My husband and I had gone out to a nice steak restaurant for my birthday dinner. For one night, I got to put on a pretty dress, do my hair and makeup, go somewhere nice and feel like a grown-up.

I was officially forty. Old enough to know how to eat like a big girl.

We started with wine and some crusty bread, served fresh out of the oven on a wooden board with the best butter I’d ever tasted. I was basically eating hunks of butter with just enough bread to make me look civilized.

After four decades of successfully following the two basic rules of eating—chew, THEN swallow—my body apparently forgot how food works, and I started choking.

At first, I tried to play it off with a small polite cough. I put my hand over my mouth, you know, the universal signal for I’m fine, no really, don’t look at me while I quietly die.

Except I wasn’t fine.

I tried to cough it up, but it didn’t work, so naturally I grabbed my wine and tried to wash it down.

That did not go as planned.

Now, to be clear, I have choked on my food before because I’m graceful like that.

But I could always breathe. This time it was getting harder, and eventually I couldn’t even cough anymore.

I leaned toward my husband, motioned that I was going to the bathroom, and speed-walked my way there. Apparently my survival instincts aren’t as strong as my “don’t make a scene” instincts.

Inside the stall, it escalated quickly.

I tried to cough it up again, but nothing happened. I could feel it stuck at the bottom of my throat, and it hurt like a mother. Then the panic showed up.

I stuck my finger down my throat, but I couldn’t reach it.

Cool. Love this for me.

So now I’m here, kneeling in a pretty dress on the cold tile floor in a freaking restaurant BATHROOM, fully committing to the only option left.

I dry heaved. Nada.

I tried again, and this time there was a release… but not the one I was hoping for.

Did you know dry heaving can make you pee yourself? Well I didn’t know that until that very moment, but now I had an undeniable situation.

I paused, still kneeling there, processing the latest development- when the toilet decided I was done before I was done.

It flushed, and water came up with a level of confidence I did not consent to.

A few drops splashed onto my face, because of course they did.

So now we’ve got choking, peeing, toilet water on my face, and I still can’t breathe.

At this point, my dignity was completely gone, so I went all in.

And finally, finally- the bread came up. Along with some remnants of my lunch, red wine and what felt like my entire will to live.

I looked down, and that piece of bread was friggin’ huge.

WTaF? When did I forget how to chew? How was it still intact? I had so many questions.

My throat felt like fire and my eyes watered, but I could breathe again.

Technically? Victory.

I stood up, cleaned myself up as best as one can after… well, all of that nonsense… and went to the sink.

I looked up at my reflection and genuinely didn’t recognize the person staring back at me.

My cheeks were flushed, mascara was dripping down my face, I had raccoon eyes, and my hair was doing something new and aggressive.

I was dressed up ready for a night on the town- not sure who this new Marilyn Manson look-a-like was.

Right then, an impeccably dressed woman walked in with perfect hair, flawless dewy skin painted with Tom Ford makeup, and an Hermès scarf.

She smelled like rain-kissed flowers, and I’d bet my life she has never once been assaulted by a piece of crusty bread.

She looked at me, then paused, and you could see her deciding whether to ask questions she didn’t want answers to. She gave a polite smile and went into the stall.

I washed up as best I could, then caught another look at myself in the mirror and lost it. I laughed out loud, because at this point, what else was I going to do?

From behind the door, in the softest Southern voice, she said, “Everything okay, darlin’?”

I told her I had never been better.

I walked back to the table, and my husband looked at me like I’ve been gone for a year.

“Uh, what happened to you?” he asked. “I was just about to send someone in to check on you.”

I sat down and said, “I’m fine. I was just in there choking and puking… Oh, then I peed myself. I also got assaulted by a toilet. But Miss Dallas came in… so it was all fine.”

He just froze, staring at me, with one hand still holding his glass halfway to his mouth, like his brain was still processing.

I watched it land. Slowly.

“This is who you married”

I picked up another piece of bread because our food still hadn’t come, which really felt a little disrespectful, considering everything I’d just been through.

Not our dog.

A dog.

A big, black-and-white, dopey-looking mutt who seemed perfectly comfortable with this arrangement. Too comfortable.

“Uh. Excuse me?”

(I knew exactly what had happened).

We had been fostering animals for years by then. Dogs, cats, mama cats with litters of kittens. Puppies too young for the shelter. Animals too sick to be around everything else there. The shelter was full. Somebody needed medication. Somebody needed bottle-feeding or just needed somewhere to go for a couple of weeks.

Whatever the sad-sap story was, apparently I had SUCKER written across my forehead. Our house was like Grand Central Station for the unwanted, unloved, or too-sick-for-the-shelter misfits.

But there was a system.

Foster. Give back.

Foster. Give back.

That was the deal. I signed papers saying as much. People came to inspect the house to make sure we weren’t running some kind of live-animal circus. Then suddenly our home was a revolving door of animals coming and going.

We’d just given back Rebel and Rowdy, two ridiculously cute little heeler puppies who had been too sick to stay at the shelter. We potty trained them, crate-trained them, got them healthy and fat. We loved them through the fragile part, and then, while they still had puppy breath and thought we were their entire world, we had to return them to a place with cement floors. They were going to a cage.

I was gutted.

And yeah, I knew the drill. Getting them healthy enough to go back meant we’d done our job and they could find their “fur-ever family”. It meant there would be room in ours for the next animal who needed us.

I understood all of that, but didn’t care.

I still hated it, and giving these puppies back, MY puppies now, was too much.

So I told my kids my heart needed a break.

No more fosters.

Then I left for work.

While I was gone, my daughter found out about Rocky.

Code Red.

He was scheduled to be euthanized the next morning.

She spent the day trying to find someone to take him. A foster. A rescue.

Bueller? Bueller?

Of course, nobody else could.

Ten minutes before the shelter closed, she went and pulled him herself.

I got home later that night.

And there they were.

My daughter.

The dumb dog.

Sitting on my front porch.

“He can’t stay.”

“Mom.”

“I mean it.”

“He was going to be put down tomorrow.”

I looked at the dog.

The dopey dog looked at me.

Damn it.

“One week.”

She had one week to find another foster, a rescue, a permanent home, or Jesus himself.

I didn’t care, but that creature was not living at our house. My heart was broken, and we already had a dog. One pain-in-the-ass mutt was enough.

One week. And if she thought different, then they could both look for a new place to live. I was spent.

Well.

You know how that goes…

Rocky became “Sir Rigby.”

He was one of the goofiest creatures I’ve ever known.

He talked back like a teenager, but I wouldn’t accuse him of being, exactly… smart.

As for personal space? No such thing.

Fetch wasn’t a game so much as a compulsion. He was built like a brick with loose brakes.

And Rigby did not believe in sitting anything out.

If something was happening, he was participating.

Road trip?

His favorite.

He was an excellent front-seat dog, whether we were driving to the beach, the mountains, the park, or dropping off my son at school. The destination was irrelevant.

In my best Kronk voice:

Car moving?

Rigby going.

He swam. He jumped in the pool. He went down the slide at the playground. He ran on the beach.

He played basketball in the backyard and bounced on the trampoline with the kids. He was your own personal furnace and loved to sleep under the covers and wear actual clothes.

There was nothing he didn’t want to be part of.

That dopey dog didn’t just live in our house.

He was in the middle of our life.

Then my grandson was born.

And something happened to our giant idiot.

He got a job.

Sir Rigby became Officer Rigby.

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one creature look at another with the kind of adoration Rigby had for that baby.

From the moment we brought him home, Rigby was on duty.

If you held the baby, Rigby watched you.

Fed him? Watched.

Changed him? Watched.

Walked across the room carrying him?

Where exactly do you think you’re going with that baby?

He wasn’t aggressive. He didn’t need to be but he let you know he was taking notes.

And somehow this barrel-chested dog with no apparent awareness of his own size, who would come barreling through a room and take out anything that failed to move fast enough, (chairs, the other dog, knees) somehow, he understood that babies were different. Around them, he was gentle.

Like so, so gentle.

When my daughter moved out of state, my grandson was only seven months old.

We FaceTimed.

