eyes and thought about the answers to those questions for the rest of the flight. My entertainment was limited. My Netflix downloads had expired. When we finally walked in our back door, we ate lukewarm, mediocre Taco Bell for our long-delayed dinner. It was so lukewarm and so mediocre that I decided to change my fate.

“I’m going to make an announcement to the group here and I don’t want a single word of dissension,” I said, wagging my finger at faces that froze in alarm at what my announcement might be.

“Okayyyyy,” Brady said. “What is it?”

“Today was supposed to be my treat day. All day long I’ve been thinking about a 3 Musketeers Bar and I didn’t get to buy one because the flight got wonky.”

“What are you going to do about that?” Todd asked.

“I’m going to CVS to get one. No judgment,” I said to no one in particular. I really expected a tiny bit of judgment, if not a lapful. Instead, Brady and Jenna swiveled to face each other and lit up wearing the same expression.

“Joint CVS run?” Brady said to Jenna, snapping his fingers. 

“Joint CVS run!” She answered. 

Jenna tried to cut me out, but Brady wouldn’t allow it. The three of us piled in my car in pursuit of candy. They took the front. I sat in the back seat and soaked it all in. I got a king sized 3 Musketeers and ate half of it before we were out of the parking lot. 

And Billy Joel sang us all the way home. 

I spent Mother’s Day weekend in New York City doing exactly what I wanted to do. It was the opposite of mothering. If there is ever a good time to leave your kids, this wasn’t it. End of school assignments and exams are looming. Tensions run higher in May than they do in December. But this weekend is also a big anniversary for Todd and I, so we got on the plane, met sweet friends there, and ran around celebrating like the kids would raise themselves while we were gone. They mostly did.

While we were gone, Facebook reminded me of a slug habitat that Jenna microwaved in my kitchen 8 years ago, reducing the house to rancid fumes that almost required us to move. The family group chat reminded me that I may never have grandchildren. And New York reminded me that it loves me.

Friday night, after weeping through Wicked, I leaned my head against the cool metal of our elevator and replayed a lovely evening against the backs of my eyelids. A couple stepped onto the elevator as the doors were closing. The man, with a teal colored tie hanging loosely from his open white collar, flipped his long curly hair away from his face and glanced from face to face in the elevator.

“Hello, friends,” he said with a tired smile. He was intoxicated, but in the most pleasant way. His lady friend was holding a strange little potted flower. I have no explanation for that and regret not asking. The man looked at his friend and then down at their feet and said slowly, “Someone made impractical shoe choices, I’m just going to say it.” I looked down at his woman’s feet. They were uncomfortably wedged into glossy purple, plastic heels. She didn’t verbally add to his statement, but nodded and smiled painfully, her eyes fixated on her plant.

I chuckled and remembered back to summer camp in central Florida when I was 13 years old. I chose to wear pink plastic flats on a sweltering day in July. To Disney. By the time we boarded the yellow school buses to return to camp, I almost couldn’t walk the steps to get on. I sympathized with Potted Flowers Lady on Friday night. As they got off the elevator, I said without thinking, “Good luck with your feet!” and the drunk fellow laughed until the doors sealed in the middle and shut him up.

Good luck with your feet was a stupid parting phrase. A person who says things like that while running around New York probably ought not be raising 4 kids. But I am and I’m thankful for the quirky almost-adults that kept each other, and the dog, alive for 3 days. I’m on a plane home to celebrate these humans I love so dearly. My own mother has been gone more than 5 years and was gone a good bit before that. She never got to see the people my kids would turn into, but she influences them in subtle but significant ways even now.

These days of celebration for some are a mixed bag or a day of mourning for others. I’m soaking it all in. Crying (SERIOUSLY crying) babies on planes. My kids taking each other to Cici’s Pizza and charging it to me. My mother forgetting what Mother’s Day even was but thanking me for the blanket I laid across her legs. The day I rode home in the backseat of the car with our first child, ink barely dry on the paperwork to adopt him, praying we would figure out what to do when we got home. The day my second son first heard my voice on the outside.

I’m soaking it all in. Everything but the slug habitats. Those I am trying to forget. Happy Mother’s Day, friends. Good luck with your feet.

