To get there you have to walk through your hotel lobby, a lovely open fresh air kind of lobby, past the board of post-it notes that people have put up about their odysseys here. It seems like a normal lobby except for the wheelchairs lined up at the front door. You walk past the Cuban restaurant that has plantains to die for, past Jesus Loves You Short-Term Rentals. You walk fast unless you are injured. If you are injured everyone understands. There is a great deal of fast walking here, like New York City. There is construction, good grief, is there construction. You walk past gorgeous green lawns into the lobby. Are you here to see a patient? Last name, first name, date of birth. Do you have any weapons in your bag? You walk down the long clean hall past signage. Signage is important here. It is part of the healing.

Joy is the echo of God’s life in us.

We do not look at what we see but at what can be.

No one comes to St. Mary’s Hospital at the Mayo Clinic to get their tonsils out. The nuns helped build it and the place brims with hope.

You sit for a brief moment in the cafeteria. You see the drs, nurses, techs all getting coffee. A cluster of young people in medical scrubs waits for their coffee. If you’re like me, you play the coffee game. The barrister says, “double chocolate chip frappe no cream,” You study the group and think, Ok, that’s for the exhausted one having a bad hair day. Nope. The tall, muscular one strides forward and grabs the drink.

You never know. You just never do.

A group walks by wearing matching shirts that say, Murray’s Team. You want to ask, “How is Murray doing?” Children are wheeled out to the Peace Garden. A man reads a book about traumatic brain injury — a guide for families. Time stops. Then it doesn’t. You go to the gift shop. You finally buy the t-shirt.

It’s fine.

I’m fine.

Everything is fine.

Words as touchpoint. Words as mantra, as mottos. Yesterday, you might have had a meltdown. A nurse said, “Let’s take a walk.” Down the long hall you go. She puts her arm around your shoulder and tells you things. The thing you remember most is when she says,“You’re brave.”

Some days you wonder how you’ll manage, but you remember the story of a famous high-jumper. When asked how he broke so many records, he said, “First I throw my heart over the bar and the rest of me follows…”

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A bit of news. My new novel, This is Epic, will launch on October 27th. It’s the story of a singer/songwriter’s hard-fought journey to recover the best part of herself – her voice and her songwriting – in the place she least expects: her newfound understanding of family.

Learn more at www.joanbauer.com

I was sitting in a library with my sister Karen yesterday and we were talking about weighty things. A library is a good place to do that, especially since it seemed we were the only ones there. This was a library in the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. It is a wondrous place. I remembered as a child loving my local library, the River Forest Public Library. I remembered when it was my twelfth birthday and I raced to the library on my Schwinn, headed down the stairs to The Moment. The librarian smiled at me and said, “Happy Birthday, Joanie,” and she gave me my adult library card. I could now take out books “upstairs” in the general reading room. I could now sink into the green leather chairs, and walk up and down the aisles of books, sometimes letting my hand move across them on a shelf. Everything one wanted to know, it seemed to me, was in that place.

But yesterday my sister and I sat in two blue comfy chairs by a window, downwind from the American History section with Doris Kearns Goodwin, with the thickest book on Martin Luther King that I’d ever seen, and we talked. There are some places that enhance conversation and this was one of them. I spoke more than she did, but Karen is a brilliant listener, and I needed to say some things out loud, so I did. And she heard. I had been fighting back tears, when suddenly a small person appeared. Really small. Baby small. Bare, but for a white diaper, simply adorable, crawling on the floor, grinning. This was possibly the cutest baby in North America, and this little one was undaunted. She crawled among the floor to ceiling bookshelves with freedom and confidence, she tried to lift herself up to see the books above her head.

Well, it was just a magical moment, and Karen and I started laughing, and then the baby’s grandmother came round the corner smiling, and said the baby’s name, and that her birthday was tomorrow. That made her 364 days old. We said, “Happy Birthday,” and the baby raised her little hand as if she knew and went back to crawling past the books and taking it all in. I instantly loved this grandma because she let her granddaughter crawl around the most beloved things — she didn’t follow her around with antibacterial wipes. And we learned a bit more — the baby’s mom was in the hospital.

And then the grandmother scooped the little one up and they left. But not really. The memory kept coming to me through the day. This morning, I realized our little friend was one year old. Happy Birthday, Baby, and may your mama be one of those who wears the t-shirt: Mayo Clinic Saved My Life.

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Dear Mrs. Bauer,

I wish you was my mother.

The letter came on a day when letters came. The envelope had hearts on it, such a happy, kid-decorated note, but on the back of the envelope was a broken pink heart. I remember sitting with it for a minute before I opened it because it perfectly illustrated what we often carry simultaneously. Love and brokenness.

She had taken great care to decorate her words. Dear Mrs. Bauer, I wish you was my mother. Nine words. And had there not been the broken heart, I would have read this quite differently. But she had the courage to say it. Is courage the word? I understood carrying both, and I understand it now. I didn’t know this girl, but she seemed to know me through my novels. I remembered growing up and wanting another dad. I latched onto Atticus Finch, the stalwart father in To Kill A Mockingbird, who was never rattled, who did the hard jobs that others wouldn’t do; who once, when he was defending a black man unjustly accused of raping a white woman, was spat upon for his belief in justice for all. After being spat upon, Atticus stood regally and wiped the spit from his face.

Yeah, I thought, that’s the dad I want.

There is something about literature that sticks to you, and having written fifteen novels, I can tell you that when a writer wrestles with a story, and agonizes over a character, there is often something that is left on the page for the reader to feel and make their own.

It might be time, I know it is for me, to start rereading the books that gripped us when we were younger. It might be time to remember that a good story that nestled within our hearts never goes away, not really. It’s part of our power, our grit. Certain books gave us blood transfusions — no vampires involved — just heady, honest storytelling. Fictional, yes. And absolutely true.

