I was five days from starting group therapy, which would teach me a whole lot about “crowd work,” and change my life forever. Way more importantly, two weeks and two days later, we’d watch plans fly into the World Trade Center, which would change this country forever. Lots of crowd-mourning during that season.

What I wouldn’t have given to attend a concert the night Prince died in April 2016. Instead, I was at a federal court building attending a Continuing Legal Education seminar on jury selection. Excuse me, I’m supposed to pay attention to the principles of voir dire when Prince has left the realm? Nope. I sat next to a young public interest lawyer who graciously agreed to pass Prince lyrics back and forth with me.

It helped to metabolize the loss. Please don’t ever ask me to voir dire anything because I didn’t learn how to do it!

On Tuesday, when the great Dolly Parton died, I, like everyone else on the planet, felt the gut-punch of grief. She was only 80 years old. As someone who follows Willie Nelson around, that feels like spring chicken territory.

I hated that Dolly was gone but felt heartened that I was headed to the Outlaw Music Festival later that afternoon. (Headliner: Willie Nelson). I threw on my Dolly t-shirt and immediately felt the embrace of the crowd as I walked to the venue.

“Gone too soon!”

“Loved Dolly!”

“RIP Queen!”

There were lots of Dolly shirts and unanimous Dolly love. We all missed her already.

During the show, the Avett Brothers snuck in a mournful tribute to Dolly by tucking an I Will Always Love You interlude into Pretty Girl from Annapolis. Stunning, no notes. Seth Avett kissing the sky: sublime.

I hoped my OG Ginger King, Willie Nelson, would hold forth about his relationship with Dolly. Maybe sing my favorite of their duets: From Here to the Moon. They sound like BABIES in this 2013 recording. Try to listen and not cry. This is also a rather unhinged video from 1984 of Willie and Dolly singing Everything’s Beautiful (In It’s Own Way) with…a group of children painting at easels? Actually, it makes me cry too. I loved that song as a kid, and now I can’t unsee that video.

On Tuesday night, Willie didn’t say anything during his show about Dolly. I was surprised and a little disappointed, but you can’t go too hard on a 93-year old, still-touring musician. I can’t, anyway. Willie sang Last Leaf on the Tree, and Dolly’s death makes that even more real. He’s the last of his generation— Waylon, Loretta, Johnny, Kris, his sister Bobbie, Charley, and so many others are already gone.

I suck at giving celebrities the benefit of the doubt, but if there’s anyone I can give it to, it’s my main man, Willie. It might be too hard to do another goodbye in public. Maybe adjusting the set list was too arduous. Maybe he wanted to mourn privately first.

My son wondered if Willie even knew she’d died. “I mean, is he glued to his phone like the rest of us?”

I’d like to think he’s not playing Wordle and checking reels between shows.

But listen, when Willie passes on, I will not be okay, even if I have a ticket to see Harry Styles, Adele, Noah Kahan, Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift, and Tyler Childers play all my favorite songs together in my backyard with all my best friends and family.

But that’s not today. So let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Today, we queue up our favorite Dolly songs, feel grateful we walked the planet when she did, and we love up the people around us.

My favorite Dolly song is a cover of Woody Guthrie’s Deportee. When I got the 9 to 5 album for Christmas in 1980, I played Deportee a billion times and couldn’t understand why it wasn’t played on the radio. In high school, I wrote a paper about her version of the song and got a B-. Sorry, Dolly, I was distracted (His name was Kevin and he broke my heart)!

Anyway, mourn with friends and strangers. It makes it so much sweeter!

**

If you’re looking for a fall writing workshop, please join me in Cold Spring, NY (90 miles from NYC) from Nov. 12-15. We will generate work, workshop as a group, go on a book-buying excursion, eat farm-to-table meals, and WRITE! Ping me for an application: christie.o.tate@gmail.com

Six years ago today, I started The Artist’s Way for real because my debut memoir, Group, was coming out in two months. I’d gotten the call of a lifetime in late July informing that Reese Witherspoon had chosen my book for her book club. Once my nervous system absorbed that information three weeks later, I knew I needed something to ground me. I wanted to be present for the experience, and more importantly, I wanted to establish a foundation for a fulfilling creative life.

I understand why artists ditch the morning pages. I have dozens of notebooks from the past 2,190 days and storage is…an issue. And I rarely dip back into them unless I’m factchecking. It’s mortifying to look back and see that I’ve written PAGE AFTER PAGE of resentments at X for taking up all the space in our relationship or Z for making me to do all the work. It’s so cute how I obsess over problems that NEVER COME TO PASS. I filled an entire notebook perseverating about whether and when to quit my law job to write full time. It’s not high art, the morning pages, but I know dumping my anxiety and mental anguish morning after morning helped me take the leap.

Without the pages, would I still be working as a lawyer?

Without the pages, would all that petty spinning still be stored in my body?

For me, the morning pages are a form of prayer. Many lines are explicit prayers: Help me let go….Help me get perspective…Help me find that jacket on sale….

On my best days, I believe that I have a Higher Power who loves and accepts all of me, including the rants and raves I commit to writing every single day. What if it were true? Wouldn’t that be something. If I believed that a smidge more, think of how soft and open-hearted I would be toward myself and others.

On most days, which are non-best days, I like the discipline of lighting a candle and moving my pen. I write the dreck so that when I turn to my work-in-progress I’ve theoretically already completed my boring writing for the day. It doesn’t exactly work like that, but when my mind is spinning in a million directions about my kids, my body, my parents’ health, I know that I can start with the pages.

Once I’ve written them, I’ve taken one solid step toward my artistic life. I moved my pen for three pages with no expectation except that I won’t stop until I’ve done them. Then I get on with my shitty first drafts, etc.

Mostly, I’m grateful for any tool that is free, offers any relief from my busy brain, and connects me to community and creativity. I probably take it too far—getting out of bed with the flu to scribble so I wouldn’t miss a day— but I’d rather go too far than not at all.

If I ever get a dog, I’ll name her Julia after Julia Cameron and take her on all my artist dates!

I dated B in college. He was several years older and already in professional school, so naturally I gave him all of my power. To be fair, I also gave plenty of power away to fellas who had flunked out of school and a few who skipped it altogether.

I enjoyed B because he was witty, arrogant, and oh so unavailable. In 1993, that was my trifecta of desire.

In the era of our romantic entanglement, I recall two main things:

(1) I was brand-spanking new in recovery. Like six months in, and in case you’re not familiar with the newly-sober (in this case, from bingeing and purging), that means I was pretty fucking scooters. I floated on the pink cloud of relief that I was no longer bingeing and purging, no small miracle after years of both. That miracle, however, coincided with and occasioned a new habit of eating very little food. People who undereat are not always paragons of self-care or logic or good judgment.

(2) I could never speak up in my relationship with B. About anything. Ever. I couldn’t tell him what movie to rent, what time to pick me up, where to spend a Saturday. Once, we attended a wedding, and somehow, we missed dinner. For lunch, I’d eaten low-calorie salad bar fare from Jason’s Deli. Thus, I was extremely hungry. I remember pouring myself a cup of coffee at the reception and grabbing a handful of nuts for “dinner.” It never occurred to me to say, “Hey, since we missed the meal, can we get some food?” I also had several sexual boundaries that I was unable to state clearly (or in any way at all). I hoped he would simply intuit where my limits were; it mostly worked, but it was awkward AF. When I’ve recalled this relationship over the years, I’ve always said, “I must have been a very confusing person to date.”

Six months into dating, I found out B hooked up with a two of our mutual friends. We never talked about it; I just stopped talking to him. One night, he showed up at my apartment— more than an hour’s drive from his place in another town— and I didn’t want to answer the door. But of course, I didn’t want to be rude to this guy because he was blond/blue-eyed/smart. That’s the thing about people pleasers like younger-me: we’ll open the door if you show up at 10 pm.

My roommate, Alice, wasn’t having it. She pointed her finger at him. “You have to go. We don’t want you here.”

He left.

Fast forward several decades. I felt sick reading about B’s alleged crime— he didn’t hurt any people, but hurting animals is hardly a consolation. It stuck with me and to me— the facts, the mug shot, the shame, the degradation.

And I felt a great sorrow for the girl I was.

You know that feeling when you almost fall, but you catch yourself? That gasp, that split second when you saw yourself tumble and knock out all of your teeth? That’s how I felt reading about B. For a brief moment in the mid-90s, we shared an orbit. Had I not gotten lots of help, I might have ended up with him or someone like him.

I spent several days perseverating about the bad situations I put myself in when I was younger, while also saying prayers of thanks for the bullets I dodged.

I also recognized this: I had a roommate who fully and totally had my back. I was in Alice’s orbit too, which was a blessing I recognized the second we bonded at the Kappa house at Texas A&M in August 1991. It would take me years to learn what Alice knew back in college: You don’t have to accept unacceptable behavior, you don’t have to open the door, and you can ask your date to take you to Jack in the Box at any point of the night.

Lucky me— the bullets I dodged and the blessings I received.

**

If you are looking for a fall writing workshop, join me in Cold Spring, NY (90 miles from NYC)

• Nov. 12-15

• All levels welcome

• Cozy cabins, lovely linens, friendly fellowship

• Write, generate, revise, workshop

• Ping me for more info and an application: christie.o.tate@gmail.com

  

Happy to announce my 4th Annual Writing Workshop in Cold Spring, New York. This year, we will gather in Cold Spring on Nov. 12-15. We will write about the relationships that haunt, elevate, dazzle, confound, enrich, drain, and infuriate us! All levels welcome. For an application, please shoot me an email: christie.o.tate@gmail.com

**

I was half-heartedly reading a memoir that hadn’t yet grabbed me. The sentences were pretty, but I had a stack of four other books an arm’s length away. I was a page away from calling it quits, but then I read a sentence about how the author’s Dad liked to drink, like really really drink.

Oh, she’s the daughter of an alcoholic and now has to untangle the dysfunctional web of terrible habits she developed to survive her imperiled daughterhood? I’m in!

That’s all it took! A little fact about her situation growing up, and I locked in for the next 250 pages.

If a celebrity/artist mentions they attend Alanon meetings, you better believe I’m going deep into their Wikipedia and then consuming all of their art. That’s how I came to know so much about Hank Azaria’s filmography and almost got in a fist-fight with someone who said something rude about Anna Kendrick.

Two weeks ago, I dragged my second-born child to Wrigley Field for the Tyler Childers’ concert. In case you don’t know, Childers is a Grammy-winning country artist from eastern Kentucky who writes in the vein of John Prine and Kris Kristofferson. Initially, to me, Timothy Tyler Childers was an artist who penned a song about who he’d bite first in the event that he contracted rabies. I thought the rabies song was clever and wacky, but I didn’t foresee serious fandom. But that was before I learned that Childers got sober in 2020 and sings about giving up white lines and booze. Now, I can’t get enough of my sweet Kentucky ginger king.

Would I spend roughly (and perhaps embarrassingly) 5.5-6 hours of my week listening to Armchair Expert if Dax Shepherd wasn’t sober? I’d like to think I’d knock that down to a modest 3 hours of weekly listening but for the AA discourse.