I’d get a smile.

But then we’d turn the phone toward Rigby and his whole face would light up.

And Rigby knew him, too, and loved to hear his voice.

So we started FaceTiming the dog.

Not once because it was funny and adorable. Regularly.

I have an absurd number of screenshots to prove this.

My grandson grew from a baby into a little boy with Rigby’s giant spotted head appearing in that tiny square in the corner of the screen.

They had a long-distance relationship before my grandson understood what long-distance meant.

And when he came back to Phoenix once or twice a year, there was no getting reacquainted. They were instant BFFs again.

Later, another baby came along.

Officer Rigby reported for duty again, and this baby stayed. It was his very own boy to watch over, every day, and he was good at it.

Years passed.

Rigby got thyroid cancer.

We operated and medicated him and bought him some more time. We thought he beat it.

Then he got sick again.

Around then, I got a trip to Tokyo.

I’d never been to Tokyo, and I was ridiculously excited. Rigby rallied again and started doing better. He seemed stable.

I thought it was safe to go.

So I went.

While I was there, I visited the statue of Hachikō.

If you don’t know, Hachikō was the Japanese Akita who famously continued returning to Shibuya Station every day to wait for his owner, even after his owner had died. Nearly a century later he’s still loved and remembered for his loyalty.

So there I was, on the other side of the world, standing in front of probably the most famous good boy who ever lived.

Of course I thought about mine.

I thought about the stupid dog on my porch.

The one I didn’t want.

The one who got one week.

And I told Hachikō about Rigby. Our whole story, because I thought he’d understand. I felt strangely comforted by it.

When I came home from Tokyo, I found out that Rigby had gotten worse while I was gone.

My family hadn’t told me. They couldn’t.

They knew there was nothing I could do from the other side of the world except worry and be devastated, and they didn’t want to take the trip away from me.

Rigby died while I was gone.

Later, I looked at the timestamps on my photos.

I’m not even sure why.

I guess grief makes you do things like that.

I found the time I had been standing at Hachikō’s statue.

Then I asked the time Rigby died.

It was fifteen minutes apart.

Maybe it’s nothing.

But somewhere on the other side of the world, within fifteen minutes of Rigby dying, I had been standing in front of the world’s most famous good boy, thinking about mine.

Telling his story, our story.

And I don’t need to know what it means because it gave me comfort.

Today, Rigby has been gone three years.

I don’t know how that’s possible.

It feels more like three months.

And of all the memories I keep coming back to that front porch.

My daughter.

That dopey dog.

My absolute certainty that I did not want him.

“One week.”

I had no idea I was looking at the dog who would guard our babies.

The dog my grandson would FaceTime from another state.

The dog who would swim in our pool, run on beaches, ride shotgun, jump on trampolines, play basketball, go down playground slides and drive us completely insane.

The dog who never met a person he didn’t think might be his new best friend.

We thought we were saving him because somebody had put his name on a hot list and he needed somewhere to go before morning.

And yeah, we saved him.

But when I look at all those pictures now, that’s not the part I think of most.

It’s everything that almost didn’t happen.

A whole ordinary, ridiculous, wonderful family life sitting on the other side of one decision nobody knew mattered yet.

Technically, he was my daughter’s dog. She showed up ten minutes before it was too late.

But he was everyone’s good boy.

One week.

That’s what I gave him.

But I remember what happened after every single person finished speaking.

The entire room would say, in unison:

“Love you.”

And the speaker would say it back.

Love you.

At first I thought it was weird because I didn’t even know the person talking. Like, cringe weird.

But then a thought came to mind, something I’d heard before. If people can hate someone they don’t even know for absolutely no reason, surely we can love someone we don’t know for absolutely no reason.

So I started saying it. A lot.

I say it to my friends and family every time we hang up the phone. I say it when someone leaves the house, even if they’re just running to the store.

Yeah, they might be gone for ten minutes… but ten minutes could be all it takes.

A few years ago, on an ordinary Wednesday, my dear friend, Erin, who was only 57, fell down the stairs and died.

I had no warning that our last conversation was going to be our last. That I’d never hear her laugh, feel her hug, or have her tell me a hard truth. There rarely is.

I never got to say it to her again. But… I had said it the last time we talked. I will be grateful for that for the rest of my life.

Look, the world is chaotic. People irritate me. Some test the outer limits of my goodwill on a near-daily basis. But I still have more love in me than annoyance, and I refuse to be embarrassed to offer it.

So, whoever is reading this, wherever you are, whatever kind of day you’re having:

I love you.

I hope somebody told you that today. And if they didn’t, I just did.

And as Erin would say: yeah, I love you, but for the love of Pete, either move it or get out of the passing lane!

I post pictures of beautiful places. Beaches and sunsets and adventures. All of it’s real .

But there’s more than that.

There are things I don’t feel like I’m allowed to write about because there are real people on the other end of them. Even though those things affected me deeply. Things I wouldn’t wish on an enemy.

They’re my stories too, but they aren’t only mine. So I still have to protect the people in them.

I’ve written a lot of it down. I don’t know how much I’ll ever share. Maybe some. Maybe none. I just want you to know those stories exist.

I’m grateful for every person who reads what I write, because time is the ultimate gift and I don’t take that lightly. And if you’re going to give me some of yours, I want you to know that what you see here is true, but it’s not all of it.

There is more love and joy in my life than I could possibly describe. There’s also been a whole lot of anguish and some rip-your-guts-out moments. Things I just can’t talk about.

I don’t know. I guess that’s life. Mine, anyway.

Anyway, I’m sitting outside in Phoenix tonight watching a lightning storm. Still hot as hell because apparently the sun going down means nothing here. But the lightning is beautiful, and today was a nearly perfect day. No twist in the story. I know, weird. But it really was.

And somewhere between the flashes I started thinking about therapy, because apparently that’s where my brain decided we were going tonight.

I was in pretty intensive therapy years ago because someone I loved was suffering through something unimaginable, and I thought if I could just figure out what was wrong with me and fix it, I could help them. I racked my brain trying to figure out everything I’d done wrong that somehow led us there.

What had I missed? What should I have caught earlier? There had to be something.

The thing was, I really thought I was doing the right things. Not everything right, obviously. Jesus. But I loved my people and I was trying. I was making the best decisions I knew how to make with what I knew at the time. I still believe that.

But I kept trying to make it my fault.

And somewhere in there I learned something about guilt I’d never thought about before.

If somebody you love is suffering, and whatever they’re going through is your fault (or even some part of it is), then there’s a chance you can fix it.

You can do better. You can be sorry. You can change things going forward.

There’s something almost comforting about that.

Because you know what’s a LOT harder? Finding out there’s not a damn thing you can do. I hate that. Give me something to DO.

But sometimes things are just plain awful. Sometimes you get dealt a shitty card. That’s it. A shitty card, not because you’re a shitty person. You didn’t necessarily miss something or screw something up. It’s just what you got handed, and no amount of guilt is going to change it.

I wish I could say I figured this out in therapy and stopped feeling guilty about things that aren’t mine. But that’s not the case. I still wrestle with it regularly. Some of it I put there myself. Some of it was told to me, given to me, or projected. I’ve carried it anyway. I’m trying hard to put some of it down.

Now, I’m not saying the bad things that happen to you, or to somebody you’d take a bullet for, are never your fault. They might be. I don’t know your life. But if I had to bet, I’d bet most people are doing the best they can. They love their people. They’re trying to make good decisions with whatever information they have. They fuck up, we all do, but most of us aren’t out here trying to screw up the people we love. We’re doing the best we know how.

And sometimes something awful happens and there was no right decision that would’ve stopped it.

God, I hate that one.

Give me something to fix. Anything. I’m good at that. But what do you do when there’s nothing to fix?

You can just love somebody, hard, while they go through something you’d give anything to take away from them. I’m still trying to figure out how to let that be enough.

Anyway. The lightning is still going. Today was nearly perfect, and somehow this is where my brain went.

Some things are not my fault.

Some things are probably not yours either.

The director met us out front.

Before she could even finish introducing herself, he looked directly at her and said, “Did you know there are eight planets in our solar system?”

