You can cancel things for a good reason. Everybody understands that you can’t get those reports done, that you can’t hold the meeting, and that you can’t cook dinner. It’s all right not to perform when you’re sick. And suddenly, people are expressing that they care about you. It’s not that they don’t care about you when you’re well. They just don’t SAY IT.

I had the best day yesterday because I had a stomach problem. The symptoms be damned, because the illness taught me many things. Without getting into the discomfort, having to rest, and not being able to eat, it gave me freedom and new insights into scheduling, prioritizing, and what my abilities are. If I didn’t get something done, it was okay because I wasn’t feeling well. If I didn’t clear the sink before or after dinner, it was okay because I wasn’t feeling well. And NONE of that mattered. I’m feeling better today, and everything is still there. I didn’t have to be Henny Penny. Things were okay.

I reveled in not having to do things. And that taught me that it’s just me feeling that I have to do those things. Let me repeat that- It was just ME feeling that I have to do those things. Yesterday, my priorities were me, and usually my priorities are never me. I didn’t have to schedule anything because there were things scheduled already that I couldn’t do, so why schedule more? Granted, things were running smoothly because of everything else I always do. I am competent and keep my ship in top-notch order.

My ship would still sail well even if I did 50% less on normal days. It’s okay if I let go of things sometimes. I can enjoy myself and what I want to do more than I do. (That was a pun. I didn’t get it until I read it again.)

I’m still not feeling well physically today, but mentally I’m released, refreshed, and regenerated. I had a little one-day vacation, and it didn’t cost any money. It taught me not to pay attention to my cognitive bias that things have to be a certain way, or that I have to do certain things in a certain order. Change up is good.

As a writer, sometimes you have to mess with a bunch of ways to say something until you find the right one. You have to extract it. Sometimes it’s easy, and sometimes it’s hard. What if I said, “Oh, goody, I’m sick today!” What perspective would that give me? When there’s too much to do, what if I said, “What would I let go of if I was sick today?” even if I wasn’t. The illness forced me to “Let that shit go,” the phrase that started from mindfulness culture. “Release what doesn’t serve you.”

In any case, today I am mindful of the joy being ill brought me. I am mindful of feeling better, climbing to 100%. I am less stressed from being “excused” yesterday. I’m holding my excuse tight to my heart in thoughts, words and lessons learned.

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I pushed the key and was given the podcast host talking with two of his podcast cohorts about the newness of his podcast and how many he had already published. I listened for about three minutes and decided it wasn’t worth my time. Why are they jabbering about themselves and what they’ve accomplished instead of giving me info about bearded pigs? Podcasts are for learning, entertainment, news, inspiration, and personal growth. This one was for boredom.

A podcast is a stage. The host is the one on stage, the one with a script, the one people are listening to, and the one who is acting. One difference between a podcast and the theater is that the actor is also the director. There’s no one to say, “Get on with it!”

Or maybe my problem is that I’m not an auditory person. I don’t take things in through my ears as well as I do through my eyes. Or maybe I don’t search enough to find the right podcasts. There is probably a broad spectrum of podcasts, from wonderful to crappy.

I haven’t given it a good try. I’m usually turned off by starting one and deciding it’s not worth my time, so I don’t try another one for a while. I need to spark my curiosity with a pact as Anne-Laure Le Cunff proposes in her book, tiny experiments (her choice of word case). My pact would be to watch a new podcast every day for a week. Or maybe the same podcast, multiple episodes.

Either way, I will remain curious. I’m not a negative person. I’m just protective of my time, probably because there are so many things I’m interested in.

Do you have a podcast you can’t live without? Maybe that’s too strong. Do you have one that doesn’t bore you and that you really enjoy listening to? Let me know in the comments.

I, obviously, need some recommendations.

Cheers.

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The 750 Words app offers prompts in case your brain isn’t giving up the words right then. Each day, I get two prompts from categories that I’ve chosen. I get a word to weave into my writing, and I get a question for curious minds. It gives me the definition of the word and an example of how it could be woven into a sentence. That’s like spelling bees, where the judge has to use it in a sentence to help the letters come out correctly from your mouth. I don’t really feel like I need the prompts, but I was curious about what the app-makers thought was a good prompt.

Today’s question was : CURIOUS_10: Do we live in a simulation?

A few times my husband has asked me something to this effect. I just marked it up to his fantasy-loving imagination and his game-playing. And maybe his wanting to be living in a simulation. His experiences are as they are in his head, be damned to what his senses are taking in. But, back to the question at hand. Does it matter if I am “living” in a simulation?

I feel like I have free choice. If that isn’t true, if someone else is calling the shots, it must be a very advanced simulation because my emotions and actions feel like my own. I am conscious.

Or maybe I’m confusing game-playing with simulation. Games are simulations. They are imitations of situations or processes. But are all simulations, games? Could there be a simulation for a reason other than game-playing? I might be narrowing my answer down a pre-conceived path by focusing only on game-playing.

There are simulations for scientific reasons, for experiments. There are simulations for medical reasons, e.g., body performance; also, critical assembly, such as jet engine repair. Another simulation is haptic feedback, which creates a tactile experience that can be used in the arts, such as sculpting. If I’m “living” in any of these simulations, yay for me! I’m assuming my character will help support and forward successful human life. But if I’m just “living” in a game, I hope the players are having fun!

Even “living” in a game would suit me. I don’t “game” nearly enough in my life. The napkin I saw in the grocery store today spoke to me: “My party was stopped by responsibility.” Back to my simulation.

And interestingly, my word prompt for today was "libertine"- someone who ignores conventional rules about morality or behavior. “Not I,” said the rule follower, though at one point in her life, she had been. Like I said before, back to my simulation.

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“Research shows that the more you create, the more creative you become.” This is a quote from an article by Anne -Laure Le Cunff. (Look her up. She’s amazing.) I’ve started writing (at least) 750 words every day with the 750 Words app. Or rather, I’ve continued writing. I started a couple of years ago when the app was 500 words. I never got the story about why they changed it to more words, but that idea fits with my opening quote, more words, more creative.