Given that Willie Nelson is my most beloved of all time, I shudder to think what would happen if he added sobriety to his resume. Would my heart explode in my chest? Something tells me we’ll never have to find out!

But it’s not just sobriety/recovery. When Noah Kahan cried about his body dysmorphia in his documentary, I knew I would ride hard for his music for the rest of my life. It’s always Stick Season in my house.

I’m proud to report that it’s also not only pathology that will draw me to someone. It’s also Texas (though maybe that is pathology?).

Exhibit A: For a long time, I ignored Waylon Jennings because I couldn’t deal with his sideburns. I love the Highway Men, but Willie, Johnny, and Kris always ranked above Waylon. But then I found out Waylon was born in Lamb County, Texas, and I stopped being so rude to him and his legacy. (Note: This doesn’t work for all Texans, obviously. It hasn’t turned me into a Cred Truz stan, nor will it ever work for Pen Kaxton).

I’m also a sucker for someone with a ballet background. I enjoyed Sarah Jessica Parker in Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and of course Square Pegs, but when I learned she grew up dancing ballet, I thought, “okay, that’s my girl until the end of time.” Similarly, I was never into Motley Crue, but I learned this week that Tommy Lee loved ballet until bullying drove him away from the art. Yes, I queued up Shout at the Devil in the shower this morning.

Recently, a buddy from social media and I discovered a shared ballet past, including this famous Harvey Edwards print on our walls:

Now, of course, I’ll take a bullet for this new friend, whose middle name, address, and profession I do not know.

I enjoy these unearned bumps in affection. They function like grace: “the unearned, undeserved, unmerited favor of God,” though of course I’m not God; I’m just a woman who likes what she likes and can’t always explain it.

Example: Should I press “buy” on these Taylor Swift tickets for $3K each? Bless me or block me, Oh Spirit of the Universe. If your internet goes out right then, you have been BLOCKED, and sure, it could be ComEd, but it could also be your loving Guiding Force saying, “um, no, you’re not spending a mortgage payment on a concert. Go see the movie.”

My experience is that this prayer works, even when I don’t really mean it.

Wednesday night, I said bless me or block me 100 times as I tried to fall asleep.

But how could I sleep? Big things were happening. Namely, at 11pm, based on my credit card status, I could shop the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale, which is a big-ass deal. It’s bigger than the World Cup, the Emmy nominations, and the latest ICE murders combined, according to my algorithm, which has been hyping the sale for two weeks.

In my 53 years on planet earth, I’ve never paid any attention to this sale. But this year, all those perky influencers ensnared me by shouting that the “premium” denim and timeless cardigans would sell out.

Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, activates my nervous system like scarcity. Typing out the word makes me shake with anxiety.

That premium denim probably doesn’t even look good on my short-ass legs. They’re for Penelope Cruz, but don’t tell me I can’t have them, because then I must make them mine.

The problem is that you cannot buy shit-all from the Anniversary sale without your Nordstrom credit card, and I couldn’t find mine. At first, I wasn’t worried— my card number is saved in my computer because I’m a britch who cares not about cybersecurity. I care about scratching the itch and main-lining new shit to arrive on my porch.

But.

But.

The computer wanted the CVV code from the back of the card. Need the card for that. I panicked. Now it was midnight.

Bless me or block me— I said it and mostly meant it.

Only psychos call customer service at midnight and anyway, who was going to buy “my” platform Nike tennis shoes during the witching hour? The benevolent Higher Power who keeps my head out of the toilet one day at a time blessed the hell out of me by granting me a laziness too profound to ransack all my pockets and purses to find that damn card.

Thursday morning, I woke up tense. Had my loot had been snatched by savvier shoppers? (The Nikes? Gone.) My itchy hands dialed Nordstrom customer service seeking a solution. For 42 minutes, I wended my way through various portals. Lots of AI (“Nora,” as she introduced herself). The first actual human suggested I cancel the lost card and get a new one.

“Perfect! So what’s my new card number?”

“We can’t give that over the phone. You’ll get your new card in eight business days.”

“The sale’s over in three.”

“Let me transfer you.”

It turned into Groundhog Day. The fourth time I explained the situation, the rep tried to override “the system” so I could buy my stupid items with a basic VISA not a Nordstrom card. Guess what you cannot do during the Anniversary Sale? OVERRIDE THE SYSTEM.

More hold music, more flop sweat. While waiting, I did clamshells and IT band stretches to convince myself I was neither (1) wasting time, nor (2) totally fucking scooters.

I’m fine. This is normal behavior. I’m not materialistic— it’s all ON SALE. Also, bless me or block me but mostly bless me so I can get these treaty-treats!

Once you’ve spent 20 minutes trying to fix something, you can’t quit! What if the solution is only two minutes away?

You wait. You do a few squats, a set of lunges. You know you’re being blocked, as you prayed for, but you’re still fighting.

“Help. I’m in a toxic situationship with Nordstrom,” I said to my friend Caroline. “Also, the jeans are sold out so what’s the point of living, really?”

Caroline’s wise. She knows my squirrelly heart.

“Is it your vision to spend your morning chasing this stuff?”

IS THIS WHO YOU WANT TO BE?

My values are connection, creativity, being present, and being of service, not whatever you call doing clamshells while chatting with an AI Nordstrom rep.

I stayed on the phone with her until I opened the door to the coffee shop where I write—otherwise I might have absconded to Nordstrom to try to resolve the card issue in person like a shaky alcoholic sneaking off to a bar.

My fever broke. I went two minutes without thinking about my shopping cart. I wrote. I met my friend Cindy for lunch and as soon as we sat down, I burst into tears. Fat drops that scared the waitstaff away from our table for fifteen minutes.

“I’m tired and hot, and I hate summer, and my HRT hasn’t kicked in, and that Noah Kahan song, and we’re looking at colleges, and thing is, I don’t need new jeans—”

Cindy put her hand on my arm. “I know,” she said. “I know.” She had mother-tears of her own. We cried-laughed through our Manchego cheese salads and grilled octopus. I felt better. Better than any jeans could ever make me feel.

My first sponsor taught me this lesson when I was a nineteen-year-old bulimic new to recovery. “Christie, what would you have to feel if you weren’t obsessed with high-fat dairy content?”

Ah. Feelings. In this case, I’d been avoiding grief about letting my kids move into the big, wide world without me beside them. About how few summers you get with your kids and how few are left with your parents, and how lost you can feel even if you love your family and your work. It’s about loving so much it hurts, which makes no sense, and you wouldn’t want it any other way, but damn, let’s look at jeans— seems easier.

I truly love bless me or block me, even though I HATE TO BE BLOCKED. In this case I got both: the blocked credit card and the blessing of friends who touch my arm, get me to the coffee shop, and say, I know.

By my calculations: 20 minutes. Worth it. After about 12 minutes, I felt light-headed. The Coca-Cola cans lining my temporary home in the beverage aisle swayed. I squatted down and took a few deep breaths.

“You okay?” asked a woman with a high ponytail and a ton of applesauce in her cart.

“I’m pregnant.” I clarified because I was only 13 weeks and you couldn’t tell yet.

She grabbed a bottle of water off the shelf, twisted off the cap, and handed it to me.

“Drink this.”

I never want to get crosswise with a woman in a high ponytail, so I obliged and was restored.

I learned a lot that day, including to avoid the Chicago grocery stores on Sundays. For the past 18 years I’ve honored that lesson; my sweet spots for shopping are Mondays after work and Friday mornings.

Last Sunday, I gambled. Wasn’t everyone still bar-b-queing and boating on the Lake?

No, they were not.

They were buying all the food at Mariano’s on Chicago’s south side.

You can’t see the check-out lines from the entrance, so I blissfully selected cilantro and bananas. I wound my way through cheese and meat until I understood: those people sticking out of the aisles in the back of the store were waiting in line, like the nub of fatty tissues sticking out of the abdominal wall in an inguinal hernia.

What could I do? I’d committed. I had eggs, for God’s sake.

These lines were long enough to make a baby cry. Actually, lots of babies were screech-sobbing, and several adults were nodding like same, same. I chose the line by the floral department so I could enjoy the natural beauty of a carnation bouquet.

So many minutes went by. I cursed myself for forgetting my AirPods. I could have caught up on a few podcasts! All the podcasts!

“Ma’am,” said a guy around my age and his mother were in line in front of me. “We’re in the wrong line. This is the express lane.”

Holy fucking free-range eggs. The wrong damn line?

“Us too.” He offered a rueful laugh. “Follow us.”

I put my head down and followed this man and his mother through the floral department, behind the nut butters, and then suddenly we were the end of a new line that snaked by the pasta. I didn’t understand the physics of our line, but he nodded like We’ve got this.

His mother and I made small talk as you do at the grocery store. These lines! The price of, well, everything! Why aren’t these people at a bar-b-que! When they were bagged up and done, we waved at each other like soldiers released from the front.

I thought about a famous writer who once scream-Tweeted: YOU KIDS NEED TO GET THOSE EARPHONES OUT OF YOUR EARS! EXPERIENCE THE WORLD! At the time, I bristled at this Pulitzer-prize winning author telling me not to listen to Armchair Expert as I ran my errands.

Anyway, now I’m old and not mad at her anymore because she was right.

I prepared to load my groceries onto the belt, flush with stranger-affection. I offered to let the guy behind me go first, because he had a handful of items.

“No, go ahead,” he said. “I’ll be done soon enough.” Okay, Buddha.

Then, he helped me unload all of the groceries from the lower level of my cart. Seriously, Buddha, is that you?

Who are these wonderful, socially-minded helpers? My good lord. I left there in such a good damn mood that I may go back every Sunday; it’s like Church with longer lines and more fresh fruit. I certainly learned plenty about being neighborly, helpful, and part of a community. I’ll praise that every day and extra on Sunday!

The next best thing to a road trip is Road Trip Literature. I’ve got a list of new favorites, and we’re going in descending order, because you’re busy (Happy Birthday, America!) and maybe you don’t feel like scrolling down, down, down to see what I have anointed as the Best Road Trip Book of the first half of 2026.

Monster of a Land, Lauren Hough. First of all, a perfect cover. The color, the dog, the reflection of the highway in his glasses. Chef’s kiss.

I loved Hough’s first book, the NYT bestselling Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing, so I knew I’d love the voice and the premise of her new work. Boy howdy, the voice does not disappoint: Early in her travels, she’s annoyed at the pressure she feels to answer texts from friends and family checking up on her. “This is the sort of thing I complain about because I’m an asshole. People care about me. Poor me.”

Hough shoots straight. There’s no virtue signaling or prettying up her opinions, and she’s got a lot of them, which can be irksome/exhausting in other writer’s work, but not here. I appreciated her take on everything, including but not limited to traffic, prisons, toll roads, screens, dogs, American healthcare, living abroad, cults, therapy, family of origin, Portland, and border patrol. There’s no pretention, no hand-wringing about saying things the “right” way (though it’s clear she cares about writing honestly and well, and she nails both). Maybe it’s because of her background— raised in a cult, had a former career as an airman in the U.S. Air Force and as a cable guy, former fulltime resident of her car— but it might be because Hough is just cooler than me, which is obvious in nearly every sentence.