He skipped introductions entirely and went straight into planetary orientation.

Before she could answer, he started naming all eight planets in order and explained that Pluto used to be a planet “but got kicked out,” before clarifying, for accuracy, that it “failed to clear its orbital neighborhood and is now classified as a dwarf planet along with Haumea, Makemake, and Ceres” like he was naming his cousins at Thanksgiving.

The director smiled politely at first. Then I watched the exact moment she realized he actually knew what he was talking about.

“Wow, you really love space, don’t you?”

Now he’s explaining black holes. “I don’t know if you know about event horizons,” he says, before explaining gravity so strong not even light can escape.

He’s talking with both hands while this poor woman just keeps nodding, trying to keep up with an astrophysics lesson before nine in the morning from someone who can’t tie his shoes yet.

Just when she’d almost regained her footing, he circled back to explain that Mercury lacks an atmosphere capable of trapping heat.

Next thing I know, we’re discussing gas giants versus ice giants.

At this point, he wasn’t really talking to her so much as evaluating her grasp of the material.

She missed a couple of things.

I avoided eye contact with his mom and dad. The second one of us cracked, we all would.

Eventually, she managed to get us moving again.

“Well,” she said, “would you like to see the rest of the school?”

And Knox goes, “Weeeeell, I went to a different school before, ya know, and I hope this one is better because my teachers weren’t so smart.”

I had to physically turn away to hide my laughter.

As we walked toward the classroom, I found myself staring at a laminated motivational poster on the wall that said REACH FOR THE STARS and I almost lost consciousness from the irony. My stifled laughter became unstifled and I excused myself for a minute.

This woman was standing in front of a child explaining orbital mechanics while the wall behind him was encouraging ambition like he hadn’t already mapped half the visible universe before breakfast.

She reached for a workbook, probably hoping to get things back on track.

She opened it and Knox read it fluently without stopping.

“Wait. Is this a baby school or something?”

The director paused.

“Well… we may evaluate him for first or second grade reading once he starts.”

This child gave the tiniest eye roll, like, “Yeah, obviously, lady.”

Knox wandered around the classroom surveying the place with his hands on his hips.

Then he pulled out a child-sized chair from a desk and sat down.

“Huh. I guess it fits me.”

Then he hopped down and asked, “Do you have a playground?”

The director was still standing in the middle of the room, clutching the workbook to her chest like a shield.

And the heat? Ooof.

The parking lot was completely taken over by white canvas tents set up in uneven rows. Tables were packed tight with handmade items, paintings sat baking in the heat, and jewelry caught the sun, flashing right back at you while crowded fabric racks sent dresses lifting and twisting in the breeze.

The air was thick with the smell of fried dough, onions, hot oil, and sugar melting into something sticky, all mixing together with sun-baked asphalt and whatever else had been spilled there earlier.

Everything bled together. Conversations ran into each other. Someone calling out prices. A low hum vibrated under everything and heat was lifting off the ground in visible waves.

Tibu clocked it immediately. I saw it in his face before anything else.

He blanked out like something inside him had just shut off. His body stiffened, and he gave me that "don’t touch me" look before I even made a move toward him.

He started twisting and squirming out of his own body, trying to get away from something he couldn’t point to. His scattered movements picked up speed; one second he was right next to me, and the next he was pushing forward into the crowd.

Seeing how fast it was building, I tried to buy us a little time. We drifted from booth to booth while I pointed at things, hoping something might catch his attention, keeping my voice as low and calm as I could.

“Hey, Buddy, look at this one-you see the colors?”

“You can touch this if you want.”

Nope. He wasn’t having it.

The space didn’t give him anything back, everything felt like it was closing in.

Then, in the distance, a cover band started playing "Valerie" by Amy Winehouse.

Tibu’s head turned, he stopped, and his eyes locked in… that was it.

He moved quickly, weaving through the crowd like he already knew where he was going. I followed right behind.

By the time we got close to the stage, the sounds felt totally different. The bass had a steady rhythm you could actually feel in your chest.

When he walked right up to the front, his whole body shifted- the stiffness melted. I looked down and saw little blue crocs moving to the music.

I stayed beside him and started swaying. He stepped closer and grabbed my hand. We started rocking back and forth, and it just built from there without any effort.

With our hands still linked, I turned him under my arms; he caught part of the spin and let the rest go.

He bounced, twirled, and jumped whenever the beat hit him, and I let him set the pace.

Then he went all in, and I went right along with him, our bodies moving in whatever way they wanted to move.

Toward the end of the song, I picked him up and shifted him onto my hip. He melted in, and everything settled back into that steady sway.

His body softened.

Right then, the sun broke through and hit his face directly, lighting up his rosy cheeks and those long, camel-like eyelashes. He leaned back into the warmth with his eyes half-closed and gave a small, easy smile.

There he is.

We turned slowly, still moving, while everyone and everything else started to fade into the background. The crowd and the noise were still there, but they weren't competing anymore.

When the song ended, I set him down and he moved on- there was no grand gesture, no looking back. It had passed right through him.

I caught the eyes of a lady who had been watching us, and you could tell something had landed with her.

Maybe she didn’t understand all of it, but she understood enough.

I could smell the pizza wafting through my house for twenty minutes while I packed. I made it downstairs just as it came out of the oven. There on the counter sat a pizza customized just for me.

It had green peppers, green olives, and extra feta, all my faves. My family passed me a plate and told me to sit down, take a break, and eat like an actual person before heading to the airport.

My jerk-face cat, who is usually an absolute nightmare, was suspiciously chill.

I sat and watched a green hummingbird at my backyard feeder. He hung out for a few minutes while I ate.

I was not excited at the thought of taking my cat to my new place in Salt Lake City… on a plane. Surprisingly though, he went into his carrier without a fuss or single scratch. Huh. That was new.

I had the fleeting thought, “maybe today will be okay after all.”

I got to the airport to find my flight was on time. Thank you, Jesus!

We took off without an issue. As soon as we got airborne, I could finally feel my shoulders drop. Okay, so that wasn’t so bad after all.

We landed in Salt Lake at gate B-2. It’s close to the exit so I didn’t even have to walk five minutes to get outside.

By 11 PM, I had my cat transported to my new place, and was in bed.

When my alarm went off the next morning, I checked my phone. My reserve assignment got pushed back to a 10 PM red-eye. No way!! So I pulled the covers back up, closed my eyes, and went back to sleep, completely basking in the rare miracle of a day where nothing went wrong.

I lay there in the quiet morning light and thought, Whose life is this?

Well, since I asked…

Not mine.

Because every single word you just read was a lie.

The real story was a total shitshow from the second my eyes opened.

I was in Salt Lake City, but had to get my cat from Phoenix, back to Salt Lake, then get to LA for reserve the next morning. I couldn’t risk flying standby because I couldn’t bring my cat if I ended up on the jumpseat. I had to buy an actual seat where his carrier could fit underneath.

Earlier that day he got into it with my daughter’s cat, and when she tried to separate them, he turned on her. There was blood, and it wasn’t his.

I thought about my grandson. Then i thought about my psychotic cat, and decided there was no way he was staying in that house another night. I had to get him out of there. And it had to be tonight.

Yeah, the schedule was tight, but tight schedules are what I do for a living. It was 4 PM when I got to Phoenix. My flight to Salt Lake was at 8:20 PM, landing at 10:15 PM. I’d drop him at my new place, get some sleep, and then catch a 7AM flight to LA to report by 10.

No worries- I could do that in my sleep.

Except it was all worries.

My daughter texted that pizza was ready. But for the next forty-five minutes I was still running around trying to pack while I smelled it throughout the house. When I finally got downstairs, there were two pizza stones sitting on the counter. But they were empty. There were no green peppers, or olives, or feta.

Huh? They cleaned up quick. I looked in the fridge.

Nope.

My kids assumed I ate, I assumed they saved me a slice, but nobody checked. I didn’t want to make anyone feel bad, so I just stood in the kitchen, staring at the empty stones and quietly crying to myself.