I am all or nothing.
Everything I do is all or nothing.
I either eat the whole hog until I’m sick, or I starve myself until I’m dead on the sidewalk with a small plate of bacon next to me. There is no in between. And even though I know I am this way, and even though I know it is stupid to be this way, I can’t seem to do anything to change it.  Moderation is not a thing I do.  There’s probably a lot of joy to be experienced between the all and the nothing. But I will never know that firsthand.

Last night, as I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, I reflected on the year that is now essentially over and thought ahead to the one rolling in.  2022 was terrible. Just the worst. I can’t do that one again. And as if I have any control at all over events in my life, I made some decisions about 2023. Logically,  I  decided the solution was running shoes. I would greet 2023 with a new pair of running shoes. With new running shoes, I would immediately lose 20 pounds and be ready for a 15k. With new  running shoes, I would be able to outrun the things that sat down on me this year.

A new pair of running shoes would fix everything.

And because I had decided this would fix everything, I couldn’t leave anything to chance. I didn’t strike out on my own and go to the Nike outlet as I have done in years past. This time, I went to a real store with real sales people, who used real technology to scan my feet and tell me what it would take for me to become a dark horse champion.  I spent a chunk of my morning doing this. I spent a chunk of change as well. I walked away with one pair of socks, one set of insoles, and two new pair of running shoes.
Running shoes that would fix everything. Obviously.
You know what’s better than one pair of new running shoes?
Two pairs.
Double the success rate of the ALL I was chasing.

I hadn’t considered the fact that the person running in the shoes was still me.
Same feet.
Same legs.
Same questionable stamina.
Same 20 pounds to shed.
Same age bracket.
Same hamstring injury that’s been nagging me for a full year now.
The only thing that was different was my lofty expectation that these high-end running shoes would generate a Christmas miracle.

I put the first pair on at home and launched an elaborate mental game of Buyer’s Remorse. I do this every time I spend more than $3 on something and have to wear it out in public. Suddenly the sales person was out to get me. She was small enough to fit into my right calf. How could she know what it was like to be me? How did she know what shoes I needed? The shoes were bigger than they had been in the store. Nothing was right. How would these shoes solve my problems if they didn’t fit me perfectly? How would I really know if they fit me perfectly unless I took them out for a test run?

I put them on and started running my two mile route, just to see. My plan was to run 2 miles in the first pair and 2 miles in the second. I would have a read on both pairs if I ran in both. Today. Because today was an ALL day. I had to do it all.

One mile in, at my halfway point, I was thinking the right shoe was perfect and the left wanted me dead. From there I began to think about my exercise goals. And my hamstring. And 2022.  And last night’s dream about Jennifer where we said goodbye again, but this time we both knew it was goodbye. And the holidays. And how well I had done through the holidays.  And the darn left shoe.

I wanted the left shoe to behave. To make me faster. To fix my hamstring. To give me back my friend. To deliver the 2023 of my dreams.

I went for all.
I got nothing.

And after two solid weeks of dry eyes and celebratory dinners and gift exchanges, I was crying under my sunglasses in a brand new set of Brooks. Because in these brand new spanky-doodle Brooks, I had changed exactly nothing.

By this point, I had blown my nose into the yards of 3 strangers, which was gross but incredibly necessary. And I was shaking my head at the whole situation.
But I was still running.

And that’s the thing. I’m still running. But why do I have to run like a crazy person? Why not walk? Or run some but stop when I need to breathe? I was pulling my arm through a sleeve this morning and looked down at my ampersand tattoo that I got on Jennifer’s birthday. The ampersand represents what’s in the middle of the all and the nothing. It represents life.  It represents the wounds of 2022, but it also contains the gifts. I want to stand like a svelte rock star at the starting block and I want to cross the finish line in the top 5% of runners half my age, but I don’t want the gimpy, 2-mile flop and cry that exists in the in-between. The ampersand is the actual running. Life is lived in the ampersand. Races are run, not necessarily won, in the ampersand.
So I’m thinking about that with new shoes on old feet.

I can run into 2023.
And I can run out of 2022.
I can change my shoes, but not my path or performance.
I could win a race outright and still feel loss.
I could lose 20 pounds and find some other frivolous thing to scrutinize.
I can white-knuckle grasp everything within my reach and never have control.
I can run hard.
I can run steady. 
But I can’t run away. 
I can’t run away from what I gather along the way, blessings and blisters alike. 
I can only keep running, resting when I need to.
Because sometimes life is hard.

