Last month, I turned 69. This was the age of my father when he died, in 2006. I have vowed not to dwell on this.

I’ve been on this detour before and know it to be wasteland of worry. My mother died at age 62, and I carried that weight on my back like a lumbering mule. My shoulders ache from the memory.

Mom lived just five months after her 62^nd birthday, and so when it was my turn to flip that switch, I proceeded to squander nearly half a year wondering if I would meet the same fate. That this was happening in the scariest days of the pandemic might give you an idea of the absurdity of this frame of fretting. Come to think of it, this might explain it, too. Before the Covid vaccination was available, it didn’t take much creativity to imagine the worst.

I’ve set my heart on not ruminating about my chances this time around. I have many reasons to believe my life will be different from my father’s, as it always has been. For more than four decades he toiled as a union mechanic at the local power plant. He worked hard and drank harder, loved fried foods and nursed countless grudges. He spent his 49^th birthday in the cardiac care unit of Cleveland’s University Hospitals, recovering from quadruple bypass surgery.

In his way, Dad was also a visionary, and I am the direct beneficiary of his biggest dream. Mine is the life he imagined for his four college-educated children, and it would annoy him no end if he knew I was wasting a minute of it worrying that time might be running out. It is, of course, for all of us, but for once I am glad not to know my deadline.

After the 2024 election, I took inventory of my life. My list was long, full of reasons to be grateful to be alive. It was past time for me to act like it, and I had to start by prioritizing my own health. I have long been proud to be the strong one for my family, friends, and colleagues. Over the years, I have sometimes acted tougher than I feel. Eventually, such performance art catches up with you, I’ve learned, which can be a real drag for people who count on you never really needing them.

I had to do what comes hard for most women, which was to take better care of myself. With the support of family, a great team of doctors, and my stubbornly best friends, I did just that. A year-and-a-half later, I’m healthier than I’ve been in years. In the process, I’ve dropped considerable weight, which has introduced me to a swirl of curiosity, scrutiny and occasional judgment from others. That’s a future essay, perhaps, but not for today.

Not another word about turning 69, except to say I know how lucky I am to be here.

I do, however, want to note another upcoming birthday in our family, and this one feels miraculous. Our Franklin, the husky-poodle-King Charles spaniel we adopted when he was nine weeks old, turns 15 today.

He is slower, but mostly agile and always ravenous at mealtime. His snout is whiter, but in recent weeks he’s added a stripe of bright green, the result of constant rooting around in Sherrod’s vegetable garden. His eyesight is failing, but he still bares his teeth in a smile when he hears us come through the door. His hearing loss is selective, it seems, depending on what is happening in the kitchen. Whack a large knife against the cutting board and there he is, underfoot with his nose either in the air or between our knees. Call for him to come back inside at three in the morning, and he is the octogenarian who forgot his hearing aids.

Franklin is on medication for various ailments, and every evening, as the sun sets, a mild form of dementia takes hold. Our beloved boy, sundowning. Sometimes, he pants for no apparent reason, and in such moments this asthmatic is perhaps not the ideal nurse. In the hour or so before bedtime, we often end up in my study, as that is the one place that regularly calms him. We don’t know why, and it doesn’t matter. We will do anything we can for this sweet boy who has spent most of his life following us around, tail thumping against our legs.

My most enduring memory of Franklin’s habit of hovering is from the weeks after my brother’s suicide, in the summer of 2019. Such a hard and sad time, and Franklin would seldom leave my side. Whenever I grew quiet or sighed, whenever I started to cry, he would lean his full weight against me and place a paw on my hand.

It is our turn to follow him, room by room, inch by inch.

Franklin has other helpers. Walter, our 8-year-old Yorkie-poodle mix, monitors him like a home health care aide. Our friend Sue Klein loves both our dogs as much as we do and they adore her, so they stay with her whenever we must be on the road in this campaign year.

And then there’s Dr. Kenneth Litwak, a third-generation veterinarian and our hero, who is helping us do whatever we can to make the remainder of Franklin’s life a glorious one. He has also made the ultimate promise to us: He will tell us when it’s time. Love can blind us to what we do not want to see. We trust Dr. Litwak’s big heart and unwavering ethics. I cherish him for this.

For now, Franklin’s days are mostly above the imaginary line Dr. Litwak has helped us draw. Adjustments are ongoing. The new carpet runner on our stairs was picked for its ability to endure the tug of dog nails while giving paws the traction they need for safe passage. (The saleswoman who recommended it had an elderly dog, too.) Ours is a home of hardwood floors, and wherever Franklin’s paws land—beside our bed, at the end of stairs, near the front and back doors—we’ve placed rugs designed to stay put so that he doesn’t slide.

Lighting has become a priority. In the two darkest corners of the kitchen, little lamps are always on. Outlets throughout the house are aglow with nightlights that look like flickering candles; the one in the wall at the foot of our bed casts a bright reflection in the window near my pillow. Two years ago, this would have been an annoying distraction keeping me awake. Now it reminds me to listen for the reassuring sound of Franklin’s snoring, a perfect final thought before I fall asleep.

Many evenings, Franklin will lift his head for a kiss; just one, at the center part that ends at his eyebrows. Sometimes, that’s all he needs to settle down. Occasionally, he’ll wedge himself next to me on the sofa, but only briefly. He has always been a lap-adjacent kind of dog, facing outward, keeping an eye. Might that be the source of some of his anxiety? I wonder. He is no longer our proud watchman, and like any good provider disarmed by age, perhaps he cannot see who he is to us now.

“Everything,” I whisper in his ear. “You are everything to us, dear Boo.”

Through it all, little Walter abides. To call him a lap dog is to disrespect his commitment to the endeavor. He barely waits for me to sit down before he leaps through the air and burrows into me like a tunneling mole. In the seven years he has owned us, I’ve become so accustomed to his appendage-like behavior that I sometimes call out his name in search of him, only to find that he is already attached to me.

Eager to do his part for family drama, Walter gave us quite the scare recently. One evening, he started trembling like a phone set to vibrate. I felt his distress immediately. He was scared, and I didn’t know why. A quick examination of his tiny body revealed a swollen abdomen that was rock hard. It was early evening, and Sherrod was out on the campaign trail. I called him.

“As soon as you get home,” I told him, “we have to take Walter to the emergency room.” The only thing I remember about Sherrod’s response was his asking, twice, that I stop screaming so that he could understand what I was saying.

We arrived at the ER a little after 9 p.m. A technician whisked Walter away, and on a night with multiple emergencies, we didn’t see him again until almost 3 a.m.

During that long wait, all I could imagine was our sedated pup under the knife for a lengthy abdominal surgery. Sherrod did what he always does, which is to try to distract me with some newfound nugget of information. This time, it was a detailed history of Uzbekistan.

Fans of The West Wing will understand why, in such moments, my nickname for Sherrod is Jed, as in President Jed Bartlet. For those unfamiliar with the reference, I will simply say Sherrod has never met a fact he doesn’t want to share as soon as possible, preferably as a tutorial.

Five hours and $800 later, we were ushered into an examining room to view an x-ray of Walter’s intestines. Our boy was constipated. Not enough, the doctor assured us, to require an enema. (Sherrod and I looked at each other and mouthed in unison, “They give dogs enemas?”)

The doctor injected Walter with something to “move things along,” and it worked. I’ll spare you the details, except to say we took turns rolling out of bed in 45-minute intervals to carry Walter outside. Franklin slept through it all.

One recent evening, we were sitting in my study watching a Cleveland Guardians game when Sherrod pointed to Franklin, who was asleep and dreaming on the floor by my feet.

“Look,” Sherrod said. “He’s running.”

All four of his legs were moving, and he was letting out soft whispers of barks, the kind he used to make when he batted a slightly deflated basketball back and forth with Sherrod in our yard. God, he loved playing that game.

I read recently that dogs’ dreams often involve memories of life with their humans. I have no idea if this is true, but in that moment, watching our boy run in his sleep, I could easily imagine the magic of his dream.

Franklin was back in our old yard, batting that basketball with his paws, catching it with his teeth. Round and round he ran, lunging and leaping into the air as he ran full speed toward the only father he has ever known.

Tuesday, 10:02 p.m. E.T.

My students’ final grades are due within hours, so this has been a long day of reading. Their final projects are compilations of revisions, and I have been taking my time with their writing, gratefully so. All but two of them are graduating seniors, and they have worked hard this semester to finish strong. I owe them my full attention one last time.

Some professors—perhaps I should say most—are far more organized than I am and have already turned in their grades. This is me shouting from the sofa in my study, “Good for you!” And I mean it. Yes, I do.

Anyway, a fresh pot of coffee is brewing and I thought I’d take a quick break and say hi from this cliff I’m toeing.

This is my third year of teaching at Denison, and I will miss these students the most. I have known known them the longest, so there’s that. But I have also known them the best, which has to do with a vow I made to myself at the beginning of the semester.

I remember well the moment. It was early January, just past dawn, and I was shivering in front of our opened front door, watching the snow fall as if it had no intention of ever stopping. I had pulled on a long coat over my nightgown and rubber wellies on my bare feet. Why, I was practically a pioneer women, I told myself, as I braced to march into the wind to feed the birds. The day before, I had counted thirty-one cardinals gathered around the two platform feeders outside my study windows.

Thirty-one hungry birds. They were counting on me.

I tugged the woolen hat over my ears and the promise arrived like a prayer. All this effort for the birds. Surely, my students deserved at least the same degree of commitment.

I have always tried to be available to them, but I decided then and there to be on campus more, with my office door wide open. I could not have predicted all that followed. So many unscheduled conversations. Too many reasons now to miss them.

A few hours ago, I was sitting on the sofa when the setting sun suddenly cast its golden glow on the patch of bookshelf less than six feet in front of me. I am thirty-six years old in that framed photo, holding onto my six-year-old daughter, Cait, and feeling like a mother lion. A few months later, she and I would move out of the only house she’d ever known and into a first-floor rental in a Tudor in Shaker Heights. One day we were a family of four, the next day we weren’t. Most of the time it was just the two of us, as my son Andy was in college.

Despite the sad narrative spooling around this photo, I have always loved it. I could already feel the strong headwinds of change trying to knock me over and I was afraid, but I was not without courage. I was that little girl’s mommy. I would do what I had to do.

The mother and daughter figures to the left of the photo are more than thirty years old. They are made of straw, and I don’t remember where I bought them. I do recall thinking they were deceptively strong. “Like us,” I told Cait the day I brought them home and set them on the mantle. The skirts of their dresses used to be bright red, but they have faded after so many years.

“Like me,” I whispered to our dogs, wedged on either side of me. Old Franklin sighed. Walter is licking my hand as I type.

One more photo, one more story, before I go back to grading. See the little boy in that picture? That’s Andy, also six years old, in 1980. It is the very first picture I ever had of him, taken by his father at Andy’s request. We had just met, that little boy and I, and he wanted me to have a Polaroid photo of him.

“So, you don’t forget me,” he said, sliding it into my hand.

As if I could.

Twenty -four years later, Andy and his sister walked me down the aisle the day I married Sherrod. This past Sunday, on Mother’s Day, he called me and we talked about plans for his only child’s high school graduation. Our first grandchild, Clayton. That’s me in the photo below, holding Clayton in the NICU when they weighed barely three pounds. Clayton is about six feet tall now.

Yesterday, I sat in the shade of our backyard with a kind and talented man named Jake who is designing the garden of my dreams. All these years later, I am living in a Tudor again, and yes, this is a campaign year, and yes, I am hard at work on my next novel but also, yes, I want to create something new and beautiful that says welcome to your home every time we pull into the driveway.

And so, Jake and I are planting a cottage garden for this little stone-and-brick house of ours. The Mugo pines will go there, next to the tree peony here, just feet away from the Itea Sweet Spire and the Red Rocket Barberry bushes. A row of Annabelle hydrangea will line the fence, and we’ll plant mixed perennials, so many little batches of them, each of them a bouquet sprouting from the soil.