It never rains in Phoenix, like ever. But that day the sky turned dark orange as a massive haboob rolled in. I had my son-in-law drive me to the airport through the dust, a little early, so he could get back home before the storm hit. The storm came in hot, and hit hard. Luckily, he made home in time.

Unluckily, all flights at the airport were grounded before it hit.

Thirty minutes became four hours before we finally boarded.

So there I was, stuck at the terminal with a heavy backpack and a soft carrier holding a cat that was going ape-shit. He wasn’t just meowing. That’s what a normal cat would do, and we wouldn’t want that.

He was screaming and howling. It was ridiculously loud, and guttural. People stared and got out of my way. Every time I tried to put my hand near the mesh to calm him down, he growled at me.

After a couple hours I took him to the airport animal relief room. It reeked of concentrated dog pee on fake turf. Binx was offended and refused to use it.

Now I had to get him back in the carrier which turned into a full-on wrestling match. I am not a wrestler if you’re wondering who won.

I was tempted to leave that little asshole in the room and just walk away.

By the time we boarded, I was running on zero sleep, I was starving, and my whole body hurt.

We finally took off. I hoped he’d worn himself out and would sleep. I should have known better.

That little psycho kept howling under the seat.

By this time it was almost midnight- other passengers were tired and clearly annoyed. I was the cat lady from hell. Nobody gets to sleep on my watch… great.

I thought, “PLEASE, for the love of all things holy, go tf to sleep!!”

And then, by some miracle, twenty minutes later, he suddenly stopped. I took out my AirPods to be sure, and there it was… total silence.

I closed my eyes and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Before I could put my AirPod back in…

I smelled it.

This wasn’t a normal pet smell.

It was an instant, toxic chemical wall inside a pressurized cabin at 30,000 feet.

No. No. No. No. Oh my god, no.

Yep.

And, right on cue, he immediately started in with howling again. Now we have sound and smells.

And of course we were totally full so nobody around me could move seats.

We finally landed in Salt Lake at 2:45 AM at Gate B24.

Now, if you’ve been to the new SLC airport, you know B24 is light years away from everything. You have to walk the entire concourse, go down into the long underground tunnel, walk through the main terminal, and finally out to pickup. It’s at least a full mile walk- I know because I clocked it.

I had a knot in my upper back that felt like a hot knife, my knees were aching, I was carrying a heavy backpack plus a screaming, shit-slicked cat in a bag that felt like it might be leaking onto my hip.

It took twenty- five minutes just to walk to the curb. Walking through that obscenely bright tunnel at 3 AM, I honestly thought maybe I’d already died and this life was my hell.

Well, I got to my new place at 3:45 AM.

Then I spent the next hour and a half trying to bathe a furious, shit-covered cat at four in the morning without getting shredded. I wrapped him in towels, took a few scratches, and scrubbed him down . By the time I was done, I smelled like cat shampoo and not only looked unhinged, I was unhinged. I finally got into bed at five AM.

At six in the morning, my alarm went off.

I opened my eyes and there he was.

Curled up in a patch of sunlight, stretched across the floor like he’d just returned from a luxury spa instead of ruining my entire existence.

I put on my uniform, grabbed my bags, and headed for the airport.

He didn’t lose a minute of sleep.

I lost about twelve years off my life.

If you walk into the dining room, you’ll see old tintypes and cased portraits sitting on my mom’s hutch, framed right alongside photos of the grandbabies. Except these people aren’t family.

At least, not ours.

She found them years ago at an antique shop. I was there hunting for peach opalescent carnival glass while she wandered off toward an old wooden wheelbarrow stuffed with old pictures. People had picked through the quilts, dishes, and lamps, but nobody wanted the portraits.

My mom did. She told me later that every time she set one back down, another pair of eyes caught hers from beneath the pile. She couldn’t leave them sitting there, so she brought them home and framed them.

Every once in a while, a visitor notices them and asks, “Who are these people?”

My mom always gives the same small smile.

“I’m not sure. But they mattered to somebody.”

Every photograph starts out important enough to keep. Someone sat still while the camera focused. Someone paid hard-earned money for a photo, then set it on a mantel where it quietly became part of a home.

Then decades pass. The people who spoke those names die. The house gets cleared out, the boxes end up at an estate sale, and the portraits get dumped in a wheelbarrow.

Maybe that’s what she couldn’t leave behind. Not the photographs. The possibility that every family eventually becomes someone else’s strangers.

One face always catches me: a woman in a lace collar staring straight into the camera. I wish I knew her name.

So those strangers sit in her dining room now. They’ve watched our family’s Christmas dinners, birthday cakes, and ordinary Tuesday nights. My mom doesn’t know who they were, where they lived, or whose laugh they inherited.

She just refuses to let them disappear twice.

The hardest part is the mechanical click of a car door. It’s walking away from a backseat when every cell in my body wants to stay.

Tonight, my five-year-old grandson looked up at me as I shouldered my bag.

“Hey! I’ve been on the airplane before. Remember, Noni?”

Then, with his whole little heart:

“How abouttttt… I come to work with you today? I can be your helper. I can really do it.”

He was dead serious.

And he wasn’t asking for a trip; he was asking for a job. He just wanted to be where I was.

I smiled, though it felt like a lie.

“I know you’d be the best helper in the sky, buddy. But they only let grown-ups work on the airplane. I’m sorry.”

I saw the wheels turning. The “good idea” look.

“I’ll SHOW them! I can do it, Noni. I can!”

I leaned in, kissed the top of his head, and smoothed back his golden hair.

“I have to go now, but remember… Noni always comes back.”

I expected a protest or maybe a “please stay.”

Instead, he turned his face away from me, burying his forehead into the side of his car seat, and whispered:

“Yeah… but it’s too long.”

Suddenly my globe trotting career felt incredibly small.

I’ve survived sixteen-hour days. I’ve navigated foreign subways alone and worked through storms that turned the cabin sideways.

But nothing knocks the wind out of me like a backseat goodbye that ends with a whisper I can’t un-hear.

I adjusted my wings and walked toward the terminal.

People in the airport see the smile and the uniform.

They don’t see the little boy folded into his car seat, trying to figure out why love still leaves sometimes.

The other nine months of the year, this job feels unreal. Those line months mean I’m mostly snorkeling and sipping on lava flows on a beach in Hawaii (though I’ll trade for a London trip every month or two just for a change of pace). Tropical layovers, ocean hair, beach freckles, my life measured in departures and sunlight.

Now before you go thinking, “here she goes with the humble brag,” hear me out.

I had to kick a debilitating fear of flying right in the crotch to even step foot on a plane in the first place (see Flying Pigs). Then I flew absolute garbage trips for ten straight years to be able to hold Hawaii. I gave up my weekends, my nights, and my holidays. I did not get lucky; I earned every single ounce of this career.

Now, that’s the brag. Here’s the humble: every fourth month hits different.

Reserve is an entirely different beast.

It’s basically a live-action plot twist. I don’t get to choose where I go, when I sleep, or even who I become as a person. If I’m lucky, I get to pick my days off. On reserve days, I surrender all illusion of having a personal life. I live on a three-hour call-out.

If I’m on “airport appreciation” (aka Standby), I’m in full uniform and makeup, and fully alert. The second my phone rings, I’m moving before my brain even registers the destination. It could be Boise, Sydney, a quick turn, or a brutal four-day. Your guess is as good as mine, but by then, my roller board is already rolling.

Packing for reserve is like playing Tetris, and I was never good at Tetris. My bag carries options, not outfits. I have layers for a blizzard, a swimsuit for the tropics, walking shoes, a cute dress in case I actually go out, and comfy sweatpants in case I slam-click the hotel door and hide from humanity. I am basically hauling an entire REI store around on two wheels. I keep thinking I should have the arms of a Greek goddess by now.

I don’t.

The uncertainty, the delays, the reroutes, and the 2:00 AM crew scheduling notifications all shrink your entire life into a giant question mark. Plus, being LA-based means any airport within a fifty-mile radius is fair game. It’s mostly LAX, but SNA and ONT love to pop up. Just add two hours of traffic to a thirteen-hour duty day and call it normal.