I also appreciate Hough’s refusal to lean on boring-ass stereotypes about people or regions. She described all of the folks she encountered as real people, not cartoons. As she writes in her Substack, Bad Reads:

“I wrote a book about a road trip and I didn’t want to do the thing everyone seems to do— drive around the South and make fun of poor people. I’ve done it. It feels like shit because it’s cruel and it’s fucking lazy. . . When I talked about bad teeth, I did it in Wisconsin. So there wouldn’t be another goddamn drive through Arkansas and mention their teeth like there’s fuckall people can do when they can’t afford a dentist.” Her passage about her own struggle with dentistry is one of the most powerful in the book, which is not short on powerful scenes.

Finally, when I die, I’d like to come back at one of Hough’s dogs. I’ve never seen anyone love anyone or anything as much as Hough loves her dogs, both her current traveling companion, Woody, and all of his predecessors. I’m not a dog person, but damn, her care and tending to Woody during her road trip made me pull up the Animal Rescue website in Chicago!

American Rambler, Isaac Fitzgerald. This cover sings too! Swoon. I love maps and worn out boots.

This book is truly rollicking— Fitzgerald set out to follow in Johnny Appleseed’s footsteps. (Confession: I thought Johnny Appleseed was fictional, like Paul Bunyan. But he existed. Real name: John Chapman). The Appleseed angle entertained me because I’m from Texas, and we’re obsessed with Sam Houston, Jim Bowie, and Davey Crockett. If you’re a Texan Robert Caro fan, maybe you're fascinated by LBJ. But I never heard much about Johnny Appleseed— maybe if he’d been named Johnny Ribeye or Johnny Brisket, the Texan grammar school curriculum might have covered him.

Sometimes I feel suspicious that writers have trumped up an adventure so they have something to write about. Maybe that’s true of Fitzgerald— this book follows his debut memoir, Dirtbag, Massachusetts— but it worked for me. Plus, he’s clear up front: His life was a bit of a mess (break up, lack of direction, financial woes), so he turned to walking the path of an American legend to allay his angst.

Fitzgerald does a lot of walking, and along the way, he digresses about the history of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and offers obscure facts about events I’d never heard of, which is good because KNOWLEDGE. You will learn more about John Chapman than you ever wanted to know. Fitzgerald writes about the people he meets in bars and at festivals, and at various Johnny Appleseed-inspired venues, including an H&M in a Fort Wayne mall where there’s a huge Johnny Appleseed statue right there next to the crop tops and midi skirts!

Fitzgerald is a good-hearted, curious, good-time guy, puzzling through existential questions at midlife. His questionable decisions (and hygiene at certain points) make his story a pleasurable ride for a reader like me who frets about her sugar intake, her sleep score, her daily step count. Not Fitzgerald. Like Hough, he writes without pretension and with great compassion for and curiosity about the people he meets and the land he sleeps on. He’s not out there calling his body a vessel and tracking his macros, which is good, because who wants to read that guy’s book? Fitzgerald’s openness is his great virtue. That, and he’s unafraid to show himself shitting his pants, taking drugs with locals, or praying at church. I’d love to have a cup of 7-11 coffee and a day-old taquito with him.

Who Needs Friends, Andrew McCarthy.

McCarthy is no Fitzgerald. He’s not sleeping on the ground or swigging one too many beers. McCarthy is ordering hot tea and checking out of hotels early if they’re sketchy. He’s married with three kids, and he was once a Hollywood heartthrob. But financially stable folks are allowed to go on road trips and write about them too!

McCarthy’s road trip takes him across the country as he reconnects with male friends from whom he drifted as marriage and fatherhood tookover his life. He’s motivated to rekindle friendships, but also? He was getting a little weird, and his family called him out.

“[M]y introspection, my introversion, my avoidance had begun to chip away at the edges of who I was and narrow my experience, diminish my joy, limit what I had to offer and what I allowed myself to receive . . . my self-induced isolation was diminishing my life, making me into a smaller man.”

Damn, Andrew, hit the freaking road.

McCarthy wants to do better and be better. He wants to reverse his slow slip into the curmudgeon life. This self-betterment is the engine for his trip, and it’s hard not to admire.

The pleasure of this book is watching the introverted McCarthy put himself out there in Texas, Ohio, and elsewhere, by approaching groups of unfamiliar men and asking them about their friendships. As he gathers stories about life-long male friendship, he makes the case for close connections, which the Surgeon General says we all need if we don’t want to die prematurely.

“If the cancer doesn’t get ya, the loneliness will kill ya dead.”— The Surgeon General probably.

As you might expect, McCarthy travels in higher style than any of the other authors on my list, but not so extravagantly that it’s off-putting: he likes decent food, and he has a certain hotel standard that somewhere between the Four Seasons and van life.

I interviewed McCarthy at an event outside of Chicago this spring. (He drove himself!) He was kind, soft-spoken, and self-effacing; he wore a collared sweater like a hot professor. On a stage in a beautiful chapel, he talked about male friendship from a dozen angles. When it was time for audience questions, an enthusiastic woman a Weekend at Bernie’s t-shirt shot her air into the air. “Where is Judd Nelson, and when will there be a St. Elmo’s Fire reunion?” Poor McCarthy has to answer questions like that all day long, even though his books about his post-Bratpack-era are New York Times bestsellers.

Who Needs Friends is a well-written, tender account of what it actually looks like to show up at your friend’s house and say, “Remember me? Wanna get lunch?”

Adult Braces, Lindy West.

When this book came out a few months ago, I couldn’t wait to jump into the hot debates. However, the steep funding cuts at the Chicago Public Library thwarted me, as my copy was listed by the library system as “in transit” for eight weeks. By the time I read it, everyone had moved on to Belle Burden financial forensics and making Yesteryear their entire personality.

This book has been dissected thoroughly because of West’s marriage, how her husband interacted with readers/journalists covering the book, and her decision to practice polyamory.

When I read the book, I was shocked to find that the book covered a lot more than whether she would stay with her husband, who’d always been honest about his nonmonogamy. What about the van she outfitted for the trip? What about her description of rolling into a campsite after dark as a woman traveling alone? What about the care package that Samantha Irby and her wife made her when she visited them? West’s family history also fascinated me, and some of her jokes made me laugh out loud.

I have my quibbles with West’s book, but they are less about the decisions she makes in her marriage. I did get the sense that this road trip was contrived, and West seemed to feel pressure to be self-actualized and filled with confidence at the end because LOOK! I DROVE A VAN FROM SEATTLE TO FLORIDA! Her proclamations of self-rah!rah! did not comport with my experience, which is that it takes so much more and so much longer to heal from a lifetime of codependence in relationships, romantic and otherwise. One road trip? I fucking wish. Also, as someone in recovery from an eating disorder, I didn’t agree with her descriptions of food addiction or how recovery works. I’m testy about that, though I recognize West is entitled to her opinion. It’s certainly better to have a description of food addiction that I don’t agree with than no description at all.

I’m always grateful to West for her frank discussion of what it feels like to live in a fat body in a culture that hates fatness. Her book confirmed my conviction that codependence and disordered eating often show up together like twin strands in a lethal noose.

I enjoyed reading about how much West loves being in the water/swimming. That’s an activity I loathe, but she writes about it so beautifully that I almost wanted to take my new hypothetical dog (Thanks, Hough) to the Lake to romp in the waves. I enjoyed seeing how well her friends (and friends of friends) loved her and supported her pleasure and joy. I also love any book that gives a behind-the-scenes look at a Hollywood writing room.

West has a lot to offer readers, and I will be all in on a book that tracks genuine healing and nuanced thinking about politics, sexuality, and recovery.

**

Other excellent road trip books:

Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck (the inspo for Hough’s book):

The Great Offshore Grounds, Vanessa Veselka

Sing, Unburied, Sing; Jesmyn Ward

Lost Children’s Archive, Valeria Luiselli

Between Two Kingdoms, Suleika Jaouad

Road to Tender Hearts, Annie Hartnett

The first time I experienced that amazement for my own body should have happened when I got my first period (nope) or when my breasts sprouted (definitely not, ballet dancer here) or when my acne cleared up senior year in high school (too much going on for gratitude). Certainly, having a baby grow in my uterus, kick me in the ribs, and then feed herself from my body would have been a natural point to pause and give my body some flowers. I wish. I was too neurotic during pregnancy to dabble in awe, and I was too exhausted and sore (and neurotic) during breast-feeding to linger in gratitude.

My daughter’s various milestones, however, must have prepared me to feel some of that great reverence for myself. Eighteen months after she was born, I was nine months pregnant with her brother. I was still neurotic, but slightly chiller because my toddler daughter kept me busy. Plus I’d done the pregnancy thing before. True awe arrived one morning at the gym where I’d gone to walk a few slow miles on a treadmill before work. I finished my walk, weathered a few Braxton-Hicks, and then felt a tingling in my abdomen. It was like a fairy godmother waved a wand over my body; Disney-esque tinkling music played.

In the bathroom, I discovered that the term “mucus plug” is aptly named. I burst into tears because my body had not done any of the going-into-labor things I’d been reading about with my first pregnancy. No plug, no “bloody show,” no water breaking. When I ended up with a C-section and a touch of post-partum depression, I was pissed at my body for not cooperating and giving me the birth I’d dreamed of.

But now with my son, my body was doing all of the strange-but-totally-normal-and-sorta-disgusting-but-we-shouldn’t-admit-that-because-BIRTH!-IS!-BEAUTIFUL!-AND-NATURAL! and I was floating on air. I told everyone I saw that day about my mucus plug, and I can’t say my boss thought that was appropriate or that the dry-cleaner attendant wanted to hear one more word about it, but damn, when the body works, it truly is a fucking miracle, and sometimes miracles come with a side of Ew!

It’s been a minute since I had a real jolt of the Goddamns the body is a miracle.

Then, I had a hot flash.

Is there any way to talk about a hot flash without sounding falsely cheery and inauthentically empowered because I have no fucks left to give to the patriarchy? (I’m afraid I might still give the Big P a few more fucks because I’m a Southern people pleaser for whom change is long and hard.) The other option, I guess, is to be angry and put-out that the world doesn’t properly recognize women in this stage of life (or any other, amIright?) or indignant that no one told me this could happen. Thing is, they did, plus there’s the world wide web around to fill in any blanks.

When that first hot flash struck— I was sitting in my office typing an email— I took off my sweatshirt. I felt my cheeks with the back of my hands. I gulped some water. Then, it was over. Like a wave or a sneezing fit. I looked around the room. Did that really happen?

One second, I felt like the hot coils in my toaster over, and then I was slipping my arms back through my sweatshirt, finishing the email.

What the fuck was that? I wondered. It happened again a few times that afternoon.

“Are you hot?” I asked my daughter, who peeked her head out of her thick cotton hoodie.