Whether it’s all or nothing.
Whether it’s fast or far.
Whether I place for my age or crawl across the finish line just ahead of the cop car.
Whether I’m wearing new shoes, old shoes, bad shoes, Dr. Seuss shoes, or no shoes.
Ultimately none of that matters. 

What matters is I’m still running.

Grief is an animal.
It greets you differently every time you meet it. You can try to meet it on your terms and with your timing. You can go prepared. You can bargain and bribe and bestow. But it’s an animal. It’s totally unpredictable.

Today is a big day on my grief calendar. But so far it doesn’t feel that way. And two weeks ago, on a day that had no calendar significance at all, I was snotting through Kleenex like it was the cool new thing.

Today is the fifth anniversary of my mother’s death. And because my friend, Jennifer was always in tune with those dates, it is also the one-year anniversary of the last time I talked to her on the phone. Before the holidays got busy. And before she got sick.

I have been thinking about this year a lot lately. 2022. People often start the year with a focus word. One year I chose the word “intention.” Another year I chose “discipline,” which is a tiny bit comical in thinking about myself. Was I expecting a miracle? I didn’t choose a word for 2022, because 2022 got to make all the choices. It chose my words for me. Shredded. Shattered. Unraveled. Loss.
It took me apart.
But here at the end of it, I’m thinking back and looking forward and applying emotional glue and bungee cords to the pieces that don’t fit like they did 5 years ago, or one year ago.
I’m shredded, yes. I’m not the same me I was on December 8, 2021. And while I didn’t get to choose my circumstances–
Or my mother’s–
Or Jennifer’s–
I do get to choose what I’ll do about it all.
And being shredded still leaves me with all the parts. They’re just a little more unhinged, maybe, and don’t always line up like I’d prefer.

Some words for my 2023 might include therapy and prayer, because I’ve certainly been doing plenty of both. But the two words that have risen to the top of my short list are “acknowledge” and “accept.” I am acknowledging that loss is often hard and lonely and dark. It zigzags when I prefer to move in an upward, linear direction. My people help so much, but the grieving and the healing is a solo act. In some ways it feels like starting from scratch with nothing. I am acknowledging that this is where I am and accepting that it’s okay to be here and start from here. I don’t plan to stay here. Acknowledge.
Accept.

And though this past 11 months has hobbled me at times, I would be remiss if I didn’t give equal time to the beauty I’ve witnessed. I lost Jennifer. And there are no words I could arrange to convey the value of that friendship or the depth of that loss. But I gained perspective and people that I didn’t have before.
I gained her sister and her daughter and her mother and her friends.
I gained her kids’ friends.
I gained a new anchor in my faith that wasn’t there before.
I gained a solemn appreciation for how short–and how sweet–life is. I try to notice everything.
I gained the absolute assurance that she is with God and He is with me.
And for 3 decades, across marriages and children and celebrations and tragedies, I had her by my side. I had the best friend.

Last week, I was standing in my kitchen looking out on the Hillsborough River. It is a different river every day and I never get tired of looking at it. This time of year, the Cypress trees do their best to participate in Autumn. And the last hour of daylight casts them in their best color, with hues of orange and yellow deepening in the waning light. It occurred to me as I stood there that the most beautiful moment for a tree comes when it is about to drop its leaves. They are brilliant because they are dying. There is grace and sweetness in the end of something. The threshold between life and eternity is a sacred plot of ground.

So I scratched out my thoughts about that. And I thought again about the year ahead. There will always be darkness. I can’t know when or how I’ll run into the animal of grief. But I can look for the light and I can carry the light. My mother taught me how to do that. Jennifer modeled how to do that like no one I’ve ever seen. And in the shadows, God has given me people who are bright when I flicker. It is enough.

So things are different this year. I am different this year. And maybe I’m starting from scratch, in the sense that the ingredients are different and my structure has changed.
But I’m not starting with nothing.
I’m starting with everything I need.

The Color of Surrender

To let go of the green–does it hurt?
To let the November gold climb up your trunk–does it feel like dying?

Do you know you are beautiful?
You are beautiful.
Never more so that now,
Right now,
In your surrender to what is.