I am becoming more creative through this daily writing, and not just in writing, but in ideas, my egg artwork, and in solving problems. My two personal quotes that I always throw around to people are: 1. Don’t give up, and 2. Humans are problem solvers. Creativity helps when you want to give up. It puts you in a problem-solving mindset, which you may need if you’re in a position where you shouldn’t give up, which is almost all the time, in my opinion.

Now, I don’t have the credentials that Ms. Le Cunff has. It’s something I’ve always struggled with. In my case, life got in the way of life. That’s another story. I mentioned it, though, because I asked AI if there were authors who didn’t have degrees, or hadn’t even gone to college, and guess what? Many. Famous ones. Don’t stop reading because I mentioned AI. I’m using that sucker for MY benefit. And it is just a sucker. It’s not the main nutritious course, and I usually do without it, for my health.

In today’s writing, so far, I’ve written 214 words, 215 now. They’re not just for my benefit, though. I sat down to write about my grandson getting his karate black belt last night. It was an invigorating evening, seeing young people of all sizes, shapes, abilities, and colors working towards the same achievement, being tested on something they’ve been working towards for years in their few. You, who have grandchildren, are you responding to this? Are you thinking about your grandchildren? And you who don’t, are you reacting to what you know about karate, about black belts, about achievement?

Another theme that seems to go along with this is “Just Show Up.” Babies learn their native language by being present while others talk. They hear words thousands of times and take in other cues like what is said, when, and why, in context. They are there. We need to be there, too. If you show up, like I did this morning in front of my computer (with my Daily Dose), it becomes a part of your life, like your left arm. It’s there. You don’t always notice it, feel it, or use it, but it’s a part of the whole system. It makes other parts of your life work better.

Writing every day is telling me who I am. It’s surprising me with the topics that come out of my brain via the tips of my fingers. It’s reminding me of some important parts of my personality, like a ghostly need to create, lurking in the shadows of my mind. Is that a song? And my ability to DO instead of just TALK about it. My mom taught me to brush my teeth every day, but she didn’t teach me to write every day. Brushing my teeth is for my health, and so is writing.

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r

Brick wall!

Childhood teachings

Constantly in front of me.

I could blast it down, but

It has value. Mine.

Safety and power.

All on me. Mom’s gone.

Considering demolition,

‘tho wavering.

Each brick has strengthened my success.

I constructed it well.

Pretending I’m drunk

would allow me to poke out a brick.

A hammer and chisel peek

right through the wall’s

serious solidity.

Liquid mood could improve the view.

Could all of me still be there,

Bettered by a relaxed peer

through the wall?

Constant mortar mixing of

Seriousness, rigidity, earnestness

Has kept me strong.

Who’s on the other side?

Me, light-hearted with frivolity?

Levity? Gaiety?

I must pretend. Real inebriation

causes walls to crumble.

Vision expanded,

I’d see another side.

Possibilities would open,

Adding to who I am.

No loss, just different ways to be.

Me, plus!

I take care of myself.

One thing taught,

plentiful self-sufficiency.

Considering hopes and dreams,

it’s worth a shot.

Leaving now for the pretend bar,

To have the pretend drink.

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Today was Shark Boy’s last piano lesson. It was sort of a surprise, although there had been clues leading up to it. I sensed it was coming, but I wasn’t sure when. He wasn’t happy during his lessons; he wasn’t practicing as much as he used to, and there were moments during his lessons when he wouldn’t stop talking. I think he was trying to keep me from critiquing the piece he had just played.

He’s not a crackerjack musician, though he could produce some mighty fine recital pieces because of his perfectionism. It was this perfectionism that was his most difficult challenge, not because he minded the extra effort to be perfect, but because he couldn’t accept anything less from himself. He no longer takes piano lessons, and I no longer have that brilliant mind to teach each week. His mother had shared with me in the past how difficult it was to have such a smart child. It was hard to keep him challenged. I understood this because I also found it difficult to teach him, but I was drawn to this child, trying to own and manage his own intelligence.

Shark Boy knew everything about sharks, thus the nickname. During the first three years I taught him, he spoke incessantly about them: what they ate, how they swam, where they lived, which aquariums around the world had which species. I would listen patiently for a couple of minutes before I reminded him that we were together for a piano lesson and thus should swim that way. I would start a timer on my phone at the beginning of each lesson, and we agreed that he could talk about sharks until it went off. It was 35 seconds, because 30 seconds, he proclaimed, “just wasn’t enough.”

He is now approaching puberty, and over my years of teaching, I have found this to be more traumatic musically for boys than girls. Boys seem to get a sense of themselves for the first time, and if music isn’t their passion, it gets pushed aside. Girls seem to embrace the lessons under the umbrella of student-teacher camaraderie, whether or not music is their passion.

In the last few months, everything that could possibly go wrong with his lessons did, from his point of view. From my point of view, he was making “normal” mistakes and good progress. When he played a piece, he knew that he was doing something wrong, which I feel is a success in itself, a preface to improvement. But he would become irritated because he couldn’t play it correctly. This is where his perfectionism got in the way. During one lesson, he was frustrated beyond help, and he said tearfully, with his hand up to his head,

“I’m no good at rhythm! My friend has perfect rhythm, and I just can’t do it right. I try, but it’s not right.”

“Let’s try it again, and I’ll help you. It’s not as bad as you think it is.”

“It won’t help. I’m just awful at it.”

“You’re doing better than you think you are. Let’s . . . “

“No, I’m not!” he blurted with a vengeance, turning to the Zoom screen to give me an angry, desperate facial expression that went along with the forcefulness of the feeling. I realized we were at the point of no return.

“Tell you what. We’ll put this aside for right now. Why don’t you play a review piece for me that you know well? You pick one.”