Old friends, these stories, these characters, these moments that can lift us and make us more than conquerors.

**Photo credit: ArtbyMary

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My new novel, This is Epic, is now in pre-order.

Learn more at www.joanbauer.com

This is my favorite mug — a few stains, a couple of scratches, but that makes it better. In a world where so many words feel flimsy, these six words have heft.

Do

Love

Walk

Action verbs, our english teachers would say while ginning because english teachers are into action verbs. On those days when I’m not sure what to do, these words stare back at me as if to say: You do know. Get on with it.

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Wonderful news — my new novel, This is Epic, will be on sale October 27th. It is now in pre-order. If you’d like to be among the first Epic readers, you can order it now. If you’d like to tell a friend or two or think about it for your book club, I’d be immensely grateful. If my mother, a high school english teacher, were still on this earth, she’d tell you, “Joan worked really hard on it.” And I did.

Learn more at www.joanbauer.com

Thank you, friends!

Lisa had baked a cake; she had used a yellow cake mix, but she didn’t do a good job leveling the batter, so when it baked, one side was three inches high and the other side was, maybe, an inch. She tried to repair that with frosting — it turned out she didn’t have enough frosting, so she built the low part up with chocolate chips, chocolate being a good solution to most problems, and that looked pretty good. But then her big brother Byron (he was one of those big brothers) scoffed and said, “It looks stupid.”

If he’d said, Well, good try… or… It’s gonna taste great… or Life isn’t perfect… anything other than stupid, it would have been okay.

Stupid was something that Lisa had been called too much. She read too slow, she sometimes had to wait too long before she answered a question. She wasn’t good at math. During Parent Teacher Night, Mr. Swenson, her fifth grade teacher, told Lisa’s mom and dad that she might have to repeat fifth grade because she wasn’t getting key concepts.

Lisa told her parents she wouldn’t do that. They had to think of something else. It was hard for her to look Mr. Swenson in the eye. She wanted to tell him — I know I can learn, just not this way. But she didn’t tell him.

One of the things she was good at was baking, but this cake was stupid and she had promised to bring it to the Fourth of July celebration at her school. The school was closed for the summer, but they were having a potluck for the town.

Lisa put sprinkles on the vanilla frosted parts of the cake and she put little American flags in the chocolate chips. She sat in the back of the car as her dad drove to the potluck and no one was talking, which Lisa took to mean that she had messed up again and embarrassed the family. She wished like anything that it was July 5th.

She had a kitchen towel over the cake and she carried it to the big table near the baseball diamond. The librarian, Mrs. Alvarez, was there smiling. Lisa didn’t want to take the towel off the cake pan, so she put it on the table, and said, “Here,” and she began to walk off, when she heard Mrs. Alvarez shout, “This is the most glorious cake I’ve ever seen!”

Lisa turned around. “Really?”

Mrs. Alvarez was taking pictures of the cake. “How did you come up with this?”

Lisa didn’t want to tell her, “I made a mistake and tried to fix it,” so she shrugged instead. Mrs. Avarez had Lisa stand at the table, and she got pictures of Lisa and her cake. Lisa’s mom took pictures, too.

“I’ve got candles,” Lisa said. “Not 250; we only had seven.”

“Seven is perfect,” Mrs. Alvarez assured her. “We don’t want to take away from your design.” Lisa put the seven candles in the frosted part. She wished Byron was here to see it. Her dad came over and hugged her, which was a big deal since he didn’t do that much. Her mom squeezed her hand.

Later, after everybody had eaten themselves silly, it was time for cake and Mrs. Alvarez asked Lisa to say a few words about her cake, which she hadn’t expected. She didn’t know what to say, but what came out was…

“Happy Birthday, America. This cake isn’t perfect and I’m not either, but it’s cool being 250 years old. Way to go.”

All of that sounded stupid, but people laughed and applauded as Lisa grinned and lit the seven candles. Then the arguments began about which pieces people wanted — the chocolate chip part or the frosting. In minutes the cake was gone.

It was such a small thing she’d done — Lisa kept telling people that, but people kept thanking her. Lisa couldn’t stop smiling, Her mom put a picture of Lisa and the cake on her Instagram page; all these hearts and thumbs up emojis appeared. That’s when Lisa got the key concept.

Fix your mistakes — it’s the best way to make things better.

Photo Credit: Evan Bauer

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Also, my new novel, This is Epic, is available for pre-order.

If my mother were here, she’d tell you: “Joan worked really hard on this.” And I did. It’s the “touching and funny” story of a singer/songwriter’s hard-fought journey to recover the best parts of herself — her voice and her songwriting - in the place she least expects: her newfound understanding of family.

Pre-order from Amazon

Pre-Order from Barnes & NobleThank you, friends.

Thank you, friends.

One of the great gifts of having an adorable dog is that she helps me to look down instead of straight ahead. Take mealtime, for example — and Cleo is the embodiment of hope at mealtime. Surely I will drop something. Surely there will be something far more interesting to snatch than her kibble. You can’t see it from the photo, but my table was covered with To Do lists and bills and things I needed to throw out —the tyranny of shoulds and you’d-better-do-this-nows all mixed together.

How lovely it was when I looked down.

There is a special kind of magic when you see a black nose and two loving eyes peering up at you. It sets things right. Maybe this is why kids love hiding under tables (I certainly did). There is a whole world there, protected, a great place to read and contemplate things like an ant crawling purposefully across a carpet.

I want to contemplate more, though it seems like a luxury. But maybe it’s the first step toward peace.

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Fun news… My new novel, This Is Epic, is available for pre-order.

If my mother were here she’d tell you, “She worked really hard on it.” And I did. It’s the touching and funny story of a singer/songwriter’s hard-fought journey to recover the best part of herself – her voice and her songwriting – in the place she least expects: her newfound understanding of family.

Pre-order from Amazon

Pre-Order from Barnes & Noble

Thank you, friends.