“No, it’s freezing in here.”

That’s when I knew. Hot flashes: Welcome to my perimenopausal journey.

According to the one deeply unscientific entry I perused, a hot flash happens because my brain knows my body’s done with the baby-making so it’s rewiring (shutting down) those parts of my body and putting that energy elsewhere. Hopefully channeling that energy toward something cool like learning ancient Greek or perfecting a recipe for a non-alcoholic mint julep.

I’m fascinated by these temperature surges the same way I was enthralled when my kid learned to roll over.

Now when my body heats up, I see a string of images in my mind: a campfire log at the height of s’more making, the biggest burner on my stove heated for boiling water, the sun, Idris Elba. I’m a sliver of the sun, a patch of hot Texas asphalt at high noon. I’m one with the prongs of my blow-dryer when I spend too long drying my hair. I’m the curling iron, the clothes iron, the iron used to make horseshoes at the heritage festival designed to teach kids about “the olden days.” I’m hot sand on a Mexican beach in mid-June. I’m the curled edges of a wrapping paper thrown into the fire on Christmas morning. I’m the sleeve of the J.Crew jacket I accidently burned when I reached over a lit candle. I’m the bowl my daughter microwaved on high for five minutes because her ice cream was too cold. I’m the steaming plate of eggplant parmesan at La Scarola that I blew on for three seconds thinking it wouldn’t burn all the skin off the roof of my mouth (I thought wrong; it took it all). I’m the first sip of an espresso in Positano, the first bite of a margherita pizza in Naples, the first nibble of cheesy gnocchi in Rome.

I’m hot, and then it passes.

It’s fascinating and a little freaky.

It’s not the end of the world or the beginning of a WHOLE! NEW! EXISTENCE! At least not so far. It’s a novel somatic experience that I’d like to talk about without invoking all the tired old ideas (crone lore!) or false insistence that all that old baggage doesn’t exist and it’s super easy to re-write eons of cultural programming that stands between me and genuine appreciation and adulation of my body. I’d like to spend a minute observing and feeling before rushing off to make it stop and tricking myself into thinking I’m not getting older.

A good ending is hard to land. When I write essays, I often have to lop off the last three paragraphs because I’ve gone on too long. It’s like I’m afraid what I’ve offered isn’t enough, so I eke out a few more ideas in case the actual essay missed the mark. It’s like serving weird side dishes like Coleslaw or broccolini au gratin thirty minutes after I served seared salmon with couscous and an arugula salad. In relationships, I often go an extra few years because it’s too hard to say: “You’ve hemmed my pants unevenly for two years, so I’ll be seeking another tailor.”

Conflict avoidance is real and makes good endings nearly impossible. See ghosting.

The best TV ending is the final scene between Hannah and Adam in Season Six of Girls. I think about it at least three times a day. The perfection of them sitting across from each other at that diner, dreaming about how Adam will help Hannah raise her son: they’ll get a bigger place, and hey, maybe they’ll get married because it’s easier to get housing if you're married. Hannah’s (Lena Dunham) eyes fill with tears, and then Adam (Adam Driver) wells up because they both know they aren’t good together, and there’s a world of difference between making an oral vision board over grilled cheese and doing your toxic tango all over again only this time with a baby in the mix. When Adam says, “good soup,” and it’s clear this meal is the only thing separating them from goodbye forever, I feel every goodbye-lump in my throat I’ve ever said: every time I hugged my Grandma goodbye, every boyfriend who left Texas for Duke Law School, every son who went on a week-long trip to Orlando with the baseball team (and “forgot” to text us for three days), every friend who moved away, every funeral Mass and every minor and major realization about the inexorable passage of time. Sometimes, when I’m trying to end something— a phone call, a meal, a tirade about iPhone updates— I’ll whisper to myself, “good soup,” as a signal to wrap it the F up.

The first time I was devastated by the perfect ending of a movie: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. As a sensitive child of twelve, I had no business watching Jack Nicholson in this perfect if absolutely traumatizing story about a group of men in an insane asylum. I held it together through the suicide, but when Chief smothers Mac, I lost my ever-loving mind. My parents came home from a night out and found me sobbing in confusion: I was happy Chief (Will Sampson) escaped, but inconsolable that he felt compelled to take Mac’s life after realizing that all of his Mac-ness had been surgically removed. It didn’t help that I’d developed sexual feelings for Mac, and now he was dead because of that terrible Nurse Rachet (Louise Fletcher). “It was just a movie,” my dad said, gently suggesting that in the future I should stick to The Love Boat. We did not discuss how I could ever go back to Love Boat after discovering the genius of Miloš Forman. For weeks, I thought of that scene at bedtime and got upset all over again.

A bad ending is when you show up at your favorite store and find the door locked and bedecked with a cryptic sign: Sorry, this location closed forever. Looking at you, Anthropologie in Block 37 in Chicago. Also bad: When Trader Joe’s suddenly ceases to stock your favorite probiotic soda or tri-colored package of raisins. (Someone needs to tell Trader Joe’s that employing the French Exit on their products is cruel and inhumane.)

A good ending is when the Marshall’s in your neighborhood puts out neon signage about their last day weeks in advance so you can prepare, emotionally and financially. Good literary ending: Nick Carraway musing over Jay Gatsby’s lethal fixation on Daisy or Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad — all those diagrams and the PowerPoint presentation! My God, I was sitting on an exercise bike when I read that and damn near fell off.

Endings are always churning toward us. I want them all to be good, and I want to be good in them. Like when my kids go to college, or when my parents’ advanced age forces a transition that feels impossibly scary and wholly unwelcome. I’d like Willie Nelson to give me at least eight weeks’ notice before he sloughs off his mortal coil, and I’ll need my therapist to give me a five-year warning before retirement. I probably won’t get exactly what I want in these scenarios, but I hope my study and appreciation of good endings will help me be direct, present, and communicative. I hope there’s good soup.

No one likes a braggart! Don’t be too big for your britches! Don’t toot your own horn!

Since I was a wee child wearing striped turtlenecks ala Bert & Ernie in Miss Hunter’s kindergarten class, I’ve been socialized to never brag and to side-eye anyone who does. You weren’t supposed to brag about your good grades or your ballet solo or your parents’ windfall that meant the snacks in your pantry went from generic ho-hos to Hostess cupcakes. I remember the hot flash of rage I felt when Rachel Morris bragged that our second-grade teacher, the moon-faced and big-hearted Sister Annell, gave her a Tootsie Pop for helping pass out papers during recess. I would have passed out those papers— I hated recess and loved candy! And I would have never bragged about it.

All this don’t-brag training gave way to the humble brag of the early aughts, which taught us that while bragging was distasteful, the disingenuousness of pretending you weren’t, well, that was worse. My first experience of the humble-brag: I took my infant son and eighteen-month-old daughter to the park. I was still bleeding, still puffy, and had no idea when my last shower was or when I’d ever get any REM sleep. A neighbor in a flowy white dress had kids roughly the same age. She swanned over to me and told a story that sounded like this: “The baby weight fell off me so fast I had to race out to Bloomies to get a new wardrobe. So annoying to spend nap time looking for size twos.” Hostile. Very hostile.

One of the most memorable humble brags: a friend, ostensibly complaining about “kids today,” told a story that involved parking her blah-blah-class Mercedes (important fact?) in front of Barney’s (relevant?) and how the twenty-something valet scratched it. Did I want to say, “Can you hear yourself?” Of course. Are we friends today? No. Is it related to that story? Yes, but I still want to argue for a certain kind of bragging.

I recognize that bragging meant to cover up ancient insecurity or to prove your own worthiness often backfires because it turns people away. It makes everyone else at the table shift in their seats and pass looks that convey: oh, we will discuss this later.

But in our attempt to shame away bragging, we’ve swept away all the roads to sharing personal wins. And I genuinely want to know about other people’s victories— essays published, cases won, half marathons completed, promotions earned. Some of my sweetest moments in life are witnessing my friends’ triumphs. I know how long and hard K practiced for her swim test. I know what L’s new job meant to her and her family. I remember when R couldn’t go six hours without bingeing and then she put together two months of food sobriety. In each case, my pals were so afraid of bragging they whispered victories that deserved full-volume shouts.

When I asked a friend why she wasn’t saying more about one of her tremendous professional victories, she said, “I’m afraid of being too much.” She shuddered at the thought of it.

Too many of us are walking around, worried about being “too much,” whispering when we could be cheering.

Let’s normalize sharing happy news. If you’re talking about your own accomplishments, I want to hear about them all day long. Give me the nitty gritty— how long you dreamed, how hard you worked. Tell me what it means to you to have reached this goal. Maybe you got a surprise success that you didn’t work that hard for, but you’re surprised and grateful nonetheless. Please pull up a chair and spill the tea; your story may be shorter, but it’s worth celebrating.

Don’t we all need more to celebrate in our lives?

If I’m being honest, I have less appetite in general for bragging about third parties— your children, your grandchildren, your spouse. But I can work with any of those if you tell me about the role you played: did you drive the child to practice? pay for lessons? pray for good outcomes for the person you love so much? Punch a pervy coach in the kisser? You too can dive into the bragging pool— I invite you to talk about yourself and what it all means to you.

Tell me about it! I’m especially interested in any complicated feelings you have about it: Was there let down? Are you afraid people hate you a little bit now? Feeling scared to tell the friend who wanted the thing as badly as you did? Are you not sure what to aim for now or what to wear in your new identity? Of course, I want to hear plain old joy, but I’m up for the side dishes too.

Risk the brag. Say a little bit more about the good thing you did/earned/won. I betcha people want to hear about it more than you think.

“I can’t look at the reel you sent because I’m bricked.”

Laughter all around from the teenagers in my house, as well as a few on Facetime with my children. Apparently, it’s hilarious that I don’t know that “bricked” is a synonym for having an erection.

Whatever, kids, laugh it up. I don’t care because ever since we installed a brick device in our home, I’ve gone days at a time without social media. DAYS. I’m as healthy as I’ve been since I held my first smart phone in my hands in 2009.

How it works: You get this little gray square (brick) and then decide what apps to block. Then you pick the hours you will not have access to those apps. My drug of choice is Instagram/Threads so I blocked those every day from 9-5. Now when I stroll to the bathroom or wait for my lunch to heat up, I can’t aimlessly look at outfits from the Tonys or “enjoy” a reel with tips for parents of rising seniors. I have to simply be alone with my thoughts, God help me.

What’s genius about the brick is that it leverages my laziness because you have to tap your phone on the brick to get access to any apps you blocked. Insta and Threads do not magically appear on my phone just because it’s 5pm. No, your girl has to open the app and tap her phone on the brick that’s in our family room on the first floor. But I always forget because I have things to do at 5pm, and then, it’s time to deal with dinner and grill my children about their days. When all that’s over, there are dishes to do and couches to collapse upon. By the time I get upstairs for some good old-fashioned scrolly time, I’ve forgotten to unbrick. I may walk 10,000 steps a day and train for a marathon, but hell naw, I’m not going downstairs to tap my phone on the Brick. I’m done climbing the stairs for the day.

