At seven, I can’t get enough of this gangly bundle of energy. His smooth coat, long ears, and his wet nose explore every corner of the house and yard. I follow him everywhere, and soon he follows me. When Peter loses interest in the puppy’s daily routines, Rusty becomes my everything.

I wake first to take him outside, open Peter’s bedroom door without a sound to let Rusty snuffle the door open and slip out. His tail is a red feather of happiness swaying side to side as he pads to the back door. In seconds we are in the yard. It’s the best part of the day, cool and quiet. I never tire of training him, and, over time, he learns to sit and stay, lie down, and come on command. He loves to “shake,” always eager to lift his paw into mine to get a tiny piece of kibble, or to get his ears scratched.

When the whole family piles into the blue station wagon to go to church on Sundays we leave Rusty on a tie-out on the front step. He is always there waiting for us when we return. He rises from his curled shape, stretches, bows, and yawns his mouth into a wide smile that seems to say, “What took you so long?”

Rusty is my constant companion. At school I wonder, “What is Rusty doing now?” In the grocery store check-out line one day I spot a small package of dog treats. “Please,” I beg Mom. “Can we get these for Rusty?”

“We don’t have money for dog treats.” It’s her standard response.

“What kind of dog do you have?” A skinny man stands behind me in line. Wisps of yellow hair stick out from under a faded cowboy hat.

“He’s an Irish Setter,” I beam. “Pure-bred.”

“You hear that?” he glances at the young woman beside him. “A bird-dog.” He turns back to me. “How old is your dog?”

“Just a puppy,” I tell them. “We got him in December for my brother’s birthday.”

“That right?” The friendly man continues in a slow southern drawl. “You get him around here?”

“From a breeder just outside Stillwater,” mom answers in her clipped East Coast accent. She returns to putting groceries on the counter for the cashier.

“That right? I think I know that breeder.” The man leans down to me at eye level. “You gonna hunt with your dog?”

“No,” I say, “but I’m training him.”

“I bet he’s a great dog,” he says. “What’s his name?”

***

A few weeks later, Rusty and I are in the front yard when a white pick-up drives by slowly and then stops on its second pass around the circle. The couple from the grocery store get out. Rusty bounds over to greet them.

The woman squats down to let him wiggle into her lap. “It’s Rusty, right? You remember us?”

I smile and pull Rusty out of her lap. They aren’t in a hurry. They want to see all that Rusty can do. I give the commands to sit, stay, come and lie down. They want to try too, and I run for more kibble. I love showing off my beautiful puppy. His red coat gleams in the afternoon sun.

“You’ve done a good job with this pup,” they say when they finally get back into their truck and wave goodbye. “Keep up the good work.”

Later the next week, when Rusty isn’t on the front porch when we come home from church, I don’t put two and two together. We ride our bikes around and around the neighborhood calling his name. We knock on every neighbor’s door. “Have you seen Rusty?”

Sometimes a pack of strays wanders through the neighborhood. We hear them barking at night, see them sniffing at garbage cans.

“Maybe he ran off with the pack,” mom says. “He’ll be back.” She is confident, but I am heart-broken. They put a lost and found notice in the newspaper and contact the breeder. Weeks go by. Then, weeks turn into months.

***

Half a year later, I answer the phone to an unfamiliar voice. “Can I speak with Mary or Jim, please?”

Mom listens intently. “Oh, really? I see.” She looks at me with wide eyes. “Ok, my husband will be home shortly, and we’ll drive over.”

I want to know everything before the receiver is back in its cradle.

“The breeder thinks Rusty is on their property,” she says. “They can’t get near him. They want us to bring his dog blanket and bed to see if they can get close enough to tranquilize him.”

“Rusty? Really? Yay! You were right. You were right.” Peter is put in charge of me and Beth while Mom and Jim drive out to the breeder. It is an agonizing few hours. When they return, they carry a very skinny, very droopy year-old Irish Setter wrapped in a flannel blanket.

They tell the story the breeder told them. Rusty had been circling their property for a few days, but he ran off every time they approached. He came closer as he got hungrier, and by the time they’d arrived he was already eating the drugged dog food they’d left out for him. Once asleep they checked his teeth, matched his age to the litter, double-checked that all of his littermates were still with each owner. This is Rusty, but he is a different dog. His coat is dull and matted. When he wakes up he is shy and skittish.

The breeder’s guess is that he had been taken for breeding and hunting, but somehow escaped and made his way back to his first home. We never know for sure. There is no way to track down the white pick-up truck. It doesn’t matter. We are thrilled to have him back.

Mom bakes a celebration cake for Rusty’s return, their second anniversary, and baby Paul’s first birthday. We gather around as she pulls the warm cake from the oven. I am dancing and cheering at full volume. “Happy day! Happy Happy day!” I throw my arms around Rusty who has been standing quietly at my side. Without warning he rears up and plants his front paws on my shoulders. Standing on his hind legs he can fit his open mouth like a helmet over the top of my head. It happens so fast. I startle to silence. Then, he is back on all fours, and mom hustles him out to the garage.

I don’t know what miracle allows him to stay, but he never does anything like that again. For the rest of his long life, he hides during thunderstorms and hates loud noises of all kinds. He never regains his placid demeanor. He has to be leashed for walks or chained in the yard. We still spend lots of time together. I am certain he understands everything I say. I stare into his soft brown eyes and whisper in his velvety ears. “You can talk to me. You can tell me what happened. I won’t tell anyone.”

When we are both older, I take him running with me every day after school. He is a whirling, frantic tornado of pent-up energy after a full day alone in the house. We run to Fall Creek Park where I let him off-leash for a mile or so along the slow, meandering stream. His red coat gleams; our legs and lungs pump joyfully with freedom.

The twin mind-games of distractibility and hyperfocus are my best defense. Who can be bothered with uncomfortable feelings when you’re engrossed in playing, training, or coaching? When there is so much to learn about raising chickens, nonprofits, or writing? Projects became my Prozac, a coat of armor I constantly reshaped for myself.

But doubt is different. Doubt is the disabling Trojan horse of the mind. When I retired and began writing, doubt snuck in under the guise of humility. It shared a ride with timidity, linked arms with shyness. Within the confines of my psyche, doubt ransacked me and unleashed a torrent of “un.”

Uncertain, unsure, unable, unworthy, undone.

Doubt hacks my knees out from under me, sets my mind to running unproductive laps. Thoughts spin in dizzying circles until, like a top wearing itself out, I flop into uselessness, crumpled at the keyboard, paralyzed on the page, stalled in the staging of a scene. I agonize over a word here, a comma there, the order of the narrative.

Should I tell this story at all? Doubt kills.

Should I tell this part of the story? Doubt worries.

Is this even good writing? Doubt picks at the scab of insufficiency.

The memoir project started with a desire to figure out how I had learned to love and be loved. My intention was to get the whole story down; lay it out in the light of day; allow the story to exist in all of its true, ugly imperfection. Prune it later, I told myself. You can do this hard thing.

Writing the mistakes of youth wasn’t so hard. Sure, I might have known better than to climb into a treehouse with a much older boy. I probably shouldn’t have flashed my seven-year old chest to the neighborhood boys. Shouldn’t have skipped all those Chemistry classes in high school to drive into the corn fields with my boyfriend. Shouldn’t have drunk a pitcher of Tom Collins like it was lemonade. But, I was young, and wrote them into decent stories.

The mistakes of adulthood are more difficult. There are no excuses for the hurt I caused myself and others. As several friends informed me in my thirties, my history might explain my behavior, but it doesn’t excuse it. Don’t run from blame, I coached myself. Write it all. Don’t hide from guilt. Take the blinders off. See and be seen.

What could be simpler? What could be scarier?

Is this story worth telling? Doubt haunts me.

Does anyone care? Will anyone read it? Doubt knocks on my door.

I want to shout, “Go away.” I want to lock the door on doubt, barricade the entry. I need to get clear on who I am and how I got here.

It’s important that I learned to love and be loved, that I learned to see and be seen, to know and be known. These skills (and, let’s be clear, love is a skill), these skills are key ingredients in a whole-hearted life. Knowing and being known takes courage. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Tell the truth; make sense of the past; sit with the vulnerability of being seen.

As I inched closer to a completed draft, I dragged my feet. I’d left many of the harder truths to the last. I distracted myself with food and drink. There was always an errand to run, email to check, laundry to do. I needed to read the paper, go for a walk, take the dog to the woods. Anything but sit at the computer to write, reread, and revise. Anything but stitch words into sentences to make meaning of difficult events.

As I replayed an awful memory, my mind drifted to a reader’s perspective. This story adds nothing new to the lexicon of memoir. See what I mean about doubt?

One reviewer of a recent memoir said that writing about recovery from incest and addiction is now so common as to be cliché. Since my youth and early adulthood has been rendered cliché, am I destined to be a cliché of a writer, too? Once again, doubt barges into a standoff between the writing and the writer.

These visits from doubt left their mark. I struggled with relationships, sex, food, and alcohol–so what? I struggled with body image and sexual identity–who hasn’t? Don’t we all, at some point, feel the desire to stuff uncomfortable feelings? Numb the unbearable pain? Haven’t we all felt the attraction of riding the currents of life right over the falls, caution be damned?