The happiness gurus are right — it’s not the big things that make life better, it’s the small things that get into the heart and work their way through the pulmonary system and leave you smiling. I realized this last night when I was walking our dog Cleo around the house. I was going a bit slowly and she wanted to romp. A bunny on our property has been driving Cleo crazy for a few days, dashing out from a bush and speeding across our brush here in the High Desert. Cleo tears off after her, but the bunny has the speed and Cleo returns to me as if to say, “I did what I could. Where’s my treat?”

Her face is poignant, she cocks her head. I don’t just give her one treat, I give her two. We walk around the house together, and I am smiling at a fat beetle who is waddling purposefully across the gravel. Back in Brooklyn, where we lived for twenty years, I would have killed that beetle, but here, no — you go, little guy. I like your style.

I feel strangely content after a week of many ups and down. Cleo and I stop and look at the sunset, which is orange and yellow, and the sun seems hanging above it, just to make sure we’re all paying attention. Cleo looks at me and I say, “It was a hard week.” Cleo rarely has hard weeks since we adopted her, but she moves a little closer. My husband and I have been away a lot these last few months and Cleo could not come with us to the hospitals. But now that we’re home, she feels our strength, she moves in closer. She knows. She just knows.

It is that moving closer, that entering back into everyday things: the sunset, the first light breaking across the sky. Making meatloaf. Eating fresh peaches. Brewing dark French Press coffee — two scoops for me, three for Evan. Slowing down just a bit in a hard week and seeing some of the soft things around you.

Today is Juneteenth, commemorating the final end of slavery in the United States. I want to celebrate this all-important freedom day. I walk with Cleo around our house — she moves in close, and I realize that God gave dogs a remarkable gift: Being There.

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I’d just had a cardiac stress test and the cardiologist told me, “You have the heart of a twenty-year-old.” (Full disclosure: this was a few years ago) I was thrilled. I walked the four miles back to the train fast because I had the heart of a twenty-year-old. I almost got hit by a cab because I didn’t look right and left when crossing the street. I thought of the rest of that doctor visit. My blood pressure was low. My oxygen level was high. That’s when I saw the sign: Be mighty. I laughed. I was totally, unmistakably mighty.

I thought about growing up and hearing: Be nice. Be kind. Be helpful. Be assertive, but not pushy. Be careful. Never once, Be mighty.

I thought about a school I had visited in Texas — I was speaking about my novel, Stand Tall, the story of a too-tall boy named Tree and the expectations of height. There is a subplot in the story about bullying. I knew about being bullied, and I told the sixth graders in the library about it. That’s when a small, shy boy stood up. He was nervous; he looked around the room, then he looked at me.

“I know about bullying, too,” he said. “I’ve been bullied for three years at this school.”

I’m not sure how to tell you how shock fell upon the group. The adults in the library looked at each other. The kids, some of them at least, turned to look at another boy who was looking down, trying not to smirk. At that point, we all knew.

“I want it to stop,” the small boy said, his voice shaking, his face pale, and then he looked straight at me. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember the power in this kid, despite it all. He was mighty.

The librarians swept into action; the principal, I was told later, dealt wonderfully with the situation. I never saw that boy again. I like to think that he went on to become a stalwart defender of those who need help.

We have this idea that strength and might require bulging muscles, fierce faces, booming voices, and excellent metabolic panels. I began the day with the good news that I had the heart of a twenty-year old. But I wanted to go younger. I wanted the heart of that twelve-year-old boy.

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***Fun news: My new novel, This is Epic is now in pre-order. It’s the story of a singer/songwriter who lost her voice, made a new life, whose toxic family won’t let her go — and what it really means to go home again.

Pre-order on Amazon

Pre-order on Barnes & Noble

Thank you, friends.

Please help spread the word…

I’ve been doom scrolling. My hands are sore from holding my phone, my brain is sore from what I’ve been reading. I know this is sabotaging behavior, so I head out to take a walk. And you know how it is, when you’re overdone by too much stuff you keep looking at your screen instead of the scenery, you get pretty good at walking past interesting things because you and your phone are one. You know that is doing you no good whatsoever, but because your phone was created, essentially, for you to feel this way and need it so passionately, you keep doing it. Thankfully when I got to the end of my gravel driveway, I looked up.

My husband and I had noticed it when we got back in town after a long time away at a hospital, but it was bigger now.

My agave plant that had been quietly sitting in front of my address stone was having a moment. Not just a getting wider moment or a getting greener moment, a single stalk that had grown from it’s middle was shooting up to heaven — it was ten feet at least. This is how an agave enters it’s fourth quarter of life — it pours all of its stored energy into this gorgeous single stalk and struts its stuff.

It was so wondrous and impertinent and confident, I started laughing. Here was scientific proof that getting older is profoundly and demonstrably cool. I harnessed my stored energy and went back in the house, lifted too many papers off my desk, and started a project I thought couldn’t finish. Ha!

I’m old enough to do it now.

** Speaking of projects, here’s my new novel This is Epic… you can pre-order the book. It would be lovely if you did that. The algorithms will dance and bounce or whatever it is algorithms do.

A bit about the story: Everyone thought The Duprees were the perfect family band. But behind the Billboard chart successes were the family lies, behind those lies were the abuse and gaslighting, and then came the ultimate upending.

This is Epic is a touching and funny story of a singer/songwriter’s hard-fought journey to recover the best part of herself—her voice and her songwriting—in the place she least expects: her newfound understanding of family.

Pre-order on Amazon

Pre-order on Barnes & Noble

Thank you, friends.

Thanks for reading Joan Bauer: Writing in the Corners - Thoughts and Stories! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

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We are home now. My husband and I pulled onto the gravel country road to pick up our dog Cleo. We’d been gone for twenty-four days. Tami, our dog nanny, was waiting— a dog whisperer if there ever was one. Cleo, our terrier, pawed at the gate and when Tami opened it Cleo leaped into Evan’s arms with total devotion.