I stared at the sketch and couldn’t stop grinning as Jake talked excitedly and drew in the air with his sharp little pencil. At some point, we started chatting about all the children in our lives, both the grown and not yet launched. Happiness is contagious that way, as you know. I think this part of the conversation began with my mentioning something about how, when he was four, our grandson Milo picked out a foot-high gnome for our garden and it now lives at the base of a rubber tree in our house because I couldn’t bear seeing it buried in snow.

“Oh, and listen to this,” I said to Jake. (We’re friends now.) Two days earlier I had met someone who described her grandchildren to me in two batches—the “bloods” and the “steps”-- and then shook her head before adding, “I know you think they’re all the same.”

“Honestly,” I said to Jake. “Can you imagine?” He and I agreed on the spot that this was no way to think about the children we love. There are no steps, no gradations, to the swell of love that washes over me every time I hear a voice call out, “Grandma.” On this, Jake and I loudly agreed, and then moved on to a discussion of the Knock Out Rose, who will be taking up residence near our shed, I’m told. I can’t wait to meet her.

Really, truly now, I’m about to leave you. But first, I must share a passage from E.B. White’s introduction to a collection of essays by his wife Katharine S. White in the 1979 book, Onward and Upward in the Garden. I discovered it two weeks ago and I can’t stop thinking about it.

She was the first and legendary fiction editor of The New Yorker. He was one of the magazine’s popular staff writers. After she retired as editor, she began writing essays about gardening, including reviews of mail order catalogues. These were published as a book two years after her death, and his description of her as a writer is all the proof I need to know he loved her.

Letters came easily to her, he said. But, goodness, the agony whenever she was writing for The New Yorker.

“When she sat down to compose a magazine piece on gardening, faced with all the strictures and disciplines of formal composition and suffering the uneasiness that goes with critical expression in the public print—this was something else again. Gone was the clear and steady stream. Katharine’s act of composition often achieved the turbulence of a shoot-out. The editor in her fought the writer every inch of the way; the struggle was felt all through the house. She would write eight or ten words, then draw her gun and shoot them down. This made for slow and torturous going. It was simple warfare—the editor ready to nip the writer before she committed all the sins and errors the editor clearly foresaw.”

On he goes, offering one vivid snapshot after another of his wife immersed in the labor of creation. Mercy, how he studied her. What a love story.

It’s nearly midnight here in Ohio. Coffee is ready.

Now I can leave you.

Last June, one week after we moved into this house, we walked out the front door with our two dogs, pulled it shut and locked ourselves out. It was late at night, and because we apparently aspired to fully embrace the cliché of addled new homeowners, we also had no cell phone on us.

For years, our rule has been simple and nonnegotiable: Leave the house, take the phone. And for years we have done exactly that without fail, until 10:17 p.m. on that Saturday night.

In another time—any other year, perhaps—we might have overreacted. However, this was just months after the 2024 election. We’d seen worse. We also were still exhausted from the move, so perhaps our brains had had it with all the chaos. This might explain why we thought it would be a grand idea for Sherrod to climb over our newly installed backyard fence.

With one hand, I tried to restrain two excited dogs. I used the other to help heave Sherrod’s behind over the metal gate. Fortunately, mid-shove, it occurred to us that we had another gate that had yet to be locked on the other side of the yard. This filled us with joy for the amount of time it took us to unlatch the gate and march in unison across the yard—picture a wagon train, except dragged by dogs--only to discover that both back doors to the house were locked, too.

How very safe of us. How very annoying.

Bright idea number two: Let’s start ringing doorbells up and down the street.

Most of our neighbors, we soon discovered, were either not awake or wisely opposed to answering an unexpected doorbell. Most of them had Ring cameras, and so Sherrod felt the need to talk into every camera, identifying not just him but me and both of our dogs, by name, before apologizing for having disrupted their evenings.

Finally, a very kind mother of two young children not only answered her door but volunteered to call the police, at our request. We walked back to our house and sat on the front stoop, which made it easy for her to find us to tell us the police said they don’t do this sort of thing so she called a locksmith. She hoped that was okay. I wanted to adopt her.

Forty-five minutes later, a friendly locksmith arrived and forty-five minutes after that—it was a stubborn lock, because of course--we were back in our home.

This memory crept up on me as we were walking our dogs last evening before we went to bed, and I was grateful for its arrival. I reminded Sherrod of that night and we laughed as a couple might when, this time, they are armed with house keys and cell phones in their pockets. (Also, just a few houses away, our friend Liz now has a spare key. A brilliant idea that we cannot claim to have authored.)

Laughing as we walked the dogs was such a nice way to end a day that began with this social media post from the president of the United States, shared on on Easter morning:

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

I read this and immediately thought of the members of my family who voted for Trump. I will never understand how we ended up so different from one another, but I have never stopped loving them. We all call ourselves Christians, but we define this so differently.

I imagined them getting ready for Easter service when they found out what Trump had said. Or maybe they were walking into the sanctuary and someone told them. Or is it possible that no one—not a fellow parishioner, not the choir director, nor the pastor—said anything at all?

I want to ask them: Where is the line he has yet to cross? When will you say he has gone too far? I want to ask them, but I won’t. Talking about this would do nothing but plow more miles between us. We are not the family we used to be.

About an hour after Sherrod and I first learned of Trump’s threat to commit war crimes, we went outside to work in the yard, the dogs at our heels. It was a chilly morning, and windy. My favorite kind of day. Plunging our hands into the soil helped to redirect our minds to the bounty of God’s grace. Gardening is always an act of hope.

Last year, we moved right before summer, and never made the time to plant anything. Finally, we are returning to a favorite pattern of our life together, getting sweaty and dirty as we prepare for the bounty we must imagine long before we can see it.

Doesn’t take much to tease out that metaphor, does it?

I dragged out a bunch of large pots from the shed to get them ready for the flowers I ordered during the last snowstorm. For a dozen summers, I filled enough of those pots with flowers to create a garden on our deck. Different house, different architecture, but I’ve never felt a greater need to create that garden. Home, for real.

Sherrod weeded the raised vegetable beds and filled them with compost from the two bins we had filled all winter. Soon, we will load up on seeds and plants from a place with Groovy in its name, and Sherrod’s battle with groundhogs will begin. They get away with murder in our yard. With beans, squash and peppers, too.

Last fall, we planted five new trees in our yard. Three Armstrong Gold Maples in the backyard, two Minnesota Strain Hard Redbuds in the front. The base of each maple is decorated with cement medallions of hand prints the grandchildren made when we lived in Cleveland. In that yard, we had planted a tree for each child; they were the hardest things to leave behind.

This is what I know: Clayton’s tree has already sprouted blossoms, as has Jackie’s Serviceberry. Soon the birds will feast on the berries. Pale-yellow flowers are preparing to burst into bloom on Russell and Carolyn’s dogwoods. The lilac trees for Leo, Maribell and Milo are full of buds, and robins have likely built nests in the branches of at least two of them. Early next month, Ela’s wisteria, which used to be in full view from my desk in the sunroom, will erupt with purple waterfalls.

I hope the new owners feel the celebration of all these blooms. This is their first spring in our house, which is now their house. I can see it all, all the magic we left behind, but they will make their own. This is as it should be. It is time for me to focus on what is happening here.

Spring comes earlier in Bexley, Ohio, just two hours south of Cleveland. The daffodils have already come and gone, but not before they defied the last snowfall, their petals jutting out like angels’ trumpets in the clouds. Lily of the Valley is carpeting the beds under the trees outside my office window. Currently, our grass is the green of emeralds.

Remarkably, even those fragile redbuds in the front yard are blooming, a sure sign that they survived this long, harsh winter.

So did we.

So did we.

In the predawn hours of April Fool’s Day, eight-year-old granddaughter Ela left this handwritten note taped to the refrigerator door:

To family

I just went for a walk

be back soon.

from Ela

It was dark outside. Cold, too--and foggy.

The frantic family search was on.

Meanwhile, Ela was ensconced in the kitchen pantry, trying not to giggle. This child. The physically smallest in her class with a personality the size of a Morning Glory cloud.

When my daughter texted an image of Ela’s note, I couldn’t stop laughing. I showed it to Sherrod, and he started laughing, too, which made me laugh even harder. My reaction was disproportionate, perhaps, but man it felt good to let loose. “Let’s go find the joy,” I tell Sherrod every morning before we part. On April 1, Ela made that an easy hunt.

I’ve been so angry lately.

In the past, whenever I have felt this way, I’d withdraw from public view until I could figure out what to do with all that stewing. Until recently--since January 20, 2025, to be precise--this was a rare occurrence and usually took only a few hours to resolve.

My former editor, Stuart Warner, once gave me this advice for column writing: “The angrier you are, the harder you should try to be funny.” Granted, some topics offer no punchlines, but his wise counsel has served me well over the years. Most opinions benefit from a period of reflection before hitting “send.”

It’s not that I don’t think a woman is entitled to her anger, nor do I believe she should hide it. I’m just not the writer who wants to drag everyone along with me as I stumble through that course of trenches, ditches and gullies. I am reminded of my mother’s admonishment: “Nobody needs to see your scrapes and bruises.” At a young age, I understood too well her reasons for wanting to believe that. Her desire to hide her injuries was steeped in pride, but also in what she thought was her wifely duty to protect the chief inflictor of her injuries. She was the embodiment of the brave front.

Unlike Mom, I’ve never been good at hiding my fury, and this is where I’ve hit a snag in recent weeks. My Substack is called Hopefully Yours, and from the very first column, on July 21, 2023, I have felt a duty to keep that promise. Easy-peasy, for a while. If I was upset, I’d go for long walks, deliver lengthy monologues to our dogs, and watch Nora Ephron films. That usually fixed things.

Alas, this strategy hasn’t been working for me these days. As one of my closest friends said, and not unkindly, “You have a lot of edges lately.” I couldn’t deny it.

I’m simmering all the time, it seems. I am never without hope, but lately I’ve had to muster the energy to roll a few boulders out of the way to find it. There’s nothing wrong with succumbing to frustration, but I have hesitated, over and over, to admit publicly that I was letting my outrage get the best of me. I should have shared that with you, rather than disappear.

I don’t require readers to pay for Hopefully Yours, but so many of you have done so anyway. This was one of the biggest surprises for me about Substack, and your generosity has made it possible for me to keep it open to everyone and to focus on the writing here.

I am also working on my next novel, tentatively titled Because You Asked. This has made Substack even more important because, as most writers know, writing begets writing. My main character has been wondering where the bloody hell I’ve been in the last month (the woman has a mouth on her), and she has no patience for boo-hoo me. I had left her in a most uncomfortable dilemma—which was entirely of her own making, I hasten to add. Still, she needs me to show up to help her figure out why she keeps doing this to herself. She has begun to pop into my dreams, rattling the cage. So like her.

You’ve had every reason to expect a weekly essay from me, and I have let you down in this new year that already feels road weary. I’m sorry. I’ve let down non-paying subscribers, too. We’ve all been having an ongoing conversation, and I hope you don’t feel ghosted.

I’m not suggesting any of you have ever clung to my every word, or that you’ve even missed me. For that, I have dogs, who act like abandoned children every time I fetch the mail. But many of you have reached out privately to see if I am okay, and that has weighed on my heart. The last thing I want to do is add to anyone’s list of worries. I’m doing as well as any American who is in a constant state of anger and anxiety over what is happening to our country.

See, there I go again. Every time, I begin writing one kind of essay and then pivot, landing in that muddy ravine, trying to claw my way out.

I can cite precisely when this relentless state of outrage started getting the best of me. It was the sight of that blue bunny hat, the one with the white floppy ears on the head of a sweet five-year-old boy named Liam.