The last hour of the day crawls up through your branches
and shoots out through your leaves,
reflecting a relinquishing light
in shards of glory.

I had a bite of French toast in my mouth this morning when I glanced up at the TV in the corner of the diner. A reporter stood in the snow wearing a parka. The headline was snow related. And the weather map was snow related, showing all the places that were under a thick, fleecy blanket of snow. Even Tampa was in the 60s. I looked down at myself and finished my bite. I was wearing short sleeves, as I had been for days, and hadn’t even packed a jacket.

I’m in the Florida Keys, where the wind moans through the mangroves like a wounded animal. It would be terrifying to ride out a hurricane down here, but this place is otherwise brimming with charm. They set their own thermostat, as most cold fronts don’t have the stamina to slide this far south, and meander to the beat of a slower, more fluid drummer. They call it Island Time. It’s a different world. I don’t hate it.

Within the first 16 hours of being gone, three of the five of us received phone calls from people back home that sent us reeling. Each phone call rated differently on the scale of hassle and catastrophe. By the third call, we stopped in our tracks to pray together.

Each phone call and each activity seemed to have an embedded flow chart of cause and effect. Each one had a cluster of options within it that opened like nesting dolls as we asked questions of each other. The lessons seem to be flying at us like tumbleweed. Some of these life lessons might be considered trivial or unnecessary, like:

• Don’t fall asleep amongst friends. Not on a park bench. Not on a dock. Not on the open-air trolley with the gravel-throated tour guide.

• Don’t get too close to a baby chick while eating key lime pie. Chickens are essentially stupid creatures, but Key West chickens recognize good pie when they see it.

• A golf handicap is the degree to which you stink. And before you golf with someone, you should find out what their handicap is and either avoid them or make fun of them.

• If you are over 40, never pass a working restroom without stopping in to use it.

• Tattoos bring people together. And that’s all I’m going to say about that one.

But today, with no agenda and a mind as blank as a piece of paper, I learned some other stuff too. Today I walked along the waterline of Summerland Key and tried to notice everything that washed up. I wasn’t searching for lessons but for souvenirs. I was looking for the prettiest, most perfect thing I could find on the beach. I wanted bright and pristine. I wanted the smooth and the unscathed. I didn’t find a lot of that. What I found was a never-ending snarl of rocks and shell, bearing the marks of their journey and teaching me with each one I picked up.

From those broken shells, these friends, and a bad game of mini-golf, I have learned a few useful things this weekend:

• We need community. For the losses. For the victories. For the mundane, grinding middle ground that bridges our beginnings and endings as we go from thing to thing. We need each other. Sometimes we need a hug. Sometimes prayer. At times we want someone to step into our space for a moment and just listen. Every now and then, a chaotic game of mini golf is just the thing we need. But be careful the handicap there…

• We are shaped by what happens to us. Life happens and we react. I walked the shores of Sandspur Beach and noticed the things washing up in the breaking waves of low tide. Bits and pieces of coral and shell were rolling in the froth, sometimes settling on dry land to be discovered by wanderers like me. Sometimes succumbing to the current and slipping back out to sea. But whatever the case, each object took on color or texture or shape because of its journey through and time in the waves and the tide. We carry the beauty and the scars we pick up in the water.

• It takes all types. The beauty and functionality of the whole is determined by the variety of the parts, so to speak. Picking up coral and shells, my eye was naturally drawn to the flashy pinks and yellows. Often those shells were brittle and broken. The stronger shells were porous, and the color of sand. Not pretty, but able to take a beating, filter the waves, and move on. If there was only pink, pink would get boring. Too much white coral would get lost in the shuffle. But together in a heap, they are perfection. We need all of it. All of it together makes a healthy shoreline. A mosaic of beautiful brokenness.

And while I suppose these are all good things to know on a random November weekend, I think the biggest lesson we all learned from the weekend was this:

If you’re in the Keys with friends, keep your eyes open, your music turned up and your ringer turned down.

And if a call comes in, don’t answer it.
You’re on island time.

My kitchen is a place of mystery. It shouldn’t be that way, because it is MY kitchen. But I’m a person that skips over the things I don’t know and tries to glean the meaning through context. That works well enough in stories with simple plots. It’s less effective when you have to eat your mistakes. Obscure terms and poorly managed context clues can taste a lot like bitterness and heartbreak, especially if you have to feed them to your family on a hectic Wednesday night.