But, wait, who am I kidding? I was never a person who could head for the falls without a plan to save myself. I’m good in a crisis, and I cling to the illusion that I am in control. I steer the canoe around obstacles, both real and imagined. I spot the dangers ahead of time and know when to turn into safe eddies as the going gets tough. I’m built to bail or change course. I do not hesitate.

I’ve always been wearing a life vest of my own certainty. It’s different now than the shield I formed in childhood. It’s been softened by love and by doubt. It keeps me afloat as I move through the waters of my life.

Currents shift. I feel them now and look up.

* * *

An owl flies over me, hunting, in big overlapping circles. It turns its head my way on each pass. Its large eyes ask, Who are you? My Animal Medicine Book tells me that owls are the keepers of secrets. Do I hold onto my secrets and abandon the writing?

I look at the owl differently now that I’m writing. I don’t pretend I can fly above it all. I remember that secrets bind us when clenched too closely, becoming a prison of our own making.

Barn owls screech in the trees. A family of quail bob and scurry across the path and into the brush. I am awed by the bee-beep of the roadrunner who seems to have as short an attention span as I did, and sometimes still do. It zig zags away and turns to look with surprise, as if to say, Why are you still following me? She races away in a different direction with a shake of her long tail, only to pause and look back again. I wonder at the coyote, trotting down the sidewalk along the main road, the family of raccoons, a mother and three babies peering over the top of a brick wall in the early dawn light. They all seem to ask, What are you doing in our neighborhood?

The other day, my granddaughter fell and scraped her knee on the pavement. I sat with her. “It’s okay to cry,” I told her. “Sometimes it feels like the pain will never stop, but I’ll stay with you and hold you until you feel better.”

I remind myself: Sometimes the pain stops and sometimes it just changes.

Writing teaches me to stay with and hold myself.

You’ve been on my mind again this week. You left this world ten years ago, before you could see your daughter graduate from PT school, before you could see her married. You left this world, but maybe, you haven’t missed a thing.

A childhood friend gave Susie a charm to tie into her wedding bouquet. Perhaps you saw the flowers delivered this morning. Did you notice the long flat box overflowing with chaotic bundles of cornflower blue, sunny yellow, pumpkin orange, and violet-purple flowers? Colors that you also loved and grew in your garden?

Susie loves the messy wildflower look too.

“What is it?” Susie questioned her friend’s serious eyes as she handed her the ribboned box.

“Now your mom can be part of your wedding too,” she said.

Did you see Susie open the box? Did you see the solid silver pendant with an oval photo of young and beautiful you? Delicate silver loops framed your smiling face. A thin blue ribbon threaded the clasp.

They hugged in a quick clutch of gratitude. “Will you help me tie it on?”

Maybe you watched them, heads bent together after deciding which side of the cascading bouquet should face forward. The bridesmaids agreed; it was the perfect way to include you on this special day.

But it’s much later now. The sunset wedding was perfect overlooking the bay. Love was palpable in the vows, in the readings; in the smiles, tears, and shining faces of friends and family gathered on this small island in Portland, Maine. We danced for hours after the ceremony; drumming our happiness into the deck with love in our feet.

Perhaps you were there as the reception moved toward its final minutes. Lightning split the night sky, and provided a finale of fireworks, forking in all directions. Maybe you saw the dark clouds tower up from the horizon and creep toward us across the bay. Thunder undoubtedly accompanied the lightning, but we only had ears for the band until the storm engulfed us in thick fat drops. Balls of ice bounced and rolled into every corner of the deck. The musicians stopped playing to roll down the isinglass curtains to protect their equipment, and we heard and felt the thunder like deep bass in our bones. A cool, strong wind blew through and broke the intense summer heat. It was here and gone in less than ten minutes, leaving welcome relief and a spectacular ending to the evening reception.

Guests dispersed, and Susie and Ben took the ferry across the bay to spend their first night as husband and wife in Portland, the town where they met. We walked back to the house quilted in love and the cool comfort of a quiet night sky.

. . . . .

Paul’s phone buzzed beside me. It’s Ben. He and Susie must have just reached their hotel room. “Hi, Ben! Happy wedding day.”

“Linda, oh my god,” Susie’s voice is strained with panic. “My mom’s charm...”

Then, nothing. The phone goes black, dead battery. I find my own phone to call her back and hear Joey’s low voice muffled in the next room as I click her contact. She had called her brother.

Ben answers my call. “The charm is gone,” he says in a flat voice. “Here, talk to Suze.”

“Oh, Linda,” Susie is on the verge of tears, “I wasn’t thinking. I just told them to throw them all away.”

“Wait. What happened?”

“I left it on the bouquet. My mom’s charm.” She sighs and the happiness of the day fades. “I told them to just throw the flowers away.”

“Maybe the flowers are still there.” I say. “I’ll drive down right now and check.”

The last ferry leaves at 11:55. I check my watch. 11:50.

“I can still get there,” I say. “But I have to go now.” I click the phone off, pull on shorts and a T-shirt and talk to Paul’s back.

“I’m going back down to Jones Landing to find Susie’s charm. I have to catch the wedding planner before she heads back to the mainland.”

“Do you want me to go with you?” Paul asks from a jumble of pillows and sheets.

“I’ve got this.” I grab my keys and head out. Joey is waiting at the front door.

“Ready for a little dumpster diving?”

“I’m game,” he answers, and we hurry to the car.

Maybe you see the two of us, your grown son and me, moving in quick silence to the car and driving the short distance back to town. Maybe you see what we see, the ferry pulling away from the dock as we make the turn toward the wedding venue. My heart sinks. The wedding venue is dark and empty.

Do you watch us park the car and climb the steps to the deck where, just an hour earlier, dozens of happy guests had danced and cheered? Do you see the tables cleared and tidy, the chairs stacked? A single table is loaded with centerpiece flowers, but there are no wedding bouquets in sight. We check the doors into the building. All locked. We peer through dark windows. The whole place is neat and clean.

Maybe you see us walk around the building to check the trash barrels. The smell of stale alcohol greets us as we open each barrel along the outside wall. We shine our cell phone lights inside. Only empty bottles for recycling. No flowers. No trash. “Where could it be? Did they pack it all into the van?”

I remember seeing the catering van parked alongside the building earlier in the day. They had brought all the food over on the ferry. A small army of wedding servers with everything they needed for the event.

We call Susie with heavy hearts as we drive back to the house.

“Did you find it?” I hear the hope in her voice.

“Maybe you can call the wedding planner,” I suggest. “There was no trash at Jones Landing. The flowers have to be in the van they used to transport the food.”

“We tried calling her,” Ben said. “We left a message. Maybe Jen can make another charm.”

Disappointment and fatigue hang in the air as we say good night. It is hard to hold the weight of a sad ending to such a beautiful day.

. . . . .

But you were watching all of this. Did you tap on my shoulder or whisper in my ear when you woke me with a startle at 4 AM? Did you plant the thought in my mind? “Wait! The 11:55 ferry wasn’t a car ferry.” I replay my memory of the ferry pulling away. It had been a passenger ferry; not a car ferry. There would have been no catering van on that late night ferry. The van would have left hours earlier on the last car ferry of the day. The trash from the wedding is still on the island! Where could it be?

Then I remember. Or, maybe you remind me that I had passed the island transfer station by chance earlier that day. We had taken a golf cart on an exploratory spin, seen the fenced and gated dump, read the sign about hours of operation and household trash.

You are with me, as I slip out of bed and drive to the station nestled out of sight on a dirt road lined with scrub brush and pine trees in the middle of the island. It is enclosed on all sides by a tall chain link fence, but two gates are chained loosely together across the entrance.

The sign reads:

Transfer Station Hours: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays 7 AM- 3 PM

No entering when gate is closed except to dump household trash.

I park the car and slip easily between the hinged gates. It is growing lighter in the east, and I startle a clutch of seagulls who squawk angrily at me as they flap their wings and lift up and out of two huge rusting containers just inside the gate.

What are you doing here at this hour? they seem to say. This is our place.

I approach the giant dumpsters. The smell of rotting garbage overpowers the salt air. I step onto the lower edge, and try to balance. I am afraid to touch the stinking, dirty metal. I can just peek over the top by standing on tiptoe.

Yes! The container is filled to the top with dark plastic bags. I can smell stale beer and rotting food. The seagulls have torn open several of the bags. They continue to scold me. Leave it alone, they squawk. This is ours. I reach over the edge and widen a small tear in the nearest bag: empty water bottles, beer bottles. No flowers.

I try for a second bag. I strain to reach deeper into the decay. I don’t have to open this one. The seagulls have torn it open to get at the food inside. Is that wedding cake? I remember watching the caterers collect the leftover white cake onto a platter. This was it!

I move around to the other side of the dumpster and stand on tiptoe. The seagulls have torn a hole into a third bag that I can just reach from my perch. An orange blossom peaks through the opening. I catch my breath. Another hole, tiny blue flowers. Could this be it?

You must see me reach for the bag and pull the tied end toward me. Is it your hand guiding me to loosen the knot to find the discarded wedding bouquets? The charm is right there, right on top. Goosebumps run down my spine as you smile up at me from the colorful mass of wilting flowers. I wrap my hand around the thick bouquet Susie had carried down the aisle just twelve hours earlier. I lift it out of the dumpster, and hold it over my head as I step down in triumph. I carry it away from the dumpster like a trophy. “We found it! We found it!” I shout to the seagulls. They flap their wings and squawk for me to leave. I can’t believe our good fortune.