He bent over with his elbows on his knees and rubbed his face with his hands for a few seconds. He then picked up his journal, which had his list of review pieces, and with a very sad face said quietly,

“I’ll probably mess that up, too.”

I said nothing at this point because I realized he was the only one who could save the lesson. He turned to the list, picked one quickly, set it on the piano desk, and began playing the Pokémon theme. The piece was of sufficient length and halfway through I saw his shoulders and wrists relax. My mood thawed, and my teacher-self was happy for him. He was playing well.

Recently, other lessons were also defined by rages against himself. He would deny every morsel of praise and positive feedback I gave him about his performances and his progress. These were the clues that let me know he was headed out. As a child whose emotions may not have caught up with his intelligence, he might have been in disbelief, wondering how he could be making so many mistakes in this aspect of his education, since he was usually right about most things in his academic life. We had talks about all his successes, and I tried to explain that you really can’t learn to play piano without making mistakes because it’s a fine coordination skill that needs to be developed between your body and your brain. It’s not just something you can learn from a book. But nothing I said could change his mind.

I feel his finest hour was three years ago during a recital the day before Halloween. He had learned the song "Baby Shark" because his younger sister was thrilled by it. Maybe she thought she was baby shark since her older brother was Shark Boy. He had prepared the piece well, even though it was a little above his level, and I was as thrilled as his little sister.

I had invited the students to wear costumes if they wanted to, and when it was his turn, he lumbered up to the stage in a shark costume. I say lumbered because it was a little too big for him, and there were fins everywhere. He proceeded to play his piece flawlessly from memory. Parents, other than his, were taking videos of him, and he got a standing ovation when he took his bow. He wasn’t quite sure what to do while everybody continued to clap, so he glanced at me for quick approval and flopped back to his seat, not the smoothest swim a shark has ever made. I teach my students about artist comportment, but I’ve never mentioned what to do if you get a standing ovation.

Today, his mother peeked around the edge of the screen as the lesson started and explained the decision not to take lessons any longer, mentioning his lack of interest in practicing and his being put out by the time it took, even for the lesson. And then she left it to him and me to finish up. Since we were having the lesson on Zoom rather than in person, I think it was a little easier for us. An adult’s physical presence can sometimes intimidate a child.

I listened to what I had assigned from last week, said a few words of praise, and then asked him to play one last song for me: Minecraft. It was a new piece from last month, and I thought it would be a fitting goodbye because he seemed to have a renewed interest in piano while he was learning it. He turned to it in his music book and played it for me readily. When he was finished, before I could even react, he burst out with,

“Wait! I want to play one more!”

“Ok, that would be great,” I said out loud, and in my head, “Hallelujah!”

He didn’t tell me what it was, but just started playing. Tears of appreciation puddled in my eyes. It was Baby Shark. Shark Boy to the rescue!

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Perched comfortably on my kitchen stool, hot coffee and snack close by, I heard the words “imposter syndrome.” I had never heard about this before, but I still flinched in sympathetic recognition. One of the other writers in the Zoom meeting had mentioned it. The masks high on the wall in the sunroom gave a little flutter, almost audible, as they and I realized they embodied this syndrome in my life. Or maybe they were celebrating, glad to be of some use besides adornment. After all, besides ornamentation, another job of a mask is to hide something.

These masks on the wall were not N95 medical-grade masks, such as the ones that protected health workers from the pandemic virus. They were decorative masks that protected me from accusations of fraud.

When I started teaching piano in 1972, there was a viable reason that I had imposter syndrome. Lots of people experience impostor syndrome (or why would there be a name for it), but I truly was trying to be something I wasn’t. That’s fraud, especially when you intend financial gain, which I was. My supervisor at District Photo, Inc., found out I played the piano and asked me to teach her son. That was a personal matter between us. I hadn’t asked her. She had asked me. Though by word of mouth, it grew from there. I ended up with ten students by the end of 1972. That’s when my career and my mask collection started.

With no credentials, I started teaching. I could play the piano quite well and had studied music for two years in college, but not as part of a teaching curriculum. My supervisor was a mentor without knowing it because she started me on a 50-year career.

My teaching studio was in my home, right in the living room. The piano was a Baldwin grand that my parents had bought for me when I was in high school, and it almost blocked the way into the room when students came in the front door. After my parents died, I taught for three years before I got married and started a family. This took my focus off my teaching impropriety as I tended to my family. Not that I stopped teaching. It just wasn’t my primary focus. This went on for five more years before we put a two-room addition on the back of our house. One of the rooms was a studio with stronger support beams under the floor to hold my new Kawai grand. This was serious stuff now. Was I an earnest teacher? Was I even a teacher?

Above the area between the new studio and the new family room was a 12” bulkhead coming down from the ceiling with a track on its underside that supported a series of folding doors, a total of 12’ wide. We had planned it this way so the studio could be opened to the new, large family room for recitals. This bulkhead at the top of the doors was a perfect little abutment for my masks. I only had three, but they were above my head every time I walked into the studio. They could look down upon me with their empty eyes, admonishing me for my disguise as a piano teacher. Or they could be my disguise. I could pretend they were there for my protection, to hide my impersonation. I identified with their aura of concealment.

As my studio grew, so did my mask collection. When something went well, I attributed it to my gaining experience. When something didn’t go well, I attributed it to my fraudulent efforts and felt enormous guilt because I certainly wasn’t telling clients in advance that I wasn’t credentialed. Some of the masks smiled at me, and some smirked.

Now, more than 40 years later, my mask collection has grown enormously: smiles, smirks, yawns, magical leaves, a football player, and a rainbow princess with a piano forehead, the latter two made by my children in middle school art class. In this current house, the collection grandly graces the high triangular wall above the sunroom doors in diagonal lines, adding visual movement to the display. However, the persistent fear of being exposed as a fraud has diminished enormously. That’s why the masks are no longer in the studio, but on the other side of the house. They have moved, and so has my imposter syndrome, probably on to some other unsuspecting novice. I now know that I am a good teacher.