We are home after several weeks of waiting and testing at a big-deal cancer center; we are back with a lovely No Cancer Anywhere diagnosis that I might have made into wallpaper. Evan has a crazy autoimmune condition which is treatable. Treatable is a wonerful word.

We are home. Cleo does her best sit and looks at me, I have no treats. Usually they are stuffed in my jean pockets and my jacket.“That was a good sit,” I tell her. She looks at me. “I don’t have a treat. Sorry.” She sniffs as though to say, Let’s sharpen up shall we?

We are home, but we’ll be going to Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN in July. We are grateful to have gotten an appointment since the entire world is trying to get an appointment at Mayo. We will pack again, and drop Cleo off again.

There’s another epic journey happening, too. I go into my office. Happily, I cleaned it before I left. There on my desk is the printout of the proofreaders copy of my new novel, This is Epic, the story of a singer/songwriter’s hard-fought journey to recover the best part of herself. Set in the rough and tumble music industry, this character, Epic Dupree — well, I’ve had her in my heart for over ten years. She is funny and strong. She has lost her voice. I’ve loved watching her story grow over the years. I’ve watched myself grow as a writer in the process. This is my first novel with an adult protagonist.

I am home. My hair is straight not frizzy because this is new Mexico, the land of absolutely no moisture. I am home, and it seems that birds have come to live on the roof above my office and they are singing their hearts out every morning. I am home, and I am thinking about packing agin; I have more to do on the proofread draft, but it’s gorgeous. I love this book. I’m so glad I didn’t give up on this story. I am home, and I have new flowers and new weeds.

I am in transition. I am in pre-order. I am in pre-pub launch. Here we go… all together all at once…

Here’s This is Epic… it would be lovely if you pre-order the book from Amazon or Barnes & Noble, and maybe tell a friend or two. The algorithms will dance and bounce or whatever it is algorithms do.

Two Dove Awards. One Grammy nomination. Two CDs. Three Christmas specials. We sang at the World Series, the Grand Ole Opry, and the White House.

Our story morphed into a folktale—good versus evil with no in-between. Sides were taken, battle lines drawn. All of our years onstage funneled into one exaggerated, miserable moment that would define us forever…

Pre-order on Amazon

Pre-order on Barnes & Noble

Thank you, friends.

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They were standing on the lower steps of the Lincoln Memorial. A few tourists posed for selfies and laughed as the Great Man sat on his white marble chair and seemed to look across the reflecting pool to the Capitol. It was the kind of good fall day with enough clouds to add to the illusion that maybe there were better angels at work than what the headlines kept shouting.

Ernie Stockard had wanted to come alone, but his granddaughter Hannah had gotten up early and packed a lunch for them— meatloaf sandwiches, grapes, and vanilla cookies that had baked a little too long, but they were still good. She’d fallen asleep waiting for the oven timer to go off last night. That morning, she sat on the doorstep and when Ernie walked out of his house (he lived three doors down), she jumped up and said, “I’m coming with you, Grandpa. I’ve got cookies.”

Ernie smiled. “Can’t say no to that… “ They got in the car. Hannah’s mother had told her this was a big day and sometimes on big days it’s best not to talk non-stop. This was harder for Hannah to do because at age seven she had a lot to say.

In two days, Ernie was retiring from the National Park Service. He’d been there twenty-eight years, had hoped to make thirty and have a big party, but last week he got an email telling him, retire early or you’ll be fired, not much more than that. Not much of a choice. Hannah, who was reading a book about a little rabbit who had trouble shutting up, knew that just saying things without thinking wasn’t appreciated by adults. She’d thought hard about what she wanted to say on this all-important morning, she wrote it down two days ago, and when they reached the marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial, she said it.

“Grandpa, who you are comes out in all you do.”

The little rabbit who had trouble shutting up said that to her grandmother at the end of the book.

“That’s about the nicest thing you could say to me.” Ernie took Hannah’s hand and they walked up the marble steps and walked to the vast area where Abraham Lincoln sat on his huge white marble chair. Everything was marble.

Ernie had told the story dozens of times about how he had been part of the team that got to clean Mr. Lincoln and the memorial from top to bottom. “We gave him a shower,” Ernie used to say, chuckling. “We turned on the powerwash to get the worst of the dirt out. I even cleaned his ears.” Being that close to the Great Man was one of the great moments of his life. Ernie was certain Hannah didn’t want to hear that old story again, but he was wrong.

Hannah grinned. “Tell me about cleaning the ears, Grandpa.”

“Well, you had to clean the back of them, the dirt would build up. You had to get everything done right. I stood on scaffolding to reach his head.” He smiled.“I remembered my mother always being after me to clean my ears in the shower.”

“You think Mr. Lincoln’s mother did that?”

Ernie laughed. “I doubt it.”

As the tourists walked around Ernie, he stood like a soldier. Hannah stood with him. He’d served in Viet Nam — a war, Hannah knew, that was not as easy to explain as World War II.

“You know what he said, Hannah?”

“What?”

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”

Hannah wanted to ask what adversity meant, but this was not the time. She knew she’d heard something important. She would look it up when she got home. Hannah studied Mr. Lincoln sitting there on his great white chair, looking like nobody’d better mess with him. He seemed to know something the rest of us didn’t.

Ernie gazed up at the Great Man. “It’s been an honor, sir. Thank you for all you’ve taught me.”

Then he and Hannah walked down the marble steps. Hannah looked back.

“He looks like a king, Grandpa.”

Ernie shook his head. “We don’t have kings here. Never forget that.”

And they walked all the way back to the car, holding hands.

