I have to stop myself from texting my grown sons every ten minutes: I think I lost one of my sandals in Kansas. The people upstairs rescue racoon babies. And, I’m not proud of this one: I’m scared.

I’ve been thinking about the quality of my solitude, and what makes it different here. In Los Angeles, I could go a handful of days without social plans, no problem. Pat was around, certainly. The cats nudged my calves. I’d periodically phone my brother or a friend. I might be a tad lonely – I certainly was when my sons left for college – but I’m good at intimacy and I always felt, still feel, tethered to humans who care about me deeply regardless of geographical distance. I’m lucky that way.

All of that is here for me in Chicago, too (Pat, different cats, friends and family on the phone). Yet, the ache of this aloneness has a new tenor. It’s not the intimacy of human connection that I lack, but its quotidian cousin – familiarity. The faces I saw every morning in the elevator of our building in Los Angeles – the couple whose floppy dog looked exactly like them; the actress who I’d see guesting on TV; the old woman who talked to invisible beings residing in our mailboxes.

I’ve never been good at small talk. Honestly, I’ve even looked down on it a bit. No one really cares about the weather, I’d scoff to myself. But to be honest, I simply wasn’t good at it. My formative years were spent in Germany, and the Germans’ best version of small talk is a barely audible grunt. But after years of knowing Paul, the security guard at the front desk of the WGA where I wrote on weekdays, I came to see small talk as an almost tender exchange, even if I never perfected it.

Paul: Beautiful day, today.

Me: I guess so (only now noticing).

Paul: Another day in paradise.

Me: That’s what they say.

Paul: You gotta love it.

Me: Yeah.

Paul: Beats crying.

Me: I guess that’s true.

Paul: You know it’s true.

I couldn’t tell you exactly what we were saying there. But morning after morning after morning, for as long as a decade, I talked to Paul this way. Why do I ache for those moments now? Does Paul think of me? How do I characterize years of these daily exchanges?

In Los Angeles, I saw my hairdresser, Molly, every couple of months. She runs her own business on a busy stretch of Fairfax. Images of her style icon, Madonna, popping up on the walls of her funky salon. In the last couple of years, her teenage daughter would float in while Molly cut my hair, sometimes asking her for money to buy a boba. After her daughter drifted back out, Molly would often confide that the bobas cost a fortune and she’s tried to get her daughter to make smoothies at home. “But of course – “, she’d let the rest of that thought lie, rolling her eyes before grabbing a clean brush.

When I started going to Molly, our kids were in grade school. She has collaborated with me on my look for my sons’ graduations, one of their weddings, the launch of my novel, my father’s memorial, not to mention numerous vacations. Which means that at every pivotal moment in my recent past, Molly has been there. I know that hearing about clients’ lives is part of the deal for hairdressers. But that doesn’t make these conversations any less meaningful.

If Paul anchored my daily life with predictability and small kindnesses like watching my computer while I went to a meeting, Molly was there for the big stuff, all while she tackled parenthood and her small business by defiantly shrugging her tatted shoulders with a cool I desperately wanted to emulate. And never managed – except in my haircut.

During the Covid lockdown, I took a Spanish conversation class online. Even though I grew up in Europe, I’ve always been woefully deficient in learning languages. I suspect that I’m simply too lazy to memorize. But I wanted to prove myself wrong, and what better time to hunker down than during a pandemic? After the world opened up again, I was eager to get back to our local taqueria. Lettie had been our waitress there for fifteen years and the few times I had attempted rudimentary Spanish with her, my sons were so mortified you would have thought I was fucking livestock in front of them. But with a few months of Spanish under my belt, and my kids at school, I redoubled my efforts and Lettie encouraged me. We tripped through my terrible Spanish, and I learned about her daughter going to college and the fact that she was finally cutting back on hours at the taqueria. I wanted to say goodbye the day before we left town, but the lunch shift was slamming. I hope that she doesn’t worry about me. I’ve only recently realized that I’m reaching that age where people are less likely to think that I’m simply on a trip than they are to assume I’ve died.

And then there’s Treniece. She started working the front desk of the WGA after lockdown. At first, we exchanged those knowing looks that women of a certain age often share. -- part, “I see you” and part, “a lot of this going on right now, is bullshit”. I can’t remember how we started talking, but I’m going to credit her since I’m the grunty German. Quite soon, however, we were showing each other photos on our phones. She met my sons when they came to visit me. And I waved at her partner on a video call. She talked often about her big family and which cousins were mad at whom when they weren’t invited to various events. My parents had just died and I almost pined for her family drama as it was stone cold silent on my end.

I write this in a café in Chicago. It’s near the place I’m staying in for a month. By now, the counter guy probably recognizes me as the black-tea-with-cold-oat-milk lady. But he barely acknowledges me and while there’s no reason why he should, his indifference makes me feel lost. What I wouldn’t give for some of those familiar faces now. Faces that tell you, you belong here. You’ve created a life here. We notice you. What I wouldn’t give for a morning exchange with Paul.

“Another beautiful day.”

“I should be at the beach.”

“I’m not complaining.” (He never does. Although once, I saw him cry.)

“What’s to complain about?”

“Exactly, Brett. Living the dream. Living the dream.”

We had booked a room at ‘The Kansas Country Inn’ for $34. I couldn’t believe the price, but then again, it’s Kansas. I thought maybe the rooms were on offer because they were simply unoccupied for the night (even though the math still didn’t seem right). Turns out that was the price to park your RV. A common mix-up said the white girl at the desk who smiled a lot and charged us a less-surprising $80 for the room.

The eateries around us were standard fare. Fast food and a couple of bars. We picked a bar that looked like it was the set of a high-school offering of a Sam Shepherd play. I noticed that we had left the cowboy aesthetic of Utah and Wyoming and had firmly entered another – farm country: flat, dirt green, endless, desolate, smelling of sweet manure and white panic. The panic evinced in the assessing eyes of locals as we entered the bar. It was clear we weren’t from around ‘here’. And while the young man who was both bartender and server for the entire establishment gave off a Chris Pratt vibe (big and dumb and harmless), the vibe overall was -- wary. On all our parts.

Wednesday, July 1. Wichita, KS. Wichita was largely closed on the Tuesday before July 4. Which was fine since we were mostly here to stay with my high school friend. Pat and I did manage to see a huge, famous statue of “The Keeper of the Plaines”. Which was impressive and off-putting in ways that plug into my knee-jerk discomfort with our history of colonial deflection, often epitomized by hollow efforts like, “Well, for God’s sake then – give ‘em a statue.” But maybe I don’t know enough about it. The music piped out of the base was a bit over-the-top, but then again, maybe I’m being too cynical.

Faced with the oppressive heat and shuttered museums, we did what any pragmatic, and let’s face it – lazy—American does – we went to the mall. Where Jesus and Guns and Gap and arcades and flashing lights and lines for ice-cream or pretzels blend into an assaultive mix of color and sound. Wowie, zowie. The first thing you get is that the middle of our country is freaky for Jesus and consumerism – in that order. The second thing that kind of surprised us was: not that many people. Certainly fewer than we expected on such a hot day. And it occurred to us that maybe this is true in all malls across the nation. As much as I’d like to think it indicates some resistance to said advertising of Christ our Lord and Moana, I think it’s probably more that people don’t leave their houses anymore.

Thursday, July 2. Kansas City, MO. A couple of days driving east on the dusty interstate to Kansas City, and you can feel like the stereotypical desert crawler, staggering around looking for any water – a droplet, a hidden spring. Signs of life. It isn’t desert, obviously – not like Arizona or New Mexico, by God. But the desolation is the same, the wind whipping up dirt. The vista dotted only by manmade oases of Taco Bells, Merch Marts, and the occasional penitentiary. The point is, you are parched. The ‘desert’ there is one of circumstance more than topography.

And so, upon arriving at La Quinta Inn ($90 a night), we thought to go to the art museum in the city. And whoa boy howdy – talk about plunging your head into a clear mountain stream!

I instinctively recoil from elevated language and about art. My mother’s egalitarian soul still whispering to me – art is for everyone, high-brow, low-brow, profane, sacred – we make it to express what we feel. We absorb it to feel less alone. Language aside, an art museum always slows me down. I can almost feel the hand of God smoothing away the tension in my forehead. Something about the quality of attention it requires. Even to stroll, to read an attribution, to wonder what the hell that artist was thinking.

I have staggered through the wilderness to gaze upon a giant shuttlecock in a fluffy green grass and it is good. It is absurd and so am I.

Friday, July 3. St Louis. It’s hot. Midwest hot. The air is sticky and heavy and makes me feel mean. It’s in the low 100s.

We are in a Day’s Inn in downtown St. Louis and man-oh-man – it’s sketchy. There is a plywood board over a window (?) in the lobby. There’s a story there, but you don’t ask. The entire place smells like cigarette smoke and the chain of command from the front desk of the motel is unclear. An older man in the hallway seemed to follow us to our room in a vaguely official capacity, but maybe he was simply lonely.

All that said, we are downtown – which is interesting in any city – the best way to know a place, fast. And found a little Soda Fountain, Crown Candy, established in 1913, down the street. It has tiny, old-timey booths, painted white. Antique posters on the walls, of girls in bathing suits selling coke, that kind of thing. had a BLT so loaded with bacon it should be against some health code – certainly mine.

Pat’s romance with these places comes directly from Gram. The aesthetic evoked and amplified on covers of magazines from the 50s offers up her vision of the best of America. If I am honest, I have a more complicated relationship with that vision. But I didn’t grow up here. And one of the many things I love about Pat is his ability to devote himself to an ideal. His ability to love the promise. That is at the soul of a romantic, I think.

Sunday, July 5. Bloomington, Indiana.Pat lived in Bloomington for six years. I lived here for two and a half. We didn’t know each other while we both attended IU, but the landmarks of our college days are very much the same. As they would be to any alum. Showalter Fountain, Mother Bear’s Pizza, Kilroy’s. The old gothic buildings of academia – anchoring my memories of the years on the cusp of the 70s and 80s.

To visit your alma mater is to see yourself young and know yourself considerably older. Here, in this field outside the window of my first dorm room, I built a snowman and met a woman who is still one of my closest friends. Here is the Bursar’s office where I held down the world’s most boring job (filing in a vault) during a summer term when I felt more isolated and alone that I have ever felt since. Here are the steps I sat on the night we won the NCAA finals and the entire campus erupted. I sat here, a little removed from the action just so the news cameras wouldn’t catch me smoking a cigarette and broadcast it all the way to Europe, where my parents were still living.

My first apartment ever is demolished. But the street looks the same and I can still see myself hauling stuff to the dumpster out back as I packed to move to New York City. I was twenty-one and I lived on a different continent from my parents. I rarely phoned them because it was expensive. There was no social media. As I look back at it now, I think, dear God, I was brave. I handled all of it by myself. Moving across oceans, applying to programs, working summers and throughout school, traveling on busses and trains, auditioning for stuff with barely any coaching – which basically meant impersonating what I saw famous actresses do. More than once, I lost everything I owned, either because I left boxes with friends who forgot about them or shit just got lost in the mail.

I didn’t feel brave at the time. It’s only in retrospect that I see it now. That is the gift of revisiting after more than four decades. That is the gift age hands us. I can stand on the street I lived on right before I moved to New York and everything changed and say to that girl, “You are going to have a god damned blast, dear one. Trust me. It will all be worth it.”

The photos on the boat were taken on Lake Monroe. All those years ago, I rode a motorbike on its shores with a boy I just met and never saw again. We stopped and made out for a bit and then he drove me home. No doubt the motorcyclist had done this many times with dozens of girls. The bike, the moonlight, the route all calculated to inspire multiple make-out sessions, and more, with dozens of girls. I, for one, would like to thank him for his service. That memory is shiny as a new penny.

Monday, July 6. Indianapolis, IN While walking around the IU campus, Pat stopped several times to say, “I used to love this view” or to fondly remember a time where he and his buddies snuck a joint or skipped class. His memories of college are infused with a youthful feeling of almost weightless freedom – he had escaped the boring and somewhat conservative confines of his youth and Bloomington was the open door to the rest of his life. After a day of walking those same paths, I ran out of corresponding memories and started to get irritable, and to feel --- quite the opposite – confined. Almost trapped.

I was twenty at the end of my junior year and almost everyone I knew left for the summer. I didn’t have anywhere to go, as my parents were traveling that summer. I was alone, except for a grad student I’ll call, Mark. He was thirty-five and terribly smart and obviously more worldly than any boy who had ever looked at me before. The type of guy my father would be incredibly impressed by (he was, in fact, impressed). I was impressed too. But I had zippo sexual experience and Mark was aggressive, made me feel like I was being coy, unworldly, silly, when it came to my shyness around sex. I was alone, so very alone. Long distance phone calls cost money and anyway, who would I tell and what would I say? There’s this grown man, a PhD candidate who is so crazy about me that he doesn’t want me out of his sight? Mark took me over to a professor friend’s house, periodically. We had drinks on the patio. Mark and I both knew the professor. No one said, Boo. No one said to Mark, “What are you doing with a girl that young?” and not one person (not even the professor’s wife) asked if I was OK. To be fair, I probably seemed fine.

I wasn’t.

Yesterday, as I walked around with Pat, I thought, Bloomington was safe for him. For me, it never was.

Years later, at some conference in Los Angeles, I met up with some of the faculty in the lobby of The Roosevelt Hotel. My heart thumping, I managed to tell the former Chair of the Theater Dept that I had been abused by a doctoral student (who went on to be an academic star, dogged by sexual allegations throughout his career). The Chair, who I had always liked, gave me a somewhat watery gaze, patted my hand, and continued talking to the rest of the party.