You likely remember him, too, as this photo quickly went viral in January after Columbia Heights Public Schools shared it. That hand on his back belongs to an ICE agent, who is clutching Liam’s Spider-Man backpack, making sure he cannot leave. Agents detained both Liam and his father, who was here legally as an immigrant, and whisked them off to a family detention center in Texas, where they were held captive for nearly two weeks.

Schools Superintendent Zena Stenvik spoke for so many of us in her fury.

“Why detain a 5-year-old? You can’t tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal,” she said. “Another adult living in the home was outside and begged the agents to let him take care of the small child and was refused.

“Instead, the agent took the child out of the still-running car, led him to the door and directed him to knock on the door asking to be let in in order to see if anyone else was home, essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.”

That hat.

It looked like so many of the hats that have belonged to the children in our neighborhood, our community, our family. That goofy hat in the photo at the top of this essay, the one resting on the back of my childhood rocker, has been in our family for nearly eighteen years. It first belonged to Clayton, our oldest, and once they had outgrown it they bequeathed it to the seven cousins to come. Every one of our grandchildren has worn that blue-eyed fuzzy bear on their heads, if only to run around the house.

Every child is born innocent. I have known this all my adult life. An alternative weekly in Cleveland once ran a satirical piece about local columnists, offering comical summaries of our writing habits. I was depicted as a one-note drama queen, hand pressed to my head: “The children…always, the children.” I didn’t hate it. When I first started writing as a columnist, I was a single mother of two. As a grandmother, I have become the woman I used to mock. It is impossible for me to imagine my life without these kids in it. I am watching other mothers’ children of the same ages being treated like animals to be caged, as policy.

I am so angry.

Last week, Sherrod and I took the stage before a packed theater in Columbus. This was a different kind of fundraiser, as I was there to interview him. A wife has her questions, after all.

At one point, I mentioned my anger and how it has frozen my writing on Substack. During the audience Q-and-A, a woman gently urged me to write about that anger. It would help her, she said, to know that I am struggling, too.

That landed with me, and hard. I was reminded of the advice of another close friend who recently listened patiently as I recited my list of reasons I had failed readers. “Write that,” he said. “Write about all of it. You owe the explanation.”

Don’t be a hypocrite, he would never say. He didn’t have to.

And so, here I am.

The day after our theater event, daughter Liz texted this photo. Those little hands belong to five-year-old Maribell, who was in the audience. She is watching us onstage, framing her grandparents with a heart. Like children everywhere, she loves the people who love her.

Sherrod saw the photo first, and burst into my study to show me. At 2:34 p.m. on a cloudy Wednesday, he had found the joy.

During my first Christmas season as a single mother, in 1994, I frequently visited an antique shop in Chardon, Ohio during my rounds as a reporter for The Plain Dealer.

My young daughter and I had recently moved into the first floor of a modest, well-tended Tudor in Shaker Heights. We had brought little with us, and our small collection of new furniture, dishes and linens painted the scene of a family in flight. I was on the hunt for affordable, vintage pieces to make our place feel like we’d lived there for a while.

On one of those trips to the shop, on a snowy day in December, the proprietor drew my attention to a worn, wooden box that had just arrived. It was painted red, with a slot carved into the hinged lid. These barely legible words were stenciled on the front:

League Sacred Heart

Intention Box

She looked at my puzzled face and smiled. “You’re not Catholic.”
I shook my head, and she explained that these boxes were used to welcome parishioners’ prayer requests—their intentions--for others. Write the names on slips of paper, slide them into the slot, and others would remember them in prayer.

I loved the notion of this, the intention. I bought the box, set it on our fireplace mantel and told Cait we would use it to manifest our own good intentions for our life. It would be a bank, for two vital necessities: Friday night pizza and books. As long as we saved our coins and tossed them into the box, I promised her, we would have enough money for both.

And we did, because of course I was going to make sure of it. That old red box became our habit. Every bit of loose change, and there was so much of it back in those days, went from pockets to box. The credit union kept us stocked in paper rolls, and every so often Cait and I would sit at our kitchen table and stuff them with the right number of dimes, nickels and quarters.

At some point, after I remarried, the intention box ended up in a closet. I hadn’t thought of it in years but unearthed it during our big move this year. I picked it up and nearly dropped it, surprised by the weight. I opened the lid and there they were, roll upon roll of coins. At some point we had stopped needing them.

“Your intentions were manifested,” my friend Kathy said last week, after I told her about the box. “That’s how it works. What a wonderful lesson for your Cait.” This is Kathy’s nature. I don’t know anyone with more faith in the mystical good pulsing around us. In her orbit, I feel its promise.

The intention box is back on our mantel, in another Tudor. This house was built in 1936, and it has felt like home from the minute I laid eyes on it, after our realtor sent the website link. I can’t explain it, except to say I walked through its doors and felt the windstorm of dust from this year’s upheaval finally settle at my feet and slowly blow away. This move took more out of me than I thought I had to give, and I am grateful for all that it asked of me.

This old red box reminds me of the ongoing need for good intentions for others, and the importance of conveying this tradition to our grandchildren. Instead of coins, we will talk about ways to help. We will talk about our intentions. Right now, ICE agents are invading our central Ohio community. Families are under siege; children are terrified. There is no way our children don’t know this is happening. They have classmates. They have friends.

This is my ongoing worry now, for America’s children. What are they learning from this cruelty, this president? What is this telling them about who they should grow up to be?

Perhaps you are seeing why I haven’t written for a while. It is impossible for me to stay on topic, if the goal is to focus elsewhere. I’ve decided to surrender to this and I hope you will bear with me as I write again and again, no matter how imperfectly. The racing mind needs to run.

It’s Christmas Eve, and we are about to watch one of my all-time favorite movies, It’s a Wonderful Life. My heart is in two places. I am so grateful to be home with Sherrod and our dogs, listening to him play his guitar as I plan tomorrow’s Christmas gathering. But a part of me is still at the airport on the day after Thanksgiving, saying good-bye to two of our grandchildren who live hundreds of miles away.

I love how artist Anne Truitt once described such a parting with her daughter, in her 1986 memoir, TURN: The Journal of an Artist: “We hugged good-bye with different smiles.”

We’d had such a wonderful visit with Milo and Ela, and Cait and her husband, Alejandro. We happily hugged and the immediately the kids darted for the entrance, excited for their next adventure. I was feeling the tug of their departure, the ache of all that I cannot control. I look at them and see this always: They are safe, but many children who look like them are not.

Children.

Children.

“We have to be a country that exists for our children,” Michelle Obama said in a recent television interview with Jonathan Capehart. There was such urgency in her voice, in the expression on her face.

She is right. Who are we if our country’s children—everyone’s children—are not our priority? I can’t stop thinking about this.

Recently, I unearthed these four dusty photos of my daughter when she was seven months old. It was her first Christmas, and she was just learning to pull herself up and cruise along table edges. I had set her in front of the Christmas tree, but at the sound of my voice she had other plans.

See those pudgy little fingers?

Bald head, center stage.

Well, hello there. (Much grunting.)

Victory.

All she wanted was to lay eyes on her mama. Intention, manifested.

Merry Christmas. If you are struggling right now, may this season land gently.

Happy Thanksgiving, dear souls.

If this is a difficult time for you, may the day land gently.

This evening Sherrod surprised me with dinner reservations at a local restaurant. I had spent much of the day sorting through boxes in our garage, and I was ready for the break.

Every time I look at that mountain of boxes, I keep thinking of what my daughter said to me about a month after we had moved into this house: “Mom, if you’re not missing what’s in those boxes, it probably means you don’t need what’s in them.”

She was half-right, and so I am finally grateful for the construction dumpster that’s been parked in our driveway since June. It sure is satisfying to hurl what is neither needed nor donatable into that mammoth bin. There’s a metaphor there if I was in the mood to build it, but experience has taught me that there’s always one or two people in my life who will claim I was writing about them. This is never true. I’m not a passive aggressive woman. On the rare occasion when I’m upset with someone, they’re going to know it. How else do we resolve things and get back to it?

It’s homecoming week for a local high school, and at dinner tonight multiple teenage couples were seated at tables around us, all of them looking gorgeous and shy. The girls kept turning their wrists to look at the corsages wrapped around them. The boys wore boutonnieres that flopped around like small birds on their lapels. Everyone remembered to put napkins on their laps, and they spoke in the hushed tones of the enchanted. Older couples kept glancing at them and then smiling at each other. Romance lives.

After dinner, I returned to the garage, which taunts me with its towers of boxes. It’s getting dark here so much earlier, which is how I happened to look up at the sky over the top of the dumpster to see tonight’s moon. There’s the faintest shadow on the bottom left, which reminded me of E.T.’s ride in the sky on the front of Elliott’s bike.

I love that movie. I remember taking my son to see it when he was eight and buying him a mug with ET as the handle. I still have that mug but haven’t yet found it. I know it’s out in that garage somewhere and I will unearth it.

Three decades after watching the movie with my son, I sat with his four-year-old child and introduced him to E.T. This time around, I was grateful for those sad moments in the movie. I was feeling so emotional about sharing this moment with my grandson, and poor E.T.’s plight gave me an excuse to cry in front of him.

In 2012, another Steven Spielberg masterpiece was released, the movie Lincoln. I had already seen it twice when we had the chance to watch it with multiple members of the production, including cast members and director Spielberg. Holy cannoli.

When it was my turn to meet Spielberg, I told him I had recently watched E.T. with my four-year-old grandson.

He smiled. “I did the same thing with my four-year-old grandchild,” he said. “Wasn’t it fun?”

Um.

“I imagine it was a bit different for your grandchild,” I said.

He assured me that no secrets of the production were revealed. When you’re four years old, he said, you deserve to believe E.T. is real.

One more thing before I leave you to your evening. What a remarkable thing, this Rose of Sharon, which continues to bloom in October. Through tree pruning, lawn seeding and months of workers hammering, sawing, painting and excavating, she has stood tall outside of what has now become my study.

I did not plant her, but every time I look at her, I silently thank the woman who did. I need to let her know that.

Last Sunday, I met an 80-year-old man who wanted to talk to me about love.

He is a prominent person in his field, with decades of professional accomplishments and public accolades. Experience has taught me that such a man is typically eager to share his knowledge, with or without prompting.

This man was different. He was in love.

After nearly a decade of widowhood, he married a woman he’d known as a friend for many years. She, too, was widowed, and much to his surprise, she found him lovable. We were standing on a patio at sunset, and the air was cooling. As he talked about his second chance at happiness, everything about him melted away except the look of wonder on his face. I can’t describe his hair for you; nor do I remember how many age spots peppered his cheeks, or if he was wearing glasses. I do hope never to forget the soft timbre of his voice as he spoke about his wife, and the way his eyes glistened as if he were on the verge of tears over his great luck.

At one point in his monologue, he touched my arm. “You’re smiling,” he said. “Am I talking too much?”

I assured him that it was impossible to talk too much about love. He had cast his spell, I said.

On cue, we felt the breeze.

When I began writing this essay several weeks ago, central Ohio was in the middle of a brief and glorious cool spell. For the first time since early June, when we moved into this house, the nights were cool enough for us to fall asleep with windows wide open. This allowed us to hear the night’s mysterious murmurs and awaken to familiar birdsong. Hello, mourning doves. Greetings, blue jays and chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dees.

That heat wave was something. On the day we moved, we drove two hours south of Cleveland and arrived in the tropics of Columbus. I may have said this to Sherrod multiple times. On one such occasion of my grousing, he looked to the sky and noted the absence of palm trees, but that was as far as he was willing to goad me. He’s no fool.

I may have mentioned once or a thousand times how I was born hot—not in that way—and how even in winter I love to crack open a bedroom window. Whenever I feel impatient with Sherrod, I remember how often he has claimed he loves this about me. Sometimes he says this through chattering teeth, which is my cue to thank him for his sacrifice.