“Thank you, Seagull,” I shout. “Thank you, Ellen!” The gull bobs her head up and down, motioning yes. She calls to me again. Now get out of here and let me have my breakfast!

I got back to the house about 5 AM, the sky was just beginning to brighten, but I crawled into bed, snuggled up to Paul’s warm back and whispered, “I found it. I found the charm.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” he mumbled in his sleep. “Susie will be happy.” I smiled and curled around him, knees tucked into knees, arm around ribs, hand sneaking under his lower arm. A perfect fit.

Adrenalin and amazement coursed through me. I replayed all the events that led me to the charm. It couldn’t have happened any other way.

I recalled the centerpiece flowers gathered at the venue. I got up and took the car to pick them up. We would have to return the vases to the florist, but the flowers were beautiful, and we should enjoy them for our last day on the island. I unloaded each one to the front steps of the house. Arranging and rearranging until it looked welcoming and festive.

Then, I noticed the recycling bins filled to overflowing on the front porch. I knew where to take them. I loaded the car and got there a few minutes after the posted opening, 7 AM.

The transfer station was now an entirely different world than it had been in the pre-dawn hours. The sun was higher and brighter in the sky. It had burned off the early morning fog, and the seagulls were gone. The gates were wide open, and I could drive right into the large containers set up for recycling over a wide expanse of gravel and asphalt.

The dumpsters looked empty as I drove by, not heaped with trash bags as they had been just a few hours earlier. After dumping the cans and bottles into the designated containers, I walked back there, stepped up and peeked inside. They were EMPTY. Completely empty!

A lanky white-haired man monitored the station. I walked his way. “Can I help you?” he asked.

“Well, yes. I was here earlier this morning and the dumpsters were full. What happened to what was inside?”

He pointed across the pavement to a shed with a ramp leading up to a large maroon metal container extruding from the front end of the building. The front half of the container was attached to a huge trash compactor. “In there,” he said. “All compacted.”

“But the station just opened. How did you do that so fast?”

“Oh, I was here at six this morning. I like to get an early start. Saturdays are always busy.”

“So, anything that was in those dumpsters.....” I paused.

He looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Closed and compacted. I do it first thing. Those dumpsters are always overflowing on Saturday mornings.”

The hair raised on my arms. Chills ran down my spine.

You knew all along, didn’t you?

Thank you, Ellen!

. . . . .

Here’s to 10 years of Marriage!

Happy Anniversary, Susie and Ben!

The universe may be full of deep magic if we are open to it, if we don’t crave or grasp for it. I crave the magic, grasp toward fleeting seconds of stillness.

Sometimes both are there, unbidden, when I wake in the pre-dawn hours.

***

The morning after Beth died, I woke in her bed and glanced at the digital clock on her nightstand. 6:11; her birthday. Her energy was immediately present, unmistakably her, exactly as she hugged. I clutched people tightly, squeezed them to my chest and then released them quickly. A hug triggered my fear of intimacy, managed only by maintaining clear boundaries with a definite beginning and end. Beth’s hugs were nebulous. She snuck into your arms like a feather and melted. That morning, like butter on a griddle, her energy entered at the soles of my feet and filled me inch by inch, warm and fluid, to the top of my head.

She was still with me.

In the days and weeks that followed, her energy became a daily light show behind my closed eyes. It was mobile and dramatic, different every time, bursts of pure white against a deep black background. She wove intricate webs of light, dashed off geometric shapes, letters tumbled over each other into the pull of gravity. Her light spiraled and circled and pulsed with life.

This was some deep magic alright, and I had a front row seat.

A year and a half later, I woke in my brother’s bed in Manhattan the morning after he died. His wife had chosen the couch, where she’d slept for the last two months as lung cancer too quickly sapped Paul’s strength and breath. Night noises had intruded on my sleep all night: car and truck engines on the street below, sirens, honking, human voices and music. At one point, a dance party boomed right outside the window, six floors down. The courtyard below amplified humanity in full motion.

There was no digital clock to mark Paul’s presence. I closed my eyes and let morning traffic noise wash through me. Life continued all around. Beth appeared as usual; her light so bright that I opened my eyes to check that there wasn’t an external source. As usual, it was dark. I closed my eyes to her swirls and spirals. Allowed her to hold me.

I am here, her light seems to say. I am with you.

And, that morning, there was another message.

I am with you, and I have Paul.

Beth and Paul were always close despite a six year age difference. She was his champion and protector. The day we stood vigil in the hospital as Paul’s body gradually shut down, I told his kids about Royalty, the card game Beth designed and played with Paul on rainy weekends when we were kids. I heard the two of them often in one of the bedrooms. “Oh, I forgot to tell you one other rule,” she said many times. He went along with all the changes, happy to be playing with his big sister, eager, trusting, some might say gullible. It wasn’t until the fifth or sixth game, and the millionth rule change, that I heard Paul say tentatively, finally catching on that Beth was constantly rigging the game. “Hey, wait a minute. What’s going on here?”

It felt good to remember Beth and Paul, to chuckle at their younger selves, to marvel at their particular bond and connection. He had been hospitalized for two weeks with dangerously low oxygen saturation. He was unable to catch his breath, or speak comfortably due to a trapped lung. He had been awake when Eli and I arrived the day before. His eyes lit up when he saw his son. They clasped hands; Eli leaned in close. “I love you I love you I love you.” Paul’s voice was barely audible, breathy and forced. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I love you. I love you.”

They were his final words.

***

Hours later, the nurses adjusted the IV drip of pain medicine, and he relaxed back into sleep.

I sat at his left foot. Olivia at his right. Milla held his right hand, and Eli held his left.

Olivia reminded us about when her mom was hospitalized and isolated with covid three years earlier. It was one of many times Beth thought she was coming to the end of her 22-year cancer journey.

Don’t worry, she texted. If this goes south I know I will be okay. I am surrounded by luminous beings. Olivia told the story just like Beth. “Luminous beings,” she said. Her words shimmered with light.

I directed my question to Paul’s sleeping form, “Are you surrounded by luminous beings, Paul?”

Eli looked up suddenly. “He just squeezed my hand.”

***

I recalled Eli’s look of wonder the next morning when I woke in Paul’s bed. The deep magic of the universe alive in Beth’s light show.

There in the bottom of my mind’s eye was the tiniest speck of light. Beth’s light spiraled around it, scooped it up as if playing with it, protecting it. She was showing him the ropes. This is how you move in the world without a body, she seemed to say. Follow me. I’ll show you how this works.

Maybe most miracles can be traced back to someone’s profound and quiet kindness: the nurses at Memorial Sloan Kettering, the nursing aids, the custodial crew. Everyone was incredibly calm, present, and respectful. A quiet knock on the door, a peek around the edge. Okay if I grab the trash? I have your dinner? Just a quick vitals check, okay?

Then, there was the parking garage attendant standing under a sign that clearly stated: NO ACCESS TO CARS PARKED OVERNIGHT.

I asked anyway, “Is it okay, if I come back to grab my nephew’s backpack in a couple of hours? I know I’m not supposed to. I’m not leaving the city until tomorrow. I was here last week. Do you remember me?”

He didn’t know my brother had just died. He didn’t know that I’d been back and forth to Manhattan from Western Massachusetts three times in the last two weeks, that I’d made an hours-long detour to pick up my nephew, that we’d spent the last 24 hours standing vigil. Maybe he saw it in my tired eyes, my lined face, my body sagging under the weight of loss.

“Si,” he said, “I remember you. I will leave your car right here.” He pointed to the first open spot just inside the garage door. “When you come back, bring your ticket.”

The kindness of others and the universe’s deep magic.

Maybe they are one and the same.

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My niece Olivia started her own Substack. Read her writing and follow her below.

Sweet Peach

By Olivia Sedarski

Mrs. Millington is old too. She looks like Aunt Mary with her big belly and dark hair pulled back into a tight shiny bun. She speaks in short, sharp sentences and paddles kids who misbehave with a flat wooden board with holes in it to make it sting. It hangs on the wall beside the chalkboard, a confusing reminder to sit still, be quiet, and follow directions.

Mrs. Millington is not warm or loving, but she is serious about reading. She sits with me and two boys whose bodies are in constant motion at a table in the back of the room every day. We turn the pages of thin paperback books with the stories of blue-eyed children, Dick and Jane, and their little dog, Spot. With one eye on us and one eye on the rest of the class, she points to words we miss. “Look again,” she says. “You know that word.” Soon the individual letters form words and the blond kids talk to each other (“Look at Spot go. Go, Spot, Go.”). Then they match the pictures (Look at Dick run. Run, Dick, Run). Something clicks that feels like magic and freedom, and I can choose books from a different shelf and read at my desk like the rest of the class.

Show-and-tell is the scariest part of the week. “Listen to her talk,” the kids whisper behind their hands in their Oklahoma drawl. They bring Barbies, diaries with locking clasps, toy tractors, cars, and trucks. I don’t bring anything to share. I don’t talk in class. It keeps me quieter than I might have been.

Second grade is so much better. I can read all of the books on the reading shelf. Mrs. Tomlinson plays the piano and the whole class stands and sings together several times a day. We sing This Land is Your Land, She’ll be Coming Around the Mountain, Old Susannah, and the Hokey Pokey. Some days we push the desks to the edges of the room to open up a dancing space in the center. We learn the Virginia Reel and how to square dance.