By the time I drag myself into Ops, I’m either half-asleep or dangerously over-caffeinated. Commuting is its own full-time, unpaid job, so I’m usually worn down before the day even starts. The absolute last thing I want is conversation. I am peopled out. The thought of one more polite interaction makes me want to evaporate.

But that’s the part I always forget.

Ops is where we all end up. It’s the smell of stale coffee, industrial carpet, and the never-ending sound of airport construction with doors opening and power tools going at all hours. It’s a harshly lit purgatory for exhausted commuters, night owls, and the ones sleeping in recliners on purpose.

Then, somehow, there are the immaculate ones whose hair hasn’t collapsed yet and whose snacks require actual utensils. I have so many questions for them.

It’s The Breakfast Club: Flight Attendant Edition, and depending on the hour, I’m either Molly Ringwald or Ally Sheedy.

You’ve got the one who’s sleeping in Ops tonight because she’s at her wits’ end with a defiant teenager back home. You’ve got the guy who somehow, tragically, missed his connecting flight. And you’ve got the one who picked up an extra trip because her dog just died and the apartment is too quiet to sit in alone.

I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling like the kid outside the party, watching through the window, never expecting to be let in. But Ops doesn’t ask for credentials or screen anyone. You walk in with whatever self you bring, and boom! You belong.

Everywhere else, we are completely different people. We live in different cities, lead different lives, and carry different kinds of baggage. But in that room, someone always brings food, so we pass around the goodies. We talk about the latest galley gossip and share horror stories and survival tactics from in the air and on the ground. Sometimes we get deliriously slap-happy and laugh until our stomachs hurt. Sometimes, someone is quietly crying in the corner, and nobody makes a big deal out of it. We just hand them a tissue and some chocolate.

It’s like a grown-up sleepover. By 3:00 AM, the edges blur. We get tired enough to be completely honest. The woman with the dog tells you its name. The teenager’s mom laughs for the first time all day. The conversations get loose, then they get real, and people you met two hours ago suddenly feel like family.

I bitch and moan about reserve every four months. I hate it this month and will hate it again. But I will also walk into Ops, look around at my people, and remember exactly why I fell in love with this job in the first place.

The house sits back from the road at the end of a long driveway, a Cape Cod with red shutters and what looks like a country barn door painted the same deep red.

In spring, daffodils line the front in thick cheerful rows, and there are always fresh-cut flowers from the yard in little vases in every room.

My dad is never not working in the yard. My mom is never not watering something, feeding something, coaxing something back to life.

When they bought this place in 1990 there was not a single tree on the property. You look at it now and it looks like a park.

Apple trees, cherry trees, fruit trees my dad planted one by one over the years, plus a border of evergreens, ornamentals, and things I don’t have names for, all of it intentional, all of it tended, all of it a labor of love that took three decades to become what it is.

There is a giant pumpkin patch my dad tends like it’s his life’s work, because in a certain sense it is.

He germinates the seeds himself, covers the vines so the bugs can’t get to them, measures the circumference of the pumpkins as they grow with an actual tape measure, crouching next to them in the dirt with the focused energy of someone who takes this very seriously, which pays off, because one of them this year grew to the size of an oven.

Every season something different blooms out there. Tulips. Lilies. Daisies. Mums. Giant sunflowers that somehow end up taller than everyone standing next to them.

Maybe it’s the soil, or the attention. Perhaps living your whole life in the presence of people who notice things changes you somehow.

Inside, the house is the kind of place that takes you a minute to take in because there is so much to look at. Knickknacks and collections and things gathered over decades. They feel intentional, like every object has a story and someone who remembers it. It doesn’t feel like clutter. It feels like love.

Photo frames cover every available surface. Kids at every age. Grandkids. Great-grandkids. Their parents. Their parents’ parents.

You walk in and you find yourself in those pictures.

Your own face at ages you’d half forgotten.

Your kids as babies. Your grandkids front and center because they put them there when they know you’re coming.

There are letters on the fridge. Drawings kids made years ago. A stained-glass suncatcher of a family tree in the kitchen window that catches the light in the afternoon. Lace curtains. Sunflowers. A picture of Jesus and more books than I have seen in some actual libraries, stacked on shelves and tucked into corners and piled on the kitchen rack next to the cookbooks.

The plants have names.

A lot of them started half dead on clearance racks at little garden centers and nurseries because my mom has never been able to leave struggling things behind.

I remember going with her when I was little and picking out the fullest, brightest plant I could find.

“No, that one,” she’d say.

Then she quietly reached for the saddest one in the entire place. It had brown leaves and bent stems. There was a bright orange discount sticker hanging off the pot.

“Why would you want that ugly one? This one’s beautiful.”

And she’d say, “Because it still has life in it.”

Then she would bring the thing home and somehow nurse it back into something thriving.

She still has a spider plant my brother gave her when he was in second grade.

He’s sixty this year.

That plant is over fifty years old now and somehow still going strong.

Over the years she has split off pieces of it and given them away to dozens of people, little parts of the original plant sitting in kitchen windows all over the place now, still alive because she kept the first one alive.

I have what I lovingly refer to as the kiss of death and a black thumb.

I’ve killed succulents. I’ve killed herbs. I once watched a perfectly healthy plant begin declining almost immediately after I expressed confidence about its future.

Still, I’d like to think some of their other cultivation habits rubbed off on me. Walk into their house today, and you’ll find bins of toys and treasures for the grandkids to discover, restocked and rotated, because my mom thinks about these things.

And there is always something cooking. The second you walk through that red door, something hits you. Fresh baked bread and garden vegetables and whatever is on the stove, which is always something. Bacon every morning, crispy, cooked just right with perfectly scrambled eggs and fresh green peppers. Homemade mac and cheese made with a roux, not a box. Stew with vegetables from the garden that my dad grew and my mom turned into something warm.

Bowls of fresh local peaches and berries sit on the table in the summer, washed and ready, as though someone might wander in hungry at any moment.

They have enough food to feed everyone who might show up, plus a few people who weren’t invited.

My mom has always believed you need to eat something green every day. She’ll tell you so while handing you some steamed cabbage or peppers.

My dad believes most problems can be solved with Cheez-Its, Oreos, or ice cream.

If you sat still for more than five minutes, he’d appear next to you holding a bowl of snacks saying, “Eat up. How are you gonna put any hair on your chest?”

I remember being little and thinking I absolutely did not want hair on my chest.

I still ate the Oreos.

Ice cream is basically its own food group in that house. There is not a single visit that goes by without giant bowls of it appearing at some point, usually handed to you whether you asked for it or not. He’ll cut up some fresh cantaloupe, put a few pieces on top and say, “you need your vitamins.”

They don’t let you wash a dish. They don’t let you make a meal. And from the moment you walk in you feel like you are wanted in a way that is completely unconditional and requires nothing from you in return.

You also never leave that house unprepared.

Going to the lake for a few hours? Snacks packed.

Thirty-minute drive somewhere? Water bottles, fruit, sandwiches, crackers, sodas.

Airport? Enough food in a tote bag to survive an earthquake.

My mom’s body has folded in on itself over the years in ways that seem impossible if you know her spirit.

Moving is hard for her now. Everything takes effort. But she still keeps going in the same steady way she always has, making food, washing fruit, setting things out before anybody even realizes they need them.

There is already a drink poured with a straw. Strawberries washed in a bowl. Cucumbers sliced because you need something green every day.

She never complains, ever.

And if during a visit you casually mention liking something, a book, a necklace, a kitchen towel, a pair of earrings she’s wearing, there is a very real chance you are going to find it tucked into your rollerboard when you get home.

No announcement. It just quietly appears there like they couldn’t help themselves.

My dad talks the way people talk when they genuinely love what they’re showing you. He holds something up and says, “See there,” while pointing to make sure you don’t miss it, his voice moving faster as the thing gets more interesting, the excitement contagious in the specific way of someone who has never lost their sense of wonder at how the world works. He is the best storyteller I know.

There’s classical music most mornings, hymns on Sundays, ambient in the background while dinner cooks, something ridiculous and fun by nightfall.

My parents are well into their eighties, and I don’t think I have ever been there when they were not, at some point, dancing.