That heat, though, and the drought it brought with it. Except for dog walks and errands, I spent much of the summer hermetically sealed within the confines of our house. Good thing I like this joint, as this would be a terrible time for buyer’s remorse. One evening in late July, I elbowed Sherrod as he was drifting off to sleep to recite the latest data from the Weather Channel app: At 11 p.m., it was still 94 degrees, with 92 percent humidity.

“Good thing we’re not outside,” he muttered into his pillow. Point taken. He loves me more than he hates air conditioning—and he really hates air conditioning--so in the dead of summer he was sleeping in long-sleeved t-shirts, plural.

“My hero,” I said, ruffling his head of curls before returning to reading Virginia Evans’s novel, The Correspondent, which I highly recommend.

Through much of September, the temperatures continued to climb but my optimism was sturdy. During our final dog walks before bedtime, we strolled to the serenade of the cicadas. My mother always said their song was the surest sign that Autumn was packing her bag of colors for her trip to our patch of the world.

“She’ll fly in on chilly winds,” she’d say, cupping my face. “Before you know it, she’ll be painting our leaves and turning your cheeks candy-apple red.”

It’s October now, and no matter how hot the days, the evenings are cool. Autumn has begun her dance. Whenever the leaves begin to turn, I find myself whispering to my mother.

Mom, look at this maple.

Mom, I saw a burning bush today.

On the night when the first bright leaf landed at my feet, I held it to my heart and whispered her name. A breeze embraced me. I’m not going to try to convince you this means anything. I also won’t claim it doesn’t. To believe in the enduring love of someone who is gone is to know the power of hope. I don’t see the downside.

A few more words about love. Five days after my 68^th birthday, we went on a road trip to Bloomington, Indiana to attend the wedding of our dear friend, John, who is 65. Witnessing a second chance at love for two people in middle age sure can lift one’s spirits. (I hear my mathematician son’s voice in my head: “Middle age? Really. So, you plan to live until 136?” Yes, son, that’s the plan. Lucky you.)

We made the road trip with our friends Carmen and Denny, whom Sherrod has known for more than four decades. I met them soon after Sherrod and I started dating, so they’ve been my friends for more than twenty years. I got to know them a lot better on this trip, which is one of the benefits of being stuck in a car together for three-and-a-half hours, twice. I’ve never seen such an array of snacks stuffed in the smallest of spaces. I wasn’t good at that even when my kids were little, a guilt I carry around for not one moment because there are so many other credible critiques of my mothering.

Sherrod and I rode in the backseat because both Denny and Carmen love to drive. I wish I were that person. I also wish I were singing onstage with my sistah Bonnie Raitt to sold-out crowds, night after night. Some dreams just smack you in the head with their feathers before whooshing right past. I’m close to accepting this. Also, I should probably admit I’ve never met Bonnie Raitt, which is a real shame for one of us.

About two hours into our trip, our car slowed to a crawl before stopping altogether on I-70 in Indiana. We had been sitting there for 20 minutes or so when Carmen pointed to the 18-wheeler in front of us and said, “I’m going to get out and ask that guy why we’re stuck here. Truckers always know.”

Immediately, I’m thinking: In 2025? No, no, triple no. Stay.

Denny nodded. “Okay,” he said.

This is Carmen talking to the trucker, who was very nice once he comprehended that the tiny woman in the bright red sweater was not going to stop pounding on his cab door until he opened it.

She returned to our car, slammed the door shut and delivered the verdict. “It’s construction.”

“Ah,” we all said in unison. “Construction.” We’re all Ohioans, after all. We’ve lived with summer road construction through every autumn of our lives.

At the wedding reception, Nat King Cole’s Unforgettable lured even my husband to the dance floor. It was the first time in years we’ve slow-danced, and something took hold.

Now, whenever we’re home, Sherrod asks Alexa to play that song right before bedtime. His hand reaches for mine, and we swirl across the dining room floor.

In these times, it feels like an act of rebellion. We refuse to be robbed of joy. Even in the darkness, we will dance.

A year ago last month, on my 66^th birthday, I launched this Substackaccount. After mulling many titles for it, I landed on Hopefully Yours, for two reasons.

First, I believe in the power of hope.

No, that sounds anemic. I know the power of hope.

I’ve quoted Nick Cave’s wise definition before: “Hope is optimism with a broken heart.” I wish I’d had this definition when I was in my late 30s, when some colleagues mocked me—sometimes gently, sometimes not—for being too cheerful in a newsroom. As if my laughter and chirpy hellos were evidence of my inability to grasp the complexity of life. This was in my early months as a single mother, when worries about my kids and my career—and bills, so many bills—jostled me awake. So many times in the middle of the night, I walked the floors like a ghost in my own home.

“I’m too cheerful?” I wanted to say. “Fellas, I’m a walking miracle.” I didn’t say that, of course. Instead, for a short while I tried to laugh less and frown more, but I couldn’t see a future in that. Hope is neither naïve nor blind; it’s the hallmark of a survivor. Life has taught me that believing in the hope we cannot yet see is the surest way to find it.

I imagine most of us can recall moments when, despite the fear in our guts, we dared to believe that better days were waiting for us. We kept moving, one foot in front of the other. Minute by minute, week by week, we trudged along until that day when it happened. We looked up and realized those obstacles that had once seemed insurmountable had crumbled at our feet.

I’m thinking about a tale I read years ago about a woman who dreaded walking under a ladder. Every time she saw one--which was often, of course, because it was her greatest fear--she would change course to avoid it.

One day, after years of dodging ladders, she approached a large one standing over the entrance to a bookstore she wanted to visit. As usual, she turned and walked away, but after rounding the corner, she stopped in her tracks. She was so tired of being afraid. She was ready to face the ladder. She turned around and retraced her steps, but when she reached her destination, the ladder was gone.

She had hoped for a braver version of herself, only to discover that it was in her all along. To me, this is the power of hope. It is always within us, and it is up to us to unlock that gate.

The other reason for calling this Hopefully Yours was personal. If I was promising hope, then I’d better be able to find it. In this endeavor, I have stumbled mightily in the last couple months, and for that I’m sorry. It’s not that I’ve been feeling hopeless. It’s that we--my husband, Sherrod Brown, and I—were immersed in an ongoing struggle to find our best version of hope as a couple who believes in the mission of public service. For this, we needed focus, and time.

So much public speculation was swirling around him. Would Sherrod run for governor? For the Senate? Or would he stay on the sidelines and slide into retirement? So many people were weighing in with their own opinions about what we should do. My choice of the word “we” here is intentional, as that is how we have always made big decisions in our marriage.

The speculation and pressure became so intense that, whenever I tried writing an essay for Substack, I froze mid-draft at the keyboard. I had become increasingly worried that anything I wrote here could be misinterpreted as a sign that we had decided what to do.

We’d already been through round one of this after we moved earlier this year from Cleveland to the Columbus area. Even after I wrote about how we did this to be closer to five of our eight grandchildren, some pundits and journalists cited our move to Bexley, Ohio as evidence of Sherrod’s intention to run for governor—because the governor’s mansion is also located in Bexley. (Who knew you could only run for governor from Bexley, Ohio? The things you learn.)

Last year around this time, during Sherrod’s campaign for reelection to the U.S. Senate, I ordered a handmade sign for our home. Its quotation is the story of our beginnings, and our shared view of what God asks of us.

Our first date was on January 1, 2003. We met at a nearly empty chain restaurant, and over candlelight, Sherrod read aloud two typed pages of his favorite quotes, including this one by George Bernard Shaw:

“I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to the future generations.”

After he finished reading that one, I pulled out the same quote from my wallet, handwritten on pink paper.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die.

After many years as single parents, Sherrod and I had found our other.

We married fifteen months later.

The 2024 campaign was the ugliest of Sherrod’s career, and I had ordered this sign as a reminder of who we are, individually and as a couple. Then came Election Day, which I’ve described many times since as an earthquake for so many Americans, including our family. For the rest of that year, I focused on taking care of the people I loved.

During that time, we also decided to move. We found our new house in February, and the day the sale closed I packed away the sign. For months, it has remained in a box in our garage. I was feeling all used up. Until I could figure out how to relight that torch, I didn’t need the reminder of how I was failing.

Organizing a move helped. What an exhausting, glorious distraction. So did my continued teaching at Denison University. That classroom full of young people is my oasis, and I am so grateful to be back for two more years.

In June, I met my new book editor at Random House while attending a lunch celebrating the retirement of beloved editor Kate Medina, who changed my life. I am thrilled to announce that I am writing a second novel for Random House. Working title: Because You Asked. In this endeavor, I am never frozen at the keyboard. What a relief.

Through all of this, momentum was building for Sherrod to run for office again. Earlier this year, he had founded the Dignity of Work Institute, and for a while I was hoping he would find this important work to be enough. If I am to be honest, I must confess that I felt he owed no one another campaign. Eventually, though, I came to understand that this was not the issue. As bad as we thought this administration would be, it is far, far worse—for our state, and for our country. I came to understand that, if Sherrod were to remain true to himself, his only option was to run.

For which office? Governor or the Senate seat vacated by J.D. Vance, which would be only a two-year term? This was the ongoing debate within our family, and with our circle of close friends. My only complaint to Sherrod, expressed after several weeks of this process, was to tell him when I was finally tired of living in limbo.

“Make up your mind,” I said during one of our evening walks. “Listen to your heart, and let’s get going.”

Last week, Sherrod announced he was running for reelection to the Senate. The response from people, in our neighborhood and across the country, has been like nothing we’ve ever experienced. Their renewed sense of hope has fueled our own. Hope is such a wonderful contagion.

Throughout last year’s campaign, Sherrod and I reminded each other that this was the last one we would have to endure. Now, here we are, again. This will be a race like no other, in part because Sherrod’s reasons for entering it are different from elections past. I have always known him to be a public servant fueled by a strong sense of duty, but also ambition. I watch him now, I listen to him as only a wife can, and I know that his sense of duty carries the day. This is as it should be.

This is no time for standing on the sideline. Each of us must decide for ourselves what that means. In this house, in this marriage, we are relighting that splendid torch.

Last summer, I had the chance to tour the plant of the oldest and largest manufacturer of U.S. flags in the country, right here in Ohio. You may never have heard of Annin Flagmakers in small-town Coshocton, but you have likely seen their flags. They produce more than three million of them every year.

I learned this fact within minutes of entering the plant. Workers and managers, most of them women on the day I was there, were proud of their craft and eager to share their stories. They taught me a lot about making flags in the hour or so that I was there. How long it takes to stitch the largest ones, for example, and the difference in fabrics depending on size and hoisted height. Those giant flags dancing over car dealerships must be made of sturdier stuff than the flags typically waving from front porches or attached to sticks in children’s hands.

This is why I love visiting manufacturing plants and meeting the people who work in them. Everything I take for granted, from the car I drive to the vase holding the flowers on our table, were made by people who know so much more than I do. Bearing witness to their expertise is a poignant reminder of the talent and commitment of workers who are invisible to most even as they fuel our daily quality of life.

Thinking about the people in that plant was perhaps an obvious pivot for me on this Independence Day. I am seeing their handiwork everywhere, including at the community parade Sherrod and I attended this morning in our new neighborhood. Hundreds of residents lined the street just a block from our home, camped on lawns and curbs for two hours of celebration. It was everything I had been yearning for, full of welcomes and introductions from strangers, and children laughing as they leapt into the street to catch candy tossed from floats and pickup trucks. I was so happy for their innocence.