Sunday, June 21

We landed in a spectacularly shitty motel in Mammoth Lakes. There’s only one fold-out metal chair in the room that has a window that faces a dark hallway. There are three curtains that can be pulled to hide yourself from passersby, but they don’t quite line up so you feel like anyone could peer in at any moment. There are cut out plywood cubbies in the bathroom, whose doors don’t fit and so they pop out a bit.

We were shown to our room by a young man who seemed confused over which room to put us in and even more perplexed when we asked him for an extra roll of toilet paper.

But the mountains are gorgeous and even snow-capped in June. We passed Convict Lake and remembered ten-year-old Murphy’s heroic walk around it while ill; his hollowed-out eyes and that feeling that whatever happened, our little family would soldier on.

Monday, June 22

Here’s a phrase I never thought I’d say: Sparks, Nevada lacks the charm of Las Vegas. We got a room at a casino because they’re usually cheap (the thinking being that you are going to lose a lot of money to the house). Having stayed at the odd casino in our day, we thought we knew what we were in for. But this casino was an apocalyptic next level. People drifting past you with a dead eyed gaze through the stale cigarette smoke miasma.

The room was a bump up from the strange motel we stayed in last night. In other words, it was clean and airconditioned and the chairs weren’t challenging. So we went to the “café” for some basic soup and some oyster crackers. It was there where we noticed the clientele was a bit different from the hallowed out faces of the gamblers – they were, we decided, fellow travelers like us. Families, some people of color, life in the eyes. It was then that we formed our theory. The casino had no live show and no games like roulette or 21 that were group activities with girlfriends blowing on dice for luck. Electronic games with their pull handles and their dings and flashing lights, were all that was on offer (there were even electronic games at every bar stool). Anyone who came to Sparks as an actual destination, was here to gamble, not to hang or see a washed-up comedian or to let loose in some naughty way (as they might in Vegas) – they were here to gamble. Only. It was Dante-esque.

Never been so relieved to be passing through.

Tuesday, June 23. Elko, Nevada

We woke up at 6am because John said the air, then, would be “smooth as glass”. Later in the day, he said, the warm weather would create air pockets which would make the flight bumpy. I didn’t want air pockets!

Driving out to the airport, I still didn’t know if I would actually go up. I’m terrified of heights and could easily imagine myself tumbling out of the sky. There is absolutely no time in my past when I romanticized air travel. Far from it, I thought that if I went up, I’d probably do it with eyes slammed shut, madly hanging onto any piece of hardware, loudly praying to a deaf God to get me through this and I would devote the rest of my life to eradicating all human suffering in some yet-to-be-determined-but-performatively-unpleasant-way.

Fortunately, Pat went up first, so I had time to back out of the whole thing.

I sat on some steps, while Pat and John took off, thinking, “If you don’t do this now, you’ll probably never do it.” To which, I replied, “So what if you never do it -- you have nothing to prove.” But then I thought that I did, in fact, have something to prove, and it was that I could be marrow deep terrified and still love the adventure. I could prove to myself that the view and the experience was worth pushing past the complacency of the thought, “Well, I could call the whole thing off and get a donut.”

So I went up, and I came down. And it was glorious.

Wednesday, June 24

There’s a lot of Jesus in Salt Lake City. The temple (the big one) rises up from the middle of the city in faux gothic majesty, dwarfing the city buildings around it. We went into the Mormon Visitation Center attached to the temple (which was closed due to construction). The guides at the center were all perky girls in modest, flowery dresses. White families drifted in and out and even sat down and gazed at the big Jesus statue in the middle of it all. And while it’s easy for an outsider to be cynical (trust me), it struck me how very reassuring it must be to feel so completely sure of your purpose in the world. That surety is compelling, gotta say. And also, seriously freaky and dangerous.

From the many iterations of Jesus in Salt Lake, I gather that he was handsome, white, and ripped.

Friday, June 25

When we told a couple of friends we were stopping in Rawlins, Wyoming for the night – they both, separately, described Rawlins as “rough”. We never got more than that. Carrying on in my parents’ traveling tradition of staying in cheap motels and spending money on food and experiences, we booked a Motel 6 here. Sixty bucks. The only sight-seeing opportunity on offer is the old penitentiary, which we will probably visit this morning. There are huge prisons along the several rural highways in the west – and also, the odd sign along the road warning people not to pick up hitchhikers.

The motel itself seems to service mostly itinerant workers (many sharing rooms). They leave before six and return at night in their trucks. The motel is as broke down and can be, though I’ve seen worse. Everything tells s story – the abandoned suitcase in front of an empty vending machine. I can imagine its owner dragging the stupid, non-functioning old thing down the stairs to get a cold coke, and upon seeing the empty machine, hurling his suitcase against the machine in a fit of rage, grabbing his clothes out of it and screaming, “Fuck it – I’m out!” as he strides off, socks falling from his grasp as he heads for his truck.

There’s a hole in the bathroom wall.

Last night, the man next door talked loudly to someone in a language I didn’t try hard enough to identify. He talked for over two hours before I finally drifted off to sleep. I was loathe to knock on our wall, since who has the heart to deny a fellow traveler their tether to home?

Sunday, June 28

I’m visiting my friend, Cathy, and her husband in Colorado Springs. I’ve known Cathy for half a century. Literally. We met in drama class in our sophomore year in high school on an American Air Force Base in Kaiserslautern, Germany. At the time, the area (which included Ramstein Air Base) was home to the biggest concentration of Americans outside of the US. Growing up in the military (even though Cathy’s and my parents were civilians), we lived a peripatetic life. With no permanent home, miliary kids learn that other people are your home. And Cathy has been that for me.

Yesterday, she and I talked about how many friends of ours had parents who served in Vietnam and how, frankly, fucked up their dads were – permanently – from that experience. How Vietnam shaped our childhoods. It was the great haunting that gripped so many fathers who returned, never to speak of it, only to drink and rage at their kids – my friends. Classmates in Germany.

Cathy and I spoke of a mutual friend whose military father was so determined to knock the gay out of him, that he would take him outside every evening, glass of booze clinking in his hand, and throw a football for his son to catch. Over and over and over, the ice-cubes clinking, barking insults and the poor kid. I know that poor kid (now in his 60s) and he is not well.

Holding all of those thoughts, Cathy and I (and our husbands) walked around an informational gathering for left-leaning citizens in the park downtown. We even met Joe Reagan who is running for city council.

I, on the other hand, have chosen the path of denial. I cling to my usual routines. Tea in the morning, in my favorite mug (which I now keep in a hiding place). A dried flower from a trip, still jabbed into cup of pens on my desk. Ticket stubs in a messy stack on my bookcase. Yesterday, I tried to cull through my underwear drawer, only to stop when I unearthed the baby onesie I’ve kept in there for two decades.

“One box a day!” Pat periodically announces to the universe, usually as he slaps his latest box like it’s the rear of a horse.

In that moment, I hate him.

I’m also grateful since I, sure as shit, am not doing anything except trying to sabotage the whole venture with inertia. That said, at least I’m not crying – much.

Pat, on the other hand, tenderly holds scraps of paper with childish scribbles on them, and weeps. He cradles little plastic toys in the palm of his hand and calls one of our sons to see if they want to keep it, then cries when they don’t. This is absolute lunacy. A form of self-imposed torture that is completely unnecessary. Yesterday, he found a small, pink plastic bowl we used to serve our infant sons baby food. He wanted to sit with me on the edge of the bed and remember those baby boys.

Is he fucking out of his damn mind? You absolutely do not look at these things. If you dwell on them for a micro-second, you won’t recover for a week. You do what I did, you see the fucking baby onesie in the drawer and you flip a lot of other stuff on top of it and shut the fucking drawer. When it comes to packing up that drawer, you just dump the entire contents into a box without looking at anything and voila– it’ll get lumped in with all the other boxes going to Chicago and you haven’t had to sit there keening over your lost youth and every single mistake you ever made with your children, wondering if you will ever do anything meaningful or interesting or fun ever again in your whole, now, pointless, dried-up life.

Meanwhile, I keep making the bed and stacking the dishwasher like there are a gazillion tomorrows in our LA home. Granted, I come by this strategy honestly. Growing up, I moved every two to three years. My father was a civilian, working for the military overseas, and so we bopped around quite like a military family. Moving our household was a regular thing and ripping myself away from newly made friends was fairly routine. But because the military moved us, we never had to sort through anything. Some guys would simply appear and box up absolutely everything and ship it. It was frictionless before that was a thing. Here one day, gone the next.

My military-adjacent family never had to make the hard choices we currently face. Just the other night, Pat brought out two medical boots (one for each foot) that both of us have used because of hairline foot fractures in the past.

“I’m thinking maybe we should keep them for the next break,” Pat said, pleased with the notion that should we falter on the stairs, we’ll be all prepped. Seriously?

Pat was raised by a single mother who worked two jobs in the 60s and 70s – and when you grow up like that, nothing goes to waste. Especially food. Which means that we have frozen food stuffs that need to be consumed. In the living room, he waves around a damp box of phyllo dough – do I want to make a tart?

“I had a hard time working with phyllo,” I say, “I switched to puff pastry.”

“Well, what are we going to do with this?” he says, raising the dripping box high in the air like it’s a vital piece of evidence in a crime.

I know what my answer is, but it’s not going to fly. I mumble something about Spanakopita and make a mental note to spirit it out of the freezer sometime when he’s occupied with sucking the air out of bags.

I return to the bedroom where my desk looks exactly the same as it always looks. My heartrate slows and I place my mug of tea next to the computer. I put my headphones on and watch a couple of British Bake-offs. If Pat comes in, I’ll say I’m investigating what to do with phyllo.

What I’m actually doing is hanging on. Hanging on to the illusion of permanence. If I don’t look at the boxes and make decisions about what to throw out in the kitchen, then everything will be the same tomorrow and the day after.

Except it won’t. Children grow up and we get old. I know this. But fuck Pat for reminding me every five seconds.

After a couple of hours, I creep out into the living room. Boxes are stacking up. There is, in fact, a wall of them blocking my view of his desk. Where did he go? I sneak up slowly and peer over the cardboard rampart.

Ahhh. There he is, hard at work -- so engrossed that he doesn’t even feel me looking over his shoulder. He’s listing a branded man’s manicure kit on eBay for fifteen dollars.

I withdraw quietly.

God, I love that man.

Pat looking to unload an antique newspaper front page. We found a taker!

An agent saw me in the show and said he would hip pocket me, which basically meant we would see how it went. I didn’t know a thing about Hollywood. I wasn’t interested in fame or TV or any of it. I think I simply liked making stupid shit with my friends. But the agent was a good excuse to stay put. And my husband, Pat (who was part of the group), seemed game to give it a whirl.

I thought we’d stay for a couple of years, but it ended up being thirty. This is an old Hollywood story. It is, in fact, the story of every yoga teacher, caterer, and contractor in the city. The only difference for me was that I never really loved Los Angeles; it lacked charm and the endless sun depressed me. But I kept making stuff with friends and ended up acting on a TV show called, “Mr. Show” with Bob Odenkirk and David Cross for four years. Those were heady times. It was a sketch show and I wasn’t even a main player, not by a long shot. We would tape the show live at the Sunset/Gower studios. Afterwards we would head on over to The Cat and the Fiddle -- the sole mitigator to its subpar pub food being a huge courtyard where TV stars could still hang with the regular folk (a poor man’s Chateau Marmont). Half of us became famous, a quarter became bitter, the others are yoga teachers, caterers, and contractors, a handful are dead, and one stormed the capital on January 6. Those are mighty strong numbers on the fame scale, but that was the comedy scene in the 90s. Studios were handing out sit coms to anyone who had to hold for a laugh.

Los Angeles was, and is, the city of other people’s dreams. In fact, it is largely a city for other people. Who was working? Who got awards and whose shows were being picked up for another season? I quit acting because I grew tired of panicking every time a friend told me they had auditioned for a part I’d be perfect for. Imagine feeling chronically overlooked in the land of endless sun. This was before Instagram; this hyper awareness of what other people got and what had somehow been withheld from you.

Los Angeles is also the land of the next big thing. And there was probably some next big thing around the corner for Pat or me when I became pregnant. In fact, I know there was. I was writing and starring in a pilot for Comedy Central while hiding my pregnancy, nervous that my condition would derail the big thing. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried, the pilot wasn’t picked up (Hollywood ease for “we’re not doing it”). In the five years that followed, it got too complicated to leave with a couple of children in tow and who knows what other big things in the future. By then, I had transitioned to writing – frankly necessary, since I was over forty and Catherine O’Hara had already nabbed the spot open for a sketch actress of that advanced age.

Writing suited me better anyway. This was back in the aughts, before the big Writers’ Strike, when you could make a perfectly acceptable living writing pilots for studios and networks that never got made. The job was akin to bottling air. But no matter, I also published a couple of books and Pat started a theater company downtown, landing the occasional commercial which generated a year’s worth of healthcare for the whole family. I could have lived like that forever. I could have lived with the relentless sun and the fawning, meaningless rhetoric of studio executives and agents who heaped on praise at the start of any new venture, only to fire you later through your manager without a phone call. I wasn’t one of the bitter ones; my people were the yoga teachers, caterers, and contractors – the middle class. Remember the next big thing? One of them hit for me after I had officially withdrawn from SAG, and I returned to acting in “Transparent” which won an Emmy in its first season. Again, I wasn’t a main player, not by a long shot, but I got to go to the parties and award shows, and it is absolutely, 100% as fun as it looks – arguably more fun for us small-timers since we were only day tripping and didn’t have to smile so hard or worry about losing an earring that cost as much as a small house in the hills. So, yes, I could have lived like that forever.

Except I couldn’t. Not really. The children are older now and on their own. Also, I am older now, a thing that happens to survivors. Los Angeles, more specifically Hollywood, is for the young and those who pay a lot to look it. So I could easily blame my disillusionment on biology and not one single Angelino would disagree. But that feels lazy. And bitter, and I’m not one of the bitter ones.