The real kicker was that I went on a three-day trip and forgot to unbrick, and I didn’t bring the damn Brick with me, so guess what? Three days went by without any social media. Then, I got home and forgot for two more days.

Have I felt less agitated? Less like my heart is a Pringle that could snap in half because influencers are yelling at me to (1) go on a GLP-1, or (2) get the F off a GLP-1, or (3) lift heavy weights, or (4) stop wearing my shirt untucked, or (5) join the conversation around grief/perimenopause/the ballroom/making art/fighting fascism/eating protein/hating Mega-corporations/that trad wife book/that book about the open marriage/that dumb thing that author said? Yeah, I do. My heart is slowing growing back into the pulpy, fleshy beating fist it was always meant to be!

(This is not a sponsored post, in case that wasn’t obvious.)

Before the brick came into my life, I didn’t think I could live without reading Roxane Gay’s Threads, and I couldn’t imagine looking away from the latest writer-feuds and meltdowns— and there have been some doozies this spring. One of my favorite internet personalities is a Wisconsin woman (Emily Day:: Slow Slimmer) who has lost over 120 pounds, and I love her so much, mostly because she calls Trader Joe’s “Trader Jizz,” and it makes me laugh EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Anyway, I felt like I was letting her down by not looking at her videos— HAHAHA, most of her videos have 200,000 views—and I’m sure Roxane and Debbie Millman were like “Where the hell did Christie Tate go? She hasn’t hearted any of our posts/comments in days.”

Right.

So, anyway, I’m lazy and now I have a totally healthy relationship to social media.

The irony, of course, is that the Brick was supposed to be for the kids so they could “lock in” during their study time. This reminds me of the time I went to a certain support group to see if it would be good for my friend Evie, and I ended up staying for three years.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears. My teacher is a little gray square, smaller than a pack of gum.

**

Side note: Last time, I wrote about a runner dressed as a taco during a 10 mile race. Ya’ll— yesterday I ran a half-marathon because my friend SM had a bib for the race but couldn’t run. So there I was, standing at the starting line in SM’s bib, and who did I see? THE TACO RUNNER. Apparently, he runs all the races in Chicago, and I’m obsessed. One day I will meet him and thank him for his service. It was a hot, unshady day, but the west side of Chicago showed up for all of us, mile after mile. Congrats to everyone who ran, everyone who opted not to run because of the heat, to the sweet little girl with cowbells who gave me a high five at mile 11, and to the volunteers who handed out water and NUUN for hours in the heat. Also, to my hubs who ran miles 8-11 with me, regaling me with funny work stories he’d saved up for those hot, hard miles.

Chicago summer never disappoints.

Ugh I’m not ready.

I definitely can’t do this.

Wait, my ankle already hurts.

I’m too old.

Is my foot septic yet?

What if the post-race bananas are full of brown spots?

Mostly, I obsessed about my socks and berated myself for pretending to be a “real” runner when I have such subpar, shitty socks that I bought at a Marshall’s close-out sale. So, I’m not a real runner, and I’m real cheap. Great.

Thank God the damn horn sounded, and it was Corral G’s turn fly down the lakefront path to greatness.

Quickly, we settled into a rhythm. I found myself behind a guy dressed as a taco. I can’t begin to fathom the whimsy that induces one to run for over 90 minutes dressed as a taco. But I knew this: I wanted to follow him.

I adopted Taco as my personal pace leader at the mile 1 marker. A few times, I was tempted to surge ahead to get through a clump of runners, but I held back. Don’t get greedy.

At the water station at mile four, I couldn’t resist. I put on a little gas. Vroom vroom. I passed Taco, despite wondering if it was a good idea to “surge” so early in the race.

Taco showed up again at mile five, where he passed me, and POOF! I lost sight of him completely and forever. There’s a reason greed is one of the seven deadlies.

My husband jumped into the race at mile 4.2— a joyful surprise, as I’d left him sleeping hours earlier. We chatted— kids still asleep? is the electrician coming at noon? — which slowed me down a bit, but when your husband, a non-runner, jumps into a race to support you, you gotta dig deep and ask a few preguntas about the household.

But then he peeled off, and I was alone and Taco-less. I searched for new moorings. As the person who turned people on (and off, actually) group therapy, of course I delighted in joining a group running behind a pace leader. They made it possible for me to enjoy miles five through eight. I thought of the African Proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together,” which is my personal motto (along with Keep the Hole Open). Left right, left right, I kept my eyes on the pace leader’s hot pink tennis shoes. I could have run many, many miles with this group.

But then I got the surgies again, and off I went, spiritually donning a Taco costume.

Sometimes, you gotta be the Taco you need to see in the race.

Then my thoughts turned philosophical. I knew I’d finish the race, even though it had seemed impossible at miles 1, 3, 5, and 6. Why didn’t I know or believe sooner that I’d finish just fine? And why is that thinking oh so familiar? I have it in every area of my life: Writing a book seems impossible, but then I have a first draft, and then an eighth, and then an agent. (For the purposes of this essay, we are pretending no writer has ever compared running to the artistic process. Obvi Murakami does not exist in the world of this essay.)

Going on a trip, finding a house near my kids’ school, making it through my daughter’s theater tech week, planning a writing workshop, moving through a phase or a feeling or a season of life— impossible. Can’t be done. I’ll die on this couch upset about THIS thing, having never tasted the sweetness of life after THIS pain. Even though so many impossibles flipped to realities of my life, I still need to stick my hand in Jesus’ wounds because I doubt. When I toe that starting line, I’m being dead-ass serious when I say, “I can’t do it.”

At home, I perused the race results, checking to see if any of my enemies had run the race and whether they were faster (they hadn’t and therefore weren’t). I looked at my own results, studying my age group and wondering how Diane from Palatine, Illinois, age 54, can run 10 miles at a seven-minute-per-mile pace. WTF is in Diane’s creatine?

Was the race was a metaphor? Yes, but if I’d spent the morning birding, then spotting cardinals and mockingbirds would serve as the metaphor.

The race confirmed what I already know: I have self-defeating thoughts. I do okay if I take it one step at a time. Groups help me accomplish my goals. I appreciate tacos. A great playlist improves my mood by 12%. I sometimes mis-prioritize speed over connection. If someone offers Gatorade or water, I should accept. I may always draw tortuous conclusions about who’s “real” as a writer or a runner, but who cares because either way I have to get to work. Socks really aren’t that big of a deal.

The race was impossible, but then there was a medal around my neck.

I can’t explain it but I praise it.

I’d had plenty of experience with love triangles by the late 1980s. The boys I crushed on liked my best friend S. That’s how I remember it, though maybe it was just one guy named Aaron who now sells commercial real estate in Scottsdale and posts extremely inflammatory political memes.

So, I loved Aaron, because what the fuck did I know? No one told me he was going to turn out to be a total crackpot who loved desert living. He had thick hair that flopped to one side; he acted mean, but I suspected he was actually sad, which was the kind of boy I loved until I got some goddamned therapy.

The love triangle was unpleasant because unlike the plot of Some Kind of Wonderful, Aaron didn’t ditch the hot girl and decide he was in love with me. Though in fairness, I didn’t wear fingerless gloves. By the time I dated my first real boyfriend, who was not sad at all, but extremely mean, I forgot all about Aaron. The love triangle was a thing of the past.

Friendship triangles took so much longer to get over. I took that shit into adulthood. So much in fact that I wrote a whole book about it.

High school triangles: I remember that night at E’s house feeling like the weak link because I didn’t share their amazing taste in music. Think The Jesus & The Mary Chain, Throwing Muses, Psychedelic Furs. I favored the Fame soundtrack and Carole King, which would have been cool (maybe) if it was 1973. My indie cred stopped at Depeche Mode’s Somebody, which I played to cry myself to sleep because a boy like Aaron would never want to kiss me. E and L played songs I’d never heard of, laughing about this drummer and that bassist. I was fifteen— I didn’t know how to be curious. “So, tell me more about these Pixies.” To be clear, they weren’t power-tripping or enjoying my isolation; they were not mean girls freezing me out. They were friends enjoying their shared interest, but all I knew how to do was wallow in my un-coolness.

Fine, I was a teenager. Teenagers are supposed to have all kinds of wacky relationships while their brains solidify. The friendship triangles I got up to as an adult were just as painful, some more so. I celebrated my thirtieth birthday obsessing about why my two best friends, M and E, were going to Europe without me. They had the gall to plan their trip right in front me. It’s like they thought I was an adult who could manage her emotions. Plus, it’s possible I was invited but couldn’t go because I was taking the Bar exam. I imagined them flitting through France buying antique friendship rings they had engraved: hahaha we’re so glad Christie isn’t here!

When I recovered from that situation, I stumbled into a minor-but-still-annoying triangle with two moms from my daughter’s school. We’d take our daughters to lunch, and the other two mothers would huddle together making carpool plans and talking about their shared neighborhood news. Again, I could have been curious or enjoyed the break from being social to kick back and enjoy my Cobb salad. Instead, I felt awkward and annoyed they’d included me when they seemed so happy doing their own thing. It seemed rather rude and hurtful for them to spend our lunch time conducting business that only concerned them. Now, I want to reach back into that booth and whisper in my sweet, misguided ear: “Sweetie, none of this personal. See that bacon bit? Put it in your mouth and get your head out of your ass.”

Recently, I realized I’ve gained enough skills to manage— and ENJOY— all kinds of friendship triangles. Every Thursday morning, I have coffee with two friends. They’re both men so they have male privilege and testosterone management in common. Sometimes, they go on tangents about etymologies or ancient texts, and by God, I let myself sip my coffee and LISTEN. I’m not bothered by their shared passion for whatever the fuck they’re going on about. Sometimes I’m curious, and sometimes I simply wait for the conversation to veer back toward me, like a ski lift I can hop on when the timing is right.

And it’s not just with men. Last week, I had dinner with two friends. During our three hours together, I noted dozens of connections that only involved two of us. D and E have a deep knowledge of the art world and have opinions about flying private. Reader, I can absolutely crush an errand involving crafts at Michael’s, and I book a Southwest flight on my phone, but I cannot meaningfully contribute to conversations about Art Basel and wouldn’t begin to know what to say about a private jet beyond “Do they serve cashews?”

I listened and marveled at the differences in our lives and withheld jokes about private jet crashes, because I’m only human and, at times, charmingly bitter. A few minutes later, talk turned to a couple we all knew who had opened their marriage, and E and I agreed we were raised too Catholic to practice polyamory. We bonded over the religion of our childhood, which E, who was born in Israel, does not share.

This is the richness of life! I’m still quite stunned that I actually appreciate the friendship triangle. In some ways, I prefer it. There’s less pressure when you can share the burdens and blessings of friendship among three people.