Except for Christmas, nothing reminds me of my time as a young mother more than the rituals of summer. Little girls in cotton dresses, dancing in the grass. Huddles of boys with faces of awe as they pointed at men riding vintage, giant-wheeled bicycles. Small hands reaching, ever so briefly, to touch a parent’s skirt or trousers, and then returning to the controlled chaos of a community parade. It made my eyes sting with memories.

For just a little while, I allowed myself to stop dwelling on how worried I am for our country. I could ignore how alarmed and sad I feel for so many innocent people who are justifiably terrified about their future in Donald Trump’s version of America, relentlessly fueled by Republican cowardice in Congress.

This second term is so much worse than I had feared it would be. What a devastating failure of imagination.

Deep breath.

Early this morning, novelist Thrity Umrigar, a dear friend, shared this passage from one of my favorite Leonard Cohen songs, Anthem:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in

As soon as I read those words today, I searched on my phone for a photo from June 2021. This is from the front porch of our home in Cleveland. We were flying the flag to say this is our country, too, and we would never stop fighting for what that flag is supposed to represent. Our promise holds.

I don’t remember if this image is from dawn or sunset, but I love how the streetlight is glowing through it. As this day draws to a close, I’m aware of how important it is that I choose to see daybreak, as the sun begins to rise.

That’s how the hope gets in.

That’s how the hope gets in.

Our nine-year-old grandson, Milo, has developed an interest in World War II history. There is no explaining this, just as there was no obvious reason for my sudden obsession with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt at his age. As is true for most of us, the imagination is ignited, and we follow the flame.

Milo’s curiosity has stirred up family memories.

My father never served in the military, but his older brother, Harry Leroy Schultz Jr., enlisted in the Navy in 1945, when he was 17. He had lied about his age because, as my father told it, Harry—called Junior by family—was eager to flee their violent father and serve his country. That was the beginning and the end of that story, until one rainy day in April 2006.

I had called my father from the road during my first book tour. Dad was recuperating at home after a second surgery to clear out his other carotid artery. I had promised when I said goodbye to him in post-op that I would read a 14-page letter he’d sent me that had been written in 1946 by his mother, Regie Swartz Schultz, my grandmother. During that long patch of highway, I called to talk to him about the letter.

My grandmother wrote it shortly after she had buried both her father-in-law, whom everyone called Pa, and her boy Harry, who was 18 when he died. He was flying home from a naval base in California to attend his grandfather’s funeral when his plane crashed, killing everyone on board. My father, who idolized Harry, was nine years old. Milo’s age, I just realized.

One of my father’s sisters had recently discovered the letter and sent a copy to Dad. It chronicled a series of tragic events that, sixty years later, made my father choke up in the reading. I don’t know why, but he had wanted me to read it, too. I was so moved by our conversation about it, and devastated by what happened next, that I wrote about it it in my second book, “…and His Lovely Wife.”

“I just can’t write much of a letter now,” my grandmother wrote in that letter in small and tidy script. “I am so crushed with grief I can’t think clearly at all. Never, never did I ever think that such a terrible shock would come to me.” She had begun to write the letter on April 19, but she was unable to finish it until May 8.

Her father-in-law, Pa, who lived with them, had died after dinner one night. “He died in his chair,” my father said in what would turn out to be our last conversation. “Had a heart attack.”

My uncle Harry was close to Pa and was due to ship out soon, so my grandmother sent word via the Red Cross to let him know. For the rest of her life, she would regret sending that letter.

“I only wish to God that I had never sent for him to come home,” she wrote. “But it was the last thing he said when he left for California last November: ‘if anything ever happens to Pa let me know so I can come.’”

The Red Cross had confirmed to my grandmother that Harry was on his way to Ohio and would arrive in time for his grandfather’s wake. He never showed up, and a telegram delivered the following morning told my grandmother why. In it, the Navy misspelled his name. I grew up knowing this because my father would never forgive it.

My grandparents met Harry’s body at the train station in Cleveland. “It was an awful feeling to see that shipping case removed from the train,” my grandmother wrote. “I just couldn’t believe my boy was in it, for it was a little less than eight months when I had stood at the same place and saw him off to Rhode Island after he had been home last August. I could still see him standing on the platform and waving good-bye.”

Dad and I talked for nearly an hour during my drive that day in April 2006. He kept pausing to clear his throat and take deep breaths. “This letter was really hard to read,” he said. “My mother was never the same after Harry died. I remember when she was dying, she kept calling out his name. She kept saying he was in the room with her.”

I have no memory of my grandmother, as she died when I was only two. But my father knew I had always felt a tie to her because she had wanted to be a writer, and he had given me a scrapbook full of the tiny stories she had written about her community for a local paper. Always, her byline read, “Mrs. Harry Schultz.”

“Pa died in his chair,” my father said during our call. “Isn’t that something? You can have dinner, sit down in your favorite chair, and just die.” The next day, Dad sat in his favorite chair, the recliner in front of his TV, and suffered a heart attack. He never regained consciousness and died two days later.

Last week, I uncovered another letter from my grandmother that I’d never read. It is dated March 31, 1946, written to Harry, who was stationed in California. Her cursive is more confident, larger and marching across the page.

“Dear Junior,” the ten-page letter began.

By the second paragraph, I understood that my grandmother believed her 18-year-old son to be her only confidant. “I haven’t felt well enough to write. I just don’t complain to the rest of them here at home, if I do they just think I am putting it on so I keep my ailments to my self.

“I’ll say this much to you,” she continued. “I have high blood pressure and my heart is not so good so that it takes in a lot. I get such terrible dizzy spells. I don’t know whether I am going or coming. Some thing has gone wrong with the joints of my arms, its hard to control my hands and at times the pains are awful. I hope you are able to read this letter. I’ll do the best I can.”

She had a husband and twelve children, eight of them daughters, and her far away teenage son was the one person she felt would believe her. She was 56 when she died.

The rest of the letter provided family updates, including about Harry’s beloved Pa. He’d had a heart attack and was in “very poor condition.” She offered a maternal nudge. “I know he would enjoy getting a few lines from you.”

She was sending him copies of Reader’s Digest and wondered if he was getting them. Hank the cat had given birth to five kittens, only two of whom survived. They had recently purchased 241 six-week-old baby chicks for the farm.

She had a few choice words for her son, too.

“Junior, one thing that gave us an awful surprise was that you were learning to chew snuff. I just couldn’t believe my eyes when I read it and Dad thought it was awful.

“Junior, listen to your Mother and Dad—don’t do it, it’s a terrible habit to get into and one that will be hard to break, so please listen to us and leave the stuff alone, it won’t do you any good.”

By the time the letter had arrived—the envelope’s stamp of receipt is May 4, 1946—Harry was already gone.

Two weeks ago, I was in our basement going through a bin of my father’s belongings when I unearthed a small wooden box. It is full of Uncle Harry’s belongings at the time of his death, including a cigarette tin, two long-expired tickets for beer at a hut on the base and a leather wallet engraved with his name. They tell a tragically short story about an 18-year-old farm boy who wanted to be somebody of his own making.

I am sending the box to Milo, along with the letters from my grandmother. I want to encourage his interest in history, and help him learn more about his roots. I also want him to know the sacrifices of military service. As Dad said, my grandmother was never the same after Harry died. I would say this was true for my father, too, who forever regretted that he was too young to serve in World War II and Korea, and too old to fight in Vietnam.

“I wanted to do it for Harry,” he told me in our last conversation. “I wanted to make my mother proud.”

She would never have wanted that, I wish I had told him. She would have been grateful that you are still alive.

This sweet boy gave us quite the scare yesterday.

Workmen in our backyard had left open the back gate, which we only noticed after Franklin was missing. Walter, our ten-pound Yorkie-poodle rescue, had stayed put, which was our second shock of the day.

Both dogs are microchipped. Unlike his little brother, 13-year-old Franklin has never tried to run off. On the rare occasion when he has slipped through the front door, he immediately turns to look at us like an abandoned child and dashes back into the house.

Seven-year-old Walter is another story. We adopted him nearly six years ago, after a friend rescued him from the streets. He loves adventure at least as much as he loves us, and to say he wanders doesn’t quite capture the way he soars through the air like a flying squirrel. Both dogs are microchipped, but Walter wears an Apple AirTag that allows me to track his every move. Whenever I leave the house, this alert pops up on my phone: Walter has been left behind. So much drama from this guy, even when he isn’t with me.

I never thought Franklin needed a tag. Not our loyal, docile boy we adopted when he was just nine weeks old. He would never leave us.

Until yesterday.

Franklin is low to the ground and his eyesight is fading, and my immediate fear was that he could wander into traffic and drivers would never see him. Total panic. We started running through our Cleveland neighborhood screaming for Franklin, who can barely hear. Sherrod traced their typical walking route, and I ran down the street in the opposite direction.

I should add that we had just completed another exhausting, three-hour round of packing and sorting with the organizer who now knows more about our home life than any of our children. We were two grungy grandparents running the streets and howling for our deaf dog. So far, no videos have surfaced.

After about 15 minutes racing past front porches, I decided to search backyards. Two doors down from our house, there he was, exploring our neighbors’ patio and sticking his nose in their window. He was calm as can be when he felt my hands on his back, flapping his tail against my legs as I wrapped his harness around him and kissed his head.

I spent the next five minutes screaming Sherrod’s name as I wandered the neighborhood with Franklin. This was fruitless, and I looked ridiculous. Again. So, Franklin and I sat on the front porch steps and waited another half-hour for Sherrod, whose joy at the sight of his boy will be a memory I hope never to forget. That, and Walter’s screeching so exuberantly behind the front door window that he became airborne.

Franklin’s AirTag arrives today.

Meanwhile, at our new home, five talented men are currently installing a fence. For weeks, we have been discussing the need for a fence that sits low to the ground and includes a “terrier barrier” to make sure Walter stays put. Again, because it never occurred to us that our aging Franklin would even consider leaving us.

Our house sits on a corner, and so the fence must include an electric gate across the driveway if we want to let the dogs out without leashing them. This alarmed Sherrod, as he feared we would come across as exclusionary and unfriendly.

“You can see right through the fence,” I said, repeatedly. At one point, I sketched the railings, and drew (sort of) our dogs peering out from behind them. “It’s clearly for the dogs, not our privacy.”

He was unconvinced. “We’ll look like snobs.”

After several days of this, I made what I thought was a joke: “Okay, how about I order a special sign for our fence? Maybe something that reads, ‘Our dogs own us, hence this fence.’”

“Perfect,” he said. “Thanks, honey.”

One of the good things about undertaking a house move is its ability to focus the mind. So many tasks to complete as the clock ticks, ticks, ticks. I’m not less aware of all that is happening in our country right now. I just have a fresh way to expend some of that churning outrage.

One of the worst things about moving, however, is its tendency to make anything other than packing, donating and trashing feel frivolous. This is treacherous terrain for a writer. In my case, it has been nearly paralyzing.

Currently, I have four Substack essays brewing on my desktop. Each idea began strong but halfway through stopped gurgling, much like our drip coffeemaker after a fuse blew in our new, very old home. (We are far from moved in, but we installed the coffeemaker in the kitchen within days of receiving the keys.)

I have trained myself to take breaks from sitting too long, for health reasons buttressed by vanity. I would like the headline of my obituary not to read, She Died From Sitting. These days, each stretch of the legs launches another tour through towers of boxes in the land of all that is yet to done. I have been falling prey to the writer’s monster, the one I’ve been fighting all my adult life. Who are you to prioritize writing, the monster growls, when there is so much else to be done?

To give in to the monster is to lose hold of who I am. More to the point, when I am not writing I become irritable and unsettled, as if I’m looking for something I need but cannot find.

That tea pot in the first photo? For years, it has sat on my writing desk as a constant reminder—a protest, really--that the dishes, and every other inch of housework, can wait. One of the biggest obstacles for many women who write—for this woman who writes, anyway--is the mound of domestic responsibility too often blocking the view of the words trying to find us. After forty years as a writer, I can still sit at the keyboard and easily talk myself into feeling like a slug of a wife, mother, friend. Nobody is suggesting I feel this guilt. I volunteer to carry it, like a trained mule.