I am, however, deeply pragmatic. My people come from Russia and Slovakia and Sweden. Their DNA runs through me, something fierce. All that running away from invaders in the snow counts for something. I am a survivor and, these days, as I sniff the air for danger, I smell it cutting through the California jasmine and sage.

I am in danger of becoming soft. I don’t mean that the way it sounds. I like a bit of comfort and rarely turn down a spa day. But my soul, oh my soul still craves excitement, novelty, purpose.

About three years ago, I was up for a big writing job that would have changed my life completely. The series took place in academia and was chock full of juicy story lines about sex and race and privilege. Writing even one season of the show would have completely paid for one of my kids to go to college all four years. When I didn’t get it, a producer kindly invited me over for coffee and a debrief of some kind; it wasn’t clear. Truth be told, he simply felt sorry for me. Which I finally gleaned when he pointed out various other unmined stories out there that I might want to tap into. Had I ever thought, he told me brightly, about writing a sit-com that took place in an old folks’ home?

So when I say “soft” what I mean is that I am in danger of thinking that writing a sit-com about an old folks’ home might just make staying in LA one more year or two or three, worth it. Worth the seasonless glare. Worth sitting in more backyards talking to friends my age who are half-retired but excited that about the latest script they’re writing with a friend – which isn’t to say they won’t get it made. It’s simply to say, it’s not enough. It’s not enough anymore to live on vague possibility. Maybe it would be if I loved the weather.

Pat and I are moving back to Chicago. We lived there thirty-odd years ago, and left because it felt small. Which it was, in comparison to Los Angeles. But now, that smallness is what I crave. I am getting older. This has always been the case, but my awareness of it lately is acute, and not simply a function of the conversation with that sympathetic producer. Anyway, I don’t care about the next big thing anymore. I want my day, this hour, this moment to be the big thing. Which sounds counter-intuitive when I’ve just declared that I’m craving excitement. But that’s the point – it IS exciting to imagine walking from my apartment to a café just around the corner and writing near the window so I can gaze at the snow -- and afterwards, trudging along the sidewalk to a local store to pick up missing ingredients for that night’s dinner. What makes this image so exciting to me is that it is absolutely possible. Probable, even.

I have so little time left on this earth to play with, and I don’t want to squander it on vague possibilities and endless car rides across town to meet with friends who have to leave early to beat the traffic home.

Goodbye, Los Angeles. I’ll see you in someone else’s dream.

Me at an Emmy Watch Party, the night ‘Transparent’ won

Instead, standard Mother’s Day posts will probably describe the mother as ‘beautiful’. ‘Stylish” is an acceptable substitute if “beautiful” is a stretch. The mother is often “a good cook” and maybe she’s even “adventurous” (which means she travels). She is almost always “kind” and very occasionally “funny” (which usually means she makes silly faces in photos or laughs at other peoples’ jokes – she’s rarely as funny as dad). Variations range from her being the cool mom on the block who hosted all the kids, and left out an endless supply of fresh cookies while turning a blind eye to make-out sessions in the den; to her being a cute over-worrier who had strict curfews and a phone list of people to call if a kid didn’t materialize at the right time. In both scenarios, the point is clear: the sainted woman simply cared that damn much.

These descriptions my diverge from each other somewhat, but the one constant that shows up in practically EVERY SINGLE TRIBUTE to a mom is that she is “sacrificing”. If she’s dead, her sacrifices are practically canonical and she’s already frolicking in heaven with other family members who were lucky enough to make the cut.

If the sainted woman is still with us, she is still putting everyone else’s needs ahead of her own – staying up late to make cookies for bake sales, rubbing backs of sick grandkids, running over to pull you into her matronly chest after a brutal break-up.

Clearly, people also say positively shitty things about their probably awful mothers all the time. But we’re keeping it in the Mother’s Day Tribute area here. And we’re keeping it here to make a simple point. The way we exalt our mothers is often – well – it’s not that exalting. Even in tributes, mothers are the workhorses, the Christ-like figures who don’t get to actually be Christ for obvious reasons. Sometimes the mother’s very invisibility is praised, “She was a quiet woman who loved to see her children shine.”

What does it say about the way we view mothers, that the deepest compliments we can give them are in the context of how they treat others? We heap praise upon them for being invisible, overworked, worried, and making a mean lasagna. And even when it comes to the lasagna, there is likely to be a funny anecdote about that one time the dog ate it and mom laughed, because good mothers always laugh when their housework is destroyed or overlooked – she was such a good sport; and is probably still being a good sport in heaven.

I didn’t think much about what kind of mother I would be until I was already pregnant. Up until then, I probably thought I’d parent pretty much like my own mother had parented me. I adored her and she definitely bought into the heroic model of motherhood. She quit her job and stayed home with us, even though she admitted to me later that she was bored. When we got home from school, she was waiting with cookies and my brothers and I talked endlessly about our days. She stayed home with us when my father took trips for work and sometimes even for fun. My father supported these choices whole-heartedly, even while praising her artistic talent and intelligence. He deferred to her in almost all family matters; even employing standard phrases like, “Your mother is always right.” This kind of manpraise is rife in the martyr-mom universe. Hey, praise is cheap especially when it gets you out of changing diapers.

As my brothers and I got older, it was quite a shock when my mother said that her favorite time of life came after her kids left and she went back to teaching and painting. It took a decade for one of my brother’s to process this.

As I first contemplated what kind of mother I would be, with my round pregnant belly, breasts freakishly mottled and heavy, I remembered my mother’s admission after her long tenure as a heroically self-sacrificing mom. So I decided to go in the opposite direction. And since we’re here, I might as well flat out say that the “opposite direction” (the non-heroic one) is fraught too. For different reasons that are exactly the same. The difference being obvious – one you get praised for and one you get criticized for – but in both instances, you are still being judged by a the standard of a maternal cliché that was generated and literally sold to you in the 1950s to make women feel less robbed when men came back from the war and took all their jobs back.

I had company in choosing the less heroic path. The early aughts saw bored moms blogging and writing books like my own, basically eschewing standard mommy conventions. We swore and complained and basically seeded the ground for packs of young mothers drinking pink wine in back yards throughout the nation.

God help me – wine moms. Who were supposed to be so very different from their high-heeled-while-vacuuming predecessors; but were they really? I did my time in those backyards and I can tell you that the conversations were strikingly similar to the ones I overheard as a child in the 70s. First, a lot of complaining about clueless husbands. Second, a deep dive into all the impossible tasks that the mom has to do because apparently no one else can do them right. And lastly, recipe exchanges and chatter about how to get your kid into a good school. I’m not denigrating the community here. Wine moms clearly needed it, enjoyed it, and hey – it got them through.

It got me through.

But let us pause to acknowledge that the backyard scene, the “I deserve my wine in the afternoon because motherhood is hard and boring” vibe was, and is still, steeped in a tradition of maternal selflessness, even while employing the more contemporary framing of women having time to themselves.

Don’t get me started on spa days.

Or girl bosses.

Hint: These still cute-ify legitimate gender inequities and offer branding solutions in lieu of substantive legislative or culture-shifting ones.

While my kids were growing up, I stayed somewhat true to the non-heroic model of motherhood. To be honest, even in a broader context, self-sacrifice tends to blow up in my face, making me resentful and mean. I’ve known this about myself ever since I was a the only girl competing with two brothers for equal-footing in a number of areas. Bringing up examples like my father telling me I should play the flute instead of the drums seems petty. Is petty, considering he supported me in so many ways. But these things add up and I learned early to grab what I could.

That said, with my twenty-something sons mostly out of the house, I question my choice constantly. If I had worked on myth-making my own role in the family, might they love me more? Not that they do a bad job of loving me, but because deep in my mommy soul, I still believe that I fell short. And I find myself craving their forgiveness for carving out an existence separate from theirs.

There must be a place on the motherhood spectrum between martyr and self-involved bitch. And it seems to me that if we refuse to heap generalized, idolizing praise upon our maternal figures, real live human moms might be a little more comfortable settling somewhere in the middle.

To that end, here is my tribute to my own mother:

Audrey Lundquist Paesel lived by an ethical code that could be maddeningly inflexible and yet was clear and dependable. In church, she refused to say parts of the Apostles’ Creed that she didn’t agree with. She barely raised the prices on her artwork because (having grown up in a crowded apartment, sleeping on a couch in the living room with her sister) she believed that everyone should be able to afford to buy a work of art. Fiercely intelligent, she refused to join MENSA because she didn’t “believe in exclusive clubs”. And she was so proud of her own self-reliance that her oft quoted maxim was, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.”

She was hilarious and talented and sharp in every way you can be sharp. She was also deeply insecure socially, which she masked with a coolness that passed for elegance.

She taught elementary school and excelled at really listening to children. Taking them seriously; which she did with her own kids.

Her paintings hang in public spaces all over the world, ranging from Cambridge Shire Hall in England to the UW University Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin.

She loved me fiercely and imperfectly and almost imperceptibly less than my brothers. Often when I complained about a random indignity or inequity, she offered stoically, “It’s because you’re a girl.”

And, in spite of the fact that she hated cooking, she made a mean lasagna.

Audrey Lundquist Paesel and me. Many family photos are marked with paint, since my mother used them as studies for her paintings.

Boy and Girl

Cambridge Shire Hall

Death, it’s death. And nothing drives that realization home more than simply aging. The inevitability eventually becomes clear to you if you are a normal person who isn’t a fucking biohacking denialist tech giant. If you’re a normal human, sometime around your late 50s, you face facts. You’re gonna get got – ya just are.

I’ve always had a healthy fight-or-flight response. Granted, I’m more possum than Cheetah, but I made it to sixty-five and that’s saying something for a woman who lived in Hell’s Kitchen in the early 80s. Those days, there might be a scary looking dude at the end of the street and my heart would race as I picked up my pace to pass him and duck into a bar until he wandered off. Having a glass of wine to calm my nerves, my system would slow down. Reason would take over. The guy was just a guy, the warm bar was safe haven, and it was all a funny story I’d tell my roommates when I got home.

Death, then, was conceptual – an arty idea. Ingmar Bergman’s “Seventh Seal” arty. I smoked over a pack a day – wearing ripped sweatshirts and jazz dance shoes (the uniform of a serious acting student those days, regardless of whether you actually took jazz). Cigarettes weren’t going to get me because nothing was going to get me.

But at sixty-five, I am feeling unusually vulnerable; the joints in my hands ache; my mommy is dead. If my husband dies before me, I won’t know any of the passwords for things. I will wither.

This can’t be how it ends. Holy shit!

The other night, I couldn’t sleep (I’m typically a solid sleeper). Part of what was panicking me was that I simply couldn’t imagine what my life would look like in five years. Since I was a kid, I’ve been able to imagine my future. I’ve been wrong. Massively wrong, it turns out. I didn’t have four children; I had only two. None of the TV shows I sold got picked up for a series. I never got a gourmet club off the ground. So many of my writing projects simply expired like old dogs on the side of a road. But my wrongness about these things didn’t stop me from imagining a fairly bright future. Failures, wrong turns, disappointments stung and then I’d start dreaming of something new.

Not so, now. Lately, looking into the future yields very little. It’s so incredibly hazy that I literally can’t imagine what it’s even going to look like. Driverless cars? Robot baristas? What kinds of jobs will my kids do when AI eats up all the entry level positions? Where will I live, as climate change alters the weather and topography of some of the spots I’ve been considering? I’m not even touching how we will or won’t recover from the devastation Trump wrought --for the record, I’m not saying it’s all him –he’s simply the tip of the spear we’ve been shaving to a fine point for decades.

Recently, I heard someone say they had written this phrase on the wall of their living space: “That is not how it ends”. And then next to that phrase was another: “That’s not how it ends either”. Normally, I would find this “not knowing” unsettling. We humans love certitude and even though many of my previous forecasts into the future were a bust, they gave me an existential floor to stand on. They gave me meaning. Prognostications gave me faith that things will sort themselves out. They calmed my worry.

But now, I really don’t know how this (any of it) ends. I really don’t. Nothing. Zippo. I don’t even know who will die first, my husband or me. I haven’t a fucking clue.

However, I have found a smidgen of – I struggle for the right word here – relief (?) in not knowing. No – “relief” isn’t the right word. It’s more like whatever exists between peace and resignation. This state – whatever you call it – has nudged me into the present more successfully than most of my attempts at meditation (or maybe I recognize it because of those attempts). Whatever it is that has brought me here – age, the times, new physical challenges, empty-nesting – I find, it’s not so bad.

It’s not so bad to let go of tomorrow; to be clueless about what comes next. Last night, my adult son suggested we watch an old episode of “Law and Order” before calling it a night. I used to watch it when the kids were young, while I did housework (It distracted me from the monotonous tyranny of dusting). Spencer is now in law school and the patois of the lawyers is interesting to him. I got myself a cup of tea even though I had been on the verge of turning in. I was pretty sure that I’d bail before the end of the episode because I could barely keep my eyes open. But watching it with him as he got himself a late snack after a long day, I found myself revived. This is it, I thought. A moment so mundanely beautiful. No to-do list scrolling in my mind. Just this. Time with my son. And whenever a bothersome worry scratched at the door of my consciousness (or even a surprising plot twist on the television), I managed to tell myself something I often forget, “You have absolutely no idea how this ends, so give it up; all that weight of mistaking worry for control. Give it all up and watch the fucking show.”

2. Favorite phrases overheard this past year: “I can’t keep putting it out there like I used to”. “That’s 10lbs of bullshit in a 5lb bag” (I cannot wait to authentically use this). And this gem: “You know what I’m saying to 2026? I’m saying, ‘Come on in. Sit your ass down. And don’t start anything’.”