Best of all, Mrs. Tomlinson is young and pretty and she never yells or paddles. I am thrilled that her first name is Linda just like mine, and I ignore the snickers of “Teacher’s Pet” when she asks me to carry notes to the office or to the other Mrs. Tomlinson, her mother-in-law, who teaches Peter in 5th grade. I feel important walking alone on the wide, quiet walkway.

The best part of the day is read aloud when Mrs. Tomlinson reads about a little girl who lives in the big woods of Wisconsin. Every word comes to life in my imagination. I am with Laura and Ma gathering kindling, sewing clothing, and making food. I hunt with Pa and sit with Laura, Mary, and their baby sister, Carrie, as Pa tells stories and plays the fiddle after dinner. I smell the smells, hear the wolves, feel the cold. My spine prickles with fear, and I bask in the love, affection, and adventure of this family despite their hard life and strict rules.

In line to wash hands before lunch, a girl in front of me says something to her friend about adoption.

“I was adopted,” I tell them. I’d like to be included. I’d like to have a friend.

“No you weren’t,” Wendy dismisses me over her shoulder and turns back to her friend.

“Yes, I was,” I repeat. “I was adopted.” We go back and forth a little too loudly. Mrs. Tomlinson comes to see what all the fuss is about.

“Linda is lying,” Wendy says. “She says she was adopted.”

“But I was adopted.” I tell Mrs. Tomlinson. “I was.”

Wendy and her friends snicker in their southern drawl. “Listen to her accent.”

I remember the adoption, the courtroom, the judge, and I still stumble over my new name.

Mrs. Tomlinson calls home and arranges a parent-teacher meeting. I sit outside the classroom on the cool concrete while she and Mom talk. I am in trouble, but I want to be a good girl who doesn’t get paddled at school or whacked with a wooden spoon at home. I don’t like yelling.

“Settle down in there, girls.” Mom hollers from the living room after bedtime. “Don’t make me come in there.” Trouble sometimes comes out of the blue. Like after church when the three of us race to the front door to be first to the bathroom. We prance from foot to foot, angling to beat the others. “I was here first.” I complain. “No, I was,” says Peter. “But I can’t hold it,” whines Beth. None of it matters when Jim comes up the walkway from the car and swats us out of the way. He hisses, “I’m the one with the key, assholes.”

After the parent-teacher meeting mom takes me by the hand and walks briskly to the car. “Yes, you were legally adopted,” she says, “but this is a private family matter, and we don’t tell strangers family business.”

“Mrs. Tomlinson isn’t a stranger.”

“I know you love her, Linda, and it’s clear she loves you, but we don’t talk about family business outside the family.” She is firm, her mouth a straight line, her eyes straight ahead on the road. We don’t talk about family business inside the family either.

Later she tells Jim about the meeting, and I overhear her tell him that Mrs. Tomlinson would take me home in a heartbeat. That she and her husband can’t have children of their own because her husband was paralyzed in a farm accident last fall when he fell between a hay baler and trailer. This makes me love Mrs. Tomlinson even more, and I imagine life at the Tomlinson’s filled with read aloud, singing and dancing.

On the bus one day, I overhear two girls in the seat behind me whispering about divorce. They are talking about a boy in Peter’s grade, Billy, who just got off the bus and crossed the road to go into an old, run-down green clapboard house with peeling paint. The shutters are falling off, the grass needs to be cut, and the bushes are overgrown. “His parents are divorced,” they say. “That’s why Billy is such a bad kid.”

At home, I find mom in the kitchen, “What is divorced?”

She turns sharply toward me, eyes flashing electric blue, “Where did you hear that word?” She scolds me like it is a swear. When I tell her about Billy, she says, “We don’t talk about d-i-v-o-r-c-e. It is a private family matter.” That is the end of the conversation.

Peter only shrugs when I ask him. “His dad left. He just lives with his mom.” He rides his bike out of the garage. My questions about dads and divorce go unanswered.

Both fourth graders, Peter befriends Prentiss Riddle, a skinny kid with blond hair, thick glasses, and a passion for science. Prentiss’ younger sister, Suzy, is in Beth’s kindergarten class. We get banana seat bicycles with high-rise handlebars and glittering streamers and spend hours riding round and round the circle.

Emmy Harris is my age and lives across the street, but she doesn’t ride bikes with us. When she comes outside, it’s to show off a new dress, a doll, or a stuffed animal that her dad brought home to her from a business trip. She doesn’t stay outside for long. She doesn’t want her new things to get dirty and always seems to be on her way to a party or a restaurant. Her mom is always dressed up too with perfect hair and makeup. Her dad drives a huge Cadillac and takes the family out to dinner every Friday night.

In the summer, we follow Peter on our bikes to swimming lessons at the University pool a few days per week. Mom gives us each a dime to stop at the creamery on our way home for fresh quarts of chocolate milk. “Straight from the cows,” she says. It is rich and cold and super sweet. We suck our cups dry in a race to finish and get back on our bikes. My stomach feels like a bowling ball as we coast down the hill and into the circle under the scorching sun.

When we need a break from our bikes, we explore the many construction sites on the circle. It happens so fast. One day, a concrete truck delivers a wet gray mix, smoothed into a perfect rectangular pad. And the next, it seems, there are walls made of two by fours; then rafters, and a roof. We weave through the studs until the house is closed in. “Look at me,” we call to each other. We are ghosts walking through walls. We jump from gaping window frames. “Look out below!”

Peter lands on a nail that punctures his thin-soled sneaker and gouges his heel. He howls in pain and hobbles home. Beth and I follow his bloody footprints and watch Jim hustle him into the car. When they return there is talk of tetanus and lockjaw and the danger of being in places we don’t belong. I hold my face and imagine my mouth locked shut; the silence, the slow starvation. But there are always several new houses going up during the four years we live on Preston Circle. The scent of fresh-cut wood and saw dust draws us back after the carpenters go home. Beth and I are vigilant for wood scraps with upturned nails.

Suzy’s mom is a teacher and has a lot of time for us in the summers. We play at their house on rainy days. Mrs. Riddle sets the table with art supplies and brings a box of dress-up clothes. We plan, practice, and put on Laugh In-like variety shows with jokes, songs, skits, dances, and acrobatic routines. She convinces Peter and Prentiss to play bit parts in our plays. Soon we are making signs, selling tickets, and designing sets complete with a bed sheet turned stage curtain hung from the clothesline in their backyard. As more families move into the neighborhood, Beth, and Suzy write increasingly elaborate plays. The whole show requires weeks of planning and practice. Over the years, more performers join and our audience of neighborhood parents and kids grows.

A wide concrete drainage ditch runs off the circle and out onto a broad, flat expanse of mud. The red clay dries into delicate plate-sized jigsaw pieces that curl at the edges. Beth and I arrange them in designs, stack them like cairns, and smash them into powdery dust with a two-footed stomp. “Don’t you come in the house with those pants on,” Mom hollers when she sees us caked in dirt. We shed our pants, socks, and sneakers at the washing machine in the garage and hurry to our room for a fresh pair.

One summer morning, I wake with the morning light and creep out to ride on my own while everyone else is still sleeping. And, today, because it is already hot, and I received them as a birthday gift from Auntie Anne, I go out in my new pajamas: a thin blue nightshirt with red trim and a smiling Mary Poppins, complete with matching bloomers. I speed around the circle, creating my own wind; my hair and streamers fly, goosebumps ripple my bare arms and legs. I pedal faster when two older boys pull onto the circle behind me. After a few spins, I tire from trying to stay ahead of them and turn up our driveway and into the garage to park my bike.

They follow me up the driveway as my front wheel comes to a rest, and I push the kickstand into its diagonal prop.

“Hey,” they call, braking just outside the garage door to stand astride their bikes. Two red-headed brothers, close in age, live in one of the newest houses down the street. “How come you’re wearing a shirt today?”

Could they have seen me yesterday? Beth and I had played on the slip and slide in the backyard. With bathing suits in the wash, we had worn only a pair of shorts to run and fling ourselves down the yellow, watery sheet of plastic.

“Show us your tits,” they taunt. “Lift your shirt.”

My hand is on the doorknob to go into the house. I am one quick turn and a single step to safety, but I drop my hand and turn to face the two boys. I grasp the bottom hem of my pajama top with two hands, and flash my flat chest for a split second. Then I turn and slip into the kitchen and close the door behind me as they hoot, holler and clap. I lean against the door, heart pounding with the thrill of naughtiness and fear. My body is electric with energy as I skip silently through the house to find Beth still in bed. I swear her to secrecy, then tell and show her what I did. My heart beats like a rollercoaster.

Waste is not allowed. “Be thankful for the food you’ve got.” She recites the mantra of the clean plate club.” Children are starving in India.” We chase every bite around the bowl and slurp the watery mix of undissolved powder before we deliver our spoons and bowls to the sink.

Memories of food and hunger dominate these years. Mom can’t get the amounts right for our new family of five. (She didn’t do much cooking in Scranton.). We force down the weekly canned line-up: tuna noodle casserole, split pea soup, liver and onions, spaghetti O’s, fish on Fridays, and the occasional dry roast chicken. Yes, it is food in our bellies, but it is far from the homegrown mashed potatoes and green beans from Aunt Rita and Uncle Patty’s garden.