I assume this change of heart is part of the wisdom of growing older. I have no collagen in my skin, but I also could give two shits if two people in my midst are closer to each other than to me. Tradeoffs. Maybe my change of heart is as boring as being more secure and knowing I can offer certain things, but certainly not everything in a relationship…. that’s what the other people are for. It’s certainly function of assuming others’ good intentions. That’s what was missing when I went out with those mothers: I dismissed them as impolite, but they were two busy, working mothers mapping out a complex schedule for school pick-up. They were being efficient! Why would I begrudge them the opportunity to iron out their plans when they were sitting side-by-side with their calendars?

If you would have told me during my tortured friendship triangle years (1978-2025) that one day I would one day celebrate being part of triad, I would have wondered what kind of psychedelic drugs existed in 2026. I’m so grateful I lived long enough to see this transformation. Long may it last!

I’m curious about Dunham’s touchiness about being called a nepo baby. I imagine the charge is extra-sensitive because some of her critics dissed Girls because it showcased its fair share of actors who had parents in show business. (see Allison Williams, Zosia Mamet, and Jemima Kirke, for starters). But those critics might have dissed Girls for something else had they not latched onto the nepo baby angle. For example, many criticized Dunham’s body, her frequent nudity on the show, the lack of diversity in the show, etc. The only way to combat the nepo baby charge is to do exactly what the cast did: Work hard and make compelling art.

Do I think Adam Driver is “better” or more deserving of his success because his mom was a paralegal and his step-father (who, according to Wikipedia, raised him) was a minister? I do not.

The nepo baby facts are fun tidbits of trivia I think about briefly before being absorbed into a story.

As for Dunham, she works so hard in Famesick to tell us that her parents were working artists (painters/photographers) who hustled to raise their two children in NYC. They thrifted! There were lean years and fat years! I certainly believe that her artist-parents were the opposite of stage parents who pushed their precocious kid toward the limelight. They honestly seem cool as hell for all the ways they stuck by Dunham through her fame and sickness, and all the messiness that both entailed. I’m envious of anyone raised in NYC, much less those who emerged with a distinct fashion sense, a hit HBO show, and the writing chops to land on the NYT bestseller list twice (and counting).

Of course, it would be infuriating to be charged with a crime you didn’t commit, but then again, her mother did place a pretty helpful phone call to the head of a huge talent agency when Dunham arrived in LA in her early twenties, not something many mothers could do.

My quibble is: So what if you are a nepo baby?

I love nepo babies. Some of my best friends are nepo babies. We all love nepo babies.

Don’t we love Jamie Lee Curtis? When you are in thrall to her performance in the “Seven Fishes” episode of The Bear, are you thinking, “Wow, she was the daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis. Shame, shame, shame”? NO! You’re thinking, holy shit, if that drunk lady doesn’t wash her hands before fingering more fish, I may hurl.

Do we love Tracee Ellis Ross only because of her super-star mother, Diana Ross? No, we love her because we can’t take our eyes off her on screen, her comedic timing is perfection, and her style on and off the red carpet is flawless. This interview about how she celebrated turning 50 is one I think about all the time.

Would I have whipped my hair less hard if Willow Smith’s parents were a laundry mat titan and a mason? Of course not. I whipped because that song was a banger, and I have a chronic neckache to prove it.

Isn’t Jesus Christ our most famous nepo baby? God could have sent any old rando down to earth to save us from our sins. But he sent his son, who was part-man and part-God. That’s nepotism, right?

Would I love Lena Dunham more if her parents were bankers or lawyers or chimney sweeps? It wouldn’t matter, because I love her writing. Girls arrived at an important time in my life, when I was living in a postpartum body I didn’t recognize. I was thrilled to see Lena Dunham’s naked body week after week with its tattoos, reassuring roundness, and its aggressively non-Super-Model proportions. For that alone, I don’t care if her parents were the Co-Heads of Television Programming for Planet Earth. I’d still love Lena Dunham and Girls. And for all the ways she mis-stepped, mis-spoke, mis-fired along the way? Honestly, they made me love her more. Miss me with your perfect public figures who never say stupid shit.

I’m not saying it’s fair that some people get a leg up, but I’m too old to moan about the fairness of the world. It’s not fair, full stop. Never will be. When I worked in law, there were plenty of lawyers who got into prestigious schools or earned plumb clerkships or landed in fancy law firms because of their family connections. I can no longer afford to burn up inside because shit isn’t fair. I need that flame for my own damn work. I’m happy to work for justice, but we will never eradicate the professional advantage that some folks have because of who their parents are.

One night I went to Thalia Hall in Chicago to hear Lukas Nelson play. Would I have gone if his father was anyone other than Willie Hugh Nelson, one of the greatest living songwriters? Hell no, it was a school night, and I was nearly five decades old. I admit : I’m drawn to Lukas Nelson because of who his father is, but I would not have left my house on a Wednesday night if Lukas couldn’t sing worth a shit.

If I’d had a dream of working in the rural Texas real estate market, I would have hit my dad up for tips and contacts, and he would have shared them freely. Same with my mom: If I’d decided to work in the billing department of a massively successful med-mal firm, then she would have shown me some ropes, if not THE ropes. And what if they were NYT best sellers, North Texas’ answer to Ann Patchett or Dani Shapiro? Would that have made it easier for me to become a writer? Maybe… once I got through all the intensive therapy to deal with my parents’ legacies and shadows. Can you imagine? Certainly, I might have had less internal resistance to the idea of Writer as a Full Time Job if my parents had worked as writers, but then I wouldn’t know anything about selling land in Ellis County, Texas, so I’m not sure how ahead I’d actually be. Maybe I would have gotten an MFA or understood the so called “long game” or weathered rejection with more grace. However, at the end of the day, every artist has to face the blank page alone, and it doesn’t matter what your parents accomplished.

Nepo babies have made work that has brought me great joy. I’m praising the ones whose art has enriched my life. I don’t need them to defend against the charge of “nepo baby,” and would be psyched if they turned their attention to making more great TV/films/books/performance art.

Also known as: If, during your daily life in Chicago, your relationship is riddled with tension, misaligned expectations, and the fraught communication of the deeply codependent, it will be similarly Swiss-cheesed in the Cayman Islands. Plus, now I had to watch my boyfriend’s mother compulsively washing towels every spare minute, and his brother drinking enough Red Stripe to drown all the parrots in the Caribbean.

You bet your bikini I dove into Flaubert’s Parrot to cope with my steadily rising panic about the health of my relationship. At some point, everyone in our party wandered back inside to get ready for dinner (wash some hand towels, drink some beer), but I stayed in my chair until I reached "the end” on page 208. The relationship I treasured most in the world was going up in flames, but I READ A BOOK IN A DAY!

My second book-in-a-day was Ruth Reichel’s Tender at the Bone: Growing up at the Table, her memoir about discovering that food was a way to make sense of the world. It was six months after my Flaubert’s Parrot binge; the Cayman Island boyfriend and I had decamped to a charming farmhouse in rural Illinois for the weekend. In the library, I found Reichel’s book and dove into it for similar reasons as I’d buried myself in Barnes’ book: to distract me from the decaying state of my relationship, which would last six more days.

People speak passionately about books that saved their lives, and I’m not quite saying that about Barnes’ and Reichel’s books. However, they soothed me through very difficult weekends when I lacked the skills to initiate an honest conversation about what I wanted. All I could do was read one sentence after another, each page I turned a prayer that somehow the ending to my own story would be different than my greatest fear, which was dying alone after a series of increasingly alcoholic relationships.

Gratefully, my stunted and unskilled twenties gave way to my thirties, a decade of therapy, recovery, and personal growth. As my life got bigger, I no longer needed to dissociate for entire days with paginated companions. In fact, the only occasions I had to read books in one sitting were on long flights for work. I’m grateful for the stories that kept this very fearful flyer from earning a spot on a federal list of Psychos Unfit to Fly. Those lifesavers included James Baldwin’s Just Above My Head; a Norwegian novel called The Grown-Ups by Marie Aubert (translated by Rosie Hedger); and Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford. Bangers all!

In December 2020, I experienced my first book-in-one-sitting while at home. I wasn’t under serious duress, though the pandemic continued to rage across the globe. I’d heard Kiese Laymon praise Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. When I looked up the cover, I felt whole-body shivers. I knew I would love it.

When it arrived a week later, I opened it immediately. Throughout the pandemic, I’d had trouble focusing, which muted my love of reading. I feared my passion was gone forever. But then those church ladies walked into my life, and I could not get enough. I remember holding the book while stirring pasta sauce, while waiting for a Zoom to start, while pretending to watch Downton Abbey with my kids. I loved it so much. Even more, I loved that reading was back, that I could still focus, and that I could be ecstatic about short stories, of all things. Philyaw’s short stories are not staid, literary slogs. No, they’re exuberant, colorful, rollicking, and original; they are also extremely sharp critiques of religion, piety, masculinity, and sexuality.

I still think of Deesha Philyaw as an angel whose work brought love of reading back to me. If you follow her on Threads, you might know that her bio says, “My existence is the clapback.” And you, like me, might enjoy her witty posts about her practice of blocking assholes who criticize Roxane Gay or for posting stupid things about writing/publishing. She may have the best boundaries in the literary world.

Also, she’s hilarious: Exhibit A is this McSweeney’s essay, and Exhibit B is this Thread:

Ms. Philyaw is on my mind because I got an early copy of her novel, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, coming in September. Ya’ll, this book is absolutely on fire from the very first word. I’m talking about the “Note” that precedes Chapter 1. She comes to play, and it’s clear on every single page. Her work is so singular, so one-of-a-kind, that I fear I disrespected this novel by not devouring it in a single sitting. If I didn’t have two teenagers who need to scoot around town for activities and such, I would have done it one gulp. I hope Lady Freeman will forgive me for stretching it over 48 hours.

Y’all this one’s a pre-order. Mega-church antics, a grown-lady pageant, and secrets! Delicious.

Praise, always, for the books that bring us through the dark days and those that guide us back to reading, the best place of all. Extra praise for Ms. Philyaw, one of the best to ever do it.

There’s an equally long list of items I’ve given up in the name of better mental hygiene: caffeine, late-night TV, the news, dieting, practicing law, raw-dogging perfectionism.

Oh boy, what about the things I’ve bought for mental health— now there’s a list. Candles, palo santo, Julia Cameron books, subscriptions to meditation apps, probiotics, t-shirts with empowering sayings, notebooks. God, so many notebooks. Tarot card sessions. And yes, I admit, there was a crystal phase— actually more of a moment, but still.

Most of the above bought incremental relief and, in some cases, appreciably greater serenity. But pound for pound, the best thing I’ve done for my mental health is to move across the street from an elementary school.

From my office window, I can see the entrance used by the littlest kids (pre-K through third grade) and the one for the fourth through eighth graders. Early drop off begins at 7 a.m., so as I’m writing my morning pages in my jammies, I watch parents dropping off their kids. One dad always arrives a few minutes early, so he and his daughter stand right by the door until the administrator lets them in. During the winter, it’s dark as night when these littles are starting their day. I know it’s a godsend for schools to offer early morning care, but I can’t help but wish all of them could get a little more shut-eye.