If we’re out and there’s live music, they dance. A country fair, a street corner, a bar band at the beach, it does not matter. My mom can barely stand without help these days. Turn on the music anyway and she will find a way to move. My dad is the biggest clown of all of us, spinning everyone he can reach, grabbing whoever’s closest and twirling them around whether they were planning on dancing or not.

I have never once seen either of them holding a phone while someone is talking to them. The second a grandkid starts to speak, my dad crouches down to their level.

My mom can’t get up and down like she used to, so she sits close and looks them in the eye instead.

Listening is a verb in that house, a skill they have both clearly spent a lifetime practicing.

I brought my own kids to this house when they were small, and I watched my parents do exactly this with them. Get down in the dirt. Point at things. Feed them until they couldn’t eat another bite. Put their pictures on the walls. Make them feel like the most important people in any room.

And now I watch them do it with my grandkids.

Knox, Coco, and Tibu run through the same fields my kids ran through.

Digging in the same dirt.

Sitting at the same kitchen table, Coco helping set the forks with total seriousness like she had been asked to do something very important.

My dad kneeling in the yard holding up a rock for them to look at, pointing at something in it, saying, “See there,” both of them leaning in.

I stood at the back window watching that happen and felt something I don’t have a clean word for.

Not just gratitude, though it was that. Something closer to witnessing.

They taught me to look closely at things. To find connection in the smallest rock, the wildflower, the whisper of wind (she lovingly calls “Mariah”) through the fruit trees out back.

They taught me that love is not an announcement.

It’s a drink already poured, a snack already on the table, your picture already in the frame, a welcome hug.

Watching them pour that same tenderness into my grandkids now feels like time folding back on itself in the most beautiful way I know how to describe.

Their greatest garden has always been us.

The GPS kept saying, “You’ve arrived,” which felt wildly optimistic considering I was surrounded by complete darkness.

I kept looking but couldn’t find the place, so I drove past “you’ve arrived.” Then I turned around and drove past it again.

Then I slowed down and drove past a third time going about four miles an hour like that was somehow going to help.

My phone kept confidently repeating,

“You’ve arrived.”

Ma’am. Have I?

Finally I spotted a long rock driveway and committed. At the end of it were two houses sitting right next to each other with a detached garage in between. One was a little white farmhouse with a front porch, exactly like my daughter had described.

There were massive trucks everywhere. The tires were so big you’d need a stepladder just to climb in.

I turned off the truck. It was quiet. Unnerving quiet. You know, where someone’s cousin is absolutely watching from a deer stand quiet? It was that.

Then I spotted my daughter’s car at the end of the trucks.

“Oh thank God.”

I called my daughter.

Me: “I think I’m here.”

Her: “You’re here?”

A pause.

Someone peeked through the blinds.

Me: “Yup.”

Her: “Ok… see you in a sec.”

I stepped out of the truck. It was freezing! My Arizona blood was not prepared for the cold and the wind whipping through. I wasn’t wearing a coat because apparently I never learn, so I pulled up the hood on my hoodie, reached back into the passenger seat, grabbed my backpack full of goodies for the kids, and started walking toward the house.

There was no welcome wagon. No little voices screaming, “Noni!” No bare feet slapping the cold ground. No one flying out the door.

Huh.

Okay.

Everyone must be exhausted, I guess.

Another peek through the blinds… and then nothing.

On my way to the door I passed my daughter’s car and looked inside.

Car seat.

Okay.

Good.

Whew.

That’s hers.

But wait…

Why only one?

She has two littles.

I stood there with my hand on the car door, running the math. Long drive from Minnesota. Two little ones.

You know what? One of those car seats probably came inside. Smashed crackers, juice spill… you pull it out to clean it, and then it just lives in the house for a minute because that’s life with kids.

Totally checks out.

I was basically doing crime scene analysis to talk myself into something that already felt off.

Then I saw the license plate.

Pennsylvania.

I didn’t move. I just stood there in the dark, black hoodie pulled over my head, hand still on the car, staring at that plate like it was going to change.

It did not change.

My daughter lives in Minnesota.

Shiiiiiiiit.

I looked up.

Eyes still watching me from the blinds.

I was wandering around someone’s property at 11 p.m., dressed in a black hoodie, wearing a backpack and peering into their car while they watched through the blinds and were probably already deciding things.

I did not walk back to the truck.

I think I levitated.

Got in, still wearing my backpack, which almost pushed my face into the steering wheel, but that was the least of my worries.

I put it in reverse, but I couldn’t see a thing behind me. My dad’s old Chevy had no backup camera. I was wedged between two trucks with about four inches of clearance and absolutely zero margin for error.

I could not hit their truck. I could not destroy their lawn. And I could absolutely not still be in this driveway when someone came outside… and I have zero doubt they were coming outside.

So I did what any reasonable person does in a complete crisis:

A cha-cha.

One inch back. Two inches forward. Turn the wheel.

Reverse. Inch. Turn. Regret.

Sweat. Repeat.

A slow-motion 27-point cha-cha in a stranger’s driveway at 11 p.m. in rural Pennsylvania while someone watched through the blinds and I quietly bargained with God.

And then, to put the cherry on this shit sundae…

I peeled out.

Not on purpose. I’m not a maniac. But that’s just what happens when your soul tries to leave your body, and gravel does not care about your exit strategy.

The real Airbnb was the very next house up the road. It was sitting there the whole time. And for the record- my GPS is a liar. My daughter’s car was tucked behind the garage, completely out of sight. Minnesota plates, two car seats, and no one watching through the blinds because I was expected and not, in fact, casing the property.

By the time I actually made it up that driveway, the porch light flipped on before I even cut the engine.

And there they were. Bare feet on cold wood, hair wild from being woken up just to see me. Coco came full sprint. Tibu two steps behind, both of them yelling it at the same time.

“Noni!”

All that adrenaline, and it turned out this was where it was taking me the whole time.

So…

If anyone in rural Pennsylvania has Ring camera footage of a woman in a black hoodie suspiciously mucking about, then doing a panic cha-cha in their driveway before peeling out into the night…

That’s me.

Hi.

As I shoved the bike into the back of the SUV, I noticed the back tire looked a little deflated. I didn’t have a pump or a spare tube, but I did have a dangerous burst of Hero Mom Energy… which has a long, documented history of making things worse. So I decided we’d just stop at a gas station on the way and put some air in it.

We pulled into the station, and instead of unloading the bike like a rational human, I decided to fill it while it was still in the back. I fed the machine, grabbed the hose, and started adding air while mentally calculating how late we already were. The tire was taking air, problem solved.

It was not fine.

The explosion sounded like a shotgun going off in a tiled bathroom. It was a violent, physical event that hit my nervous system before it hit my ears. For a split second, the SUV filled with the smell of burning rubber and ten years’ worth of pulverized Cheerios.

Strong start to my Mom of the Year campaign.

Scamp died.

Well, not technically.

He launched straight up, hit the roof, and scrambled, eyes blown wide in his tiny little pin-head like something inside him had short-circuited. He wasn’t shaking; he was oscillating. This dog, who just seconds ago thought he was going on a casual good-boy outing, now believed he had survived a targeted assassination attempt.

We went to the park anyway, because what else do you do at that point? Cancel the day because you blew up your own car? Not a chance. I made the effort and we were going to show up in whatever shape we were in.

By some miracle, the troop leader had a spare bike. My son hopped on, earned his badge, and moved on with his life.

Scamp did not move on.

When we got to the park, he refused to get out of the car. This is a dog who loved the park, lived for the park, and would normally drag me across a field to get there faster. That day, he sat in the back seat, staring straight ahead like a soldier who had seen too much.

For the next week, every sound was a personal attack. A dropped spoon meant liftoff. A cabinet closing too hard sent him scrambling. Footsteps with shoes on? Immediate panic. The smoke detector chirped once and he left his body.

It took about a week for him to remember the world wasn’t actively trying to take him out. He eventually forgave us, but even after that, he’d glance at the back of the SUV with this deep, quiet suspicion, like he knew that car couldn’t be trusted.

My son earned a merit badge that day.

Scamp earned PTSD.