Peter, Beth and I walk a few blocks to our new school each morning down a black cinder road. We walk home together at lunchtime to eat peanut butter and banana sandwiches on Wonder Bread. Beth stays home with Mom because kindergarten is only half-day. I am a big kid walking back for the afternoon in first grade.

We each have a School Years scrapbook, a collection of plastic coil-bound pocket pages to hold report cards and random mementos. Mom records our schools, teachers’ names, and our heights and weights at each grade level. There are checkboxes for what we want to be when we grow up with options like nurse, teacher, mother, and secretary for me and Beth. Peter has choices like policeman, fireman, doctor, and lawyer. There is a place to paste a school picture and a line for our signatures. My Montessori page reads Linda Sherman, which starts with large, confident capital letters and ends with progressively smaller letters cramped to fit the line. My first grade page holds a shaky mix of upper and lower case letters: Linda Smurl.

***

Five of us stood in a large, brightly lit courtroom with tall bench seats like pews, but with no altar, cross, or crucifix. The judge sat behind an expanse of wood, his head floating above the legal document that created Jim Smurl’s instant family (just add three children and a divorced mom). “Be sure to practice your new names now.” He instructed us to introduce ourselves and shook our hands with a congratulatory smile as if it would be easy to dissolve our previous years if we could say and spell our awkward new names.

***

The three of us share an old two-wheeler left at the cottage. It’s a little too small for Peter, and a little too big for me and Beth, but we take turns riding it down the bumpy cinder road that runs uphill toward school in one direction and down to the lake in the other. We steer around the many potholes, fall repeatedly, and walk it back up to the top again and again. Mom washes black gravel out of scraped knees and elbows. We howl in pain as hydrogen peroxide bubbles. Scabs grow thick and itchy and reveal patchy new pink skin when we pick at them.

A deep, dark hole recurs in a nightly dream. No one hears me when I call for help from the bottom. I wake in terror crying for Mom. She hushes me when I try to tell her that it is real. “Quiet, Linda, it’s just a dream.” She pats my back and smooths the covers. “Go back to sleep. You’ll wake Peter and Beth.” I hear her through the thin walls telling Father Jim, “She’s dreaming about those potholes in the road.”

The potholes in my nightmare get bigger. Every night I fall into a black hole lined with crumbling cinder, the sides and edges fall away under my hands and feet as I try to crawl out. I wake up calling, “Mom, Mom! Help me!” But she stops coming, and I don’t dare climb down to find her. I lie awake, afraid to fall back to sleep. I wrap the thin cotton blanket around me, brace one foot against the wall and the other against the bed frame to keep from falling.

The nuns of Our Lady wore long black habits with wide white collars. Another white band tucked their hair out of sight and crinkled their faces into soft folds when they smiled. Their arms emerged like magic from oversized sleeves and they seemed to float around the room with their feet hidden from sight. We learned to sit in a circle to sing songs, count in Spanish, and learn the routines of the day and week. We set and cleared the table for snacks, poured juice for each other, washed and dried dishes, and then put them away. We learned to take care of the classroom materials. We made choices purposefully, played on a mat, and put them back where they belonged when we were finished. Everything had its place, including us. The nuns created a sense of belonging and importance. It seemed to matter that we were there.

* * *

Then one day we are dressed up like we are going to church, but it isn’t Sunday. There is a sense of urgency, an unusual degree of hustle and bustle.The grown-ups are short and terse with each other. Bags, boxes, and pillows are piled on the front porch and then loaded into an unfamiliar blue station wagon. Peter, Beth and I squeeze together into the back seat each hugging a pillowcase filled with our clothes and pajamas. Our feet rest on other bags and pillows. Father Jim drives, but instead of the usual black collar and white square, he wears a jacket and tie. Mom sits beside him in a new blue dress and pillbox hat. Peter, Beth and I fidget quietly on the drive. We elbow each other for more room, but no one talks. No one asks where we are going.

We stop in front of a low house, almost invisible behind overgrown shrubs. Mom turns to us. “Sit tight. We won’t be long.” She and Father Jim get out of the car and disappear into the house. We roll down the windows and sing our hellos to Auntie Anne who has pulled up behind us in her little blue bug. She leans in with kisses for all and then follows Mom and Father Jim into the house behind a swinging sign that Peter reads, “Justice of the Peace.”

“Just us of the piece?” Beth and I giggle, but Peter just shrugs. At nine, he has no patience for the silliness of a five- and six-year-old. The grown-ups return to the car all smiles, and we tumble out for pictures. Beth and I lean into each other. Peter stands to the side with Mom and Father Jim behind us. Auntie Anne clicks the black instamatic camera. She gives everyone a big hug and kiss, leaves us swimming in the scent of her face powder and perfume, and with a cool smudge of her lipstick on our cheeks.

“Congratulations,” she says to Mom as she gets into her car, “Good luck.” As she pulls away, she calls out to us. “You kids be good.” Her pale arm waves out the window, and with a “beep beep” of the horn and a puff of cigarette smoke, she leaves us to this fuzzy transition. It is indistinct, yet sharply defined like a fulcrum, like bumping into something in the dark.

We drive for a long time to a squat cottage hidden behind giant shrubs and under a low green roof. We carry our pillows and pillow cases to the front door.

“Isn’t this exciting?” Mom says. “A new house.” But she opens the door to the musty smell of someone else’s furniture. The living room is stuffed with a sagging couch, a wing-backed chair, and a low scuffed coffee table. Shelves on either side of the stone fireplace hold haphazard stacks of books, games and puzzles.

“Whose stuff is this?” I ask.

“It comes with the rental,” she says, her voice strains with cheeriness. “We get to use everything here. “

“Where do we sleep?” Peter asks. We hold our pillows against our bellies and peek around the door jamb into a room with a bunk bed and a single twin.

“This is your bedroom,” she says.

“For all three of us?” Peter asks. He had his own room at Aunt Mary’s house.

“I get the top bunk.” I say and start up the ladder.

“No, I get it,” Peter says. “I’m the oldest.”

“No fair,” says Beth. “I want the top bunk.”

“You are the oldest,” Mom says to Peter, “but the girls get the bunk beds. You get the bed by the window and we’ll string up a curtain for privacy.”

I test out my pillow on the lumpy mattress and survey the tiny yard riddled with the roots of a giant tree with low branches perfect for climbing. It feels like we are playing house, but we unpack real clothing into a scratched bureau with sticky drawers.

While we explore the yard, test climbing branches, and find hiding spots under the shrubs, they hang a sheet on a wire across the middle of the bedroom. Peter ducks under it to get to his side of the room and blocks our way when we try to follow.

“No girls allowed,” he says, but I can see over the divider from my top bunk.

***

The first dinner in the house is strangely formal. “Time for dinner,” Mom calls and we find our places around an oval table in a cramped kitchen. Cooking smells have replaced the vacant odors of the cottage. Mom places a bowl of green beans and a basket of rolls in the middle of the table. “Ah, ah, ah,” she says as I reach for a roll. “Just wait.” She brings a platter of meatloaf to the table and sits down. “Elbows off the table,” she says as we lean in ready to eat.

“Sit up straight,” she chides. “No hunchbacks in this family.” But she is all smiles. “Oh, will you look at that,” she says, “I forgot my apron.”

Apron? Mom doesn’t wear an apron. She stands to untie the white apron with oversized pockets and folds it over the back of her chair. This is different.

“Shall we say Grace?” She reaches to hold hands with Father Jim on one side and Peter on the other.

Grace? We don’t say grace. But Father Jim is sitting at this table now in regular clothes, and we hold hands and bow our heads. I dart my eyes from side to side to glimpse my brother and sister. Father Jim says a prayer of thanks. I guess this is what we do now.

We pass the food around the table like Thanksgiving dinner. “Wait until everyone is served.” Mom says.

“Delicious,” Father Jim says after his first bite. He smiles at Mom. “Your mother did a good job, didn’t she?” He smiles at us. We nod with full mouths.

“Now that we’re married…” Mom looks at us and then looks at Father Jim.

“You can call me dad,” he says. “I’m your dad now.” They smile at each other.

Dad? We look at each other, nod our heads, chew and swallow our food. Maybe Peter remembers our father, but Beth and I don’t remember ever having a dad. We don’t say a word. Things are different now.

We live in a cottage on a dirt road, and we start at a new school tomorrow.

As preschoolers, Beth and I stepped down the steep bank with care to crouch at the water’s edge. Our shoes are scuffed with dirt. Cold water drenches our toes and creeps up the hem of our pants. We like the quiet and the abundance of treasures. A slug leaves a trail of slime across a bright orange leaf. A smooth, gray stone fits our palms perfectly. We delight in letter-shaped twigs and the designs in multi-colored rocks. We find flat, round skipping stones and pitch them across the water’s surface. We attempt what our brother does with ease, but ours mostly drop immediately out of sight with a satisfying plunk. We drop leaves into the slow-moving water and watch as they swirl in eddies, bump into obstacles, creating ripples until they float out of sight around the bend.

As we got older, we raced to the creek. We slip, slide, and elbow past each other to get the best position on the bank: the large flat rock, the old fallen log, an exposed tree root. Some days, the creek is noisy with neighborhood kids. Someone wedges a board into the bank on either side to create a bridge. Peter, a big third grader, crosses in a single bound. With a running start, he launches himself in a flying leap. A single foot touches down in the middle of the board-bridge, and he is on the other side.