I can follow a recipe. And I do. And I’ve managed to hone my instant pot skills to the point where my pot roast rocks. I’ve got a short list of meals that might not be a homerun but are at least a stand-up double. But throw in words like julienne or blanche or emulsify and I’m going to just stick the ingredients in the toaster and hope for the best.

But then there are substitutions.
When ya don’t have the ingredients ya gotta have to make something edible.
Then what, Missy.

THEN WHAT?
Well, even with this I have learned a lot over the years. I have learned how to substitute all forms of tomato products for all other forms of other tomato products. I’ve even found that in times of necessity, Little Caesar’s crazy bread dipping sauce stands in for tomato paste like a boss.

On Wednesday afternoon, I had decided that we could get by on leftovers. I wasn’t going to cook. Under the cool, quiet shade of that decision, I sat working on my manuscript. When my phone chimed, I looked at the text and saw that it was Brady.

“what we doing for supper
lucy wants me to come”

I made mental notes to speak with him later about his grammar and punctuation and then responded.

“Ummmmm
Maybe roast
In the instant pot
So come on
6”

My texts were as devoid of style and substance as his were. I stood up from my laptop and immediately began scrambling. I gathered the ingredients I could think of while also searching on the instant pot recipe for Mississippi Pot Roast. Beef stock, au jous seasoning, hidden valley ranch dry dressing mix, the roast. Which was frozen solid. Shoot.

I stopped in the middle of my kitchen and took a breath. It was 4:25. This wasn’t going to work. But I could make something else work.

I switched gears in front of my refrigerator and went back to my pantry for a different set of ingredients. I thought I was making a linear move. I was going from a sure bet to another sure bet. I’ve done both of these meals successfully multiple times. I launched into Melissa’s Beefy Mac n Cheese recipe. I pulled out the beef stock, the ground beef (frozen again, shoot!), the elbows, the cheese, and started measuring off the 900 spices that get mixed into the meat after it’s brown. I defrosted the beef, browned the beef, added the onion, added the 900 spices, added the tomato paste, measured the beef stock and then reached for the milk.

I reached for the milk in the kitchen refrigerator.

There was no milk.

Please tell me the milk got moved to the garage refrigerator. My eyes narrowed in annoyed panic and I swung open the doors to the garage refrigerator.

There was no milk.

No milk.

At all.

My mind began turning on the subject of substitutions. I could be flexible. This didn’t have to be a deal breaker. I opened the kitchen fridge again. Reddy Wip. No, probably not, but I do admit to considering it. Was there oat milk? Oat milk would work. No oat milk. No yogurt, not that this was a good idea anyway. No coconut milk. For some reason, melted butter or sour cream or even water never entered my mind.

I looked at my watch. It was 5:40. It was less than an hour before we needed to leave for church and I had Brady coming for dinner in less than 20 minutes. I was standing there with overdone beef that was dry-roasting in a stew of spices, crackling into little fried meat tips, while I desperately attempted to create milk out of what I currently had in my fridge. I didn’t think I had time to run to the store. I didn’t think to ask a neighbor or a friend, either of which would have worked fabulously. Instead, my eye kept landing on a milk substitute on the door of the open fridge.

A never-opened bottle of Coffee Mate French Vanilla creamer.

I shook my head like I did the instant before I jumped 7 stories with a bungee cord strapped awkwardly to my unmentionables.

This was never going to work.
This was a mistake.

Triple churned, it said.
2x richer than milk, it said.
Contains a milk derivative, it said.

FRENCH VANILLA, it said. That should have been all it had to say.

I should have given up the moment I cracked open the seal and reeled from the pungent French vanilla fumes. Those bad boys flew up my nose like a gnat on a suicide mission. But I didn’t give up. I poured. In my defense, I did make adjustments to the amounts I poured in. The recipe called for 2 cups of milk and 2 cups of broth. I poured in 3 cups of broth and less than a cup of French vanilla creamer. Maybe that would even things out.

I stirred in the liquid as I went light-headed with the smell of flavored lattes. Gross. So gross. But I didn’t stop stirring. I was all in at this point. There was no going back. We are having French vanilla beefy mac tonight, family.