When my children were young and I was freelancing, I regularly awakened at 3 a.m. to write for three hours before the house came to life. It was a hard habit to break. Long after they were grown, I still awakened at the witching hour. It was only after I fell in love with Sherrod, at age 45, that my insomnia lifted. He loves reminding me of this. I’ve asked him to avoid mentioning it in speeches, but the concept of too much information eludes him.

Which brings me to why I’m able to finish this essay, and several more to come. I had vowed not to write much about this big move of ours, but it is the headline of my life right now. So, here we are.

On many a news-grinding day, I have welcomed the distraction of this move. It’s easy to surrender to it because I know all of this will soon come to an end. We have a solid move-in date, and while we have hired a wonderful organizer to help this time, all the big decisions remain firmly embedded in us, like the talons of a hawk on our shoulders. I am grateful for the items that require no mulling, and no guilt.

Which brings me to this painting by Russian Canadian artist Maya Eventov. I fell in love with it in early 2011, certain that I could never own it.

The painting was enormous: Nearly six feet wide and four feet high. We had only one wall large enough to hold it, maybe, over the fireplace in the “great room,” which is what builders call a room that is about as cozy as an amphitheater. Also, the cost of the painting was way over budget, by my calculations. An upscale consignment shop in Columbus, Ohio, was selling it, and with every passing week it didn’t sell, the painting’s price would go down a bit until it hit the limit. Even at its lowest, I couldn’t imagine spending that kind of money on myself.

So, for months I just visited Eventov’s painting. Sometimes in person, often online at the shop’s website. She had painted a canvas of birch trees on the banks of a river in the peak of autumn, my favorite season. Close up, it feels sculpted under the soft touch of fingers—impasto, I’ve learned this technique is called—and summons many memories of favorite trees from my childhood.

Just once, I brought Sherrod along on my visit to see the painting. Not because I thought he might buy it. I knew better, as our tastes in art differ widely. I just wanted him to take in the view that so often calmed the pounding of my heart and encouraged me to breathe.

For months, I visited the painting. And then one day, in late autumn, the painting was gone. I sat at the kitchen table, signed onto the shop’s website and gasped. “Oh, no,” I said, in what I thought was a whisper.

Sherrod was sitting on the sofa. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing,” I said. “It’s just the painting. Somebody bought it.”

He walked up behind me and squeezed my shoulders. “Sorry, honey. I know you loved it.”

You know where this is going. I had no idea of course, as I seldom do when it comes to Sherrod’s schemes to surprise. On Christmas morning we had a full house of adult children and one grandchild, Clayton. After we had unwrapped all the gifts, I announced I was going upstairs to take a shower before I started cooking.

A half-hour later, I headed back down and was greeted by Sherrod and son-in-law Matt, grinning at the foot of the stairs as they held up that giant painting. I sat on the fourth step from the bottom and burst into tears.

In recent weeks, Sherrod has told that story many times, to every stranger entering this house to help with our move, and everyone helping with painting and renovations at our new house. He tells them about how sad I was when the painting was sold. He boasts about how he and a friend carted the painting wrapped in blankets in a borrowed truck. He describes how, in the same moment he introduced himself to our new neighbors, he asked them to hide the painting in their garage until Christmas day. (Bless you, Kirk and Pat.) He talks about the artist, too, and how we hope one day to meet her in Toronto, where she lives and paints. (We love you, Canada.)

We moved in 2013, and for twelve years this painting has hung on the only wall that could hold it. The display lights were already there, just waiting for it. That’s how I knew it was the new home for us.

After the election, we decided to move closer to grandchildren. I had a short list of requirements. I wanted a window over the kitchen sink, air conditioning for my asthmatic lungs, and a wall big enough to hold our view of those birch trees.

It will hang in our living room, on the wall between our moss-green, vintage sofas. Our ceilings are lower in this house, and so this time our young grandchildren will stand in front of the painting as if they were looking out a large window. My idea of a great room.

Yes, you can touch it, I will tell them. Gently, and only after you wash your hands.

Grandpa will tell them the story. Most of them know it by now, but there is something about the gleam in his eyes whenever he says, “Once upon a time, your grandma fell in love with a painting.”

“And then what happened, Grandpa?” the youngest will ask.

It’s Easter weekend, and my mind is filled with images of holidays past.

I am referring, of course, to my mother’s beehives. I use the plural because there were multiple versions of her towering tribute to the art of teasing. Depending on her stated preference and the mood of Gary, her trusted stylist, the height of Mom’s hair ranged from a low-hanging mushroom cloud to Mount Vesuvius on the verge of exploding. Most of the time her beehive hovered somewhere in between. Think wasp’s nest in August. (She found this description hilarious.)

At Easter, Mom sometimes asked Gary to tuck a small bunny or two on one side of her beehive. Dad said they looked like abandoned hikers scaling a mountain, but we kids found them fascinating. Gary was always trying to outdo himself. For Easter in 1965, he inserted a tiny bird’s nest along the bobby pin border at the back of Mom’s head. Inside were three, even tinier colored eggs. Word got out fast, and kids from as far as three streets over knocked on our door to see it. That’s when Mom became a neighborhood legend. She was careful never to brag about it.

We are in the process of moving out of our house, and I am determined that we will leave with less than we currently own. This has required multiple excavations through storage bins I have not opened since the day we moved here in 2013. The word “embarrassing” comes to mind, but only after “horrified” has had its daily workout in my head. We’ve been so busy. How did we find the time to accumulate so much stuff?

Occasionally, however, I discover buried treasure, which is how I found a small bundle of photos of Mom’s beehives I’d collected over the years. My father snapped many of them, which explains why we have no photos of Gary’s wizardry with props, except this one, above. Mom’s tinsel garland likely made the cut because she was standing with their only son, Chuckie, aka The Prince, who apparently at age seven was given his first bottle of Old Spice.

This Polaroid photo of Mom is one of my favorites, in part because of how she is smiling at my father. His inscription on the back:

Jane on 54^th St.

1976

So romantic.

My mother said she wore her hair piled high because it “evened us out.” She was referring to the height difference between my parents. She was four feet, eleven inches tall; Dad was six-one. As you can see in this photo, with her beehive, they’re practically even.

She once explained to teenage me how height doesn’t matter when you fall in love because torsos match up regardless of the length of legs. To this day I cannot think of that completely unnecessary exchange on our porch swing without feeling my cheeks catch fire.

For a short period of time in 1970, Mom added curly sideburns, which matched Dad’s, or so she said. I don’t know where my parents were for this photo, but I’m certain it’s not in their bedroom because she is not sitting in front of her three-paneled makeup mirror with settings for daylight, office, home and evening. Mom gave all three of us girls our own make-up mirrors by the time we were sixteen. The last setting was my favorite because it made me look as if the sun was setting on my face.

A word about maintenance. My mother could afford to get her hair done only once a week, and sometimes she had to wait through two. Her preservation of the hive was an exercise in mummification. At bedtime, she wrapped her hair in two nets and a scarf. She also sprayed it thrice daily with Aqua Net, which she bought in cans the size of oil drums. I have no idea how my father managed to get this photo of her. His inscription on the back of this photo: Sleepyeyes. He had a gift for misreading the room.

At some point in her life, Mom finally stopped wearing beehives and moved on to bubble hair and acrylic nails, one of which caught fire when an index finger got too close to the candle she was lighting. I extinguished the flame by throwing an entire glass of red wine at her, but that’s a story for another day. My point is that I’m glad she waited to make this hair transition until after my daughter was born. This is two-year-old Caitlin with Mom and Dad, in 1989. How I wish every child had this chance to explore the eighth wonder of the world.

A few weeks ago, my friend Gaylee McCracken couldn’t stop giggling as she handed me a gift bag. I opened the box inside and saw a lid. “Oh, a travel mug,” I said.

“Keep going,” she said. More giggles.

I pulled out the cup. It looked exactly like a 1980s hot pink can of Aqua Net hairspray.

My turn to laugh.

I met Gaylee when we both were in our twenties. She is my longest friend, which makes her sound like a piece of pulled taffy but sounds better than calling her my oldest friend. Or so I have been told, many times.

Gaylee knew my mother well, and visited her the day before she died. Even then, we marveled at Mom’s full head of hair, which made her smile. My new mug is currently sitting on top of a bookshelf in our increasingly empty living room. It is swathed in one of Mom’s nylon scarves, waiting for the move. You’d better believe it’s coming with us.

If Mom were still here, she would have called today to tell me about the giant ham she bought for Sunday’s dinner. She would want me to say Happy Easter to all who celebrate. She would also want me to add that God loves everyone no matter what they believe. I’ve quoted her definition of Christianity many times over the years: “Being a Christian means fixing yourself and helping others, not the other way around.”

Miss you, Mom. More than ever.

For the first time in our 21 years of marriage, we spent our wedding anniversary immersed in public life. Several times this past week, including on April 10—the day—we were in conversation together on stage. We have been surrounded by college students, and a number of them have offered observations about our relationship.

I love this about Gen Zers. They are full of questions and opinions, and eager to share them. I will leave this visit full of memories of our spirited discussions—and laughter, so much laughter. Their camaraderie is contagious. I recall our bowling excursion to Lucky Strike in Boston, for example, and can’t stop smiling. So many gutter balls, so many cheers and high-fives anyway.

For the last five days, Sherrod and I have been Visiting Fellows at the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School, and these students in our orbit are from Harvard. We have grown close to some of them over this short time, which has allowed us to marvel at their talents, and witness how some generational traits transcend geography and privilege.

We all have our insecurities. I am moved by how readily this generation shares theirs. In such moments this past week, I tried to be the same professor I’ve been with my students at Kent State, and now at Denison University. My primary goal, always, is to be a mirror to the many wonders I see in them. These one-on-one talks have been my favorite conversations during our time in Cambridge.

The students have reflected the best in us, too, intentionally or just from the depths of their generous hearts. So much of marriage is a tangle of habits, and I seldom think any more about how the world sees us beyond the sturdy stereotypes of political coverage. Most reporters show little interest in how the dynamics of marriage can fuel or upend political campaigns, for example, and I’ve reached the point where I’m fine with that. Who we are when no one is watching is what has kept us in love. No one needs to know those stories.

When sharing their views of us as a couple, these young people have seldom mentioned what we do for a living, or framed our marriage within that context. Instead, they’ve noted how often we laugh together and how clearly fond of each other we are. They’ve noticed all those little things we do for each other, small acts that we think are invisible to others but they saw as proof of mutual tending.

Every time one of them mentions this, I see our love--and our luck--more clearly. Certainly, this was not a stated goal of our brief stay here, but as is often true of life, it’s the gift of random encounters that can startle us into greater awareness. Thanks to our new young friends, I am beholding anew this guy next to me who has never failed to cheer me on. What an anniversary gift. (They gave us a card and cupcakes, too!)

When we first married, Sherrod and I sometimes talked about how we wished we’d met sooner, how we would never see that fiftieth anniversary. As if anyone knows how much time they have. I’ve come to understand that we met when we were ready to love each other, and we are making the most of the time we have.

These public events have been more fun than usual. We’re more relaxed, less worried about public perceptions. Still, we have our habits. We love to talk about each other when it’s our turn at the microphone, and this week has been no different. This month marks 20 years ago that I won the Pulitzer, and Sherrod never tires of talking about that. I have always been uncomfortable with that conversation, but a Gen Zer at another campus recently called me on that.

I was invited to deliver the opening keynote for the Narrative Journalism Conference at Boston University. I had mentioned my discomfort at even mentioning the Pulitzer, and during Q-and-A a young woman stood up at the microphone and asked me why. In front of 400 journalists and students, I had to explain myself.