I stopped keeping track years ago after I passed my first million. It’s several million by now, I’d guess. I’ve spent thousands of hours looking out airplane windows. I’ve watched the sun rise over the Atlantic, disappear behind the Rockies, and light up deserts, oceans, cities, and mountain ranges in ways most people never get to see.

I never get tired of it.

But these clouds…

These were different.

I don’t know if it was the light, the angle, or the fact that we weren’t just looking at them anymore. We were moving through them. For the first time, I noticed they had landscapes.

There were ridges and valleys, cliffs and canyons. Every time I thought I’d seen the coolest cloud of the flight, another one drifted into view.

I couldn’t stop looking.

I was fifty-three years old, sitting on an airplane, and all I wanted to do was put my hand out the window.

Remember when we were kids and cars didn’t have air conditioning? You’d crank the window down on a hot summer day, stick your hand outside and let the wind push it up and down like it was surfing.

I wanted to stick my hand out the airplane window and get a bump in the clouds. I wanted to spread my fingers and watch them disappear into all that white. I wanted to climb out onto the wing, close my eyes, stretch my arms out wide, and take one deep breath. Then I wanted to jump into a cloud and have it wrap around me like the world’s softest hug.

I wanted to run across them, fall backward and make cloud angels before getting up to see what was over the next ridge.

My imagination ran wild for fifteen minutes.

I kept thinking how lucky I was.

Not all that long ago, no human being had ever seen the world from this perspective.

Even after millions of miles, I had never seen anything quite like it.

Then we climbed above them.

The sky turned blue again, and because I am who I am, I opened my phone and started reading about cloud physics mid-flight.

It turns out they’re nothing like they look.

From my window, they looked soft enough to nap on.

They weren’t.

A single ordinary cumulus cloud weighs about 1.1 million pounds.

Inside those beautiful white towers, warm air races upward, carrying moisture higher into the atmosphere. Billions of tiny droplets are constantly forming, colliding, evaporating, and forming again. What looks peaceful from thirty-five thousand feet is actually alive with movement and, under the right conditions, can grow into towering thunderstorms carrying an astonishing amount of energy.

I’d been looking at something that felt as gentle as a hug.

It was quietly, relentlessly powerful.

Somehow, knowing what was happening inside those clouds didn’t make them less magical.

It made them even more magical.

What struck me wasn’t the science. It was those fifteen minutes.

Life has felt heavy lately. Some of it I’ve written about. Some of it I probably never will.

But for fifteen minutes, none of it came with me.

For fifteen minutes, I wasn’t thinking about any of it.

I was just a little girl trying to figure out how to get onto a cloud.

I stood in the garage holding it a second too long, couldn’t decide, and told myself I’d think about it on the way to the grocery store instead.

On the way, I drove down Liberty Lane.

I don’t know why that got to me. Maybe it was just the size of the word next to the size of my morning… milk, eggs, whatever was on the list. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it the rest of the drive.

I thought about a guy on a flight who once flagged me down for a stack of napkins. I assumed he’d spilled something. Instead, he spent five minutes leaning across the aisle, tucking napkins under a dripping drink tray so the condensation wouldn’t ruin the sketchbook of a girl asleep two seats over.

Nobody asked her how she voted first.

Lately it feels like everyone gets assigned a team before they get assigned a seat. You open your phone for five minutes and half the country is evil, the other half is brainwashed, and everybody’s one comment away “ruining America.” Communists. Fascists. Snowflakes. Racists. Groomers. Sheep. Traitors.

I think most people are just trying to pay rent, figure out what’s for dinner, and remember where they parked at Costco.

I grew up in a conservative house with a dad who was a railroad worker and union laborer, so our dinner table never quite matched the labels people use now. Then I had my rebellious years and swung hard, the way you do when you’re young and convinced you’ve personally discovered the truth for the first time in human history.

Now I’m older, and mostly just tired of watching millions of people get flattened into a vote, a bumper sticker, or a headline.

Maybe that’s why airplanes feel different to me. Up there, people stop looking like categories and start looking like tired human beings hoping we don’t hit turbulence over the Pacific. Once that boarding door closes, most of what people scream about online seems to disappear.

Sure, there’s sometimes a lunatic yelling about a seat assignment while half the cabin films it like the Super Bowl, but that’s not usually what I see.

I see two strangers wrestling a suitcase into the overhead bin for a ninety-year-old woman who keeps apologizing for “packing like she’s moving.” When they finally get it up there, they both stand there catching their breath before one of them laughs and says, “Well, that thing’s not going anywhere.”

I see moms boarding with a crying baby, a backpack, a car seat, seventeen snacks, and a face that says they haven’t had a complete thought since Easter. More often than not, by the time I get there, somebody else is already helping.

I’ve watched a college kid crawl under three rows of seats through old pretzels and gum wrappers just to find a stranger’s lost earbud.

I once watched a businessman in an expensive suit spend an entire flight answering a little boy’s dinosaur questions every thirty seconds, at full volume. By the time we landed, he knew more about dinosaurs than any adult should, and the boy’s exhausted mother looked like she might cry from relief.

I’ve watched people quietly trade seats so a veteran could sit closer to the front, then disappear into a middle seat in the back without making the slightest fuss about it.

Most people are simply trying to get home, whether that’s for a funeral, a wedding, a chemo appointment, or the vacation they spent two years saving for. For a few hours at 35,000 feet, we remember we’re on the same team.

That’s who I thought about, driving down Liberty Lane with a cart full of groceries and a flag still folded in the garage.

So I went home and put it out. Not for the politics, but for the napkins, the suitcase, the dinosaur facts, and the seat that nobody made a show of giving up.

Those are the Americans I know. 🇺🇸

It’s on Waiheke Island. The cove is small and protected, tucked between two villages. The shells run all the way to the cliff base. There isn’t much sand. You walk on shells, and they crunch under your feet.

If someone had asked me what it would feel like to sit in a mountain of broken shells, I would’ve guessed sharp. Instead, years of waves had rounded the edges. The ocean had spent centuries doing what oceans do, tumbling them against one another until they felt smooth in my hands.

I couldn’t stop picking them up. A shell is a body. Every one of those once housed something alive, a clam or a mussel or a snail, some tiny creature that spent its entire life building a home from minerals dissolved in seawater. Then the animal died, and the house stayed.

I started looking around differently after that. What I was sitting in wasn’t a beach. It was time. Generations of lives stacked on top of generations of lives, shells breaking down into fragments, fragments breaking down into sand, the beach slowly becoming made from its own ancestors.

I grew up in a faith that took eternity very seriously. We talked about it constantly. It wasn’t a belief, it was the ground I stood on.

A thousand years was supposed to be the blink of an eye. I believed it for a long time… until I didn’t.

The worst thing about walking away from a belief system is that nobody hands you a replacement. Nobody pulls you aside and says, “Here’s your new way of thinking about forever.” You mostly just keep living.

And nobody mentions what gets taken with it. Not just heaven, but the whole story. Walking away doesn’t feel like freedom at first. It feels like getting your hand stamped and escorted out of a place you’d lived your whole life.

Then one day you’re sitting in a shell-covered cove on the other side of the world, holding something that may have existed before your ancestors were born, and a thought sneaks up on you. Life has been happening for a very long time before me, before anyone whose name I know. And it will keep happening after I’m gone.

I expected that realization to make me feel small. Instead, it made me feel connected. For a few minutes, all the noise in my head stopped, and I wasn’t trying to solve my life anymore.

I sat there holding the leftovers of millions of lives and felt strangely comforted by the fact that none of them lasted forever either. None of those lives knew they were helping create a shoreline. Yet together they had created an entire beach.

The beach had been collecting lives for thousands of years. Every shell had once been someone’s home.

I left every shell where I found it. It felt wrong to take one. I was a visitor. The beach had been collecting lives for thousands of years before I arrived. It didn’t need mine.

I’m still not sure what I believe about forever. But I’m less afraid of it than I used to be. Which is maybe the closest thing to peace I’ve found since the old kind ran out.

Maui said, “Swim.”

My stitches said, “Cute. Absolutely not.”