3. A good frying pan can make a huge difference in the quality of daily life.

4. The old lady invisibility cloak means I can wear sweats over a barely functional bra, out in public, all day long.

5. Speaking of sweats – athleisure (or sweatfleece) is not a thing. It’s a way to make you spend $90 on sweatpants instead of $24.99. This isn’t necessarily a new thing I learned, I just want to rant about it.

6. I now know what a flashbang is.*

7. I shouldn’t know what a flashbang is.

8. Putting bananas in the refrigerator turns the skin brown faster, but may “keep” the pulp longer.

9. The capitol of Venezuela is Caracas. Venezuela is fifteen miles from Aruba. I know this because I was supposed to have a family vacation in Aruba, but that didn’t happen. Because, fuck Trump.

10. I learned that the US actually has for-profit detention centers (as well as prisons). An activist friend told me that these will soon be a source of free labor. I thought that was a rather far-fetched assumption. Turns out, it isn’t.*

11. I discovered Alabama Shakes this summer. Their song, “Hold on” has gotten me through some rough moments.

12. You just have to give over to peeling your hard boiled eggs right after you’ve cooked them. If you wait, their outside will look like the surface of the moon.

13. It’s exhausting to continue finding creative ways to avoid saying that Americans are dumb. And I’m not saying that simply because many of them disagree with me, I’m saying that many of them don’t know that Australia is a continent. And apparently, most American women would rather pee on a toilet seat than risk catching – what? Not sure what they think is going to happen to them if they sit the fuck down. But it’s nowhere near as skanky as my now-wet tush.

14. I learned who Mel Robbins was and I’m trying to let her, but something in my self-righteous nature wants to say, “Really? Let them?” – the Nazis, the perverts, the obscenely wealthy? And I know that the second part of her gigantic discovery is “let me” (basically, “let me do what I can to…make the world better or whatever”) but I think she only came up with the second part because someone told her that “Let them” could also be a mantra for sociopaths.

15. Sometimes when you cut trees back and then they sprout more branches, they look like they have lots of hands like kids draw – balls with sticks coming out of them.

16. Not drinking gives me a whole lot more confidence in my own reactions to what people say to me.

17. Even though I have more confidence in my assessments, I am learning to build lag time between my visceral reaction and the words that come out of my mouth. This is a revelation and has probably been known throughout history as the “Count to ten” rule which I thought was 10 lbs of bullshit in a 5 lb bag. Turns out, when you call it “calming the reactive mind” it’s a whole lot cooler.

18. I now know how to make Salmon en Croutê. It’s salmon wrapped in puff pastry. I asked a friend who’s a fantastic cook to teach me how to cook and I highly recommend it as a “hang out”. Productive and fun.

19. Ashes Cricket games last five days long and only about 8 people watch them. One of whom is my son.

You may notice that this year’s list isn’t as punchy as past ones. This is because I don’t feel punchy. I feel exhausted. Because no matter how much logic and causality and historical context I can stuff into my daily assessment of what is happening, I still can’t quite believe where we have landed as a nation, a people, a world. I fundamentally, cellularly don’t understand how people can hate on each other so deeply. I’m not simply talking about MAGA or the right – it’s all of us. And I’m shocked and saddened and completely at a loss as to what I can do about it.

So, hello 2026 – pull up a seat and sit your ass down.

And don’t start anything.

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* When nice, smart girls want to mask their self-righteousness, they tend to make pronouncements in the form of a question like, “Do you think it’s too late for that?”

* The books I read on lying were, Beck’s “Integrity” and Harris’ “Lying”

* Flashbangs are non-lethal explosive devices that create a blinding flash and a deafening bang. They are used by the NG and police to disorient protesters and creating the feeling that you are under attack.

* CoreCivic already uses forced free labor in their prison systems and either already does, or will, use it in their detention centers.

Me with the trees that have fists. San Francisco

Despite this rather healthy relationship with misses and rejections, I have recently been revisited by a few minor ouches because I’m getting older and there appears to be less and less time for the world to finally get me.

That said, there are signs that everyone might be catching up with me. One of which is Emma Thompson’s hair and overall style in the TV series, “Down Cemetery Road”. Emma and I are the same age and her new look is almost a replica of mine for the last ten years. If you haven’t seen the show, her greige hair ( I just like saying “greige” because it makes me sound like my finger is on the pulse of something) is cropped short (just like mine) and she wears slightly butch attire (like mine) – sporting a leather jacket statement piece (just like mine).

I know, I know. It’s not like there is a vast range of style options for women our age so the likelihood of us both belonging to a sub-group of greige, slightly hip ladies who can still walk at an impressive clip is not small. But still, the fact that Emma and I now look so similar has gotten me thinking about how close I came to having everything I ever wanted.

I had just turned eighteen was an acting student at a little college in Richmond, London. I had gotten lead roles in high school and in the first few months of college so I was dead sure this would lead to a huge stage career. Oh, yes. I was so confident, that I auditioned for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art with two monologues. One was Eleanor of Aquitaine from “The Lion in Winter” made famous by Katherine Hepburn, who was sixty when she shot the movie. The fact that I was eighteen didn’t give me a minute’s pause, since really I felt that Hepburn and I were very similar. Yes, you’re getting it now, I was actually playing Katherine Hepburn – not Eleanor. But no matter, for some reason the faculty at RADA called me back the same afternoon of my audition to work with them. They were seemingly unfazed by an American girl doing her impersonation of an old movie star. Maybe they thought I was gutsy. Maybe they called me back on a dare. Now that I am sixty myself, I can imagine a couple of judges saying, “C’mon, we have to see that clueless American girl one more time, just for giggles.” Who knows, but they were ultimately fazed, since I didn’t get accepted. I was told I was too young and to audition, again, the following year.

If you are guessing that I was so incredibly confident that there were still countless horizons and paths to greatness, that I didn’t re-audition – you were also once a an eighteen-year-old who vaguely understood that you would grow older and that the world was tough and unfair and that one day your ass would be as flat as your mother’s, but you didn’t REALLY know all that -- because who does until it happens.

The best thing I can say about my stage career is that it did not interfere in any way with my family life, which is my biggest joy. Other things happened; most were absolutely lovely. Thus, the very few regrets part.

Then, about a decade ago, I was sorting through old boxes in my parents’ house and I ran across the callback list from RADA that afternoon years earlier. That’s when I spotted Kenneth Branagh’s name near mine. Yes, that one -- the famous stage and screen actor who graduated from RADA and married Emma Thompson and then left her for Helena Bonham Carter, but only after they had both distinguished themselves as true theater artists. Bam. Yes, you are ahead of me here. I drew the only conclusion one could make from such a discovery. I could have been Emma Thompson.

Ever since I determined this, I have taken an unusual interest in Emma’s life. “Unusual” for me since I’m not much of a celebrity worshipper. If only because I live and work in television and celebrities I’ve worked with have fallen into a range from perfectly lovely people to full-on assholes – just like the population at large. So as the kids say, “whatever –” But the parallels with Emma didn’t just stop at the whole RADA thing; it’s also that the choices she made as an artist and as a human are the ones I wish I had made.

So now I’m at an age with a shockingly short amount of time ahead of me and I’m wondering “What if I had auditioned again for RADA? What if I had married Kenneth Branagh?” For one thing, I’d live in London and have a great flat and National Health Insurance. I look back at my life and think, when did I decide to turn left instead of right? Why this and not that? And the only answer that comes back to me with any consistency, is that I didn’t do a whole lot of choosing at all. More often than not, a possibility materialized in front of me and I shrugged and said, “OK.” In the early 90s, I was in a show that was in the middle of a tour in San Francisco. A handful of friends and I (along with my husband) left the tour, created our own show and lived in a big house together for a couple of months like we were in a real-life sit-com. There must have been a moment when Pat and I decided to quit the original tour, but I don’t remember it. In my memory, I simply flowed like water from one thing to the next until I ended up here: older; struggling with debt; anxious about the future of the country; worried that my latest novel won’t sell.

Was Emma more intentional in her choices? I imagine her being more so because she’s the one with a fascinating career and a flat in London. That said, Kenneth left her for Helena Bonham Carter and I am more than a little relieved that I didn’t have to go through all that upheaval.

At my sixty-fifth birthday party this year, I sat at a long table with dear friends, my husband and sons floating around me. A friend shouted down the length of the table, “You did it. You and Pat really did it.” “Did what?” I said. He answered, “You stayed true to yourselves; created lives as artists and didn’t get scared and do something else when things got tough!”

Wow, I thought, was that an actual accomplishment? I wasn’t sure. There are many friends and family members who would beg to differ. Including my own parents who are dead now, and my siblings who are kind enough to keep their judgements in the shoulder shrugging zone. I am, to them, a flaky artist who tripped through life and who, they fear, might need their help when I get even older.

But I thought about what my friend said later. And while it still feels true that I flowed in one direction or another, without much of a thought about where I would eventually end up – it is also true that I made a much bigger choice. The choice from which everything else followed with a great deal of emotional logic. I chose art. I chose it above security and predictability. I chose it above worldly comfort. I chose it above recognition, even. I certainly chose it above the approbation I would have liked from my family.

Lately, I’ve wished that I could afford to replace the couch I’ve had for twenty years. I spent a small fortune on it after I sold my first show to HBO based on my memoir. Was I foolish to spend that money on what is now a ripped up couch? Foolish to think that I might have a show on television only to have it fizzle in a kind of spectacular way? Foolish not to have jumped ship then and gotten a real job?

In rare moments when I ask myself these questions – and let’s face it, I mostly ask them now when I am actually sitting on that ratty couch – the answer comes back the same every single time, without fail: Fuck no. It was a hell of a ride, I tell you. A fucking hell of a ride.

And it still is. I’m guessing Emma would agree.

I often feel slightly nervous in towns like this – which is completely irrational and unfair. I’ve been an apartment-renting urbanite all my life and give me the odd mugging on the subway or even a gunshot outside on the street at 3am and I’m fine; give me wide flat desert and dark streets and I’m looking for the serial killer who has been making purses out of the skins of victims in his basement for years. Who knows what goes on in these communities, I think, suspiciously.

As it turns out quite a bit, as I found out when I attended the California City’s city council meeting on Tuesday, September 9, 2025. I didn’t spot any serial killers milling around as I got out of the car, but you never know (that’s kind of the point). Council meetings in Cal City are usually attended by ten or so, from what I heard – and I quickly scoped the gathering townspeople to decide who were those stalwarts. My friend, Michelle (an activist friend who proposed our trip), introduced me to a cluster of like-minded activists under a tree. Shade was key.

The meeting was attended by roughly a hundred townspeople and activists, in person and on Zoom. The air-conditioned room was packed. We were there because the abandoned prison close-by was recently taken over by a for-profit prison and detention corporation called CoreCivic which had already opened for business without the required permits and license, and more importantly to the decidedly not serial-killery population there, without any transparency regarding the establishing of the detention facility or any public discussion of what its existence would mean to a population that is sixty percent non-white. The detention center, now intended to be the largest in the state, was/is technically operating illegally.

I am not a journalist, but I can tell you what I saw and heard and understood. Which is about the level most of us were playing at, except for some lawyers, one local journalist, and several whip smart activists (some of whom drove for five hours to attend the meeting). Several residents also seemed very aware of what was at stake, having done their homework on CoreCivic, detention centers in general, and constitutional law. Many others articulated their very reasonable fears about what CoreCivic would do to their town.

After a prayer (apparently we can do that), the meeting opened with some small community characters and real consternation about the City Council’s failure to hold meetings for the past few months. This was because two of the seats were vacant and a council member claimed he was in ill-health and couldn’t attend. He sat at the end of the dias, wearing sunglasses and tyrannically defending himself against accusations of getting the fire department to help him carry a bag of dog food to a local shelter. Frankly, my trip out there would have been worth it just to watch the locals go after him. More importantly however, was the suspicion, by some of the residents and activists, that the delay in holding meetings masked any required transparency around the arrival and the overall mission of CoreCivic near their town.

Two new council members were sworn in so business could proceed, and the following two hours were boring as all hell. Except for a moment when an unusually tall policeman updated us on the new S.W.A.T. team being formed in the county (S.W.A.T. team?), but then the usual business of councils ground on. I actually wondered if the idea was to purposely wear everyone down so they would leave and never get a chance to challenge the decision to allow CoreCivic (someone must have allowed it!) to move in right next door or for our very real fears to be heard.

Fighting fatigue, I still managed to understand that the city is basically bankrupt. Ledgers and payments to various entities were discussed. And a neutral audit was being considered. It became clear to me (and if it was clear to me, it was clear to everyone) that CoreCivic was being seen by some city leaders as a possible way-out of financial catastrophe. It was unclear how much the Council members invited CoreCivic’s take-over of the prison or whether they simply rolled over and said, “Um. OK, I guess.” But what was clear was that CoreCivic had not gone through any of the usual legal steps a company is required to establish itself in the city.

After two-and-a-half hours, the floor was finally given to public comments and what also become crystal clear was that the residents did NOT want the for-profit detention camp in their city. Over thirty of them spoke for another couple of hours. Pleading, some crying, to be heard. One veteran said, “I can’t believe that I am begging this council to follow the constitution.”

Some details. CoreCivic is a for-profit prison and detention company. Meaning, as one Cal City resident stated, “Human beings are being monetized.” The center at Cal City can house 2500 people and it is in their financial interest to fill every bed (if there are, in fact, beds). It is not uncommon, in cases like this one, that the prison town becomes completely engulfed by the corporation that is paying their bills. Several spokespeople for various human rights organizations cited huge violations of CoreCivic facilities in other states, including dirty water, no access to representation or a law library (required), almost zero medical help (in fact, local hospitals often have to absorb any big problems), denial of prescription meds, foreign objects in food, denial of communication with loved ones or advocates, etc. etc. etc.