Even when you are credentialed, there is still a learning curve in your career. Credentialed or not, there will be a starting out time as you shove off from shore, the freshness of effort your wind, furthering your journey. Looking back, I now understand self-doubt was my calm water for refreshment. I rallied, sailed forward, and ended up the captain of my ship; still with my masks, but now the buccaneer.

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Family pictures composed just right,

Knowing how, knowing when.

Posed images or catch she might

The moms, babies, men.

Some emotional mime

Sharing the essence precise,

Bringing forward in time

Recollections. A device

to stabilize connections,

The art is valuable.

Photographic impressions

Make

Love visible.

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When I got to the side door, there was a sign that said, “Please Come In” in neat print. I reached for the handle on the screen door while thinking, This is like our house, a screen door at every entrance, a somewhat comforting realization. When I stepped in the door, a gentleman greeted me immediately. I say gentleman because he had on a suit, was middle-aged, and had a kind demeanor. This contrasted with my twenty-year-old self in a tee shirt, jeans, and work boots, a fashion statement of the early 70s for hippies who were moving on. This person was the person who had called, the funeral director.

On the phone, he had said a tow truck driver had found a man, slumped in the driver’s seat of a car on the side of the road. When the man was transported to the funeral home, they found a wallet on him identifying him as Samuel Jovich, and they needed someone to identify the body. It would have been difficult for me to get Mom dressed and drive her to Laurel, so I realized it was on me. A thought passed that maybe I wouldn’t know the person, but the wallet information didn’t sound good. However, I left room in my emotions for the possibility that it wasn’t my father.

As I met the funeral director, I looked around at the tiny, stark entrance hallway, with no chairs and not a single picture on the wall. I suddenly understood the severity of the situation, and the room no longer seemed stark; it only seemed appropriate.

The funeral director said a few words to me about what we would do. That was nice of him to try to prepare me, though it could have just been Funeral Director-speak. He was good at it, though, because it made me feel more comfortable. At that point, he knew I was Sam’s daughter and realized how young I was. I followed him through another door into an even more clinically severe room. It was larger, looked like a hospital room, but harsher, cooler, darker. I don’t know what I was expecting, brightly colored walls and vases with pretty flowers? There was a gurney in the middle of the room with what looked like a body underneath a white sheet. From this point on, everything happened quickly. I guess prolonged identifications of dead bodies aren’t in a funeral director’s protocol.

He said, “I’m going to walk over to the table and pull the sheet off the upper part of his body. You can stay where you are. I just need you to let me know if this is Samuel Jovich.”

I said, “Ok.”

He did exactly as he said, another comforting action, no extra surprises today besides unexpectedly finding myself in a room with a dead person. When he pulled the sheet down to the person’s waist, there was my dad, so familiar, yet not. Death is intrusive in its expressionless pallor. His hair was a little mussed, but plentiful, white, and fluffy as always. And there, right beneath his closed eyes, was his nose, that significant protrusion, the center point of his face in many ways, position, size, shape, a beauty of a nose. Then my eyes fell on his hands, folded sweetly on his chest; those huge male hands, long, thick fingers knobbed from arthritis. I had wondered at those hands when I was a small child and later came to think they were the reason he was such a good chef; the better to stir you with, my dear. My reaction to these observations, all within a second, let the director know this was my dad, but I replied anyway, “That’s him.”

He pulled the sheet back up, deftly, with practiced hands, turned to me, and gestured toward another room, this one more decorated with plush carpeting, pictures hanging on the walls, a large desk, comfortable chairs, and soft lighting. I felt more at ease right away, but was afraid this sense of comfort would let my feelings erupt. I didn’t want to do that in front of this stranger. We had business to do. The director planned for the coroner to call me, and then said he, himself, would follow up to make transportation arrangements to Ohio, where I had told him that my parents had plots alongside my father’s father. I hardly had time to react. The director was so professional and practiced in his career. When we finished, he led me back through the entrance room, said kindly, “I’m sorry for your loss,” and I stepped outside into the crisp autumn air, a changed person. I still hadn’t reacted, mostly numb, almost as if I was viewing a movie, and I was waiting for the next scene. On the drive home, my thoughts turned to Mom, another way to avoid my own feelings.

It turned out my dad had had car trouble on the way to Laurel, a short five-mile drive from our house. He walked the rest of the way to Laurel, about a half mile, and made tow truck arrangements. Then he walked back, got in the car, and had a heart attack. Back then, there were no cell phones. He had been diagnosed with heart problems earlier that same year, but hadn’t done a follow-up. Not missing work was more important to this 67-year-old immigrant.

I had come home from college to take care of my mom, who was having trouble walking from the metastasis of her breast cancer. I didn’t have time to grieve for Dad. I had a house to keep, doctors’ visits for her, wigs to buy, relatives to call, and a trip to Ohio to plan. I had to take Mom to her husband’s funeral. Little did I know that within the year, I would be making the same trip to Ohio again to bury my mother beside her husband. Grieving now is not for dad and mom. It’s for my young self, unpracticed in the ways of death.

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when you can’t afford

the extra steps

is when

your memory lets you forget

the things

you went to get.

The time of your life

when you can afford

the price of items you adore

there’s nagging the thought

you will have to give

them up to go

to the next plot.

The time of your life

when the body creaks,

balance is off and there are leaks

is the time the mind

is full of knowing

and wisdom is worth

the years of growing.

The time of your life

when you can have the time of your life

because there is time in your life

makes it exciting to plan

the years you have left

and not waste

this precious

Time of your life.

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Soul darkness begs for light without seeing

the darkness of that.

Light cannot burst through the black muck

That has been built over the years.

The grime grew while all seemed light

But now is revealed all over

the inside of the Soul,

which wouldn’t even allow begging.

Without resolution all is still dark.

The Soul tightens and squeezes each day’s joy

Out into oblivion.

Even a simple warm thought is banished

Too quickly.