About this time, as the French Vanilla pasta simmered on the stove, Jenna rounded the corner into the kitchen.

“What are we having? Why does it smell so weird?”

“Beefy mac with a twist. I don’t want to talk about it any further,” I answered.

Two minutes later, Lucy rounded the corner into the kitchen.

“What’s that smell?” she asked.

“IT’S DINNER, man! There are people starving in other countries. Cut me some slack.”

I mean, why are we so spoiled?

And then I tried it.

People use brown sugar to sweeten chili all the time. Why not French Vanilla Coffee Mate to sweeten beefy mac?

Because it’s SUPER GROSS. That’s why not.

Brady walked in the back door, with a head full of curly hair peeking out from his cold weather beanie. It was 80° outside.

“What’s for dinner?” he asked innocently. “What am I smelling?”

“Oh, for crying out loud, people. It’s FRENCH VANILLA COFFEE CREAMER, ok? I ruined dinner. It’s ruined.”

Brady had stopped in his tracks to wait out my weird, exasperated little monologue.

“Let me try it,” he said. He is the kindest soul I know and very much wanted to like my substitutions. Because he very much likes this meal. He scooped a small bite of pasta out of the bowl with a plastic fork and put it into his mouth. He chewed on it a little. Then he smacked his lips around a little. He tried to smile, just a little, as he said, “Well, it’s not terrible. A little bit sweet.”

“It’s disgusting,” I had to chuckle a little. “We can’t eat it.”

At this point, the others were lined up like I had opened a new roller coaster. Come see, folks. Mom sweet-poisoned dinner. It’s horrible. Taste for yourself.  

The verdict was the same from everyone, Todd included. It’s oddly sweet…with, like, the aftertaste of a band-aid.

“I thought we had milk,” I explained. “I’m sorry, you guys.”

“Ohhhh,” Lucy said with a ‘my bad’ look on her face. “I used all the milk to make pudding.” Well, that explained the mysterious disappearance of all the milk.

I scooped out a bowl’s worth of French Vanilla Mac to offer Andrew when he got hungry and texted him that it was there and to expect a different iteration of the recipe this time around. Then I took what was left of the nasty goulash, which was pretty much all of it, and dumped it into the sink and the trashcan. An hour later, I received a text from Andrew. “I’m just going to order in.”

Even Andrew would not eat it.

Andrew, a dumpster-diving scavenger goat who will eat absolutely anything, took one sniff of that French vanilla ruination and decided he’d rather drain his bank account than take a risk that smelled like that.

The rest of us scrambled to find something to eat. Brady grilled hot dogs. Jenna boiled some regular flavored pasta. Lucy ate tuna. I had an egg.

So, you know. French Vanilla Beefy Mac wasn’t a homerun.
And it wasn’t a stand-up double.
It was a strikeout.
A strikeout where I threw the bat into the stands and killed 3 spectators.

And then went to jail for it.

The End.

They say that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. My preacher recently pointed out that the road to Heaven is also paved with good intentions. It’s what you DO on each road that matters. If the heat you’re packing is only the intent, you might be on the wrong road.

I’ve been thinking about these roads lately, because I find myself hopping back and forth between them more than I’d like to admit. I’ve discovered that there are places along the route where the fork between roads is fairly narrow and the signage is blurry. It’s easy to veer if I’m not paying attention or a stiff breeze blows me in the wrong direction. Most of the time, I do okay. Even better than okay. Most of the time I’m high functioning, with a hint of irrational just to keep things interesting. But since January, my entire landscape has changed. I expected to miss Jennifer. That part, though terrible, has not been a surprise to me. I did not expect to be so easily thrown off course. I didn’t expect that in losing her I could so easily lose myself.

Oh, and then there’s menopause. Don’t even get me started on that. I can tell you which road that one is on…

Within the last 7 days, there are two I am completely ashamed of. On both of these days, there was almost nothing in my thoughts or actions that I recognized. Yesterday was one of those days. And at about 1:30 p.m., I launched my paddle board into the Hillsborough River to hopefully shift the tone of the day I was having. In previous years, I wouldn’t have stepped out on a paddle board in August. The gator activity is still fairly high. But this year? Eh. Why not?

So I did.

I was in a mood, I can tell you.

I shoved out into the river in pursuit of peace and better thinking.
What I ended up with was a little more than I bargained for.