Without due process, and with CoreCivic’s financial interest in operating at capacity, it is unclear how long detainees (let’s just call them “prisoners”) will be incarcerated. Which leads naturally to some activists’ conclusion that it will become a work camp. While there is no current evidence of this, it’s not a leap. One resident said he’d followed a white van with two cages in the back, no license plates, and only a sign that said, “Do not tow”, blowing through a stoplight in town. With that kind of menacing, secretive presence, what should we believe? A financially struggling city, Edwards Air Force base nearby, an airport too. What a handy location for a concentration camp.

Two mothers of detainees spoke through translators about not knowing where their sons were for three excruciating days. “Please, please, I beg of you,” she said. “He is like a caged animal.” Many residents of the city cried while expressing their fears about ICE being so close and, hey, if some masked, nameless guy didn’t make his quota that week, why not pick up a brown person on the way to the camp? Some residents worried about what the jobs in the facility would do to their mental health and that of their neighbors.

Several speakers spoke about alternative ways for the city to revive itself financially. Apparently, there are programs and grants afforded by the California legislature that might infuse the city with positive business models, creating a community they can be proud of.

As the five hour meeting finally wound down, Mr. dogfood guy in the sunglasses did want it on the record that the council planned to speak to the lawyers who offered to consult with them.

Here’s the thing. After sitting in this meeting for five hours, what I thought was, “Where the hell is Newsom?” Where are our representatives or big media?

This is how it happens. The stealth around these concentration camps should keep us up at night. “Good Germans” claim they didn’t know the death camps existed. But they saw the vans, the arrests, and brutality on the streets. They knew something wasn’t right and they embraced their ignorance because then they could cling to it and say that it wasn’t them doing this—whatever it was. And the takeover happened gradually. What’s a van or two? Who cares if these unidentifiable men wear masks and don’t have a warrant? It’s not me in that van. I obey the laws!

But it IS you in the van – or it certainly could be – being driven in a cage, by masked men to a camp in some American town or city’s back yard. It is you because when one of us is denied due process and transparency, we are all in danger. And when we look away or choose not speak out about what we know (as the residents of Cal City just did), we are complicit.

Please share this post and others like it. Be vigilant. It’s exhausting. I get it. But if you ever wondered what you would do when people were rounded up on streets and disappeared, now you do.

Californians must pressure Newsom and Atty Gen Rob Bonta to find a way to enforce state permit and inspection laws - if Kansas can fight the opening of the detention center in Leavenworth, We can fight it in Cal City, CA.

INFORMATION I LEARNED LATER:

600 people are already being held in the facility already. They do not have access to regular drinking water. They bring a five gallon jug for every three hours per 90 people (info from an immigration lawyer)

Neither the mayor or city council members have been allowed into the facility since it opened.

Newsom claims that he and California has no jurisdiction over the prison or what happens there. I find this almost impossible to believe.

For a more journalistic approach: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-19/this-new-ice-detention-facility-will-be-the-largest-in-the-state

The prayer

Concerned residents and activists line up to speak

During a break in the five hour meeting, the mayor fields questions

Local news

I wish the lessons I am learning now were as delightful as a sleeping-bag hack. They aren’t -- but that switch is the same. That moment of “I see it now”. A couple of days after protesting against ICE downtown, I found myself balled up in bed in the middle of the day, shaking and crying, unable to force myself to my feet. I am not a balled-up-in-bed kind of gal. While I am no stranger to weeping, infrequent panic attacks, and subverted rage – I typically don’t take to my bed. I do the opposite. I take long huffy walks, write mean emails I will shortly regret, call a friend who won’t judge me too harshly, and occasionally I buy a pack of cigarettes and smoke them serially imagining how sorry everyone I love will be when I die of cancer.

Trust me, I know I need to work on my shit, but that’s not the point. The point is that while I was under that sheet, shaking uncontrollably, I was trying to identify the feeling. It wasn’t the usual despondency or rage. What was it? I could barely open my eyes and look at my bedroom. I shivered. My crying occasionally calmed down to a sputter and I would shift, only to be taken over again. To my mind, this lasted a day – maybe it was only a few hours – but I was only able to get out of bed when I managed to identify the feeling. Which sounds counter-intuitive, but that meant I could at least start using my brain.

It was terror. It wasn’t just fear about what was going on “out there”. It wasn’t just weepy frustration over being assaulted every day by news of Trump doing his sociopathic best to drive the country and even his followers into ruin. It wasn’t any of the usual fears about what was happening to the economy, immigrants, government workers and agencies, AI (oh God, AI) etc etc etc. It wasn’t even the heartbreak of watching reels of masked men jumping out of vans and ripping families apart. Sure, a few days before I took to the bed, I’d been protesting downtown. My group had been tear-gassed, surrounded by the LAPD and the National Guard, seen people beaten and shot with rubber bullets, and flash banged. I had walked away from it feeling a bit shaken, but not incapacitated. I even went out to dinner afterwards.

I could handle all that, couldn’t I?

Apparently not. Something new had crept into my nest of snapping, writhing, biting fears. Sheer terror. And the terror I felt was specific and new.

They/It was coming for me. That was the switch. I had never, never felt that vulnerable in my life. And not in a Brené Brown-putting-yourself-out-there kind of way. But in a you-don’t-want-to-be-stuck-next-to-me-in-a-foxhole (unless you want me clinging to you, throwing up on your neck and pooping in my pants) kind of way.

Some of you are already ahead of me by now. Some of you already know that the relative safety I have felt all my life is an illusion. You probably already knew about the sleeping-bag too. But if you are like me: white, straight, healthy, able, relatively attractive, college-educated it’s a fucking revelation. And I’m embarrassed that it took so long for me to see it.

On reflection, the reasons for the terror are real and, well, terrifying. The structure, let’s say the United States, like all structures is like Plato’s shadows on the wall. We only know what we see. And until Trump got into office, I had gone about the task of creating my own happiness really successfully. As an artist, I skirted having to buy a house or enter into too many bourgeois pissing contests with the Joneses. I didn’t run in a world where the label on my purse or the car I drove mattered a damn. I needed a thing to carry stuff in and a thing to get me around. My husband and I, and later my children, lived very simply in a two-bedroom rented apartment with worn carpets. We had an often-battered used car and sent our kids to public schools. For the most part, it suited us – gave us room to devote to acting and writing and we got to spend a LOT of time with our children. There were low times, not saying there weren’t – but on the whole, I landed in that bed, shivering like a fevered child, because for the first time in forever I didn’t feel ultimately safe. I had believed that Social Security and Medicare and our modest union pensions would ensure that we wouldn’t burden our children and that we’d close out our days living just as modestly as we always had in some adorable town in Ireland or Canada or Mexico or France.

I also believed in the inherent good will of humanity.

But no longer. And worse, I mean this – it also began to dawn on me that if I spent the rest of my days grasping at ways to make myself feel safe again, what good was I to people who are less safe than me?

This country’s worship of wealth seems limitless. Quickly followed by a love of projecting a successful image. And it’s KILLING US. LITERALLY KILLING US. We elected a president because of it. We go into debt because of it. We choose our friends based on it. We endlessly post about it. I know I’m saying nothing new here – but this national obsession with wealth or the appearance of wealth is going to be our undoing. And by undoing, I mean total collapse.

Late Stage Capitalism, my friends. Everything has a price. Everyone has a price.

You see why I was in the bed. My brother calls me “Miss Doom and Gloom”.

And the personal terror I was feeling came from the absolute certainty that no one is going to help me when I need it. Social Security might be gone. Medicare, gone. And they (the ones running things) don’t give a flying fuck about me.

But certainty is a motherfucker. I know this because I have been wrong about so many things before. And it is this understanding that ultimately got me out of that bed. I don’t know what will happen. I can’t shiver and shake to the end of my days. I guess, technically I can – but I certainly don’t want to.

So in the end, you get out of bed. You start with small pleasures like this new truffle mayo I’ve discovered. You start with a phone call to a friend. You start by going to a museum in the middle of the day because you created a life with a flexible schedule. You start by pausing to watch the sun come through the living room window, creating the most perfect slash of light across the painting your mother painted over half a century ago.

In the particular is the universal. James Joyce said something like that. Maybe, if I pay attention enough to feel pleasure in the simplest of things, I’ll start find more pleasure overall. I’ll stop the shaking, keep terror at bay, and maybe live a little. Be useful to someone; that would be nice.

God I hope so. It sounds simplistic, but it’s all I’ve got.

I was talking about clichés of course, but to deny that I was making a broader sociological point, would be coy. And I’m too old to be coy. It’s not, as we white folx say, “a good look.” The sociological point being: Do these phrases really lead to care of the self; care of the spirit? Does #grateful under a photo of one’s well-manicured toes with the ocean in the background reflect actual gratitude on the part of the poster? The last time I felt very real heart-exploding gratitude was last week when I found out that the car wasn’t completely totaled and would cost a mere one-thousand dollars to repair. That’s actual gratitude to me. Toes in front of the ocean? At best, contentment.

And “self-care”. Does it simply mean a day at a spa (because God knows, I love a day at the spa!)? Or does it actually mean taking a rigorous and clear-eyed look at all my past screw-ups and a making a plan for how to avoid those same screw-ups in the future? Yes, I’m tipping my hand here. Can we add a little rigor to our pampering? Because I love being kind to myself, but I also desperately need to build spiritual resilience for the road ahead.

Months before the pandemic, I started going to a meditation center in Hollywood. My husband and I were doing OK financially, which is not always a given, and I decided to reward myself with a pricey membership. I don’t know that I was spiritually looking for anything specific, but my world was messy at the time. I was teaching a lot and my kids were pulling away from me in the way that teens do, my parents were getting old and addled and falling over and ending up in the ER frequently, and I was watching Rachel Maddow every evening, drinking too much and yelling at the TV. So I was probably looking for a smidgen of respite, without really challenging myself too much. Because basically, things were just fine.

Of course they weren’t fine. But at the time, the meditation center seemed like the spiritual one-hit I was looking for. I loved it and I walked there almost every day to take guided meditation classes with titles like, “Self-compassion”, “Psychic Guides”, and “Chill the F*)ck Out”. The last one, I would come to find, was emblematic of a marketing stab at making relaxation sound badass – kind of like the CrossFit of breathing.

Over the following months, I sunk into the floaty, tinkly world of the Center. To a one, the instructors were gorgeous. Most were women in the mold of less-done-up reality show contestants. Thin (mostly very thin), long-haired, straight-teethed, with pert breasts that didn’t appear to need ballast. Only two of my instructors were men. One looked like sexy Jesus with a lot of leather bracelets and the other like a marine with a gentle smile juxtaposed by huge tats on his guns, who could also slam you up against a wall and bang the heck out of you. With your consent, of course. My guess is that you were either a Jesus gal or a Marine gal – the Center covered its bases. None of the instructors were old.

The lounge of the Center was decorated with a lot of brass and pillows and candles. All of which gently redirected your thoughts away from fully grasping that it was a shop. I absolutely loved running my fingers over the crystal necklaces and bracelets, spritzing myself with an essential oil, and perusing the really soulful titles of books on enlightenment and nourishment. For the uninitiated, “Nourishment” is a gentler way of saying “diet”. The things you learn! I bought many, many items for “my practice”, including skin cream and a mala with an image of a Hindu Goddess, I forget her name, who looked kinda sexy but also like she really knew her boundaries.

You could also purchase their meditation chairs with adjustable backs. These were so very key because my back tweaked after twenty minutes of sitting still. Which leads me to rigor. Yes, I needed a back to my chair. But after weeks of classes, I noticed more broadly that nothing on offer was remotely demanding or uncomfortable. Other than the prices.

I admit that “White Lady Spiritualism” is a misnomer. And one that I should quickly address. What we’re really talking about here is the confluence of class and privilege that makes one eager to believe that existential dread will be mitigated by simple, unexamined phrases and an unchallenging color palate. And nothing else. Make no mistake; this is what is being sold to you. And it’s a compelling product.

So let’s examine, “Be kind to yourself”. This particular phrase is like the everyone-gets-a-trophy equivalent of White Lady Spiritualism. Let me be the first brave soul to say that there are a ton of people who absolutely should NOT be encouraged to be kind to themselves. But let’s assume here that we aren’t talking about Marjorie Taylor Greene, here, but me – an overworked, arguably societally overlooked woman of a certain age. And since we’re also talking about specificity here, we will dispense with the coyness of a “certain age” and nail it down. Sixty-four.

For years, absolutely years, being kind to myself meant that after working like a beast all day, I would reward myself with a glass of wine or two or three or four. Often with my girlfriends. Often alone. This particular panacea was encouraged by advertising, books, TV, and film – and oh the T-shirts (“It’s Wine O’clock!”). And it worked! I got through Trump’s first term by suppressing my rage and filling up on lots of things that made me feel good in the moment. Including clothing I bought online during the pandemic because holy hell, I deserved it. I was being kind as hell to myself. I remember buying a shirt that said, “Be a better human”. I kid you not. I cringe now at my sanctimony.

Then my parents died, we lost the family home, and my youngest son left for college. Being kind to myself was pretty much dulling me to the point of paralysis -- #grateful, but maybe not so much.

What it took to get me moving again, in forward motion, was rigor. What it took was me being honest with myself, about myself -- which is hugely scary, next-level stuff. I didn’t expect this piece to be about radical honesty, but eventually all roads lead there. Hey, we can do hard things, right?

So the question is, what does being kind to oneself really look like? The gorgeous, very perky and well-meaning teacher of my “Self-Compassion” class instructed me to imagine a golden light emanating from my core and moving up to the top of my head. I loved this part and could really feel a quieting of self-critical thoughts – which are, admittedly, useless. Great, but what do we do with that light when we go out into the world? I’m not kidding here when I say that I’d love a class where we employed the mantra, “I’m an asshole sometimes” and then focused our golden light on how we are going to make it up to the aggrieved party or do it differently next time.