Sunlight warms the front porch body

But can’t penetrate the epitome

Of a cold dark mistake.

Unforgiven, though years past,

it festers in anger

in another Soul,

folded between pretend healing

and unforgiving memory.

No healing for that Soul

And no healing for mine.

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Scared kitties, running kiddies,

Lost sleep, count sheep,

Messy house, same blouse,

Spilled drinks, favorite: PINKS,

Whining reaction, constant distraction,

Afraid of bugs, ooooh, a slug!

Garden peas, scraped knees,

Trips delight, SO tired at night,

Help Nana. Want a banana?

So much work, constant perk,

After, I can miss it,

Precious visit.

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My experience is a quarter

My travel is a dime

My reading is just a nickel

But I still want to write.

I need knowledge

I need research

I need a mentor and,

There’s not even a penny.

But a foreign coin in a bucket,

But a child looking in,

And a small jar ready

For the savings.

Still wanting

To tell truths and stories.

Hungry to put one word

After another that

Someone else will read.

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Heat raised, beauty fades.

The rain is gone like a broken faucet.

Just as peak’s picture is groomed to perfection

The sun’s light and shadows change direction.

Indulging in dirt, though soil is preferred

By those who plant and watch ‘til mature

Tiny promises, life greatly compacted,

Freed by a magical reaction.

The age-old assurance of nature

Makes the job an adventure.

The tearing down effort is vicious,

After winter’s rest, renewal will be delicious.

Life’s effort is yanked.

No consciousness here.

Heart racing reject,

Then plans for next year.

Their span is shorter, their needs defined,

Food, water, a little sunshine.

At the end of life’s opus, their art is ripped down.

After producing together a beauty profound.

.

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I’m also not very creative in the costume department. When my kids got older and chose their own costumes, it became much easier for me. My son’s finest costume was when he dressed up in his grandfather’s chef’s hat and apron. He never knew his grandfather, but the hat and apron props were a part of my father’s life that I had kept through the years.

My daughter’s best costume year, or maybe her worst year, was a red Crayola crayon outfit that her father made for her. It was very clever, even with a red pointy hat for the tip, but she got sick the day before Halloween. On Halloween night, with a 102-degree fever and aches and pains, she lay on the couch wearing her costume. No Trick or Treating that night. Her older brother kindly shared his stash with her.

The kids are gone now, and as our neighborhood gets older, there aren’t as many trick-or-treaters. It’s a long walk between houses and a long driveway. Not too many people with young children know who we are. This Halloween, we had only one group of children with their Mom along and Dad in the car. When they rang the doorbell, I opened the door and saw the Mom and four little ones, three girls and a boy. They just stood there looking at me.

I held up my hands, palms up, and said cheerfully, “What do you say?”

They rang out, “Trick or Treat!” with enthusiasm.

As I lifted the candy bowl off the side table, I said, “Oooh, who do we have here?” I pointed to the second child in the lineup because I was actually able to identify her costume and said, “You must be a princess.”

“I’m a princess,” she said with a smile and thrust forward her candy bucket.

And to the next smaller one I said, “And are you a princess, too?” Just a shy little nod from her.

“Ok, now I’m stumped. What are you?” I said to the boy.

“Darth Vader!”

“Oooo, scary!” He held out his almost full pumpkin bucket. I scooped a big fistful of chocolate candy and said, “Do you like chocolate?”

Though I was talking to Mr. Vader, they all answered “Yes!” enthusiastically.

Then I turned to the tallest, maybe all of 6 years old, and said, “And what are you?”

She looked at me incredulously, pointed to the big “W” on her chest, and said, “Wonder Woman”.

I said, “Oh! Hold on a moment. I have a picture to show you.” I left the door open and rushed to the kitchen to get a preschool picture of my grandchild off the refrigerator. She was dressed in a similar costume. I hope they wait. I hope they wait.

Back at the door, I bent over and held the picture for Wonder Woman to see. “Who’s this?” I said. Upon the little one’s hesitation, the mom said, “Supergirl.” Everybody seemed confused at this point, and I realized in my grandmother’s role, I had overdone it. I had equated Wonder Woman with Supergirl. So, I said, “Wonder Woman and Supergirl, both strong, smart girls.” That seemed to help everybody understand my faux pas.

After all this, Wonder Woman says, “We have to wait. My little cousin is coming.”

Together, as a group, they all turned around to look. I looked out over the front walk, a little hard to see at dusk. Trundling along, as fast as her tiny legs would carry her, was a bright orange dinosaur. She had just escaped from her car seat with the help of her uncle, who was standing by the car at the end of our driveway. All six of us watched, and when she got to the front porch, the little troop split open and let the bright orange dinosaur through. She toddled straight up to me, past her cousins, and held out her bag. I dropped a handful of candy in. She obviously knew the procedure.

The Mom said, “Ok, guys, onward.”

They all turned around again and scooted off the front porch, little Bright Orange lagging behind yet again. She turned to follow the others. All she needed to do was go down one step from the porch level to the walk level. She planted each foot alternatively a couple of times, getting ready. But then she stopped, turned around, looked directly into my eyes, and said, “Thank you,” in a tiny, little two-year-old voice. As her bright orange dinosaur tail wiggled off to catch up to the others, my heart melted, and I got tears in my eyes.

I like Halloween now. The two-year-old bright orange dinosaur taught me.

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Things were hectic. Stress made the air in the kitchen feel like she was moving through water. Jo was supposed to be making dinner for her two kids and her late husband, who was late from work, not late, deceased. However, he might as well be dead because she needed him now. She was between piano lessons, and her next student was coming in about 15 minutes.

Her two kids were home from school, finished their homework, and were letting off pressure cooker steam in little rocking bursts of fights, screams, and shrieks. From the dining room, her nine-year-old boy zipped around the corner into the kitchen, crouched behind the island, and put his finger to his lips. Then Loni, his six-year-old sister, came cautiously around the corner, frowning, a whine ready to bubble from her pursed mouth.