I stumbled a bit, finally falling back on my Midwestern roots, and how it feels braggy to talk about one’s accomplishments. Her face told me she was unconvinced, and for the first time I imagined what I would say to any other woman who had won the Pulitzer. Why would you hide your light? I would ask her. Why act embarrassed when surely you hoped that one day this dream would come true?

I’m uneasy typing that but my fingers managed to find the keys, so I will count this as progress. I am constantly learning from this generation.

My turn with the microphone. My most frequent story about Sherrod in recent weeks has been about what he did after he lost the Senate race last fall. Seven of our eight grandchildren were with us that night. They have learned many lessons from their grandfather, but as I frequently remind him, none of them are more important than how he has taught them to lose—with grace and dignity, and courage.

Rather than succumb to despair and blame, Sherrod has stayed in the fight. Last month, he launched the Dignity of Work Institute. First, however, he prioritized helping 70 Senate staffers find new jobs—and is still doing so for the handful who haven’t landed yet. He kept fighting for public servants too, teaming up with Republican Sen. Susan Collins to pass the Social Security Fairness Act. Thousands of Americans, including many of you here, have sent me notes of thanks to pass along to Sherrod. He sees every one of them.

On January 5, four days after he had stopped being a senator, Sherrod attended the signing ceremony at the White House. I wasn’t with him because two days earlier I had tripped over a laundry basket and broken my shoulder. (My life is endlessly glamorous.) So, I watched it live on C-SPAN. When Sherrod received a standing ovation, I cried about the election for the first time.

By then, they were happy tears. “Look at you,” I said to my husband’s face on the screen. “Look what you did.”

He is the man I married, still. Lucky strike, indeed.

Today we did a big thing for the first time.

In any phase of life such a moment can be cause for celebration, but at this age, and in this instance, it feels like a declaration of discovered hope.

At 8:17 this morning, Sherrod and I walked into a house as its new homeowners. Hello, it’s us, I whispered as I walked through the back door. Ghosts of old houses appreciate this acknowledgement, I’m told, and they have excellent hearing. No need to shout and alarm everyone. By everyone, of course, I mean the workmen we’ve hired to cast their own brand of magic. I’m not your run-of-the-mill wackadoodle. Yet.

After thirteen years in this house we have loved, we are moving two hours south, from our beloved Cleveland to the Columbus area. Our new house is very old, built in 1936 and located in Bexley, Ohio. It is nestled into a multi-generational neighborhood, full of strollers and bicycles and hand waves from people of all ages. Some look a little surprised to see us, as if they’ve just spotted a couple of pandas cavorting in our driveway. We’re used to this initial reaction and are already seeing signs that they’ll get used to us, too. One of my first goals is to learn the names of the roughly 225 dogs who walk past our house on any given morning. Walter and Franklin are going to love this place.

This is a very big move for me. I have spent virtually all my life in northeastern Ohio, most of it in the Cleveland area. It is the city that launched my journalism career, and the one I insisted on calling home through every major change in my life, and there have been many. Cleveland will always be the pulse of my heart.

After last fall’s election, though, Sherrod and I thought it was time for a change. Like so many of you, we are rallying for the work ahead. This move will anchor us. We got to this conclusion faster than usual because all four of our grown children thought it was time, too, and they have recently developed an uncanny ability to speak their minds without invitation.

We are a public couple and have lived much our lives out loud, so there will be the usual political speculation about why we are willing to make this move. I’d like to get ahead of that nonsense, if ever so briefly.

Five of our eight grandchildren live in Columbus. If we live there, we will see them more often, and they will spend more time with visiting cousins. We love our grandchildren and want to be a bigger part of their lives. This will shock no one who has talked to me for five minutes. Or to any grandparent, for that matter, who cherishes the title.

Also, the drive to my teaching job on Denison University’s campus will be shaved from two-and-a-half hours to 34 minutes. I’ve done a little too much bragging, perhaps, about all these miles I’ve been willing to log in a single day. Oh, look at me, unstoppable Grandma in her union-made Jeep. I will not miss that occasional 20-minute car-nap at an Ohio rest stop as the final glints of sun disappear from the Ohio sky. (I’m going to be hearing from Sherrod about this. Finally, he has my confession.)

I promise not to turn this Substack into a play-by-play update about moving. I will occasionally mention it as an excuse for, well, everything—and I may beg for any moving tips you might have. Especially when it comes to that annoying concept of downsizing. Ever meet someone who’s done that? You’d know, because they can’t stop bragging about it. All that yakking about how they sold this, trashed that, gave away all of those. Meanwhile, you’re slowly shifting to block their view of your battery operated, I Love Lucy Vitameatavegamin Doll.

Perhaps this is just me.

It has been suggested by our children—so many opinions!--that we have too many books. Several thousand too many, apparently. If you’re counting, which we never do. Last week Sherrod and I had a long talk about this and finally agreed that we’ve become a tad too ‘book proud.’ (I’ll let you know when I can define this.) We had this conversation after I had Googled what kids most often wish their dead parents hadn’t left behind and found that books rank right up there with matching china and undisclosed marital affairs.

So, yes. We are going to part with books. Many, many books. This will change me, I know it.

Never mind that. Right now, I want to breathe in where we’ve been.

Any move to a different home tends to shift one’s focus to the future, but I am trying to spend more time with our past as we pack up this place. Weeks before a dear friend moved from one coast to another, I had encouraged him to take pictures of the apartment that had been his home for many years. You’ll want to remember it, I told him. A lot of living happened there.

Recently, I’ve extended this ritual to something even more meaningful after reading a passage in Rabbi Jack Moline’s book, Different Chapter, Same Verse. Keenly aware of my mixed feelings about leaving this house, Sherrod read aloud this excerpt about a new practice Moline had discovered:

“A colleague of mine offered me a ritual for a family preparing to leave a longtime home. She suggested standing in each room with the family and asking them to share a memory of being in that room. I have employed it to great effect may times, including in my childhood home, which we sold after my mother’s death. Simply naming the moment allows it to enjoy renewed life. The living room is alive once more. The kitchen offers one last nourishing meal. The bedroom releases the dreams that filled it. And then it is time for someone else to create a legacy.”

So often now, I enter a room and summon yet another story about this house. In the rush of the daily mess of life, we have built so many happy memories. Baby Milo slipping and sliding in the tiny bathroom sink as his mother keeps him afloat. Sherrod walking through the kitchen door beaming as he carries in two baskets full of his vegetable garden’s first harvest. Grandchildren Jackie and Leo pounding out serenades on the 50-year-old piano.

And dogs moments, so many of them—and a few which become funnier only with the passage of time. (See: Two Dogs and A Skunk Walk Into a Yard.)

Room by room, I am seeing the images from all that living that has taken place between these walls. So many moments when my first thought is, “Oh, hey, it’s you.” I wish I hadn’t waited until we were leaving to call them by name.

No matter where I go, it seems, I end up in conversation with people searching for hope.

Picking up a prescription, roaming the produce section of the grocery, walking across the campus where I teach—no place is off-limits. This is not a complaint, but rather an observation about the current state of our collective mind. If someone recognizes me, or my husband Sherrod Brown, they approach with a singular goal. They want words of reassurance.

This has moved me as a fellow citizen but paralyzed me as a writer. How do I even start a conversation here about hope when so much is coming at us, and so quickly? You don’t need me adding to the many voices listing all the things we should fear right now. My job, as I see it, is to share signs of hope, which are always out there. This time, it took me a bit longer to see what was sparkling right in front of me.

You, I mean. And you and you and you….

Recently, I was waiting for a doctor’s appointment when a woman around my age walked up to me and immediately apologized for interrupting. (If I could wave a magic wand, I would forever free strangers from approaching with that apology. Sherrod and I long ago decided that when we are out in public we belong to the public. We expect to be interrupted.)

“I know it’s not your job,” the woman said, “but I wish you could help me stop feeling so despondent and helpless about our country.”

It was her face that got to me, the map of lines and starbursts revealing a lifetime of smiles and kindness.

“I wonder if it has occurred to you why you worry,” I said.

She began to list the many issues. Thousands of federal employees losing their jobs. The dismantling of USAID. Billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s biggest campaign donor, now having unrestricted access to government records. Mass deportations of migrants.

Legitimate worries, all of them.

It was my turn to interrupt.

“What does it say about you that you care this much?”

She looked stunned and fell silent. That’s when it hit me. We’re not talking about why so many of you care this much. We have failed to acknowledge the essential decency required to allow what is happening to our country become our personal problem.

“You are a good person,” I said to her. “That’s why you care.”

My questions for each of you: Why do you care so much? What does all your worry, despair and outrage say about you as a person, and as a citizen?

Perhaps you are concerned for yourself, or for the wellbeing of someone you love. Just as likely, you care about people you’ll never meet because you know they are at greater risk now. You feel a duty to speak out for those who have so few champions in power. If you weren’t a good person, you wouldn’t care.

We need to recognize this in ourselves, and in one another. This helps us build community, and we need that to sustain us. I don’t mean each of us should be joining an activist group. That’s not for everyone. But a community of shared interests can ground us in our values and help us remember to breathe.

Our reasons for gathering are limitless. A love for knitting, books or gardening. Neighborhood schools and block parties. A shared faith practice. A desire to stay in touch with long ago classmates or faraway friends and family members, via Zoom or FaceTime. This matters, these tethers to the better parts of ourselves. To let go of all that is to surrender to forces that want us to feel small and helpless, when we are neither. We are allowed to be happy, still.

I’m not lecturing. I needed this reminder, and it arrived with a friend’s not-so-gentle reprimand.

Last month, I wanted to note here the one-year anniversary of my first children’s book, Lola and the Troll, and thank all of you who have supported that endeavor. Every time I started to write this, though, I’d end up hitting delete, delete, delete. Who was I to mention my own small, happy thing when so much big and horrible was unfolding all around us?

When I shared this with a dear friend over dinner, she responded with a high pitch of annoyance. “All those pep talks you give everyone else,” she said. “You are always telling us to share the joy. ‘Never surrender,’ you say. ‘Take care of yourself if you want to be strong for others.’ Either you mean it, or you don’t.”

I’ve never loved her more.

So much stewing and handwringing, trying to find something original—something important—to say. As if writing about anything but this firehose of an administration would appear to trivialize its impact on large swaths of innocent people.

I’m declaring an end to that. We should all care about our country, and find ways, big or small, to help. But immersing ourselves in the daily mess of life and building community with a small “c” is what will keep us afloat.

I am going to do all I can as an American citizen—and I want to live the rest of life, too. For me, this means showing up, including for my friends who continue to create beauty in these dark times.

Three of them are publishing books soon and I will be at their sides to celebrate. I’ll join Lee Martin at the Cuyahoga County Library’s Orange Branch to talk about his new novel, The Evening Shades. Five days later, poet Maggie Smith and I will return on stage together--this time at Drexel Theatre in Bexley, Ohio--for a sold-out conversation about her new book, Dear Writer: Pep Talks and Practical Advice for the Creative Life.

On April 1, Maura Casey is coming out with her first book, SAVING ELLEN: A Memoir of Hope and Recovery. I will write more about Maura soon, as she is one of my closest friends and I know how hard she has worked to produce this beautiful romp of a story.

We are making more time for our grandchildren, too. Two weeks ago, we rode the Hogwarts Express and shopped for wands in Diagon Alley with Milo and Ela. Last weekend, we watched six-year-old Russell play basketball, and with his qualified permission, I yelled his name “not too loudly.” Jackie and Carolyn will be in another play soon, and we will be there with bouquets.

My Denison students are writing their hearts out as week after week, we explore how we can better cover issues of class and race. My colleagues, steadfast in their commitment to the mission of the work, have become a lifeline to so much good that remains. One of my oldest friends has started a support group for women who, like her, are slowly losing their husbands to Alzheimer’s. They meet in the same room where, three decades ago, my friend and I used to gather with other young mothers for a parenting group.