Beth and I are more cautious. The board bounces and wobbles with each step. We are tightrope walkers, arms reaching for balance at our sides. We have freedom here away from adult eyes, but we’ve been warned not to venture too far.

We follow our brother across the creek to explore this new land, other houses, unfamiliar backyards. We walk through patches of lawn and brush, weave through a virtual forest of trees and random log piles to find a wooden ladder leaning against a tree. It reaches up to a raised platform with a treehouse on top. One by one we climb up the shaking ladder to find a low-roofed shelter with a crooked door, a glassless window, and room inside for four or five kids. We lean out the window, peer through the leafy canopy, and look down on the world below.

A few days later, I cross the creek alone and wander back to the treehouse. Today, it is noisy with bigger boys. “You can come up,” they call from the platform. Two boys climb down to make room for me. “Go on up,” they say. “We’ll hold the ladder for you.”

“I can climb by myself,” I tell them. Confidence puffs my chest, my hands grasp the rough rails, my feet step assuredly up and up and up, I am proud of myself as I step onto the platform high above the ground, I look down on the boys watching from below.

“Go inside.” They grin and snicker.

I push the door open to see a boy sitting on a wooden chair in the middle of the small room. Afternoon light slants in through the cracks in one wall, striping the floor. An erect penis pokes out of denim pants, pale and pink. He tips the chair back on two legs and reaches his hands behind his head. “You can touch it,” he says with a lazy smile.

I back out of the door and step down the ladder, each foot reaches blindly for the rung below.

A splinter snags my palm.

Keep stepping. Don’t cry.

My breath is tight, cold grips my spine as I land on solid ground.

“Did you touch it?” The boys at the bottom laugh. “Did you touch his dick?”

I don’t know this word, but I know it is dirty and dangerous. These boys are dirty and dangerous.

I don’t look behind me as I run back to the board-bridge and our side of the creek. I say nothing to Beth or Peter when I get to the house.

I never tell anyone.

I stop crossing the creek.

It’s been more than three hours since I fell on the ice, attempting a turn at near full speed to skate backwards so I could watch my 5 and 6 year old granddaughters skating behind me. Had I spent more than a few seconds thinking it through in advance, I might have factored in two relevant facts (despite my history as a recreational skater): I hadn’t skated in more than 20 years, and I was on rented skates with no real edges.

Our first hour had been okay. The arena was crowded with southern Californians trying to capture a bit of the Christmas spirit. “Teach us how to push and glide,” Isla begged from my right side. “Am I doing it?” Julianna skates slipped in every direction like a real-life cartoon character. I held their hands tight in mine, willing them to stay up, to experience a bit of fun and success in this new-to-them endeavor.

Then we cleared the arena to watch the Zamboni smooth the ice. I was excited to get back out there, to skate with some speed. The crowd was thinning, and the girls each had their own plastic seal to push. I skated out in front of them, then turned to watch their progress. Of course, I remembered how to skate backwards. Muscle-memory is real.

Boom! My right hand hit the ice with a palpable crunch and audible crack. Immediate tingling and numbness raced to my fingertips. My fingers sloped down at an angle away from my thumb, and my wrist looked like a rollercoaster. I scooped up my right hand with my left and skated off the ice. “I’m sure I broke it,” I told those who asked. I recalled a similar incident falling off the uneven parallel bars as a 6^th grader. I found a bench to sit down so I wouldn’t pass out as pain made itself known.

Luckily, help was speedy. An arena employee brought chemical ice packs and adhesive tape, and packed some extras in my pockets. A friend helped me get out of skates, laced up my boots, and brought me to urgent care while another arranged for the girls to go home with friends.

Paul and Susie met me at Urgent Care where an x-ray confirmed the break. The doctor was kind and certain. “See this gap,” she said, pointing to a large, blank space just beneath my thumb. The distal radial head is somewhere down here.” She pointed to a vague white mass a few inches away. You’ll need to go to the ER to have it set, and you’ll be able to see Dr. Gittings on Friday to schedule surgery.”

“Surgery? Oh, no. That is not good.”

“It’s a bad break,” she said. “I’m so sorry this happened two days before Christmas.”

Susie drove us to the ER, easily navigating the complex where she works as a physical therapist. I was thankful for the extra ice and swapped out the packs as we waited.

We were moved to a separate room within the Emergency Department after another x-ray. A handsome young doctor introduced himself. “I’m Dr. Endo. I’m sorry this happened to you. We can hang your arm and give you some numbing medicine, but I recommend the ketamine.”

“Ketamine,” I said. “Isn’t that a drug used for guided spiritual journeys?”

He motioned to the hanging Chinese finger traps and eight pounds of weight to load my arm. “We could try this to reduce the fracture, but it’s slow and comes with no guarantee. With the ketamine, you might still feel the reduction, but you won’t remember a thing.”

Ok, Let’s try it. I’d had enough pain and was game for a trip.

Medical staff crowded around my bed in the middle of the tiny cubicle. Dr. Endo on my left was ready to administer ketamine. By his side, a respiratory therapist was assigned to monitor my breathing. Then came the x-ray tech with her portable machine. The PA on my right was seated and ready to set the broken forearm while a medical technician measured the soft white splinting material. Finally, Crystal, the nurse, stood at a computer screen mounted like a robot to monitor my heartrate and oxygen saturation. Susie waited outside, prepared to capture all the activity I was going to forget. Paul moved to the waiting room to avoid fainting.

The PA nodded around the room. “Are we ready?”

“Good thoughts, everyone,” I said. “Please stay positive, 100% good thoughts.”

I watched Dr. Endo draw 70 ccs into a syringe and apply the tip to the IV.

“This is very fast acting,” he said.

The room went dark, but only briefly.

My eyes were closed, but I woke to a feeling of weightlessness and space...

Color surrounded me from all directions: pinks and white in geometric shapes and swirls. Everything was in motion and still at the same time. I was aware of peace and limitless energy. There was music, but no sound, light, but no source. “It’s a pink tunnel of love,” I thought or said, but I had no voice, no lungs, no throat with which to make sounds. I existed but without a body. I was in a field of pure energy, no physical sensation at all. I floated with effortless ease. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go. Bliss.

Then I became aware of a woman on a bed below me. I felt far, far away and yet incredibly close. Like I was watching the scene through gauze, but I had no eyes to see nor ears to hear what was happening. Other beings moved around her. “That poor, poor woman,” I thought. “She has such a long road ahead of her.”

The beings hovered around her, prodded and stretched her arm. It looked painful, but what did I know of pain? What did I know of bodies? I thought I heard howling, ‘Aww, aww, aww-oooo!’ but what did I know of sound, or thought, or hearing? Someone might have said something like, ‘Another dose of ketamine,’ but it came from deep underwater like slow bubbles rising to the surface. What is ketamine anyway?

…I swirled back into the tunnel of love, love, love….

…Space. Light. Movement. Stillness...

...Weightless peace and quiet...

...Love went on and on and on for infinity...

...Endless, fascinating, constant motion and change...

...No body. No thought. No words. No sound...

...I could stay here forever...

...Time did not exist…

Then, I heard the beep, beep, beep, beep of a monitor. Voices, more distinct, somehow familiar.

“She’s coming back.”

“Crystal, is that you?” I ask.

“Yes, it’s me.”

My eyes blinked open to see my nurse standing at the monitor. Susie and Paul sat in chairs beside the bed. “I was in a pink tunnel of love,” I told them.

“We heard,” they laughed. “You told us all about it.”

“It was incredible….”

Was I really forming words with my mouth?

Did I even want to come back?

How can I hold onto my memories of that place?

How to hold onto that energy of peace and quiet?

The weightless sensation of ease, of bliss?

I took a breath.

Wait, I have lungs?

The blanket rose with my inhale.

Would I collapse under its weight?

No, the bed held me. A body supported by a mattress, a metal frame.

Legs stretched out under the blanket, heavy against the bed.

Wait, I have legs?

Hiking boots poked out from the end of the blanket.

Wait, I have shoes?

Awe. Amazement. Shock.

Then, there were feet inside of shoes, legs inside of pants, a heart beating, blood pumping.

How is it that I have a body?

A head, heavy on a pillow, a neck that turns

Shoulders, and then arms,

one arm that moves,

The other..

a brick, a concrete block, enlarged and encased in an ace-wrapped splint.

The realization.

Wait. That was me.

Oh, no. That was me….

It’s my arm that is broken.

Then the transition was complete – gone was the world of no body. I landed like a 747, thudding heavily, fully and completely in a broken body. Reality settled around me like water; I sank into it. Breath in my body, my body on the bed, the bed in a hospital, the hospital on earth. This is also real.

“If that was a preview of death,” I smiled. “We have nothing to fear.”

Crystal spoke up. “Ketamine is my favorite drug to give to patients,” she told us. “They always wake up happy, and they say the most amazing things.”

“It was incredible,” I said again, trying to recapture the weightlessness, the freedom, the infinite spaciousness of no-body. “I need to remember this.”

Gravity pulled on me. The weight of my legs, my back, my head, neck and arms. I felt myself supported, and thankful for modern western medicine even if it is mostly “sickcare.”

I remembered the gift of a body, the miracle of a body that breathes, of a heart that beats, the capacity to laugh and cry. A body with skin that feels texture and temperature, a brain that makes sense of light and sound and taste. A body with the astounding ability to move and touch and connect.