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We had waited, we had waited, we had waited some more. The scheduler called twice to reschedule our appointment with the oncologist, rescheduled it because one test on the ten biopsy samples was not ready yet. Okay, you deal with the first rescheduling. The second one is harder because now you’re thinking, something went wrong, really wrong, and we’ll have to do the whole thing again. You are going through your list of how long things take, difficult things, like getting to the moon — you look up the answer. Ah, it only took the Orion crew 4-5 days to reach the Moon’s vicinity. You think about mentioning this to the scheduler (whom you now refer to as the re-scheduler) when she calls again, as surely she will, with some flimsy excuse.

You try to remember the lessons in slow things. You are a slow reader, you’d taken a speed-reading course, you’d learned to move your pointer finger down the middle of the page, but if you liked a book, you went slower to take it all in. You think of snails, animals created to take their sweet time. They carry everything they’ve got in their shell. No snail ever said, “Wait. I have to go back. I forgot my wallet.”

You are wrong about the scheduler. She does call. She is helpful: “The doctor has the test results and she can meet with you at 11 tomorrow morning.”

Okay. Okay. And now, life speeds up. MyChart instantly delivers pages and pages of test results because this is the law in medicine. A patient has the right to see their tests in full, and spend the next seven hours trying to discern what they mean. But this is not your first rodeo. You pick out the key words that you understand. BLOOD. HIGH. LOW. CLUSTER. MASS. But wait. This word before you. It reads: BENIGN. You read it again. Catch your breath. Yes indeed. It is BENIGN.

And now ten thousand feelings hit you all at once and you kick yourself for not paying better attention in Biology. Early on you decided you weren’t good at microscopic molecules, and you were right, but if you’d tried a little harder it would have made this easier. You text the people who have been praying and waiting with you, wonderful people all around the country. Like racehorses in the gate, they break free. And now your phone erupts in fireworks with people sending hearts and hallelujahs and you are as overcome by the outpouring of love as you are by the diagnosis. Every one of the big deal doctors had the diagnosis wrong.

You are crying now, tears drop onto your phone screen. You hug your husband. You grab his hand, you hold it for dear life. Life is so dear and those we love are a gift from God to help us carry on. The next day at 11:40 the oncologist is on zoom looking surprised. This is a cancer hospital after all and they are used to different initial test results. She looks through the tests online. “So every marker is clean… “ she says, smiling, and my husband Evan, an IT genius, fills in some of the information before she can tell us. We laugh the kind of laugh that’s flooded with freedom, amazement, shock, joy, heat, wholeness, release, power, impossibility, craziness, healing, and faith — the kind of faith that changes the molecules in the room. You feel the dark cloud lift — that’s hokey to say, but no kidding — the dark cloud lifts!

The oncologist grins, “I’ll take the win.”

Yes! ’Bye. Thank you.

The bell rings for the second round, a new doctor to figure out next steps.

We sit in our hotel room, the same one we’ve had for twenty-one days, but now this room is flooded with hope. And I’m sure you’ve noticed, hope changes everything.

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She always called me Sweetie or Joanie, except when I’d done something wrong, which happened a lot, and then she’d say my name low and slow: Joan. She’d remind me that she named me Joan because it meant gift of God, and over the years I mentioned that that was too high a bar for anyone to manage, especially me.

She learned things — from books — how to tune-up a car, how to fix a small plumbing problem, how to fix an IBM Selectric typewriter when the R key kept sticking. Really, do you realize how many random, run-of-the-mill words require the letter R?

She always celebrated holidays and birthdays no matter how complicated life seemed. She was a devoted fan of cake. She was 100% Norwegian, and she embodied not just the fresh, athletic look, but the grit.

I wished I had told her that she was brave. Dear God, she was that. She was a billion other things, too, but let BRAVE be the consummate word — written across the coconut layer cake with too much frosting and too many candles melting into one fine flame.

Thank you, Mom, for it all.

I love you. I miss you.

(Photo Credit: Michael Stavrakakis/World Nature Photography Awards)

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I am in a surgical waiting room. I am not the patient. I am what is called “the visiting contact.” I am here alone, but so many are here with me through their prayers and good wishes. It’s a palatable sense of family and community, like being in a fog but you know others are around you. This is heady stuff for a writer since our characters often seem like they’re watching from the clouds waiting to jump into the story. Frowning when we edit their big scene. Clearing their throats when we give them dialogue that they would never ever say…

I just received a text…

The patient is in the recovery area.

You will receive another message when the patient is ready for visitors.

Reply STOP to opt out.

No way am I opting out.

I’ve had a double latte. The woman at the Starbucks in the hospital gift shop told me to stand to the right not the left. There was no one in line but me. I did that. I’d come for coffee, not to question. When I paid she said, “You have a real good day now.” She meant it. I nodded. My eyes got teary. Two days ago I attended a communion service at a church with pastors I didn’t know. When it was my turn to take the bread, the pastor smiled at me: “What’s your name?” he asked. Normally this doesn’t happen, especially in a big city. “Joan,” I said. My eyes teared when he said, “Joan, this is the bread of life…”

I am in this waiting room sitting close to the check-in guy who repeatedly says his script as people come forward:

Date of birth…

Have you had any Covid-like symptoms?

Any travel in the last month?

He’s said this a zillion times, but he says it with a caring smile. There is a NO FOOD/NO DRINKS sign on his desk and we all sit here drinking coffee.

I’ve gone to the bathroom twice. I’ve prayed while scrolling. I’ve had such memories. I am texting with dear ones. My hope is high. Everyone in this waiting room is at a crossroad.

I check my phone. No new text. I have to go to the bathroom again, but I won’t in case they call my name. All during this process I’ve been writing down the names of people helping us at the hospital. Noir. John. Dr. Lee. Laurie. I am getting used to wearing a surgical mask again. A new text pops up:

The patient is now in recovery.

A few minutes later: You can can go to recovery now.