Watching the astronauts doing science in space is amazing, but have you watched two five-year-olds run into each other’s arms on the sidewalk and then walk into school holding hands? That’s Tuesday at my window. Sometimes, I’ll be pulling my hair out as I write a hard scene, stuck in clunky language and terrible metaphors, but then I’ll hear the squeal of little voices— children set free for morning recess. Glorious screaming, whistles blowing, and gates opening: the sound of youth set free from a classroom on a warm Chicago morning.

When school’s over for the day, there is even more raucous joy. Doors fly open, and children pour out with their backpacks and lunch boxes— sometimes they’re carrying art projects or books, trying to show their caregivers their wares as they walk to the car. Some of my favorite moments are at five p.m., when the late-day pick up begins. I’m probably projecting, but the parents look tired as hell they pull up to the curb and run in to grab their little ones. They’ve worked a full day, driven across the city, and now it’s time to parent through dinner and bedtime. Meanwhile, I’m the quirky lady across the street, taking it all in, hoping her teenagers will have anything at all they wanted to show her or say to her when they got home from school.

I love watching Dads pick up their sons and engage in avid conversation on the way to the car. Or Moms carrying kids, backpacks, coats, asking questions at the end of a long day. Nannies strapping kids into car seats, offering snacks. I see grandparents and sitters, getting on their knees to talk to children before and after their school days. There’s one mom who picks her kid up around 4:45 every afternoon, her car pumping out music so loud my whole body shakes. I always wonder if she’ll play the music that loud when her kid gets in, but she never does.

Recently, the beloved crossing guard passed away so there was a memorial in her honor, and from the looks of it, every single family attended. After, a makeshift memorial— posters, pictures, flowers, stuffies— was created next to the corner where she stood for many years helping kids get to school safely. A school that honors its Beloveds so publicly and thoroughly has to be doing something right. A lot right. Not sure if all the connection and joy I see shows up on test scores, but if they ever need a witness, I’ll take the stand.

This people watching is better than the Zoloft I took after I had both of my children!

It’s real life, flesh and blood, and it fills me with fizzy hope.

Do I love that my yard is littered on the daily with Takis bags and Carmello wrappers? I do not. Do I love that I can’t park on the east side of my street from 8:30-4:30 Monday through Friday? It’s not my favorite. Do I enjoy being unable to drive down my street during arrival and dismissal? Of course not. But those voices, those ecstatic embraces— they are giving me life. Don’t ask me what will happen to my mental health during the summer; for now, I’m praying this precious institution runs a robust summer school program.

If you get a chance to move this close to an elementary school, do not hesitate.

Other good news about schools:

1. Miracles unfolding in Mississippi schools from the NYT Daily podcast.

2. Chicago Public Schools have turned student IDs into library cards!

3. The good folks of Boston have turned an old school into affordable housing LGBTQ+ seniors.

“She’s moving rocks out back, but she’d love to say hello.”

Excuse me, she’s what?

It’s poor taste to tell someone else’s age, so I’ll just say that this firecracker who spent her 100-degree afternoon doing a little DIY landscaping project has celebrated 8 milestone birthdays. When I went out to say hello, her culottes were delightfully muddy at the knees, her sun bonnet sat on her head just so, and she was, indeed, moving some big-ass rocks from one end of the yard to the other. The heaviest thing I’d lifted all day was a giant iced coffee.

“Impressive,” I said and invited her to quit the chain-gang for a few hours and join me for brunch.

“Thanks, but I want to finish by sundown.”

I filed the image of her holding a river boulder in her hands under A for “aging like a fucking bad ass.”

A few months later, my family spent a long weekend in Colorado with my parents and some friends. One of those friends, who clearly hates my guts, suggested we go river-rafting. I can’t describe to you how much I never, ever want to raft in a river. I have my reasons: the water is cold (I’m scared), my kids aren’t fantastic swimmers (I’m scared), and I don’t want to picture all the terrible things that could happen on a river (see The River Wild (1994), starring Kevin Bacon and Meryl Streep who are taken hostage by armed fugitives while on a river-rafting trip; Deliverance (1972) (adapted from the novel by James Dickey (1970) about rapists terrorizing the Georgia River; the untimely death of RIVER PHOENIX).

Anyway, when you’re the scaredy-cat mom your options are to (1) stay home and imagine your family being swallowed by the gat-damned river, or (2) swallow your fears like your refrigerated probiotic pill and put on your life jacket. I knew I’d end up on the river but not before begging for a “gentle rapids” ride. Guess who overrode me? My father. Again, I won’t say his age, but he fought in Vietnam and passed the “spring chicken” phase of life a few decades ago. How rude of him to show me up with his, “Oh, we want some high-grade rapids! We aren’t scared!”

I spent the entire river trip holding onto the strap of his life jacket because I didn’t need to see him smash his head on a rock. Last thing I need is to call my siblings and report that Dad left his scalp on the Colorado River, my bad.

After the panic ebbed, what settled was pure admiration. I’ll never forget the look on my dad’s face when we faced those rapids.

There is so much bravery in these elders.

My mother-in-law, C, is planning to move to a new city five hours from the home she’s lived in for eight years. She wants more community, to be closer to family, and to try out a new scene in a whole other state. I’m in awe of her willingness to face all the annoying steps you must conquer to set up a new life: hiring real estate agents and movers; switching banks; setting up new utilities; dealing with the post office. She’s undaunted. “I’ve got this,” she says, excited about her interstate move.

My friend B’s father just bought himself a limited-edition Cadillac convertible, in which he toodles down Lake Short Drive in a little newsboy hat, dapper as you please. He’s pined for that car for many years and finally let himself have it when he’s in spitting distance of 90. I also met a woman in a recovery meeting who just turned 85 and is working on her first novel (“a romance, very steamy”). She told me she’d spent the morning cussing our rude teenagers on the green line, and I wish I could have seen those teens’ faces when she let them have it. That’s God’s work she’s doing.

In January, a woman crossing the street next to me told me she liked my shoes. We fell into step, and I told her they were Uggs. “I know,” she said, like duh, I wasn’t born yesterday, I’m eighty-fucking-plus-years-old. Then she told me she was going to work at the soup kitchen to serve meals to the elderly. I didn’t ask, but she volunteered: “I’m eighty-six, and some day someone will have to serve me.” “Not any time soon,” I said, and she agreed. Then, she complained about Chicago’s mayor for about 10 minutes, dropping F-bombs. It was glorious. I was late for my appointment, but it was 100% worth it.

I’m here for octogenarian rage!

These lively, adventurous folks are giving me life. They’ve seen so much— and they want to see more. They are busy building the homes and communities they want IRL. They’re hungry for something better, and I want them to have it. I also want it for myself.

A fitting song for both myself and these titans of ageing is George Jones’ Rockin’ Chair. For anyone of you not familiar with “The Possum’s” hit from 1992, I’ll close with the lyrics, written by Billy Yates, Frank Dycus and Kerry Kurt Phillips:

(Trigger warning: This song includes a reference to Geritol)

Lyrics

I don’t need your rockin’ chair
Your Geritol or your medicare
But I still got neon in my veins
This gray hair don’t mean a thing

I do my rockin’ on the stage
You can’t put this possum in a cage
My body’s old, but it ain’t impaired
I don’t need your rockin’ chair

I ain’t ready for the junkyard yet
‘Cause I still feel like a new corvette
It might take a little longer, but I’ll get there
Well, I don’t need your rockin’ chair

I don’t need your rockin’ chair
Your Geritol or your medicare
I’ve still got neon in my veins
This gray hair don’t mean a thing

I do my rockin’ on the stage
You can’t put this possum in a cage
My body’s old, but it ain’t impaired
Well, I don’t need this rockin’ chair

Retirement don’t fit in my plans
You can keep your seat, I’m gonna stand
An Eskimo needs a Fridgedaire
Like I need your rockin’ chair

I don’t need your rockin’ chair (he don’t need your rockin’ chair)
Your Geritol or your medicare (Geritol or your medicare)
I’ve still got neon in my veins (still got neon in his veins)
This gray hair don’t mean a thing (his gray hair don’t mean a thing)

I do my rockin’ on the stage (does his rockin’ on the stage)
You can’t put this possum in a cage (can’t put this possum in the cage)
Yeah, my body’s old, but it ain’t impaired (yeah, you know it ain’t impaired)
Well, I don’t need your rockin’ chair (he don’t need no rockin’ chair)
My body’s old, but it ain’t impaired (yeah, we all know you ain’t impaired)
I don’t need your walking chair.

I’ve resisted being a guest in other people’s homes, and every reason, upon inspection boils down to control. Control: my first love, my deepest attachment, my tantalizing mistress. I’ve chased control all around the globe and my devotion to her has made me a very, very bad traveler.

If you’re devoted to controlling your time, image, food, temperature, access to a clean bathroom, and public transportation, good luck being chill away from home.

When planning a trip, I’m convinced that staying in a hotel/Airbnb is ideal. My fear of intimacy is well-documented at this point so of course I like arm’s length transactions. I want to call a main number to ask for more towels, not knock softly on a BFF’s bedroom door to make a face-to-face request. If you’re historically terrified of being seen and known, of course you think it’s better to eat breakfast among strangers and ask an hourly clerk for an umbrella.

Anyway, the idea that securing lodging through a commercial transaction is perfect is fallacious. In more than one hotel, I’ve had to bury my head in pillows because the noise on the street or down the hall was too f*cking loud. I’ve rolled into a Hampton Inn late at night where the only food option was a sleeve of Oreos and a tiny cup of generic vanilla ice cream. A few weeks ago, in an Airbnb, I nearly cracked my cervical spine trying to sleep on an over-stuffed pillow.

After all these years of therapy and recovery meetings, I understand that my fears are worth walking through, so earlier this month, I accepted generous offers from friends to host us for my kids’ two-week spring break (which was about 10 days too long). One week, we traveled to the East Coast to tour colleges for my daughter. The following week, we joined a friend at her house in Colorado to ski and watch luminous sunsets from her living room.

I said yes to both offers because my normal bullshit is boring. I’m sick of being the same old person. I’m scared! I’m ashamed! Too bad, Christie, pack your bags.

My yes was a hat tip to a new me.

Did I fret? Of course. These friends were going to have to prepare their guest rooms— was that burdensome? What if they felt like they had to entertain us? What if we put food they hated in their fridge?

What if there are a bunch of secret rules to being a good guest that I don’t know?

I’m too neurotic for house-guesting!

Once, I listened to a friend complain for 15 minutes about a houseguest who left some water stains on her stove. It confirmed my fear that you could cross a line without knowing it. For a die-hard codependent like myself, I would rather be sentenced to lap-dancing the President than displeasing my hosts with sloppy pasta water.

Once I said yes the only thing to do was show up, help with the dishes, and not walk around naked.

Our week in Boston was a blur of five college tours (which was maybe two too many), cannoli, and my friend L’s generosity. She fed us a sushi platter, lent us her car, and invited me to do a workout with her, which left me near-hobbled yet vowing to one day become as jacked as she is. I took notes on L’s easygoing hospitality, including her cheerful invitations to process the school visits and her perspective as a Boston local. And of course, this: I enjoyed spending time with her, seeing the rhythms of her family life, and watching her cats scamper across the floor. You can’t get that at a Fairfield Inn.