I’d had skin cancer removed a few days earlier. Number five. Which feels excessive, really. Like at what point do I get a free sandwich punch card from the dermatologist?

My doctor was very clear:

No ocean water.

No swimming.

No “just dangling my legs in for a second.”

Which felt unnecessarily cruel considering I was in Maui, staring directly at the Pacific like a grounded child looking through the window at recess.

So instead, I sat on the shore like a potato in SPF 70 and a dumb-ass hat.

And listened to everybody else have the beach day I was supposed to be having.

You can always tell who’s been snorkeling. They come out of the water all glowy, smiling softer than when they went in.

Meanwhile, I was dry, bandaged, eating string cheese out of my beach bag because apparently that’s who I am now, and trying not to feel ridiculous about how deeply I missed something as simple as putting my face in the water.

At some point, a chicken wandered past me.

And if you’ve never been to Maui, the chickens are everywhere. Beach chickens. Parking lot chickens. Resort chickens strutting around like they paid full price.

This one wobbled past like it had somewhere better to be.

A little later, an entire multigenerational operation materialized five feet away with the confidence of people who have never once questioned whether they’re welcome anywhere.

They unloaded coolers, unfolded chairs, and immediately started snapping towels that somehow kept hitting people in the face.

It’s me. I’m people.

The mom was directing traffic with the intensity of someone evacuating civilians before a hurricane.

The dad was assembling beach chairs while wearing the thousand-yard stare of a man who’d checked out in 2010.

Children ricocheted everywhere.

Then Grandpa arrived.

His stomach entered first like it had seniority over the rest of him. His swim trunks looked one rogue wave or a sneeze away from catastrophe. Every step across the sand looked negotiated individually with his joints.

And yet somehow he carried himself with complete authority.

The kids were fighting and it was total chaos until Grandpa started singing. He was loud, wildly off-key, and completely unbothered by the fact that the rest of us had ears.

“On top of old Smokeyyyyy… all covered in cheeeeeese.”

I have no idea why it worked, but it did.

Before long, the kids were singing right along with him, and somehow the chaos stopped.

He reminded me of my dad.

Suddenly I’m nine again. My mom is lobbing two pounds of sunscreen on me, forcing a T-shirt over my swimsuit to ward off the sun. She’s stuffing lambswool into my ears against the ocean wind. She was the protector, on guard so the rest of us could actually relax.

My dad was the clown. He’d jump in the waves, splash and chase us, throw us into the white water. He gave zero shits what the people on the beach thought of his form or his belly. He was there to make sure we had fun. Back then, that felt like the whole point of being alive.

I’m usually the first one in the water. I’m always in the ocean when I’m at the beach. But today I was still on the sand, and if I hadn’t been, I would have missed the scene. I would have missed being nine years old again for a minute.

I sat there nearly crying over a stranger’s swimsuit.

Then I heard a woman yell:

“Make sure you spray sunscreen above Jordan’s butt crack. He burns there every year.”

There I was, feeling tragic over missing a few weeks of snorkeling, while another woman was out here managing annual butt-crack sunburns.

Skin cancer, screaming kids, bad knees, nostalgia, and annual butt-crack sunburns all happening simultaneously.

It was hard to stay dramatic after that.

Anyway.

Skin cancer suck it.

I’m still at the beach.

Do I miss my people?

Absolutely.

Do I get lonely?

Never.

Being alone and being lonely are two different things. You can be alone without being lonely. And you can be surrounded by people and still feel like the only person in the room.

I've slept in more cities than I can count. I've walked streets where nobody knows my name. I've sat on beaches long after everyone else has gone back to their hotel.

And somewhere along the way, I learned how to be good company for myself.

I walked Waikiki Beach at 11 p.m. when the island had already gone to sleep.

The moon looked bright and massive, pushing through the clouds like it had something to say. It stopped me in my tracks. I think I even said "whoa" out loud.

The sky was moody, and the vibe just spooky enough that my dark little heart immediately felt at home. I looked down at the glassy water rolling in and out against the shore. The sand beneath my feet felt like it absorbed a bit of pain with each step.

Then I wandered beneath the neon-lit banyan trees.

Purple against black.

Like Halloween had quietly taken a vacation in Hawaii.

I tried to explain it to someone later and the words didn't work.

I was so happy to be alone. I didn't want anyone to explain or dilute it. I just needed to stand there and let it be exactly what it was.

The night was for me. There was nowhere else I needed to be.

That's not loneliness.

That's freedom.

Naturally, as a mature adult, I yelled after her, “You’re welcome!”

My son tugged my sleeve. “Mom, don’t.”

“It’s rude,” I snapped. “She should have acknowledged you.”

My then nine-year-old looked at me with the wisdom of an ancient monk and said, “I didn’t hold the door because she’s nice. I held it because I am nice.”

I stood there, completely out-parented by a kid who still wanted me to cut the crusts off his sandwiches.

My son is 25 now, but somehow I still hear that nine-year-old in my head.

Today, I walked out of the grocery store just in time to watch the woman parked next to me shove her cart into the back of my car.

Just abandoned it like she’d parked it there on purpose and this was someone else’s problem.

She hadn’t seen me coming. I stood there watching her head to her car.

The rage was instant.

The commentary in my head was immediate.

“Bitch… you’re about to meet Jesus.”

I walked over. “Hey, your cart just hit my car!!”

She turned around like I’d interrupted something important. “Oh. It’s all good,” she said, already turning back to her car. Just wanted the interaction over so she could leave. “Stay blessed.”

Stay blessed? Are you high?! I’m from New Jersey. You have got to be...

Then another voice cut in.

“I didn’t hold the door because she’s nice. I held it because I am nice.”

Damn it.

I walked over and stood right behind her car. I pulled up Chopin on my Spotify, turned it up, crossed my arms, and waited. I waved and said hello to people walking past. I had all day.

Turns out she was a quick learner after all! Only took a few minutes before she got out and moved her cart.

Thankfully, there wasn’t a scratch on my car, or this would’ve been a completely different story.

She should consider herself blessed that sixteen years ago my son accidentally raised his mother.

Then I keyed her car.

Kidding.

Growth is exhausting.

The first one used up most of the budget. The second was The Berenstain Bears, which does not hold up well on adult review. It features some casual fat-shaming, and at least one life lesson that boils down to asking if you have tried simply not having feelings. Coco was completely dialed in with no notes.

Then she chose My Grandma Loves Me. It felt more toddler than four, but she smiled and said, “You’re my grandma, and even though I call you Noni, it’s kinda about me and you.” That was the end of the discussion. Case closed.

When we finished, I told her it was time to hop into bed so I could tuck her in.

She scowled at me, using a look she reserves for adults who struggle with basic arithmetic.

“Noni,” she said, annoyed but still polite. “I’m four. I get four stories now.”

She turned four yesterday, so this was a recent upgrade and she intended to use it. We read one more.

When I tried to tuck her in again, the scowl grew bigger.

“Well now it’s time to do That’s How It’s Made,” she said.

Every night, each kid gets to watch one video based on their current obsession. I told her it was late and we could do it tomorrow.

She huffed. “That’s not how this works, Noni. I get to pick one.”

She was right.

I asked if she had any ideas. She paused, so I offered, ‘Maybe we could watch how they make a birthday cake, since you just had a birthday yesterday.

She was clearly insulted by the idea.

“Noni. I know how to make a cake. Cakes are easy. We are NOT watching that.” Then she casually added, “How about something else, like, um, how cameras work?”

That is how I ended up watching a fourteen-minute video on camera manufacturing at bedtime.

We sat through DSLRs, digital photography, light, shutter speed, and curtains. The narrator kept saying things like, “And how the freak does that work?” I appreciated his commentary because I was fully aligned with his confusion by minute six. At some point the science stopped and the sorcery began.

She never once looked away.

When it ended, she smiled and said, “Thanks, Noni. That was cool.”

A four-year-old sat through fourteen uninterrupted minutes of camera mechanics and optics like it was nothing. I still cannot explain how any of it works because it feels like magic to me.

If you ask her tomorrow, she’ll probably explain it to you.

Better than the video did.