Okay. Right. I gather all my stuff that I didn’t need to bring, and the guy at the check-in desk actually walks me down the hall, past the Purell hand sanitizer pump bottles on the wall. I remember a story about a hospital in Massachusetts who was having an outbreak of staph infections because the doctors and nurses were so busy they weren’t always washing their hands. A consultant was brought in who asked: “What’s preventing you from doing this?” Such a good question. Their answer: “We don’t always have time to get to the sinks.” The following week, Purell bottles appeared on the wall. I follow the check-in guy down this labyrinth of a hall; he stops at B3. I push open the curtain. My husband is sitting in the bed, looking pretty cute, considering. The doctor who performed the biopsy explains what she did. It will take 5-7 days to get the results. Did I have any questions?

I ask a low-ball question, she answers. She checks things. Vitals are good. A discharge nurse comes in. No nonsense. I’m glad. I want no nonsense now. Somehow in the process of leaving the nurse and I talk about home — she is wondering if she should return to her home country after living here for decades. Her eyes get teary. We hug. Friends for the moment.

The patient is in the taxi now.

The Lords of Taxi Land decided that what people want when they are sitting in the back seat of a vehicle that has lost its shock absorbers, are videos that you cannot turn off. How close are you to burning out? Scan Here for more information. Want to advertise on Taxi TV? A young kid in big pink earphones walks slowly across the street screaming at the universe. I read the Post Anesthesia/Post Biopsy Instruction pages. Watch for headaches, severe pain (which is different than regular pain, but I’m not sure how to know). Coughing up blood is bad. I think of three questions I should have asked the doctor.

But now comes gratitude — rushing in like whitewater — gratitude for the best parts of medicine, for good people who show up every day whether they feel like it or not. For family, for friends, for a marriage that survived 9-11, umpteen surgeries, a car accident, a trip to Spain when I brought five suitcases… like a grape vine Evan and I have been whacked down at times, but our branches always come back stronger and heavy with fruit.

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There are the walks we take- the daily grind ones to the grocery store, to CVS, to the kitchen to make French press coffee; the walks with the dog who is thrilled you’ve woken up and you are paying attention to her, and now for her it’s an unbelievably fantastic day, and she bounds in front of you, turns back to look, you offer a tiny treat and that’s the big reward. Your dog races back.

“Sit,” you say.

She does, kind of, her butt barely touches the ground. Ok. Good enough. You give her the treat. All is right in your dog’s world.

Another walk. Another day. Your heart is heavy. You have too many questions, you’ve gotten some tough news. You take the same walk with your dog. She senses something is up, and stays a little closer, but the treat, yep, that’s still her prize. You reach past your heavy heart and let her run forward, then back again.

“Good girl. Sit.”

Treat extended. She takes it, woofs it down without chewing. She looks at you. So what are we going to do now? You take the long way around the neighborhood, past the houses of people you know and don’t know. One thing you do know — everybody’s got a heartache. You keep walking, you rub your dog’s head. Three days ago the medical tests came back — early in the morning they came— on your phone. And you started looking up the baffling medical terms and tried to diagnose things. Who picks these crazy names for bloodwork? What do these numbers mean? It was too early to call your doctor. After an hour of research you concluded you were either healthy as a horse or you had three hours to live. Some news comes quickly like a badly pitched baseball shattering your window. Two days ago you were one person, now it feels you are another.

I have a kaleidoscope made by an artist in Israel. Carved on the side of it are these words: “For I know the plans I have for you…” God’s words. Good words to put in your pocket when it feels like your plans have changed. And you know how kaleidoscopes work — same cut colored glass inside and it only takes a shake or a turn to change the pattern. But each pattern has a beauty to it especially when you look at it through the light.

So here you go down the road with your dog who is thrilled by it all. Give your dog a treat. Give yourself one, too. And keep walking.

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Truly, I didn’t know what to do. I’d written any number of lists about what made sense, and that only helped a little. I could argue both sides of the issue, and I did that, which left me with a few functioning brain cells that needed a break.

It was a timing thing, too, which meant I didn’t have all week or even all day to figure it out. All my perfectionistic DNA was jumping, or whatever DNA does, because I had to pick The Best Thing At This Moment Or Else Everything Would Be So Very Very BAD.

I ate a huge piece of coffee cake and drank two cups of black coffee — that helped. I made the phone call, feeling like a wuss, feeling that other people, whom I have yet to meet, could handle this situation with aplomb. I waited for the person to answer the phone. I said what needed to be said. We hung up. My eyes were moist. I told myself that could have gone so much better if:

. I had showered.

. I had cleaned my office.

. I had practiced a short speech so I could get everything in.

I slumped into my husband’s office and said, “I did it.”

Evan said, “You’re brave.”

What??? This is brave?

“Really brave,” he added.

I remembered standing in a gym before a large group of middle schoolers and asking, “What does courage mean?” The kids looked at each other: She’s a writer. She doesn’t know what courage means? We’re in for a long afternoon.

“It means you’re brave,” a student said.

I nodded and asked the group: “What does brave feel like?”

You’re strong. You’re awesome. You kick it.

One boy added, “Even if you’re scared, you do it. It means more if you’re scared.”

Nods all over the gym.

I once had a girl ask me, “Mrs. Bauer, how many times in your life did you have to be really brave?”I loved that question. I shared a few things with her, but later that week, I remembered more. I wrote them down. I felt energized. I walked around reading the list of Brave Stuff I Did Through the Ages. Then I lost the list. I looked everywhere. Had my grandmother been alive she would have told me, “Those moments are still inside you, Joan.”

When I was writing my new novel, This is Epic, I had this thought about courage. It’s tucked into Chapter Thirteen just as the protagonist, Epic Dupree, realizes she’s being called upon to do something :

I always wanted to understand courage, not just the stories of people on a battlefield who were brave and did things far beyond them but the kind of courage that everyday people possess. Courage when you’re sick or when someone dies or when something frightening happens or when you get so depressed you can hardly stand.