There is a uniquely American thread through all of this; synthesized in the “Power of Positive Thinking” movement of the 1950s, one that strongly influenced Trump. The movement and its many bastard children including every MLM ever, crypto, NXIUM, Scientology, EST, and all the tech bro culture we see out there -- purports to be rigorous, by making it your problem if you let negative thinking in. But it is also a culture that exalts groupthink and glazes over real problems and issues with positive phrases, branding, and a kind of willful blindness to our own culpability or even, subjugation.

As I say this, I fear I’m being harsh, especially to my people: white ladies. After all, we’re all just looking for a bit of comfort and direction in a scary world. And I truly believe that most of us want to be better humans, like my t-shirt said. Maybe there’s room for all of it. The crystals and gongs and facial peels and gentle breathing in a safe, cream-colored space -- along with the kind of self-inquiry that can bring you to your knees. But if looking in the mirror and saying to yourself “let them” with tears streaming down your face doesn’t quite do it for you (and by “you” I mean “me”), you might benefit from tougher self-love. Maybe start by asking why you gave a damn about “them” in the first place. And for God sake, let’s bury the cliches. Trust me, it’s possible. We can do hard things.

Thank you for listening, and don’t forget to visit the gift shop on the way out

.

These are the things I heard and saw in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday June 11, 2025. Protesters gathered at Pershing Square at 5pm. I’m not good at crowd sizes, but judging by other marches, it wasn’t a big group to begin with, maybe three-hundred. The crowds skewed young and POC, but not exclusively, by any means. The gathering didn’t appear to have a strong organizational head. It had more of a grassroots feel. There were several speakers, some of whom told their personal stories about their families coming to the US – giving their reasons for marching and certainly their grievances against ICE and police tactics. The mood was upbeat, peaceful, and friendly. At that time, I remember thinking, “Oh, this has a kind of Kumbaya vibe” as sage wafted through the air.

We started marching toward City Hall. Again, the mood was peaceful and determined. It felt like more people were joining and by the time we got to City Hall, the crowd seemed bigger. The LAPD along the route was a constant presence, but they looked largely relaxed and I remember thinking, “OK. They’re doing their job and maybe we have come to some understanding here.” Jesus, I was so naïve. Having grown up through the sixties and seventies, I have a reflexive flower-child thing in me that assumes that even though we’re on different sides of this, we’re all humans after all, and we’re all just trying to get through this without hurting each other.

In front of City Hall, the LAPD seemed to be watching, but weren’t in any kind of “alert stance”. At this point, a big group of people started line-dancing. I remember thinking that maybe this was it and we’d go home. A few demonstrators yelled epithets at the police and out into the air. As my friend, Michelle, said, “It’s no worse than a crowd after a Laker game.” Another friend told me that the only act of aggression that they saw was an empty water bottle thrown in the direction of the LAPD, which fell easily fifty-feet shy of its target.

Then the LAPD started to clear the street. I was still thinking, “Makes sense. People need to drive through.” We gathered on the sidewalk and some kept walking up the grassy hill across from City Hall.

And then – HOLY HELL – The first thing was flash grenades going off from the LAPD. This had the intended consequence of panicking everyone. It sounded like gunshots or tear gas and we started to scatter. People started chanting, “Peaceful. Protest.” Over and over – I think to let the police know that we were peaceful and to remind the crowd to keep it cool. There was a brief lull as we regrouped on the grass. But only briefly before flanks of police came down both streets parallel to the park. Then you could see LAPD running in formation from a completely other side – definitely closing in from all sides, forcing us into downtown. There was general panic. People on megaphones were stressing to demonstrators to “Walk, don’t run.” So my friend and I started walking, but there were no directions from the demonstrators OR the police as to WHERE to go. Then the horses came in. Remember, that very little provocation has come from any of the demonstrators. More flash grenades and now rubber bullets. People running. Another huge flank of police out of nowhere, running in that scary way that feel reminiscent of a full military takeover. Batons came out. Officers were swinging them. We all ran for the subway stop – which was blocked. One older man was running away and an officer chased him and beat him in front of all of us. Another man was hit as he was running away (notice that they were RUNNING AWAY!). I hung around to witness the beatings and when an officer told me to move, I said, “Where to?” He said, in an extremely threatening voice, “MOVE. I don’t want to have to hit you.” I moved. Michelle and I walked down streets, trying to find an open subway stop and eventually got far enough away to call a Lyft.

A friend of mine was arrested. We saw a journalist who had been hit by a rubber bullet. A young man caught up with Michelle and me as we were walking away, asking if he could join us. I assumed that he might need us to provide a little protection simply by dint of our skin color. I’d experienced this at the BLM marches and was only happy to help. After talking for a few seconds, I realized that HE was offering to protect US!!!

So what I saw and heard was only HUGE AND DISPROPORTIONATE AGGRESSION AND ESCALATION from the police. Orders to us were unclear and I’m not entirely sure if a police officer can threaten to hit me when I’m simply standing there. Maybe. Not sure what would have happened if I refused to move. Can he actually hit me?

I have tried to stick strictly to what I saw and heard. But I can tell you here that I was terrified. I am a citizen of this country and I was being threatened directly by the LAPD. This kind of violence looks and feels like it’s from another time; another country. It is not. I don’t give a shit about your politics – ask yourself if this is the country you want. Because it’s the one you’ve got right now and from everything I witnessed, it will get worse if we don’t stop it.

Before things went insane, I ran into my son. I didn’t know he was planning to be at the march! He left (wisely) before the horses came in.

For many years, I have wondered how “Good Germans” stayed silent – and now I know the answer. I know because it is happening to us. They were terrified. They told themselves it wasn’t as bad as it looked. They told themselves that they didn’t have the facts. That surely people weren’t as cruel as they seemed. They told themselves that they would be safe as long as they kept their attention diverted, kept their heads down, protected their own families, and bided their time until the nightmare was over. I understand now, because those thoughts are occurring to me. They are occurring as I see and read about the National Guard and the Marines entering Los Angeles to ensure that our neighbors get rounded up and deported without due process. I understand that this is not Nazi Germany. I understand that Trump is not Hitler. But that doesn’t mean that those same elements are not at play.

I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to overcome my fear of, frankly, being physically hurt and losing work or benefits afforded me by the government (doesn’t DOGE have my information now?). But I will not be a Good German.

Here is what I know about what I saw at the protests on Saturday and Sunday:

Last weekend, I peacefully marched with average people – not a paid one amongst them. I marched with mothers with babies in strollers. I marched with workers who took to the street on their weekend. I marched with church-goers and union workers. I marched with friends. We all marched against mass, in many cases illegal, detention of immigrants at their homes, work places, schools, and churches. This was my second day at protests and the only aggression I witnessed came from the police and the National Guard. I don’t doubt that there were a few incidents in which protesters fought back or got angry and reacted. But the fact that that vast majority did not is a stunning show of restraint and humanity. Los Angelenos are truly scared and the only reason we are out there resisting is because our neighbors, co-workers, and fellow humans need us – and that need is the only thing overcoming our fear. RESIST!

Photo taken by me of the deployment of tear gas from The National Guard against peaceful protesters in Los Angeles on Sunday.

How does dinner at 6 sound? Can do 5:30 if you need to get back to the dog. And if you want to swatch on Tuesday, I can probably do that if it makes it easier from you and all around. Frankly, 6 isn’t hard and fast, just the first time it came to mind. Let me know if you want to push to 8, that might be easier traffic witch – but you tell me! Love you. Can’t wait.

*switch *to *switch too

*to

*I meant, “for you”

*wise

You get my draft. Anyway, LMK

*drift, I meant drift. Hah!

OK – yes, I am an older lady with either fat, dumb typing fingers or using the voice-texting thingy like we do. All annoying enough. But that’s not where I’m going with this. Anyone?

Oh my God. It’s the sheer neediness and people-pleasing supplication of it that would make me – were I to receive one of my own texts like this – run screaming from the room.

What in God’s name is fucking wrong with me? I’ll save you the conjecture, though it should be perfectly obvious: I am a pathological people-pleaser. Not only am I a people-pleaser but I am a huge failure at it because I don’t actually end up pleasing people. But God knows (my husband certainly does), I persist!

Saying that you are a people-pleaser is a risk, specifically for actual people-pleasers. Because it’s seen as a sort-of humble brag and we don’t want to be seen as bragging. God no. It’s the equivalent of answering a job interviewer with, “My biggest weakness is that I care too much.” Which is to say that people-pleasing is largely misunderstood by the unafflicted. First, to clarify, pleasers don’t want please because they simply love to make other people feel good. No, they are driven to please because they need you to like them. Desperately. They crave love and affection and the easiest way to ensure that is to make others feel good. Second, people-pleasers are often not effective in pleasing people. So it may come as a shock to loved ones when the people-pleaser in their life (let’s just say ME) says at age oh – sixty-four or so, that they are going to try to stop people-pleasing and the listener (usually a beloved) says, “What are you talking about?”

I learned my dubious people-pleasing skills at the feet of a master. My mother. She had to talk my father into marrying her and spent the entire marriage proving to him that he made the right choice. As a consequence, she attempted to be so undemanding that all her requests came in the form of a question. “Do we think it’s time for dinner?” Or: “If it’s bleeding that much, do you think we should go to a doctor?”

Throughout decades of people-pleasing behaviors that reaped no actual pleasing, I have stored up a mountain of resentment over my efforts going unacknowledged and unreciprocated. Oh yes. Here’s where the emotional chickens come home to roost. I have to suppress a burbling volcano of rage in order to continue pleasing people who never asked for any of it, in order to keep the gears of my close relationships humming.

I lied when I said that my people-pleasing was ineffective. Many parts of it are, without a doubt, ineffective. But close family and friends would probably say that I am kind, considerate, and supportive much of the time. It might not be their top go-to (let’s hope it’s more like “inspiring, hilarious, frighteningly talented) but adjectives like “kind” could easily pop up in my eulogy. Which is why changing my habits is so damned hard. I want to be kind and considerate. But I’m not sure that I have to completely sacrifice everything else to maintain those descriptors. Clearly, there are tons of people who know how to strike a reasonable balance between supplicant and bitch.

My most recent therapist (the one who got me through the pandemic without losing my goddamned mind) told me about something called, JND – “Just Noticeable Difference”. The idea being that when you make a shift (asserting your own preferences, for example, into a decision making process with people you’ve previously simply pleased) people around you will feel the shift, but not be entirely sure what it is and where it’s coming from.

BINGO.

At the moment, I’m in a very clunky people-pleasing recovery stage. I have gotten to the point where I can state my “want” and then, after people bristle (hmmm, there’s that JND), I instantly walk it back. An fictional example of a conversation:

ME: What time is the concert?

FRIEND: Ten.

ME: Not sure I can make it. That’s late for me.

FRIEND: Come on! It’ll be fun.

ME: I kind of – it’s – I’m going to be tired.

FRIEND: But this is us! You love going out.

ME: Sure, but – the money, and – I’m just --

FRIEND MAKES A SAD FACE

ME: But sure. What the hell.

FRIEND SMILES.

AND – SCENE.

OR:

ME: (boldly, for me) I feel uncomfortable when you say things like that.

DIFFERENT FRIEND: Why are you being so passive-aggressive?

ME: What?

DIFFERENT FRIEND: Seriously. You’re being so ---

ME: Sorry. I’m just having a bad day. Forget about it.

SCENE

OR:

WRITING SESSION

ME: Let’s go with the phrase, “It hurts like hell.”

COWORKER: No. I like…(lists reason for their competing choice)

ME: OK but…(lists reasons for my choice)

COWORKER STARTS WRITING DOWN THEIR IDEA AS IF IT’S A DONE DEAL

ME: Sure. Let’s go with that.

SCENE

As I write this, I sound like this wimpy thing. Let me assure you that that isn’t the way I come across (except maybe to close family). I have a strong voice, valued opinions, and a lot of independence (I travel a lot on my own, for example). All this seems in direct contradiction to the people-pleaser I offer up in the previous scenes. Yet they are both true. I am independent and decisive on my own and I will also stomp on my own desires and opinions (like smoldering embers) in order to maintain your love for me.

It's the rage part that spurs me on to change a habit that is simply somewhere in the range of ‘irritating to highly convenient’ to my inner circle. It’s not fair for me to store up resentments over the mountain of concessions I have made in the past. It’s a heavy burden to carry, so I am determined to stop adding to that burden. Yes, yes, I can do the work to lighten the load of rage and resentment – the therapy, the meditating, the enlightenment sought through reading, psychedelics, wisdom that simply visits you as you age. But right now, it feels important to plug up the spout from which all that resentment gushes. And I will do it the way I always accomplish anything new — one awkward awkward moment at a time.

My mother-in-law was the last parent of Pat’s and mine to die. Now it’s just Pat and me. Kids gone. Parents dead (three of their deaths within a four year span). A huge shift, even if you don’t factor in the grief. And so, when I was thinking about Pat’s upcoming absence weeks ago my natural impulse was to plan ahead, get social events on my calendar and fill up my schedule so that I wouldn’t notice my solitude so much.

But I didn’t. Initially, I feared that grief would make me boring. It certainly made me tired in that hard-to-explain existential way that all deep loss seems to hit my system. But beyond that, I thought that maybe I should explore who I am when I’m quite alone. Do I like me? What are my rhythms? My likes and dislikes? What does time look like when it’s almost entirely my own?

So I didn’t fill up my calendar. I certainly still taught classes and went out with a few girlfriends and even spent a week in London with my son and daughter-in-law. So alone-time was hardly pure, but you have to believe me when I say it was nowhere near as packed and peopled as my usual existence.

For a couple of those weeks, I barely saw anyone and I watched a LOT of bad TV. I even rewatched a couple of docuseries about internet scammers. Who knew that faking cancer was a thing? Not just by a couple of influencers – but by quite a few people, it turns out. It’s an actual thing some people do, like owning over five cats. The kind of thing where you think at first it’s an aberration, but turns out – not so much.