And, yes, a body that feels pain

and love

and gratitude

for whatever length of time we get in our

very finite bodies.

Postscript:

Today is seven weeks since the fall, 6 weeks post-surgery. The initial weeks of pain and immobilization were difficult. I was awkward using my nondominant hand to eat, write, type, and brush my hair and teeth. I was lucky to be surrounded by the love and care of family. Paul helped me dress and shower. He opened jars and did all the cooking, driving and shopping. He fed and watered the chickens every day through weeks of freezing cold. He walked the dog, and put the cat out every night. He washed my hair and cut my food. More than anything, with his trademark good humor, he tolerated my particular and specific instructions about how to do the things I couldn’t do. Thank you, Paul!

Three weeks marked a turning point when I could remove the brace to begin range-of-motion exercise and was greeted with noticeable improvement every day. I started back to my daily yoga practice with a block under my forearm for planks and table pose, forearms on the mat for dolphin instead of down dog. I’ve been buoyed by community and connection throughout. Others who had experienced something similar, forged the path ahead of me, shared their wisdom, and gave me hope. This, too, will pass away. This, too, will change and transform. It is a gift to have the time and space to notice.

Uncle Tony’s house was dark and formal. We had to call ahead for a visit, sit with ankles crossed on uncomfortable plastic-covered chairs in a stark parlor, and wait while Aunt Mary (Tony’s Lady) served us tea in cups with saucers. They had no children of their own so they loved “entertaining” us, but it was no tea party. Crystal candy dishes, white doilies, and framed pictures of relatives in sepia tones sat in tantalizingly easy reach, but could never be touched.

In contrast, Aunt Rita’s house was open and welcoming. If she wasn’t sitting on her couch watching As the World Turns or General Hospital with an ever-present cup of coffee, a pack of cigarettes, and her loyal border collie, Chip, at her side, she was standing over vats of boiling potatoes, green beans, and pork roast in the warm and steamy kitchen. She pulled up the trap door to the earthen basement and sent us down to retrieve cans of sauce or beans from shelves crammed full of preserved goodness from the garden out back: peaches, applesauce, jams, beets, and every imaginable kind of pickle. The pull-chain light revealed treasures in every corner. An active coal chute was a perfect hiding place and escape hatch to the side yard. The sewing table always had a project in progress. A makeshift bedroom occupied one wall with handmade curtains hanging from floor joists for privacy, and a collection of toy army men and trucks lay scattered about in ever-changing configurations of war.

When Uncle Patty wasn’t listening to a ballgame on the radio on the front porch swing, he tended green beans and snap peas, corn and cucumbers, roses and raspberries in two side gardens outside the old gray barn. He puttered among automotive treasures, old farm tools, and gasoline engines with Beth and me his silent twin shadows. When he was working, he opened the barn doors wide to let in the light, but Beth and I liked returning after he had closed the doors. We squeezed into the gap to marvel at the daytime stars. The old metal roof, speckled with rust and nail holes, sparkled like the night sky.

Photographs from our years in Scranton show us posed in holiday clothes through the years and seasons. Pregnant Mom in an oversized coat, pillbox hat, and fox stole with Peter watching Aunt Rita trying to prop me up. Beth and I are awkward toddlers in bright Easter coats and ribboned hats. Peter holds our hands and squints into the sun on Aunt Rita’s bulkhead, our big brother in a little-boy-blue suit. Later, we hug each other in matching pajamas and pinned-curls, making a bid for more time in the kitchen after baths and before bed.

I don’t know the details of Mom’s pastoral counseling, of course. Arranged by her father and the old parish priest, she met weekly with Father Jim, who at the time was a newly ordained, young priest, recently returned from his training in Rome. We watched Father Jim preach from the altar, prepare communion wafers, and wave clouds of incense in Sunday morning rituals. He was an imposing figure in flowing robes, rimmed in red and gold. His booming voice rang through the church in loud, long unintelligible notes.

Church had been a holiday only event, but soon we started going every week. The bedtime routine changes after Saturday night baths. Beth and I stand stock still while mom parts our wet hair into thin sections and winds it tightly around pink cushioned rollers snapped all over our heads. The rollers make it hard to sleep and only a few are still in place in the morning. Sunday clothing awaits us after breakfast. Ruffly underwear, tulle petticoats, and lace-trimmed socks may look pretty but they are stiff and uncomfortable. We shift and squirm and scratch in the backseat on the way to church.

Mom teeters on narrow spiked heels, wobbly over toes pressed into unnatural points as we climb the thick stone steps, our wrists held tight in her gloved hands. When I reach for the holy water in its cool, stone basin inside the door, she squeezes my hand, yanks me to her side, and hisses into my ear, “Don’t you dare embarrass me.”

We find seats amid the silence and echoes. Beth sits between me and mom, and Peter parades with the priests in a long-sleeved, oversized robe. Sometimes he carries a cross, sometimes a chalice. He and the other altar boys are miniature versions of Father Murray and Father Jim. Organ music and deep voices flood the sanctuary. The service is long. We sit; we stand; we kneel; we pray; we sit some more. Beth and I bow our heads. We copy the sign of the cross. We kick our legs, fast and slow, in unison and giggle silently. We squint at the candlelight and send splinters of light in all directions while the adults receive communion. When mass is over, we file out with the other parishioners. Father Murray leans over, holds his robe out of the way to shake our hands. “Peace be with you,” he says, and I want to reach for the dangling rosary. “Peace be with you,” we mumble and then burst into daylight, free at last while Mom talks with the grown-ups until it is time for the crowded Sunday dinner table at Aunt Rita’s house.

Outside of church, Father Jim wears black clerical clothing and appears smaller when he visits the house. In one photo, he holds me and Beth, one on each knee, in an overstuffed chair beside our Christmas tree. We lean away from him, eyes wide. His large hands splay over our chests. He smiles broadly, looking into the camera through thick, black-framed glasses. One of his front teeth is gray, stark contrast to the white square in the middle of his collar.

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We look at each other and then race to the door to catch it before it slams. We peek over the cement steps and down to the alley. Three faces stacked like totems, framed by dingy metal and dusty screen. At seven, four, and three, we are the remains of her marriage.

Mom flips the lid with a clatter and drags the metal can away from the house. Her blue eyes blaze, red-rimmed and wet. Black tears stain her cheeks. Angry words scrape her throat. She stuffs the wedding dress into the can, pulls match after match across the rough strip. Sparks fade as she tosses them onto the fabric. Then, a thin thread of smoke floats out; yellow flames flicker. The white satin and lace slowly shrink out of sight. She picks up an album at her feet, rips a photograph from its paper corners, and tosses it into the fire. Some pictures she tears in half, stuffing one part into her pocket before launching the other into the flames. She smashes a framed picture into the can, glass shatters, wood breaks. We three flinch with each violent eruption.

I learned much later that Mom had ignored the paperwork from Texas, refused to respond to the request for divorce from our father, buried her head in the sand of righteousness rather than believe that a court of law could dissolve a sacrament of the Catholic Church.

Her devout family and fourteen years of parochial schooling had instilled confidence that God’s word was above the law. It didn’t register that just five years earlier she had turned her back on church doctrine to marry our Protestant father, a tall, dark and handsome Air Force Captain, who swept her off her feet at a Nursing School graduation dance. She loved life as an officer’s wife on bases in Florida and Texas…until he fell in love with another woman.

Shortly after Mom returned to Scranton with an infant and preschooler in tow (she didn’t yet know she was pregnant with Beth), our grandfather went to the old parish priest to get the marriage annulled.

Was there a way to reverse her excommunication? He wanted to know. Was forgiveness available? Could she return to the Church’s protective fold?

With her father’s encouragement, she began what became five years of weekly pastoral counseling. It was a shot at a fresh start, a chance to erase her shameful past. She eagerly embraced the opportunity.

***

Mom was the first grandchild born to both sides of her large extended family. Her grandparents, like many others, survived weeks in cramped conditions to cross the Atlantic from Ireland in the late 1880’s. They left behind famine and oppression to find work in the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania. They worked hard, married young, and believed fervently in the dictates of the Catholic Church. There were rules to follow, a catechism for living well, an answer to every question. If you were a good person, you’d have a good life and meet your maker in heaven.

Mom’s parents grew up steps from each other in a predominantly working-class Irish Catholic neighborhood. They attended the same church, walked to the same schools. No one was surprised when they married. Their siblings had worked and played together for years: in the mines, on the fields, in the bars. They’d each lost an uncle in mining accidents. Two brothers, at fifteen and seventeen, had been shot and killed by US Marshals while trying to jump a train out of Scranton. The search for a better life ran in the family blood.

Our mother’s firsts were celebrated as the end of hardship. First words, first steps, every birthday was like light returning. The family had escaped the iron thumb of English nobility to find freedom and opportunity in America. She was the shining medal of their victory and she basked in their adoration even as younger siblings arrived almost annually.

Then, she contracted rheumatic fever at age five. Convulsing with a weeks-long fever, she was not expected to survive. Both grandmothers were vigilant. Mary needs water. Rub her feet. Keep her warm. Refresh the washcloth. Run the bath. They prayed and bargained with God. The fever eventually passed but had invaded her heart. Doctors warned that she wouldn’t survive adolescence. The family should prepare. Enjoy the time they had with her.