To be totally fair, it had been a peaceful paddle until the final ten minutes. This time of year, you don’t see boats on the river in the middle of a weekday. Yesterday was no different. My paddle broke the surface of the water in a quiet percussive cadence that played under the strain of the cicadas. I don’t love the sound of cicadas, because they remind me of creepy things that would send me to the hospital if I ever came face to face with one. But yesterday, this soft, late-summer melody in the trees lulled me into lying down on the paddle board for a few minutes to look up at the sky. I don’t do this much, because I fear people seeing me through their plate glass windows, thinking I’m dead, and trying to rescue me. It hasn’t happened, obviously, but it would be outrageously awkward if it did. I stayed flat and relaxed long enough to drift into a neighbor’s deck. At that point, I stood up and maneuvered the paddle board back in the direction of my house.

On the return paddle home, the current was against me and the wind had kicked up. The front of my board bobbed in the ripple created by the weather and I dug twice as hard to move half as fast. Even so, I was moving along fine. When I got to my own bend in the river, the wind died and the water settled into a slick surface like coffee table glass. I noted where I was, but wasn’t as focused on my immediate surroundings as I should have been. It took me too long to see him. About 20 feet to my right was a 9-foot gator.
He was right there.
Right there.
And my momentum was carrying me straight to him. I pulled my paddle out of the water and rested the tip on my board and the handle against my shoulder. And then I pulled out my phone to shoot a short video, because that’s always my natural inclination. The way I orchestrated this particular video was a mistake. One of two things should have happened in that moment: 1) Either I should have never pulled out my camera in the first place and tried to back away from this lurking river rat, or 2) I should have risked everything and continued to film what happened next. Because what I actually did is what I always do. I filmed a mediocre plot-point leading up to a climactic moment which I then did NOT film. It is my gift to the world. I never catch the real stuff on camera. Ever.

After making myself about as nervous as I’ve ever been on the river, I put my phone back into my shorts pocket. And at that moment the gator went berserko. He raised up out of the water, flopped spectacularly down onto the surface making a massive splash, and then disappeared into the brown cypress-colored murk leaving a wake behind him.
While I watched with my jaw dropped and my eyes the size of Dora the Explorer’s.
By this point in the sequence, I was less than 10 feet from all the thrashing.
I stood there stifled by panic, with my paddle still perched on my shoulder, and wondered what my next move should be. Do I wait it out and see where he comes up for air? Do I high tail it home? Paddle home but do so gingerly and try not to draw attention to what a fleshy great meal my glutes would make for a wild animal?

Ultimately I chose to high tail it gingerly. I moved fast and cautiously and I didn’t look back. My guess is the alligator went to the bottom and had no intention of eating anything the size of a middle-aged house frau or her paddle board. But guesses like that don’t guarantee safety, so I got out of the water as quickly as I could.

Once I was safely on my deck, I sat on the edge to wait for my heart rate to settle and to ponder the entire day. I had gone out that day as a rebel, not caring much about anything and convinced nothing much cared about me. I had gone looking for peace and trouble on the same river at the same time. In ways, I found them both.

And I came back thinking about the roads paved with good intentions. I’d like to tell you that this gator encounter and my subsequent thinking fixed everything. It didn’t. The day continued to go downhill and I finished it pretty pathetically by climbing into bed at 10 p.m. and turning out the lights. I laid there in the dark for an hour, thinking again about the day. Wondering what my problem was and why I couldn’t just get my junk together.  Thinking about my intentions versus my actions. There were things I had intended to do and hadn’t done that might have turned my day around. There were things I should not have done and did do that made the hole I was standing in even deeper. But what I knew for certain was that the next day, today, needed to be different from start to finish.

As I laid in the dark of my bedroom, I set an alarm for 6 a.m. and decided I would force myself out on a short run this morning before the kids got up for school. And then I got a simple text from a faraway friend that read “How was your day?” I decided to answer that text fairly honestly. And in doing so, I took another step toward the better road.

Today was night and day different. Up before sunrise, high functioning, gator respecting, task completing, fun loving different. I stayed out of the river, off the ledge, and added a certain hormones doctor to my contacts for quick future access. Just in case.

Too much information? Yeah, probably. That wasn’t really my intention. But you know what they say about those…