Why can some people stand and others can’t? I hope more courage is hiding in me. I hope it’s fresh and fierce. I’ll take the Iron Man exoskeleton suit, size 8, please, with same-day delivery.

You discover what you’ve got, I guess, when you start using it.

*** This is Epic will launch on October 27, 2026, published by the good people at Greenleaf Book Group. It’s my fifteenth novel, my first one with an adult protagonist. It’s the journey of a singer/songwriter trying to find her voice after her music career is upended. More to come as we get closer.

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I took this picture quickly in Washington DC just as as a nasty storm was blowing in. Was that man really feeding a squirrel with his bare hand? So much is happening in the world that doesn’t seem tender. But here was a moment, a small squirrel trusting a man in a hoody, coming right up to him to him to eat out of his hand. It felt like a small miracle.

He must be a good guy, I thought, because animals know these things. After twenty years in Brooklyn, my husband and I now live in Santa Fe County, New Mexico where St. Francis is the patron saint and believed all animals were his brothers and sisters. There are statues of Francis around town with a wolf, with a beaver (my favorite) — not a ton of beavers in the arid southwest, but we have a few. Endless gift stores with St. Francis carvings, his arms out, birds perched on his hand and his arms. They knew he was good. I wonder how they knew. I’ve never fed a wild animal from my hand that way. I’ve had a brown bunny come within a foot of me — it was thrilling — I quietly put down a piece of lettuce, though I think she was hoping for a bit more. Twice my husband and I have taken falconry classes, wearing fat leather gloves, holding a piece of raw chicken, we’d stretch out our arms and that’s all the falcon needs to see. It’s eyes focus fiercely as it sweeps in and lands on the glove. It’s a miracle — the bird is so light. The raw chicken is gone in a nano second.

The birds out here… the size of the ravens, some so big that when they land on a tree branch, the branch bends with their weight. Animals, we know, can bring out the goodness in humans. My dog Cleo is a rescue dog; her backstory would break your heart. She shouldn’t trust anybody, not really, but she moved into our family and we instantly bonded. Our dog Max had died six weeks before. We all needed each other.

A mother turtle crossing the road rewrites the old joke — why did the turtle cross the road? In this case, I watched her slow movement to nest under a tree, where she burrowed between two roots and laid her eggs. I saw this! The next day I walked back to the tree and I was so relieved that someone had built a low wire fence around the birthing center to protect the turtle mom and her eggs. Another good human; there are so many around.

A tiny squirrel eating from a man’s hand as a great snowstorm moves in. Who befriended whom? Was this the squirrel’s idea or the man’s? A mule deer sticks her head out of the bush. And for a moment, our eyes meet. What is she thinking? Here’s what I’m thinking: Oh, please, stay with me a little longer. And I forget everything else for that moment. A tiny white dog escapes from her yard and comes to our house. We knew she belonged to our neighbor, but she was visiting. She climbed on my lap and snuggled. I felt chosen, somehow. It was a moment that fills your heart and your mind to where the worries and fears of the day vanish for awhile before the small miracles. Even a tarantula, yes I said tarantula, and they are butt-ugly, but they have authority, the way they walk slowly across the road. They have leadership gifts. I smile at them, they don’t smile back, but the tarantulas out here don’t bite, they’re not here to make trouble.

People who study happiness say that it’s not the big things in life that lead to satisfaction — it’s the small moments, the sweet connections that give life a quiet joy. It gives me true satisfaction to say to a tarantula… “Thanks for stopping by…” To a brown bunny… “next time I’ll bring organic vegetables…” To a mule deer, “Darling, I love love your ears…” To a beaver, and I have had an intimate moment with a beaver when my family and I were hiking in the Adirondacks. The beaver rose from a pond and looked at me, I looked back. Our eyes met, and locked, no kidding. My husband and daughter were doing something else, but here was my encounter. I wondered: Are you going to change the water flow? Are you there alone? The beaver shook its tail and disappeared into the pond. A beaver can hold their breath for fifteen minutes under water. They are such good, helpful, adaptable creatures. I whispered,“Thanks for making my day.”

Here’s hoping you see many small miracles this season.

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We all are being bombarded these days — Is it real? Is it fake? Is it a lie? A trap? A scam? How do we know?

I received two emails recently. One from a high school girl, a budding writer with a lovely sense of style, who had read my novel ALMOST HOME, and it had hit her right in the heart. Like Sugar Mae Cole, the protagonist of the story, this high school girl had been homeless. Had been, I was relieved to know that, and the experience grew something beautiful in her. She had more care for people, not less. I love people like this girl — she was grateful, like Sugar. It made my morning to read her note.

Right after that, I opened another email from a big-deal thriller writer who had read one of my novels, and wow, he was blown away by my writing style, and he wanted to discuss with me, writer to writer, the “tipping point” I established in my character’s journey. He was anxious to hear my thoughts on how I so brilliantly did this. This man was undone by my work.

Was this second email well-written? It was. Was it bogus? You bet.

Two emails. One real to the bone that wrote something deep across my heart, the other fake. It’s harder and harder to know these days, it’s like an army of mosquitos has been deployed to dive-bomb us with uncertainty.

I remember the good old days of phishing emails:

Dear Mrs. Jone Bauer,

Please send me a signed copy of your best book and I will pay you back.

I am 12 years old today!! I hope someday to be a writer like you, and also an investment banker.

The challenge now — temptation is a better word — is to decide it’s all fake, all wrong. It’s easy to become embittered. There is a verse in the Bible, the book of Isaiah, that warns, “Truth has fallen in the street…” and it seems that has come true. Here’s how it hit me — these are the times it’s good to do the math. I think of the people I know personally, the ones in my neighborhood, the pals of decades and decades… my family… and I think, I know a lot of really true people. I think of the eleven spectacular words written by Joel Beck that regularly give me hope: “The good has not lost its power to illuminate our lives.”