I watched most of the shows that platforms splashed over their homepages, because apparently I’m that lazy. This led me to spending one episode with the Kardashians. I watched an episode maybe fifteen years ago and I found, this time around, that absolutely nothing had changed. In that time between episodes, I raised two children and changed my entire career path. Obama’s presidency came and went. For God sake our entire nation got owned by a pussy-grabbing felon who incited the overthrow of the entire government -- but by God, the Kardashians seem to have chugged along impervious to any change. They look the same and talk about exactly the same things: what they’re invited to and who in their family said what about whom and what they are going to wear.

I tried to spend some of my alone-time in silence, but more often than not, I listened to books on tape when I simply couldn’t watch another shlocky episode of something mindless. Most recently, I listened to “Careless People” about a female executive’s experience in the lofty echelons of Facebook in the early teens, leading up to Trump’s win. I mention her femaleness because it gives her distance from the bro-culture fostered and encouraged in Silicon Valley. And, look, it’s obvious that Facebook played a massive part in that election. Largely by targeting ads – the mechanics of which, I was completely naïve about. I thought it was simply a matter of sending ads to people who have voiced interest in that product (in this case a candidate) but it’s far more insidious than that. Targeting is so sophisticated now that its algorithms can tell when you are depressed! If a girl deletes several selfies, she’s sent make-up ads. So you can see how a boy who is watching videos on how to get a girl to like you, gets funneled to Trump friendly content. It makes sense, but whooo boy, the information doesn’t help a woman alone-with-her-own-thoughts feel safe.

Maybe it was because I was so alone that I noticed a commonality in all of this – both what I was consuming and where I found myself – which was often eating a couple of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups while trying on a t-shirt I thought I’d lost but found behind my shoe rack -- before crawling into bed with an AARP magazine, a book about Henry VIII’s often overlooked third wife, and my laptop playing a documentary on Madoff at 8:30pm. The commonality is simple: We all want to belong. We NEED to belong. But what gets in the way of that feeling is our inability to authentic with ourselves and others. And to find out who we are, we need to spend time with ourselves, alone.

Go with me here – what most of us do when we feel like belonging, is do more stuff with people. Join a group. Call a friend. All of which is great. But if you’re a Kardashian, I’m guessing that joining and being with people a lot doesn’t, on its own, satisfy that intense hunger to know someone and be known. Not really. It might feel like belonging kind of in the middle of catered baby shower for a famous friend, but I’m not sure it’s a feeling that sticks too long. You can disagree with me here, I really don’t know anything about being a Kardashian. Just my take, because I’m assuming that watching the show in general is about having “a take”.

I honestly think that at the root of the Musk/Trump bromance is that they actually think they’re friends. They are dying for that feeling of connection. Which will always, always elude them because they don’t know who they are fundamentally. And they don’t want to know.

Tech bros, too. I’ve always found work spaces with slides and margheritas on tap and pep rallies completely odd anyway – it’s simply not my jam. But now I see a bunch of socially awkward people who think that they’re connecting and belonging when they slide down a plastic slide into some pillows while flashing the rock-n-roll sign – and later post it on Instagram. And maybe that’s enough for a life. Maybe they are all connecting and belonging, and they have robust support groups at home. But I doubt it. Not because I’m judging from my little alone-cave of middle-aged momentary singleness, but because I read about loneliness and its remedies all the time. Because friends and colleagues tell me about it often. And, because Americans are experiencing something called (by our health experts) an “epidemic of loneliness” in our nation.

Why do people fake cancer? Because it gets them attention and they feel less alone. And occasionally they can sell you shit or take your money. But mainly it’s because people feel sorry for you when you are sick and then you feel less lonely.

I get it. I really do. I need to be seen and included and valued. But after these two months, I am surprised by how much of that feeling I can get from myself and from long and deep relationships with family and friends who aren’t around a lot (some of them are even dead – so that’s a whole ‘nother big layer of “not around”). I am really looking forward to sharing my living space with Pat when he comes home, and with my youngest when he’s back for the summer. What I want is to keep company with people who love and respect the whole of me. And in order to find out who “the whole of me” is, I have to spend time with myself.

This year I dropped my youngest off at college for the first time (and several more times after that!), spent a month traveling around Great Britain alone, finished the third draft of my novel and started the fourth, taught four artistic residencies in local elementary and high schools, taught writing to adults at night, spent a couple of weeks on the east coast visiting friends, hosted a playwright working with my husband on an original play, volunteered for Harris, built houses in Tijuana, mentored young writers, started a somewhat regular yoga and meditation practice, and attempted to get somewhat literate about money. There’s more, but those are the bones. With all that in mind, here’s my annual list of some of the things I learned:

1. There are soo sooo sooo many battles I really don’t have to fight. What a damn relief. A rather counter-intuitive joy that attends the invisibility of being over sixty is that no one cares that much what you think in the first place. I cannot emphasize enough, the joy of holding a completely mind-blowing subversive thought to myself – especially at dinner parties. It makes me feel sneaky and dangerous and powerful. If I were so inclined, this would be the time to start my life in crime.

2. I don’t need more sweaters, but I DO need more food containers.

3. Amazon is the devil and we – even committed lefties -- are too dependent to do a thing about it. Look, my fellow liberals, we have to get real about this. Sure, we boycotted the Washington Post when they didn’t endorse a candidate, but don’t take my Prime. There are more accidents on the road because of drivers’ long shifts, the packing material and all that driving is killing the planet, workers are milled through insane hours and low wages and don’t have a functioning union, Bezos is king, and returns are mostly scrapped – I beg you to watch the documentary “Buy Now” about the insidiousness of how the immediacy of getting what you want in an instant affects our brains and spending habits. Because I am one of those who is dependent, I am waiting until January to pull the plug. But pull the plug I will – and don’t come to me with your virtue signaling over various boycotts until you do too.

4. “How can I help?” is the single most important question anyone can ever ask.

5. Use the last bit of whatever your using – the last three green beans, the quarter cup of quinoa, the four raspberries. One day I will have an epiphany about why I save these little bits that simply rot. But before that big day, I need to simply add them to the current dish, omelet, whatever.

6. I used to believe that I was so incredibly kind and thoughtful that who on earth could find fault with me? It took me sixty-four years – maybe sixty if you round down for sentience – to discover that all the twisty, self-denying, knee-jerk, mitigating actions I take on a daily basis in order to please people so that they will fucking love me, doesn’t work. All of that – all of my twisty, self-denying, knee-jerk, and mitigating actions only annoy those who love me. Unless I’m buying gifts. Then it does work. And frankly, I understand that because it’s direct. Nine times out of ten, the people I love have no idea that I’m doing my people-pleasing highwire act, they just think I’m fussing. But gifts are simple. You see them. You get the point. People smile and say thanks and we move on.

Corollary to the above: Still learning to let my children be sad or disappointed without swooping in with a bunch of stupid, annoying fixes.

7. Pistachios go well with beets and goat cheese. This might be the most actionable thing on my list.

8. I learned where Nicaragua really is. I thought it was in South America. For someone who travels, I’m shockingly terrible at geography.

9. I read a book this year that mentioned things/objects being spiritual avatars. I’ve always hung onto little items in weird places. There’s a small glass duck in the pocket of one of my sweaters. I’ve forgotten where I got it. But it’s always there, always somewhat a surprise, and it makes me feel connected to past moments in my life. These objects are almost these little symbols of my having been here. Of my having had a past, even if I can’t remember it all. I like thinking about a thing connecting me to the more expansive me – it also, weirdly enough, helps me let things go. Because I can recognize that it’s the feeling I’m after, not the thing. So I am both hanging onto stuff and letting it go. Losing and breaking things becomes a time to internalize a memory rather than externalize it, if that makes sense.

10. All through my mother’s life, she would say, “Remember, we are all in this alone.” Whenever I told people this, I would joke, “And she meant that to be comforting.” But I am just beginning to realize why it’s actually a comforting thought. It is this. As I teach people who are quite a bit younger than me, I see that everyone wants to be seen and known – really known, deeply. And I think that there’s a lot of frustration when people get us wrong. When they mischaracterize us or barely see us at all. Certainly, I have felt that frustration. Hell, more than frustration. Deep anger sometimes, and anguish. How could that person possibly think that I--------------------(fill in the blank). But I am beginning to realize how very little we actually know of each other. After my mother died, I found some of her diaries and I read about how deeply afraid she was of losing her mind (she lost most of it by the time she died). I did not know how conscious she was of her own decline. And frankly, as her daughter, I’m glad I didn’t. There was a vast unknowable universe inside my mother, as there is inside all of us. Rather than causing me pain, that makes me think: wow, what else was in there? Maybe, as she was dying, she was surrounded by all these stories and images – the room she lived in as an undergrad, the men she dated, entire years I know nothing about – maybe she was held by all of it. By the life she led and none of us living knew much about.

Knowing that I am alone, that I am cosmically unknowable because we all are, is a huge invitation for me to know myself better. I know this is toe-dipping into some white, middle-aged lady spiritualism here. I’m clearly not going to write a self-help book because I can’t get it into a pithy, easy aphorism. Here’s my best shot: Knowing that I am unknowable, allows me to forgive people for getting me wrong. And makes me my own discoverer of myself. By the way, you’ll have to take my word for it – I’m pretty damn fascinating.

Corollary: Knowing that people are unknowable really takes the stress out of hanging with adult children who seriously both want you to know everything about them and nothing at the same time.

11. I just found out who Mel Robbins is. I like her glasses. And I’m sure she’s perfectly lovely. But if you’re discovering to simply “let them” in your fifties, you had a hugely stressful few decades. Just saying. And good on ya for not letting another decade whiz by, worrying about what others are doing and thinking. Oy.

12. After disengaging from the news after the election, I find I don’t really need it. This from a former news junkie. I still read the top stories during the day. But I no longer need fifteen takes on the story. Goodbye punditry! Whew.

13. I’ve learned to embrace my lack of interest in technology rather than be shamed by it. I understand the benefit of being able to do basic things on the computer and my phone. But beyond that, I’d rather spend my time diving into the vast internal universe, which is myself. Unknowable, subversive, and kinda sexy. Hey, nobody here but me!

That’s a sloppy and incomplete list. But it’s honest. And at the very least, I endeavor to be that.

Having grown up in the Military, spending my entire youth in Germany and England, and having traveled extensively to countries as far flung as Ukraine, Egypt, Kenya, and India, I have been offered an unusual perspective of Americans. And, trust me, there are some great things about them. Us. Me. You. The thousand things we can do with avocados, alone is a testimony to our ingenuity – which, in my opinion, is our greatest strength. By which I mean, “ingenuity” -- not mashed avocado and nutty granola on sourdough toast.

However, the American Character is also firmly defined by: valuing the individual over the collective, and absolute worship of money and those who make it, and pathological short-sightedness. All calcifying into a general feeling of invincibility, the underside of which is a shocking lack of compassion for anyone who is ACTUALLY vulnerable. This makes me sad. The extent to which I am a part of this thinking, embarrasses me. And lately, it makes me feel hopeless.

So what do I do now? Now that the parts of the American Character that trouble me will be celebrated, exalted, and amplified by the incoming administration. Like many like-minded thinkers, I have reduced my media consumption drastically. Very little news. No news programs. And I have been avoiding political conversations, even with my “tribe”. I am exhausted. And frankly, not sure what I think is an actionable (as opposed to philosophical) way forward. I don’t think that I can maintain this level of disengagement throughout Trump’s term. It is not in my nature to opt out of a struggle to protect basic rights for every American. But I am stepping back, I realized recently, until I feel a sense of hope again. Because I am in my mid-sixties, I have the luxury of knowing that hope will come along again for me. Simply because it always does. I am too interested in living an enthusiastic, creative, vibrant life to give in to chronic despair.

So while I wait for hope, here is my shortlist of ‘what to do now’, in no particular order:

1. Make stuff. Write, paint, cook, sew, build, garden, hang stuff on your walls. Make stuff. It is the opposite of destroying stuff -- which has its pleasures, God knows, I watch Lego Masters. As a creative person who sits in a room alone or sometimes with collaborators and makes shit up, I can tell you that there is almost nothing that even comes close to the joy of creative endeavor. Make something beautiful. Or terrible. Or hilarious. Low brow, highbrow, crude, elegant, dumb. Creation is divine. You may be saying, “OK. But you just laughed at my attempt to draw my dog.” And yes, I did laugh. It looks like a rug with one eye and a leg growing out of its head. But while you were in it, you were paying attention or playing or dreaming. And when you showed it to me, you were connecting. And when I was laughing, yes – I was making fun of you – but, I would argue that this was connection too.

2. Be honest. This is a toughie. As a person who has opted for honesty as a fundamental tenant of my own philosophy, I thought I had this one nailed for years. I found very early in the “I didn’t spill that milk” stage of my life, that lying made me really tense and forced me to have to remember what I’ve said to whom and keep things organized in ways that tied me in knots. Aha, I thought when I was about ten or so, If I tell the truth all the time, I won’t have to worry about getting caught. This revelation and subsequent practice, wasn’t so much of a moral choice as a pragmatic one.

However, in the last five years or so, I have started to examine the lies I have told myself – and there are some real doozies. Facing some of those (I imagine there are more to come) has made my inner journey kind of fascinating, to be honest. Which takes up much of the time I used to devote to watching the news. Without going into details that would bore the reader or worse, simply confirm what they already knew (Recently, I said to my husband that my therapist diagnosed me as a Highly Sensitive Person – and he looked at me like I had just announced that I had two thumbs) I will divulge that most of the lies I unearthed within myself had to do with covering up a shit-ton of rage. Which isn’t pretty, believe me. But you know: make stuff.