By the time I landed in Colorado for week two, I was seasoned. I’d figured out the balance of community time in the kitchen and retreat time in the guest bedroom. I also understood that by skipping my friends’ homes all these years, I’d missed intimacy that comes from padding around in your socks or helping yourself to an orange in the afternoon.

I asked our Rocky Mountain host, D, what makes a good houseguest. After some thought, she said, “My biggest pet peeve is when people leave stuff behind because it creates work for me.”

“That’s it?”

Sweet! I could leave no trace! (I probably owe my kids an apology for telling them to “pack in and pack out” eight thousand times, which was about 799 times too many.)

Like L, D seemed happy to host us. Halfway through our stay, I realized that I assume other people dislike houseguests because I’m not great at hosting. I haven’t mastered all the negotiations (with myself, my family, and the guests) or my need for space. I feel responsible for everyone’s enjoyment. Then I feel resentful for the responsibility. I end up fighting with my husband. I forget how to act naturally. When the conversation devolves into “what do you want to do?” “oh, we’re up for whatever,” my body quakes with anxiety, and I begin to knead my carotid artery in hopes of severing it with my bare hands.

I didn’t experience either of my hosts wringing their hands as they dipped out for meetings, calls, or errands. They went about their lives with grace and purpose, happy to see us at the end of the day. I won’t lie, I didn’t love having to ask a dear friend for a plunger, but even that didn’t kill me.

I don’t know if there’s a slew of secret rules about being a houseguest. If I broke any of them, I hope I’m forgiven. And I hope I’m invited back.

**

On the subject of friendship, Andrew McCarthy (yes, that Andrew McCarthy) has written a gorgeous book about male friendship. Who Needs Friends is about the trouble men have forming and keeping friendships, but it’s also an American road trip book, an excavation of McCarthy’s bonds with other men, and a testament to the power of showing up in person for your friends. If you’re in the Chicago area (Skokie) on April 9, come see me and Andrew McCarthy talk about friendship. More info and tickets here.

When I told my therapist about the reunion, he raised his eyebrows. In the many years I’ve been in his care, we’ve developed a shorthand for what my college years represented. As the narrative goes, I chose a college that wasn’t a good fit for an English major who wanted a life of the mind because I didn’t know (a) that I had an intellect, (b) that it was worth nurturing, and (c) that maybe I should stop chasing my unfaithful boyfriend long enough to consider my future (and write a damn college essay). A footnote to the narrative is that I chose A&M because my dad graduated from there in the mid-60s, and I hoped some of his adoration for the institution would rub off on me. Thus, I landed at a conservative school focused primarily on engineering, business, and agriculture because of imposter syndrome, codependence, and an Electra Complex.

In my Chicago life, it’s easy to make fun of Texas—to eyeroll the politics (as if Chicago should talk), to rail against the book banning, and to criticize the restrictions on women’s reproductive rights. When I arrived in the Windy City for grad school, I prayed no one would find out I’d gone to Texas A&M or had pledged a sorority. People would make assumptions, and, honestly, I wasn’t sure they were unfair. I didn’t know how to forgive myself for being “in process”—for being a twenty-two-year-old who was not yet a full-fledged deep-thinking, progressive, feminist writer.

When I left Texas, I deadbolted the door on my college experiences, positive that my 12-step recovery and future potential required me to keep my gaze on the horizon ahead.

*

And now after thirty years, I banged a U-turn in my rental car by the George Bush Library with my college roommate, A, riding shotgun. By then, ghosts of my former self had welcomed me back. Outside our freshman dorm, nineteen-year-old me slipped by us, keying into the dorm to change shoes before her Country & Western dance class. Passing the health center, I saw sophomore-me sick with the flu, throwing up in the lobby.

Next to the storied bar, Dixie Chicken, she ate a burrito after a student government meeting; across the lawn she darted to her 8:00 a.m. Spanish class.

During our self-guided tour, A’s and my phones pinged every few minutes. Messages in the reunion group chat.

Ping! Someone posted a current photo of us eating crepes that morning on a shaded patio.

Ping! Somone unearthed a picture of us at Song Fest 1992, drunk and mugging for the camera.

Ping! A reminder about where to park at the gala on campus tonight.

Ping! A photo of all of us as teenagers on pledge night in 1991.

How could I not be a little dizzy?

“I think it’s important to go back to A&M before launching my daughter’s college search,” I told my therapist about my vague goal to make peace with A&M so I’d have more wisdom to impart to her—some bullshit like that.

He shook his head. “You’re going for yourself.” Not a big fan of codependent interstate travel, my therapist.

Once I stepped into the first happy hour in College Station, I understood what he meant. The weekend was for me unbolt the door and to honor memory and friendship, as well as a specific time and place where I’d done plenty of growing, lost as I was. It was also about letting go of my compulsion to cut these years out of my life. I believed I had to disavow my Texas self in order to become my Chicago self. I made it about fitting in: What if my Chicago people knew how much I loved driving in Mary’s Maxima to a fraternity party out in a literal pasture? What if they knew I owned a pair of custom-decorated Sears & Roebuck men’s overalls because I’d joined my sorority’s hillbilly chorus? What if they knew I could harmonize Hank Williams’ Jambalaya with sopranos from Corpus, Austin, and Bellville?

The “fitting in” story was a beard for my own inner conflict about who I’d been and who I wanted to become; and who I was scared I’d never be because of who I’d been.

The cutting off part was my own invention—no one asked that of me.

As we drove by the library and the giant football field, I asked myself a new question: What if, starting today, I gave myself permission to let every version of me exist?

*

As is customary at reunions, I hugged everyone I saw, grateful for nametags to jog my memory. Each face, so beautiful back in the early 90s, is still beautiful. Every single one. Shining eyes, warm smiles—each interaction posing the questions: Who are you now? Are you well? Do you remember?

The best conversations unfolded on the last night. By then, we’d run down our resumes and new addresses. A looseness prevailed, which allowed something deeper to emerge. Like what hormones we were taking, whether qigong helped with the anxiety, and how M.D. Anderson’s cancer treatment is the best in the country. I also learned about one friend who’d been tormented by her mother’s mental illness during college, and another whose suitemate had a psychotic break and never returned to school.

We were all carrying more than we knew how to name all those years ago.

*

The last morning, I set out on a run from my Air B&B toward campus. As I headed south, I passed a familiar church off Texas Avenue. I checked if there was a coach house in the back. Sure enough, the little brick house behind the parking lot still stood. The outdoor playground looked familiar, though surely it had been upgraded since I spent my Saturday mornings there. I first stepped into 12-step meetings in the coach house as a shivering, very sick sophomore. The women in the circle took me in, and I slowly recovered from bulimia.

Would I have found recovery if I’d gone to college in Austin, Los Angeles, or Boston? Had I landed at a “better fit” school full teeming with liberal arts majors and aspiring novelists, would I have found treatment I needed?

While Texas A&M always felt like a wrong turn, that metaphor erases all the life-saving detours I took during my time as a student. It also erases those beautiful faces, which were dear to me then, and dear to me now.

I didn’t want to be caught looking stupid for loving something flawed, or worse, basic.

It was all adolescent rebellion and good fun— I went to the library during football games so it wasn’t that much fun— but this snobbery persisted into my adulthood. I built a perch from which I could peer down at huge swaths of popular culture and smugly declare myself “above all that.” I relished that I’d never seen an episode of Real Housewives, never read a Harry Potter book, never bought a U2 album. Ooh, this girl’s hella edgy.

In 2012, I bought a ticket to see Willie Nelson at Chicago Theater on a whim and as a joke. I thought my Willie-adoring brother and parents would get a kick out of me doing their thing way up here in Chicago. I wore a red bandana and cowboy boots ironically, because, ha ha, country music is corny, old-fashioned, and lacks soul. I had two babies in diapers, so it’s curious that I spent concert-ticket money for a night out to see an artist from a genre I’d defined myself by not liking. (“You’re from Texas? You must like country music?” “Oh God, no. I like The Sundays and Concrete Blonde.”)

Willie played the opening cords of Whiskey River, and I thought Oh shit, I might have been wrong about this. By the third song, Good Hearted Woman, I was fully happy/sad-crying from my seat in the sixth row. I missed so much being too cool for this! This legend can shred his guitar!

How the F did I think there was no soul in country music? Actually, how did I forget? My first favorite song was Dolly Parton’s cover of Deportee, a protest song written by Woody Guthrie that is pure Dolly and pure country. I was also familiar with George Jones and Loretta Lynn, who knew a few things about the soul. What’s in those adolescent hormones that made me turn my back so thoroughly on the music I loved so much as a kid? And what’s in Willie’s songs that opened the door again almost three decades later?

I think about that 2012 concert all the time. How I almost missed one of the great joys of my life: Willie Nelson fandom. After the concert, I went hard on my love for the Red-Headed Stranger to make up for lost time. I listened to his albums. I read his books and books written about him. I read his memoir aloud to my son. Watched videos of him singing with The Highwaymen (Willie, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson). Being a Willie fan became a hobby I could share with my parents and pass onto my kids. Since 2012, I’ve seen Willie five times with my parents, once with my brother, a dozen times with my husband, and twice with my kids. Willie’s almost 93— not sure how many more times I’ll have the pleasure of sitting through one of his sets.

I treasure the bright joy that being a Willie fan has brought me, but there’s also my gratitude that he helped me develop the muscles for fandom. Thanks to Willie, I enjoy loving things. Had I not attended that concert, I wouldn’t know how to cheer for the Dodgers with my LA-born husband and son; I’d be only a shadow of the fan-girl I am for the books and authors I love, which is the basis of my literary citizenship. It’s why I won’t shut up about The Bear or Armchair Expert or Hanif Abdurraqib’s books. It makes it possible for me to stan current Broadway shows like Hamilton and Six even if everyone else loves them too.

When I recently ran a workshop in Charleston with Carinn Jade, I was gobsmacked to learn how enthusiastic many of writers were about Southern Charm, a reality show I’d never heard. I recognized their joy when we passed a store featured in the show and delighted in the numerous conversations about the characters and their shenanigans. The fandom in me bowed to the fandom in them.

It’s my love for Willie Nelson’s music that taught me how to follow the prickle of interest when I hear a song, read an essay, or watch a trailer.

And those prickles? They are part intellectual curiosity, part passion, part magic— and, if stoked, they can become devotion. Thanks to a recent prickle, I watched Tender Mercies (1983), starring Robert Duvall, Tess Harper, and Betty Buckley (!). I was so taken with Duvall’s performance as a washed up, alcoholic country singer than I decided to watch all of Duvall’s movies. That’s how I ended up on my Peloton this morning at 5:50 am watching Apocalypse Now, which is a helluva way to start a morning. Later this week, I’ll watch The Great Santini, and soon after, The Apostle and Colors. This is the long-arm of Willie fandom, one of the most generative gifts of my life.