“Maaauum, Jack was scaring me.”

With arms flailing, the scary brother rose from his crouch and shouted, “Boo!” After she screamed, Loni unexpectedly started crying, and Jo realized it had gone too far. She quickly reached forward and caught Jack by the shoulders.

“Ok, guys, break time. Come, sit, have a glass of juice.”

She guided Jack to the counter with her hands still on his shoulders and pressed a little firmer to make sure he realized she meant it. She waved Loni to a seat and got their drinks. They had only had one sip before Loni reached over and smacked Jack on the arm. Of course, he smacked back. Jo turned from the stove, leaned back against it, and treaded water while searching her brain about how to save them all from drowning. Theater always seemed to work.

“I have to finish dinner, and I can’t while you two are being crazy bad. I want you to be crazy good for a while.”

Jack and Loni looked at each other and then back at their mom, as if she were just plain crazy. Loni bit the bait, which was beneath Jack’s nine-year-old level.

“How do we be crazy good?” Loni asked innocently.

“Well, you take all that energy and entertain me.”

Without hesitation, Jack jumped up.

“Let’s go, George,” he said. Loni, who usually hated being called George, slid off her chair and trotted after him with adoration fueling her gait. For the next couple of minutes, all was quiet, and Jo got an inordinate amount of the dinner cooked. The smells in the kitchen (spaghetti sauce made from the garden tomatoes) gave her a sense of accomplishment, but more importantly, the stress pool drained, and she again felt as if she was moving through air rather than water.

The kids reappeared as Raggedy Ann and Andy, props gleaned from the toy chest and closet. They loosely danced in slow motion around the kitchen, hugging floppy hugs. When Jo’s laughter died down, they disappeared, only to reappear two minutes later as Batman and Robin, the theme introduced with both singing, “Duh-da-duh-da-duh-da-duh-da, duh-da-duh-da-duh-da-duh-da, Batman!” A couple of Batman jokes were exchanged that Jo didn’t even realize they knew.

Again, they disappeared and then soon reappeared as Sherlock Holmes and Watson, just as the spaghetti was al dente. She laughed and clapped, telling them dinner was ready as she reached into the refrigerator to get the milk. When she turned back around, they gave high-pierced giggles while flinging their costumes all over the kitchen.

“Nuh-uh. Take those back,” she said.

They gathered up the clothes in great exaggerated armfuls as they made their exit, stage right. She heard them stop right around the corner of the dining room and thought they were picking up clothes that had fallen, but then they fell silent, and Jo heard them whispering. Something was amiss.

She went back over to the refrigerator to return the milk, and when she opened it, there was Sherlock Holmes’s hat nestled between the sour cream and the leftovers. She laughed and then rushed around the dining room corner after the kids just in time to see them escaping down the hall, clothes flying everywhere.

She launched the headgear prop after them and shouted, “Dinner’s ready! We’re having HAT!”

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Edith made good choices and was my role model in this respect. She pulled herself up from difficult beginnings. As a young bride, she got her GED while working in a restaurant with her husband, my dad.

I remember having a very strong sense of self, even as a young child, in that I wasn’t afraid to meet people on my own, feeling complete and comfortable in different types of situations. I knew how to address people such as Mrs. Johnson, my playmate’s mother, and Dr. Sarao, my pediatrician. I could play by myself; I probably gained this experience from having no sisters or brothers. I even remember thinking of myself as a problem solver, as if I really didn’t need anyone to show me the way. All of this was before I was eight years of age when we moved.

While we lived in Takoma Park, Mom took me every year to see the Washington department stores’ mechanical displays of Christmas scenes. The chill air, the milling of the crowds, and the actual displays themselves were an enchantment to my little self. I remember standing in front of each window, feeling one and the same with the mechanical children in the scenes, watching Santa hold a child on his knee, next to a beautifully decorated tree. And in another window, the reindeer moving their front legs as if they were flying behind the houses. To me, enchantment was being aware that there were other ways to be and act than just how we were at home. I think this was one of the catalysts for my understanding and appreciating that there are many ways to be human.

One of my favorite stories that my mom used to tell me was about a stranger who frantically started running after me on a busy sidewalk in D.C. When I was three years old, I left my mom’s side and ran at full toddler speed towards the block corner, where cars were zipping past. At the end of the block, I abruptly stopped and turned around toward my mother. The stranger couldn’t believe it. When my mother caught up, she explained to the frightened woman that she had had complete trust that I would stop and wait for her. This story only cemented my good behavior because every time I heard it, I knew my mother was proud of me, and more importantly, I was proud of myself.

When I was in grade school, my mother bought a jigsaw, a tiny electric saw with a thin blade that can cut curved lines. It ismall and red, and I must confess that I still have it.

However, my interest in it then was that she made me three-inch wooden hearts near Valentine’s Day to give to my friends. I decorated them with glitter and paint, and strung ribbon through a hole she made in each one, so my friends could wear them around their necks. The hearts were pretty cool, and I truly enjoyed giving the best one to my grade school heart’s desire. Mom also helped me make a Conestoga wagon using the jigsaw. It was for a school project. I remember gluing the parts together and making a white canvas top for it. Mom contributed it to a PTA fair and it was sold. I wish I still had it. Decades after her passing, I still feel a need to have things that my mother touched.

I missed my mother a lot when I had children, which wasn’t until five years after her passing. There was no family to welcome them. Although my husband’s brother did come to the hospital when my son was born. I remember feeling it had been out of his way and wasn’t that nice of him. My firstborn was welcomed to this world, not only by his mom and dad, but by his Uncle Paul.

My young self glows inside when remembering my younger mother. My teen self is saddened when remembering my older mother. Her grueling metastatic cancer temporarily blocked my young adult self's hopes and dreams. Now that I’m older than she was when she died, I am again grieving for her because her life was cut so short. Even more, I lament that her life ended with such suffering. I felt guilty for a few years after she passed because my first tears after she died were a wash of relief. She was no longer suffering. I no longer had to go forty miles round-trip each day to try to get her to eat lunch. I no longer had to watch her body and mind deteriorate step-by-step and thought-by-thought, incrementally drawn out by pain and physical and mental loss.