3. Read Fiction. Look, I love me some “On Tyranny” and “Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and The World”. But these are the facts, or what someone is presenting as facts, and the writer’s opinions about those facts. To dig deeper into whys and hows and who we are as humans, fictional stories have non-fiction beat. Even fictional stories onscreen viscerally demand deeper involvement, although I would argue that the time it takes to read a book, slows you down in a way that is part of the gestalt). If you want to know why people do the things they do, read Zadie Smith or Doris Lessing or John Updike or James Baldwin or Dana Spiotta or Lauren Groff. Reading involves a whole lot of intentionality: where, what, how. I read on busses, before writing, in bed, on the couch. Read fiction. Read anything, on paper. Not the screen. I don’t have anything against screens, but Jesus, give your eyeballs a break. It really does calm the zinging in your brain. And if you’re not aware of the zinging, you need reading hard-copy even more.

4. Prepare to get old, mentally and physically. I know. I know, trust me. Take this from the woman who used to practically stroll on a treadmill for ten minutes and then get off, wiping my brow like I was Diana Nyad staggering up the French beach after swimming the channel. But then my mother took to the couch her last five years of life. She was one of those humped-over old ladies who couldn’t lift her head. Granted, most of this was Alzheimer’s related, but Jesus. No thanks. Not doing it. I recently started taking a Flow Yoga class. These classes are fucking insane. I flop all over the place. Honestly, I think everyone in the class hates me because I’m so disruptive. But I persist. Because when hope taps me on the shoulder, I’m going to need my body to get shit done.

Mentally? See ‘honesty’ above. And what I’m about to touch on (is “touch on” an old phrase? I think it is) is related. Through rudimentary meditation (10 minutes every once in a while), reading great thinkers, three steady years of talk therapy, and a guided mushroom trip I have developed a fascination with my own consciousness and how it is part of a larger consciousness. That’s it. I don’t have much more than that, other than to say it can be very exciting to touch the hem something so much larger than my daily concerns.

5. Travel, consume art, spend time with people you love, have hard conversations with compassion and an open mind, eat food that makes you slow down just to savor it, snuggle your pets, say “yes” to stuff that is outside your comfort zone (with all the usual caveats, we’re adults here), give real compliments, check in with friends when you haven’t seen them for a while, question your own theories, apologize meaningfully, make love, make conversation, ask questions and listen to the answers, throw stuff out, buy less stuff in the first place, if you have a partner – work on the shit you always said you’d work on but never did. That goes for kids and siblings too. Consider your own death first and always – it’s the best way to make decisions and prioritize. For example, I hate ending this piece with the rather cold word, “prioritize” — but do I want to spend more time on noodling with idea? I do not.

Election Day.

I am preparing for my probably-not-so-imminent death by first accepting the notion. This is no easy task because I have only barely accepted being in my sixties. My fifties were fine. Fifties are in the middle of things. I was still raising children. We could have stopped right there. But the sixties steamrolled into my existence, bringing with them – the death of my parents, the decampment of my sons, the loss of our family home, and several friends’ deaths.

It was impossible not to see a trend. While the double negative here is clunky, it is accurate and far more descriptive than, “I saw an obvious trend.”

Recently, I met a hospice nurse (not on the job) who said that Americans think of death as optional. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Hollywood. This is where I take a brief break in the essay to personally exhort famous beauties to stop making themselves look like porcelain ducks with ropey necks, simply to squeeze another five years out of their already lustrous careers. One can say that they are more age-averse than death-averse. But I would argue that the two aversions are so connected as to be the same thing. If one can cheat the physical manifestations of age (and I would argue that you clearly can’t/see Netflix’s The Perfect Couple) the thinking goes, then why not death itself?

It sucks to get older. But not in the ways you might think. I can give up my youthful figure and boundless energy. I can give up a brain so agile that it could retrieve names of places and people and titles of movies and obscure vocabulary intended to dazzle, without missing a beat. And I can give up any attention that was leveled at me simply because I was pretty (in fact, losing some of that attention has been a damned godsend).

These are relatively small losses, many of which can be mitigated by Siri.

What really sucks about aging is coming face to face with impermanence every day. And the biggest realization of all: that at the end is the jackpot of all impermanence, your own demise! If I were a Hollywood executive listening to this pitch, I would say, “Are you out of your mind? It’s gotta be aspirational? Where’s the heart? Who are we rooting for? Nobody’s gonna watch a show so hopeless!” (For those of you outside the business, the words “aspirational’, ‘rooting for’, ‘gonna’ and ‘gotta’ are mandatory in pitch meetings, extra points for using them all in a short paragraph). The point is, it’s no wonder that we’re looking more attractive options than devoting time to accepting our own deaths.

I haven’t found them yet, in case you’re reading for answers.

All I can do is to learn how to slow everything the fuck down. An old friend (old in all the ways), who has twenty years on me, has told me that as life gets shorter, it gets wider. Which I have found is true, as long as you slow the fuck down.

In this pursuit, I’ve been reading and listening to great thinkers. One is the physician Atul Gawande who wrote “Being Mortal”. He feels that as we get closer to the end of our lives, family and friends and helpers and professionals tend to ask the wrong questions. Questions that revolve around how to extend our lives. When we should actually be asking “What does a good day look like for you?” The idea being that once we think about what is important to us, we can start to figure out how to keep the good things in our lives for as long as we can. This is the kind of work he has done with terminally ill people. But I think it’s a question worth asking often, as soon as you get to the point where you’re like, “OK. OK. I fucking understand. I’m not getting out of this – so how do I make such radical impermanence bearable?”

I think it’s interesting that Gawande says “good” day instead of “great” day. I assume he is saying that each day can’t be a wedding or the day you got into the college of your choice. Great days are great partly because they’re rare. But a good day -- we can have plenty of those.

My good days often begin with sitting in my living room alone, with my tea and oat milk, looking at how the light streams through and hits a painting that I love. One of my mother’s paintings. Jesus, what a marvelously simple thing. The joy I get out of simply looking.

There are other things that make a good day for me. One of which is a day in which I have a meaningful and intimate conversation with a human I like. I crave this level of deep connection somehow.

Also, I revel in a creative pursuit that I don’t have to drag myself away from for some practical reason (should I simply say “job” here?).  This third element is the hardest to come by. But it is certainly within my own control. Especially when I count cooking as a creative pursuit – especially for a novice like me.

When I consider these three things that make up a good day – along with relatively simple enhancements like lying in bed with my husband (and, yes, fooling around), a funny text exchange with my kids, a good meal, and the perfect song coming up on the radio – good days seem not only doable right now – but also doable for years to come.

And here’s something far more elusive. What makes a good day for me, is a day when I’m aware that all of it is ephemeral and I sit in that perfect moment of having and losing. When the day feels like it’s shimmering in time, less the sum of its enjoyable parts – the breakfast with one of your kids, the walk through the Farmer’s Market, and the cat sitting on your lap – and more, the awareness that it will all fade -- but it is here now.

The light. Oh, the light.

“We want things we cannot have. We seek to reclaim a certain moment , sound, sensation. I want to hear my mother's voice. I want to see my children as children. Hands small, feet swift. Everything changes. Boy grown, father dead, daughter taller than me, weeping from a bad dream. Please stay forever, I say to the things I know. Don't go. Don't grow.” 

― Patti Smith, M Train

I’m not claiming to be a straight-arrow. I enjoyed a lot of recreational drugs when I was younger, most notably in the VIP Room of Studio 54. I’m not trying to impress you. If I was, I’d come up with a fresher reference. Because being old enough to have stared at Andy Warhol across a glittery lounge of equally famous people doing blow, only means that I am now eligible to get into ABC cinemas for a dollar less than a fifty-nine-year-old. I’m simply offering it here as evidence that mind-altering substances as an oeuvre are known to me. Just not hallucinogens.

The reason why is simple. I have a tenuous relationship with reality anyway. I live probably seventy-five percent of my life in my head. There’s an entire city in there. Peopled by parts of myself who talk to other parts of myself. Fed by new ideas I imbibe through constant reading, both in hard copy and through Audible. Lately, I read a book about the Alligator murders down in Florida (it’s always Florida) and wow, just wow, when I reemerged from the dark and swampy environs of my mind, Walz had been named Harris’s running mate.

It is not unusual (in fact it is common) for me to mix up my inner life with the outer world. I create entire stories about people I know that are based on nothing at all. Reasons why friends got divorced. Certitude that a colleague comes from an extremely wealthy family, only to find out that they never said anything of the kind. For years I was convinced that a dear friend was widowed when her husband opened a car door to spit out a piece of gum and the car ran over him. Turns out, she was never widowed or even married, and didn’t recognize the story.

All this has made me reluctant to mess with any tethers that keep me grounded in reality. That said, because of my extensive reading, I got interested in the spectacular work around plant medicine and trauma. And, as a male friend often says, “If you are female, you’re traumatized.”

That’s where I’m going with this, by the way. Women. Trauma. Specifically the rage of women of a certain age.

During the mushroom trip, I vomited for quite a long period of time. All while refusing to ask for any help. Purging isn’t a given with mushrooms. It’s not like Ayahuasca, where it’s expected. In fact, I had chosen mushrooms partly to avoid a deluge. That, and I wanted to be with a guide – my tether.

When I talked about the trip later to the guide (in a sort-of outtake situation), he suggested that I might have had such a violent reaction because maybe a lot of stuff was “coming up”.  “What could that be?” I asked. He paused, then said in the form of a question, “Maybe anger?”

Whaaaat?

If you asked close friends and family to make a list of ten adjectives that define me, “angry” wouldn’t be on any of their lists. I seldom raise my voice and whenever someone is angry with me, I tend to freeze like a possum on top of a garbage can when caught in the beam of a flashlight. The list might include, “resentful”, “envious”, and definitely, “intense”, but not angry. I come from a family who literally wrote notes to each other (in longhand) about our grievances. In one such note, my brother called my mother a bitch. But it would never have occurred to him to call her that out loud, in person. Why my mother kept that note for decades is a question for the ages, now that she’s gone.

Even if I had recognized anger in myself during my first fifty years on the planet, I wouldn’t have given it voice. Because my highest ambition in life was for everyone to like me. A lot. So on the rare occasions that I was forced to let someone know that they had made me mildly, slightly upset (but I was sure there was a good reason), I buried my point in such mitigation (look, I’ve been there; we all have bad days) that they could be forgiven for thinking I was giving them a pep talk.

So when the mushroom guide gently allowed for the possibility that what I’d been stuffing down, all these years, was anger – well, that took me by surprise.

But only for a minute.

Because I don’t know a woman over fifty who isn’t dealing with a certain level of red, hot rage. Much of it is specific to our particular circumstances. Mine from growing up in a male dominated household where my brothers were allowed permissions and freedoms that were denied me (both by society at large and my parents). They would probably disagree. Partly, because we were a genuinely loving family and were considered quite socially liberal. Except for the time when my father told me I couldn’t take drum lessons and should consider the flute. And I get that that is such a silly example – but when it’s added to all the other silly things, it does have an effect. It tends to make one, well, “resentful”, “envious”, and “intense”.

My beautiful, almost perfect (except she wasn’t) mother would often explain that things were the way they were because, “you’re a girl”.

A couple of years ago, I tried to talk to one of my brothers about this subtle, but cumulative, difference in our upbringings and our divergent experiences in the world at large. He listened attentively and replied with genuine charity, “I believe that you believe that.” To be fair, I’d probably mitigated the hell out of my complaints to the point where they seemed petty. See? There I go again.

Then there was the time I tearfully explained to my mother that the man who sat in our living room at that exact moment (we were in the kitchen) had raped me. Repeatedly. He had been my partner and so it was difficult for her to think of rape within that context. She looked at me with deep concern and said, “Oh honey. All men pressure women into sex.”

So, yeah. Rage.

And I’m not even a bad case. A high-school friend of mine recently left her husband and entire family (the children are grown) to move half way across the country to a city where she knew no one. She simply couldn’t take care of everybody any more. Now she’s loving her single, even slightly solitary, life so much, she’s moving yet again -- to Ghana. Yeah – Ghana.

Frankly, most of my divorced friends of a certain age are some of the most self-realized, joyful women I know. They have robust support systems (mostly each other) and get to do whatever the fuck they want, when they want, how they want.

There’s a type of complaining about husbands, and men in general, that I abhor. So I have to be careful here. I’m talking about that nattering, nagging, bonding complaining that happens amongst wives and mothers that leans very much into virtue signaling. “Of course, he can never find his keys” ,“I told him to get out of my kitchen before he kills himself chopping onions. Can you believe it?”, “I buy all the presents for Christmas; he wouldn’t know where to begin” – All followed by shrieks of knowing laughter and pats on the knee --  

While I sympathize with indulgers in that brand of complaining, it’s sort of like employees kvetching about the boss. You know they’re not going to do anything about it. They’re “letting off steam” and that’s about it. Everything will return to the status quo, because really they pretty much like the status quo.

Give me the divorcees and lesbians any day. Using their rage like an efficient sharp knife, cutting away that which makes them feel powerless.

Let me remind you, I’m speaking in broad strokes here.

I have to remind you so you keep liking me.

When I recently spent a month by myself in England, one of the most powerful realizations I had was that I simply adored being alone. I couldn’t get enough of it. I got to indulge me nerdy obsession with Tudor England and buy a necklace made out of an antique spoon. I bought a fuzzy pink purse on Portobello Road. And, yes, I probably could have just as well done these things with my husband and sons. But finding out who I am when I’m not trying my damndest to be liked, felt like being set free. And that is unraveling some of the rage that has been knit into my soul.

The rage that is left, however, is red hot. The kind that I’m only just now learning to give voice to in ways that are useful. I don’t entirely know what that looks like yet. But I’ve got twenty good years to find out.

Weeks later, I took the purse and myself to New York City.