Really?

Really.

The AI texts and emails these days have craft, but no heart. The screaming voices in the news have a microphone, but little to say. Ah, rule the narrative, grab the headline, dominate the space, scream a little louder, go for the sound bite.

I’m done with sound bites.

And which are the fake flowers in the photo above? The roses in the light green vase to the right are the artificial ones. The closer you get to them, the easier it is to know.

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I walked out my front door; I’d just finished the final draft of my new novel, This is Epic, and it was now in copyediting — it even had a retail pub date — October 27, 2026. I did a little dance on my front porch to celebrate. I had been in the writer’s zone for the last month, not paying much attention to other things, trying to make my manuscript as right as I could. I heard a sound of panicked wings and a bird, who had been inside my front porch light, flew off in panic. It was then I saw a nest poking out of the top of the brass lamp just above my doorbell, and the tell-tale streaks of bird poop on the light fixture. A few small bird heads raised and looked at me.

Across the front yard, the mother or father bird was watching me and screeched. I smiled at the baby bird heads. Birds make nests all the time, of course, but this felt deeply special. “Hey,” I said to the babies. Another screech across the yard.

“I’m your friend,” I told the parent bird who glared at me. “I didn’t know you were here until …”

Usually, birds build nests in our backyard. The front seemed like a non-optimal place.

“I won’t turn on the light or anything,” I assured the bird. The babies cheeped, and you know how adorable baby bird cheeps sound. I could hardly stand the cuteness. I sat on the old wooden bench by the front door and wondered how I could help. The answer was, leave them alone, they know what they’re doing. I walked around to the back door so they wouldn’t be scared, but I instantly went to the front door to watch then from the inside. The parent bird flew back with food. I was grinning and feeling like the world, really, was a pretty sweet place. I didn’t know how young the babies were, but none of them had flown away, so I would have to Google what to do. I was right — don’t do anything, don’t turn on the light, use another entrance.

I thought of predators, I thought of the intense joy I was feeling having these birds raise their little ones right outside my door. And then I thought of a story I had read years ago about an art contest. Artists were supposed to create something that symbolized peace. Pictures were submitted of quiet streams, starry skies, and rainbows, but the winning painting didn’t depict any of those images. The artist drew a painting of a bird’s nest on a tree branch in a raging storm. And sitting on the nest, her wings fully extended over her babies, sat a mother bird, her head down. The ultimate protector.

I’m a mom, too. You don’t have to be a mom to understand that instinct to protect no matter what. I wanted to throw my arms around my fledgling novel. I wanted to protect everybody I love no matter how fiercely the storm might rage.

All that’s left of the bird family is the empty nest. I’m leaving it in the front porch brass light fixture. The sky is lovely here in Santa Fe County. The clouds seem to know how to puff up and hang in the sky waiting for their close-up. I did not take a photo of the birds — that would have scared them. But I picture the babies — three of them, maybe four — not teeny anymore, soaring through the sky. How profoundly cool to have wings. I remember my mother telling me when I left the house and pulled my bike around to the front and headed down our walk. “Look both ways, Joanie, not everybody pays attention!”

Here I am looking at the sky, the magnificence of the orange and gold colors, the freshness of the air, my maternal instincts firing. I would not recognize my birds if they flew past, but just in case, I say: “Listen up, you guys, it’s not easy out there. Look both ways… it’s snake season.”

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My dog, Cleo, was the first to notice it — she began barking and would not stop. It was 7:30AM. My husband, Evan, and I were on our second cups of coffee. We went to the large glass sliding doors that looked out to the back of our house, and we saw it. An enormous red hot air balloon was flying low and heading our way. It seemed to be hurtling toward the back of our house, which was rather disturbing. All I know about hot air balloons is that I will never ever get into one. I looked at Evan who said, “Whoa!” Suddenly, the huge red balloon turned east, flew past us, and seemed to collapse behind some houses.

They’d crashed! My heart pounded, Evan and I jumped into our car with Cleo, and went to save them.

We got to the crash sight in time to see three people in red shirts laughing and pulling on ropes to fold up the balloon that had the familiar graphic of the head of a chicken. The balloon was mostly flat on the ground. They didn’t look like they needed to be rescued. I ran toward them anyway, remembering the feeling I had as a new Girl Scout who had just taken a vow to help people — off I had raced to assist people who didn’t need my help at all.

“Uh…” I said to a man in a red shirt. “We thought you were, you know, in trouble.”

“We’re good,” he said, and explained this was a crew from Chick-fil-A. The big red balloon was out in the community spreading the word. We watched the team fold up the balloon on the ground. They said that dogs are particularly sensitive to the high-pitched hissing of the gas-fired burners. They all patted Cleo, What a good dog, they talked about their lives before they flew this happy balloon. They loved their jobs. They gave us coupons for sandwiches. We took photos. They were some of the nicest people who had ever collapsed on the ground in our neighborhood.

Later, when we went to get our free sandwiches, I ordered an original and Evan ordered a spicy one. We waited in the long car line that is part of Chick-fil-A’s ethos, and when we got to the window, a very nice lady smiled from the window and said, “Sorry, spicy sandwiches aren’t covered on the coupon.” So we paid for the spicy one and we now have an extra coupon that has since expired, but more importantly, we have a story. And you know what? A sandwich is just for the moment. A story might last forever.

When I told a friend this story she said, “These things happen to you, Joan. They don’t happen to me.” I told her that’s because God takes care of writers when we need new material. He says, “Send the big balloon to Joan’s house. She’ll figure it out.” So, here it is: I had a heart-stopping moment; I saw the world at a different angle; I will never think of a chicken sandwich quite the same way again; and I am ever-grateful for our dog Cleo who barked that morning like she had never barked before.

Good girl.

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