I’ve always had trouble watching family situations in movies such as the one at the end of Moonstruck, where three generations of extended family are having a round of champagne with one sugar cube in each glass, saluting the newly engaged couple in the cramped city kitchen at breakfast. I think, “What is that? Why am I crying? Oh, that’s what family is.” That is an experience I missed.

She would have been proud of me, and this thought affects how I respond to my children. Mom laid out expectations of education, money management, a moral code, and a never-give-up attitude, all adding up to her being a stellar role model.

My life would have been different if she had been around to delight in the milestones of my life. But what an amazing job she did in the twenty years I had her. We didn’t have to go through the pulling-away-leaving-the-nest-struggle that so many parents and young adults go through. In this way, we were lucky, and I can now look back and understand the treasures she gave me.

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I think the marriage was one of convenience and circumstance. In his young adulthood, Sam was a dandy, a young man enjoying his youth, and a chef honing his skills in a restaurant that Edith’s father owned. The marriage enabled my mom to leave her family's struggle, that of being one of the oldest of fourteen children, and in the position of having to care for her younger siblings. Additionally, getting married was a step up economically, as her husband had a job. After they married, they left the Akron area. They lived in Pennsylvania, New York, and finally settled in Maryland, where I was born twenty years after they married.

In their home area in Akron, Ohio, they were just immigrants and quite foreign. My father, Samuel Jovanovich, which was shortened to Jovich, was born in Yugoslavia. For a while (1963-the nineties), Serbia was changed to the Socialist Republic of Serbia in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia has now been broken down into the states of Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. There is no more Yugoslavia. Serbian was still spoken in both my parents’ family homes, the kids learning English in school as they grew up.

My father had two brothers, my Uncle Donald and my Uncle Mike. I met my Uncle Donald only once, probably because his marriage to Aunt Rose ended and he moved away, but I knew my Uncle Mike throughout his life, though I saw him only rarely. He and his wife, Aunt June, didn’t have children. When I had children, I wanted them to know their relatives and build a sense of family, so I started visiting relatives I hadn’t seen in a while. Around 1982, after Aunt June had passed, we were visiting Uncle Mike at his home in Mogadore, Ohio, and my seven-year-old son played his violin in Uncle Mike’s backyard Japanese garden, while my daughter, at three and a half, hopped on the path stones like a garden sprite. This gave Uncle Mike great pleasure.

My mother, Edith, was born Ekonija Lontchar. She was a tall, strong woman, as I am now. When I do something exhibiting strength, such as moving a piece of furniture, my husband says, “My strong Serbian woman,” as a joke. I’m not sure he realizes how right he is.

When we visited Akron during my early life, we stayed at Deda’s, my maternal grandfather’s house. My deda, Theodor Lontchar, passed when I was seven, and the two things I remember about that time were the beautiful Serbian Orthodox service in Akron and my mother crying in the car after the funeral. I didn’t understand that death was sad until she cried. Up to that point, it had been beautiful in the church with all the flickering candles in the dimly lit nave and the invisible choir (I couldn’t find them anywhere), singing in Serbian. I was concerned for her, but I remember no emotional reaction on my own part for my grandfather’s death. This would become a lifetime pattern, as even today I accept death without too much emotional trauma.

What I remember most about our trips to Akron was my deda and his big, booming, heavily accented voice and the wonderful aromatic scent of his cigars. While in Akron, we would go to the Serbian Club where my mom’s older brother, Uncle Nick, played guitar and sang with the other musicians. We danced kolos, Serbian folk dances, to the music, and I always fell asleep before it was time to go back to Deda’s house. I’m so glad my mother and father took me to the Club. The memories are woven through my soul.

Mom taught me the importance of learning, for which I will be forever grateful. She would always talk about school being fun and special, and throughout grade school and high school, she often mentioned the expectation that I would go to college. She had had to stop high school so she could help take care of her younger siblings.

Once Mom and Dad left Akron, they traveled to and lived in different states, working at the same restaurants, he as the chef and she as the manager. They made quite a team, Sam always smiling under his tall chef’s hat, and Mom, not the prettiest of the ten Lontchar girls (the bar was high), was still striking. My Dad, with a fifth-grade education, lucked out with his culinary skills that he had developed at Deda’s restaurant. Sam was a hard worker and always made a decent living. He was forty-five and had white hair when I was born, so I never knew younger Sam.

After staying home with me for a few years, Mom transitioned into a different type of work, leaving restaurants behind, and worked for Control Data in Rockville, Maryland, until she became too ill. Mom passed eleven months after my father when I was twenty years old.

She also taught me the importance of money. I still have some cigar boxes that my dad had brought home from the Laurel Diner in Laurel, Maryland, when he worked there. The cigar boxes are special in that I learned how to categorize coins in them, and especially how to save. Mom showed me how to put a few coins in the boxes every day, each box for a particular value, and then how to count it each month. The boxes are now in my gardening shed in the back yard, along with some bricks from Deda’s house. In the absence of family, these artifacts were my solace.

Another attribute I can ascribe to my birth family is that of being an American Plus. I am comfortable in American culture, but I also have the advantage of having had foreign parents, so I know and appreciate life accents that are not American. For instance, I decorate Ukrainian Easter Eggs. Mom taught me the Serbian method, and I still have an egg I made when I was two years old. After she passed, I took a class in the Ukrainian method, similar in that it’s a wax resist method, but with a different stylus and a different state of wax. In 2023 and 2024, the American Egg Board found me from my Etsy shop and commissioned me, along with 13 other egg artists, to decorate eggs that were sent to the White House. This project was for Jill Biden’s Easter program that involved school kids’ artwork from all the U.S. states and territories.