Oh, and I can’t wait to tell you about a recent gift from a friend that brought back memories of my mom. So many photos of her beehive to share. In the meantime, I hope you’ll feel free to share in the comments your own stories about how you’re finding joy and hope right now. These threads are my favorite part of Substack. We are building such a thoughtful community here.

Picture

One more bright thing:

A few weeks ago, I wrote about artist Traeger Di Petro’s painting, Like a Lion. So many readers reached out to me and Di Petro, and requests flooded the New England Contemporary Art Gallery in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, where I purchased his painting. They talked about their daughters and granddaughters, and the women in their lives—and how they wanted them to have a print of that brave little girl.

Traeger usually does not do this, but he and gallery owner Laura Petican were so moved by the response that he agreed to sell a limited number of prints, signed and numbered by him.

Laura arranged everything, including the packing and pick-up of the painting from my house so that they could produce a high-quality print. Also, she and Traeger insisted on donating a percentage of the sales to a charity of my choice.

From Laura’s email announcing the print, which can be purchased at this link:

“As we publicly offer this opportunity to collect a print of ‘Like a Lion,’ we are additionally delighted to share Traeger’s message with the Girl Scouts of Southeastern New England. In cooperation with CEO Dana Borelli-Murray, Traeger and New England Contemporary will be donating a print as a silent auction item for the Cookies and Cocktails annual fundraising event this March, along with a percentage of all future sales of the prints. We hope this will contribute to the Girl Scouts’ summer camp this year and inspire them to roar like lions….”

I had no idea this would happen, and I’m so happy that it did. That’s how it works, I now remember. You start with a good intention and sometimes it takes flight.

Look up, good people. Look up.

In this twenty-first year of my marriage, I am grateful for second chances—and for that long-ago version of me, willing to try again despite all the fears I could name.

By middle age, romantic love asks so much of us. What courage it takes to gather up past wounds like acorns and leave them in a basket on the side of the road. But goodness, keep walking and the freedom that comes with listening to our hearts and declaring, I surrender.

I know that I am lucky. I also know that, in my way, I was brave. I didn’t think that of myself at the time, but I see it now. In the early days after I had fled with my daughter, my life felt like a dissembled puzzle with missing pieces. I was so tired. Most nights, I tucked her into bed at eight and fell asleep minutes later.

This went on for months, until one day I awakened to the view of my new life. I can’t explain how that happened, but surely rest had a lot to do with it. I went to bed a little less exhausted and woke up to the song of mourning doves. They’d been cooing outside my window for weeks, but until that early autumn dawn, I couldn’t hear them. After that, living color returned to my world.

My marriage to Sherrod could not have happened had I not first learned how to be happy on my own. That was a decade’s endeavor, and when he sent that first email, I was not looking for a man to take up even an inch of my life. When we met for our first date on January 1, 2003, my life was already full. I am proud of that, still. I had worked so hard to build an independent life. Falling in love with Sherrod was about want, never need.

I was about to post this essay when our dogs interrupted me to go out for the third time this morning. This is a ploy, as they know I will give them their dental treats upon their return. Most times, they think they can just step outside, turn right around and stare through the door window, but I will not be used. I am that neighbor lady yelling, “Go potty! Go potty!” Treats are earned in this joint.

On my way back upstairs, this painting called my name from its spot in our living room. I felt immediately chastened. True, my life as a single mother was a happy one, but I bought this painting of an elderly couple about two years before I met Sherrod, at an arts festival I visited with my friend Diane. It’s titled Almost Home, by local artist Ed Gifford. I recall telling Diane that it made me feel hopeful. My heart may not have been searching, but it was opened enough to let in the view.

The week before Sherrod hit “send” on that first email to me, I dreamed about a curly-haired man sitting on my front porch. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he was waiting for me. Make of that what you will.

Now we are growing old together. An amazing thing, I find, this tapestry we continue to weave together. I see my reflection in the mirror and can never reconcile that face with the young woman within who remains so very much in love.

Earlier this week, I was talking about second-chance love with a 44-year-old single mother who, to her surprise, has fallen in love. I told her I was one year older when I met Sherrod.

“Really?” she said. “I love knowing that.” She hesitated. “I think we are headed to marriage, but I don’t know, I don’t know. Never did I think I would marry again.”

I asked if he was good to her, and she nodded and shared several stories to prove it. She glowed.

I had to ask. “Was your life happy before you met him?”

She smiled. “So happy. I wasn’t looking for a man.”

I look forward to their wedding.

This card sits on my desk as I write. The illustrator is Gwen Van Knippenberg, and I have many of her cards stored in a hip-high metal cart full of stationery. This card, already one of my favorites, is now priceless because of Sherrod’s note inside, from two years ago. Of the dozens of cards, he picked this one to write about our marriage. It was not a special occasion, until he made it one.

Yesterday, he was about to pull on his coat and I asked where he was going. We’re together most of the time right now, so we’ve become that couple, always in rhythm. He starts whistling a song and I know to ask about his progress at the keyboard. (He’s writing another book.) He sees me brushing my hair with my good arm—I’m growing new bone in the broken one!--and looks for the car keys to drive me. That’s us now.

On Thursday, he said he had a few errands to run, but the look on his face gave him away.

No way, mister.

“The roads are icy, and I don’t need anything for Valentine’s Day,” I told him. “I know you love me, and you know I love you.”

It took a while, but I won that one. Until this morning, when breakfast arrived with a handwritten love note illustrated with two fat, red, smudgy hearts.

“I think I used your lipstick,” he said.

He sure did. It’s my favorite, Cinique’s Black Honey, and so far, it’s rubbed off on my fingers, our fitted sheet, and a page in the book I used to keep it safe. This tracks.

I hesitate to wish you Happy Valentine’s Day, because this is a fraught day for many. I’ve had my share of those. What I do hope for you is that you love somebody and feel loved, too, every day of the year.

Good morning from our home in snowy Cleveland, where the temperature is currently seven degrees. In our kitchen, the local NPR station (WKSU) just announced that it’s even colder at Cleveland’s airport. I giggled as I stood at the stove. All these years later, I still hear comedian George Carlin mocking such weather updates, “’cuz I don’t know anybody who lives at the airport.”

On this Inauguration Day, we find our laughs where we can.

This is the current view from our kitchen door. As you can see, the sun has yet to rise, and our deck is a graveyard of potted plants. The lighted room to the right is where I am sitting right now, writing to you. Until this fall, I had never succumbed to such gardening neglect, and after the first snow the evidence of my surrender really bothered me.

Events in recent weeks have changed my view. After a two-week bout of bronchitis and then a fall over a loaded clothes basket that fractured my right shoulder, I am willing to see the snow-covered plants as evidence of my priorities. Some things really can wait.

As a wise person recently said to me, if we don’t make time for our wellness we’ll be forced to make time for our illness. I wanted to plow ahead after the election as if I was in complete control of everything. My body had other plans.

I was talking to Sherrod while carrying an armload of clothing and distracted as usual. It’s as if my brain said “enough,” and declared itself unwilling to continue the charade that life is normal right now. Down I went.

My body has forced the issue, and while I am not up to thanking it, I am acknowledging its wisdom. I’ve written before about how I see grief as that monster banging on the door until we let it in. We must sit with it until we get bored with each other. We’ve reached the point where this creep is fraying my last nerve. Good news, indeed.

I am writing now about my arm injury because photos are starting to pop up featuring me in an arm sling. People want their selfies, especially when Sherrod is with me, which is always right now. This is driven as much by kindness as habit, I remind myself. They’re just happy to see us.

I have reached the age in which any problem can be greeted with a single reassurance: I have been here before. In this instance, it is accurate to the point of embarrassment. Last April I took a tumble on wet pavement as I was racing in platform sandals and cracked the same shoulder. This time I landed on padded carpeting and Sherrod was swift with the rescue.

As soon as I landed, I knew I had lost full function of my writing arm. I was afraid I might end up in a cast this time, and so I made an immediate decision. I would not go to the emergency room until I wrote my first Substack essay of the New Year. I set my Uplift desk as low as it would go and proceeded to peck out the piece I had been thinking about for days.

This may have struck Sherrod as lunacy, but this is where love comes in. Instead of trying to talk me out of it, he simply gathered up his reading and sat on the sofa in front of my desk.

“Let me know when you’re ready to go,” he said.

As I later texted my dear friend Benjamin Dreyer, I wrote through the pain because that’s how this year is going to go. To which he responded, “Connie Marie Hortense Estelle Schultz! Ye gods.” My new byline, should I ever find the nerve.

Yesterday, we made our way through a snowstorm to a community center in Richmond Heights, an eastern suburb of Cleveland. A crazy endeavor, perhaps, but weeks ago we had accepted an invitation by Mayor Kim Thomas to gather with Democratic activists and talk about what comes next. It would be our first joint public event since the election, and we are aware of what it says when we show up. We are not giving up.

A young former campaign staffer, Terry McCafferty, offered to drive us, which became an even greater blessing as neighborhood flurries turned into highway whiteouts. We all agreed that few would make it in such a storm, but we had given our word. We felt sturdy in our commitment.

Boy, were we wrong. The room was packed. More than 140 people showed up, and some had to stand. So many familiar faces, and new ones, too, including a school board member in his early twenties. Sherrod and I walked down the center aisle to the front of the room, speechless. Quickly, we found the words.

We gathered as a community, and in community we searched for signs of hope as the snow continued to fall. Sherrod and I quickly pointed out that it was easy for us to find reasons to hope, as we were looking at more than 140 of them. In the next hour or so, we explored all the ways we can help one another stay engaged and connected. I’ll be exploring these ideas with you throughout the year.

Yesterday, I shared on social media this photo. It was my view during my final visit to Sherrod Senate office in Washington D.C., in December. Most staffers were already gone. The walls were empty, and towers of boxes were everywhere. But our grandchildren Milo and Ela were there, too, and they were laughing as they set up a pretend office and bounced around on an inflated ball chair.

Their joy was a welcome reminder that life is never one thing. When I look at this photo now, I think of that and feel the victory of love.

Ah, and here comes the sun.

This was grandson Milo’s Christmas present to Sherrod and me. It is a framed photo of him sitting by the window in Sherrod’s office in the Capitol last month, on the morning before Grandpa’s farewell speech on the Senate floor. In the distance, you can see the Washington Monument.

Milo and six of his cousins had just heard Grandpa tell the story of how this window was shattered by the mob on January 6, 2021. Normally out of reach from the ground, the window was accessible because of the scaffolding in place for the upcoming inauguration.

Our daughter Cait, Milo’s mom, captured this shot after everyone else had stepped away. So like her to hang back and notice. She, too, was that child.

It was a lot for a 9-year-old boy to take in. The violence of that day felt suddenly much closer to the grandfather he loves. So many questions from him, and his cousins Jackie and Carolyn, too. Once again, I was reminded of the words of our beloved friend, John Glenn, former astronaut and senator: A child who asks a serious question deserves a serious answer.

For Christmas, Milo wrote a note to us sharing some of his thoughts about his visit that day. It is taped to the back of the frame and is a poignant reminder of the deep interior life of a child. I read it and hear the gentle reprimand: “Talk less, Grandma. Listen more.”

As is true for thousands of others, what happened on January 6 is part of our family’s history. We have our stories. Sherrod told our grandchildren how Capitol Police kept him and his colleagues safe that day, and how they were heroes. He described watching another group of heroes—the workers who began cleaning up the trash and debris within hours of the attack. He emphasized that, despite the attempted insurrection, Joe Biden was soon sworn in as our newly elected president of the United States.

“Our democracy survived that day,” he told the children as they stared out the window. “And we are never giving up on it.”