Another American Plus advantage I have is my family history of ethnic food specialties. My Aunt Smelia never sat down at a dinner she was hosting. She hovered around the table and the food she had made, making sure everyone was fed well. I learned to cook, not from my dad teaching me, since he was always at work, even on Thanksgiving, but from my mom offering up her ethnic specialties, her family’s everyday fare, which she had learned from her mother.

Kolach at Christmas

Chicken Paprikas

I am open-minded, although I’m not sure I got this from my parents. They spent a lot of time trying to get ahead, and eventually they did. They didn’t realize how far they had gotten and were still making a grand effort when they passed in their 60s. I felt they didn’t have enough time to search out new ideas or develop the understanding that it takes to be open-minded because they had both been born into a struggle. These struggles included Americans’ close-mindedness against foreigners in the 20s and 30s, lots of children in my mother’s family, and no mother in my father’s family. My father’s mother had died on the ship coming over to America.

I often marvel when my friends, who are near my age, talk about their parents who are still alive. I have no context to understand how they feel, and it seems almost freakish to me. I know my life would have been different having parents into my adulthood; somebody to cheer me on through college, someone to help me plan my wedding, someone to celebrate my children being born. I would have liked to have family to support and encourage me. I will forever be lonely; it is ground into my soul.

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Being an only child, I had trouble grasping the sheer size of the family, let alone understanding their connection to my mother. My parents didn’t have me until their forties, whereas most of the Lontchar girls married and had babies at a younger age. This meant I was around the same age as my mother’s youngest sister’s kids. The twenty cousins from my aunts who were around my mom’s age were at least twenty years older than I, and I’m not sure I even met most of them.

They lived in Ohio, and we lived in Maryland, visiting rarely, perhaps once a year or once every two years. Finally, I was able to start a running family tree in my head by understanding that the cousins who were my age had a mommy and daddy like me, and those mommies were my mother’s sisters. I don’t think I was even aware of what a sister was at first. One of my mom’s sisters and one of her brothers didn’t marry, so they were the resident host and hostess in my deda’s (grandfather’s) house when we would go to Akron to visit.

One of the Lontchar boys, my Uncle Nick, was Theodore and Ana’s firstborn. Although my mom was their third child, I was still fairly close to Uncle Nick’s kids, mainly because they all made an appearance when we were in town. One of his daughters, my cousin Joan (pronounced Jo-ann), did a genealogy study starting with our grandfather’s grandparents, Zaharija and Stana (Maksic) Loncar. It is through Joan’s diligence that I now know my great-great-grandfather’s first name was Zaharija and my great-great-grandmother’s first name was Stana. That makes them real to me.

The order of siblings needs to be said, read, and included for no other reason than to understand Deda and Baba’s grand undertaking, raising fourteen children in a new country. They were, from oldest to youngest, Mary, Nicholas, Helen, Edith (my mom, but Aunt Ekee to my cousins), Angeline (never married), Irenia (Aunt Zorka), Jenny, John, Smelia (Aunt Symie), Stephen (never married), Georgia, Natalia (Aunt Nutsy), Nada, and Marjory. Two of them had no children, six had only one child, and the other five had between two and six, totaling 28 cousins among those 14 children. This seems like a small number to me, so I’ll state my hypothesis that after being raised in such a large family, most of them kept their own families smaller. I’m still in contact with 6 of them through Facebook, and every once in a while, I hear about some of the others. Only one, to my knowledge, has passed, my Aunt Symie’s only child, Duaina. She was the one I was closest to growing up. We usually visited them when I was a little older, staying at their house for a few days in the summer.

Aunt Symie was an excellent cook, but what set her apart as a fantastic cook was that she did it without a stove. She and Uncle Dan were always going to finish their kitchen in their big, beautiful house, but never seemed to get to it. I remember when I was a little older, thinking how crazy that seemed, and it shaped my ability to carry things through to the end. That, and my mother always saying, “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” Aunt Symie spilled a huge pot of boiled water on her toddler while carrying it from her two-burner electric cooker to the sink. I wasn’t born yet, being four years younger than Duaina, but from my tiny egg beginning inside my mother, I wish I could have comforted Aunt Symie. It must have been horrendous for her.

I remember good times at their house: meals with five entrees, paddling in a makeshift raft in the small “pond” in their front field, finding four tiny kittens in a feral cat nest in their back field, and getting to take one home to Maryland with me. Duaina and I were close until she got to be a teenager, and then the four years between us seemed like too many, and she went off to boys and driving, and I stayed in the house while my mom and Aunt Symie caught up. Duaina married, had one son, and settled in Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh. We visited with our firstborn once, and again later with both kids, but Duaina and mine’s lives took different paths, and I lost close contact with her. I heard she was in the hospital a few years ago, but within two days, she was gone, just as I was in the middle of planning a trip to go see her. A chunk of life was ripped out of my heart.

Aunt Georgia and Aunt Margie lived near each other in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. When my kids were little, we visited them each year. We went to the falls once, and I remember my aunts being scared that my little ones would overstep their safety on the huge boulders and fall into the gushing, roaring river. The kids were fine, and I assured my aunts that they were sure-footed and would listen to me when I told them their boundaries. Plus, my mother’s eye was vigilant.

I was never close to Aunt Zorka’s six kids, but interestingly, my cousin Paula is now one of my Facebook friends. Her sister-in-law, Pam, married to my cousin John, is also one of my FB friends. Aunt Nutsy’s three children, my cousins Becky, Valerie, and Joe, are also on this list. (Becky has passed since this writing, and a little sorrow seeps in at this reading.) We reconnected at our Aunt Margie’s funeral in 2016. Aunt Margie was the youngest and last Lontchar sibling to pass. Dear Aunt Margie brought us together through her death. I never had sisters and brothers, but I now have beautiful, smart, kind cousins, with whom I share my life. I bet Zaharija and Stana Loncar would be as amazed and grateful as I am.

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