Everyone was pressed into her service. If she wheezed, her brother was told: Quick, Tommy, run and get the doctor. If she coughed or sneezed, a guiding hand was there. Let’s get you into bed, Mary. Her every wish was granted. Anne, she wants the doll she left downstairs. Run down and get it for her. She could do no wrong. Jerry, don’t treat your sister like that. She didn’t mean to hurt you.

But, she did survive. She grew to adulthood with a royal demeanor. She expected others to wait on her and to be pleased for the opportunity to do so. Her siblings called her Queen Mary without humor, long-held resentment barely disguised.

***

Is it such a stretch that her spouse and children would become the moon and stars to her sun? Mere satellites orbiting a golden center? Reflections of her readily apparent goodness?

“You belong to me,” she used to say, hugging us close, and wrapped in delight at her own creations. “You are mine, mine, mine. No one can take you away from me.”

Aging Gratefully

Despite what social media influencers may declare, aging is not a problem to be defied or denied. Growing older offers us the chance to become our more intentional and authentic selves. Buying into anti-aging messaging reduces our ability to be present and actively engaged in the precious and unpromised moments we have. While grieving our inevitable losses is important, doing so exclusively keeps us from the aliveness that comes from noticing and celebrating all the wonders of our lives.

Aging Gratefully: The Power of Appreciative Presence

Friday, November 7 - Sunday, November 9, 2025

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Discounts for seniors and members of marginalized communities are available.

I hope to see you there.

Sister Stories - Part 1

My earliest memories don’t include a time without my sister. There are pictures, of course, of the time before memory, of my infant self in my older brother’s lap, stories our mother told of early trips to the doctor’s office for shots, of Peter crying out to the nurses in his 3-year-old voice, “Don’t hurt my Linda.” My brother, always the fierce defender even as a preschooler.

There are also pictures of not-yet-one-year-old-me pulling up to peer into her crib, to look at the big-eyed bundle who would become my ever-present shadow, my sister, my Irish twin. Side-by-side cribs held us separately until we moved to twin beds.

There are no pictures of the two of us jumping the gap between the beds. My earliest memories include the gleeful abandon over what our young bodies could do, over and over, back and forth, passing in mid-air. We leaped and jumped, landed and rolled, giggled whooped with end-of-the-day punchiness. We chased each other after lights out until one or the other (and often both) crash-landed in a heap on the floor – a wild tangle of limbs and pajamas, pillows and hair.

Yes, we were indulged.

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Mom worked night shifts as a nurse in those days. Grandpa, Granny, and Great Aunt Mary (“Rary”) were happy just to hear us happy. Fatherless children oblivious to the scandal their mother had incited deserved a bit of indulgence. We always softened into sleep eventually. When mom was home, she yelled from downstairs, “Settle down, Girls. Don’t make me come up there.” It was a mostly empty warning, but on rare occasions she appeared at the top of the stairs with wooden spoon in hand. The threat of a stinging swat quieted us quickly, and we fell asleep, often in the same bed, one curled around the other like puppies.

We were dressed alike, shared the same birthday cake, blew out candles in the same breath, and received pairs of the same gifts. We shared the same brown hair color and cut, the same green-blue eyes. There are dozens of pictures of us standing side by side in matching outfits for Easter, for Christmas, in twin pajamas, hair rolled into pink plastic-cushioned rollers, the top of my head only slightly taller than Beth’s.

We watched the opening of the Carol Burnett Show and dreamed of dancing on television in colorful costumes like a school of fish moving in unison. One birthday, we woke to find two pairs of white leather go-go boots at the foot of our beds. We marched up and down the staircase with fringe fluttering, the rhythm of our shiny new heels announcing our joy to the world. Each crisp, clean step reverberated up our 3 and 4-year-old legs and echoed through the house. Maybe someone yelled, “Stop that racket,” but we didn’t hear them over our own drumbeat. Our doting relatives smiled and laughed at our antics.

We milled around the kitchen after Sunday supper like love-starved kittens weaving between the grown-ups’ legs. They sat on metal chairs around the gold-speckled Formica table, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer or coffee, gossiping and talking about the news. We watched the clock, antsy for the moment when both hands pointed straight down. Six-thirty meant it was time to race into the back room to sit side by side, knee to knee, as close to the little TV as we dared to watch Tinkerbell circle the spires of the Disney castle in a ring of fairy dust. She tapped her wand and transported us to the land of make-believe. It was easy to believe in fairy godmothers and charming princes. Magic was real. If you were good like Cinderella, you got the help you needed, found your prince and a perfect glass slipper. Happily ever after was the water we swam in.

We lived on one side of Rary’s duplex on West Market Street in Scranton. Rary was the family matriarch, our grandfather’s older and only sister. Always larger than life, she was a foreboding nurse supervisor who never married and ruled the nurse’s station and the family without question. She knew what was best for everyone and was trusted beyond measure. When Beth and I snuggled in with our heads on either side of her wide lap, she traced our ears with arthritic fingers and sent us off to sleep with goosebumps running down our backs.

Rary taught us to leave a saucer of milk on the front porch before bedtime for the leprechauns. I held the glass jug in my arms like a prize, and she helped us pour it into one of her delicate flowered saucers.

“What if Peaches drinks it before the leprechauns come?” Our Siamese cat sniffed at the saucer, her motor purring at full volume.

“The faster you fall asleep, the faster they’ll come.” Rary hustled us upstairs and into pajamas. I dreamed of little people under the porch, coming down from trees in the back yard. Three shining quarters for our piggy banks were always in the saucer the next morning.

Sometimes after Mom left for work and Peter for school, Rary proclaimed it a “Castle Day.” We buttoned our fuzzy-collared coats, pulled on woolen hats and gloves, and walked a few blocks to the imposing department store downtown. She held our small hands in her beefy ones as we stepped onto the escalator to go up, up, up to the dark interior of the third-floor restaurant. Musty and muffled, sounds of the near-empty restaurant were hushed by thick carpet and heavy drapes. Beth and I sat on throne-like booster seats in a corner booth of fake red leather while Rary ordered three mid-morning brownie sundaes.

I can still taste the soft dark chocolate of warm brownie, the smooth cold vanilla ice cream, and the thick drizzle of hot fudge that made the rest of the world drop away. Encouraged in this way, we were princesses in our very own castle.

Imagine our surprise years later, when Prince Charming did not appear with a glass slipper, when our fairy godmother could not remove obstacles with the wave of a wand, and the Castle revealed itself as the ancient crumbling ruin of an out-of-date department store.

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I miss her.

Editing Starry Starry Kite is not the same these days. We started this newsletter together as a way to put our writing safely into the world. She wanted to write the truth about living with cancer. I felt compelled to figure out how I had lucked into so much love in my life. After she died, I kept it going by publishing some of the writing she left behind. I published other people’s writing, but I ran into a wall publishing my own. Without her steady hand and confidence-building red pen, I hesitated.

But the urge to write still lurks. I’ve been preoccupied with Everyday Wellbeing, the nonprofit that grew out of Yoga Outside, but stay intermittently active with a few of my writing groups. I still tinker with the story of how I learned to love and be loved.

I made a promise to one group last week. I would publish something of my own before we met again.

We meet in just a few minutes so here is a piece about bringing my sister’s ashes to her daughter in Costa Rica. Enjoy! I look forward to your comments.

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Carrying Ashes

I walked confidently into the airport in Guatemala City three hours before my 6 AM flight. After a week at Lake Atitlán, my Spanish was stronger, and I had researched the words for ashes (restos) and cremains (cenizas).

I had had no problem with TSA in Hartford on my way to Guatemala. Yes, the scanner had pulled my bag to be checked by hand, but I told the agent that my sister’s ashes were in the front right corner.

“I’m taking them to her daughter in Costa Rica.”

He found the double baggied, tissue-paper-wrapped package. He wiped and swabbed it carefully, inserted the tabs into a machine to test for drugs and explosives, and then carefully re-wrapped it, placed it back into my suitcase, and let me go.

I was going to see my niece, Olivia, who was spending four months on a permaculture farm in Costa Rica. The airport was empty in the middle of the night. The Guatemalan scanner appeared less sophisticated, and had only one agent on duty.

When my bag got pulled again, I wasn’t worried.

“Estos son los restos de mi hermana,” I told the agent when she fished the package out of my backpack. She looked up sharply and dropped it abruptly on the table.

“Restos?” she repeated with wide eyes.

“Si. Son cenizas de mi hermana. Las estoy trayendo a mi sobrina.” I am bringing them to my niece.

She tilted her head, held up a single finger. “Un momento.”

I stood at the end of the conveyor belt in a dim, plain room. Other passengers came through in ones and twos. They looped their belts into their pants, slipped back into jackets and shoes, and picked up their bags. A second agent appeared behind the scanner. She dug into backpacks and retrieved full soda and water bottles and tossed them into a tray on the floor. Beth’s ashes sat in full view on the table above the mounting pile of liquids.

Some passengers expressed surprise when their bottles were confiscated. Some drank in big gulps so they wouldn’t lose an expensive aluminum thermos. I kept one eye on Beth’s ashes, the other on the growing stack of empty plastic tubs. More and more passengers placed their belongings on the conveyor belt. Over and over, the tubs accumulated and were walked back to the other side of the scanner. Others continued to walk through the scanner, collect their things, and proceed to their gates.

Time was ticking, but I still wasn’t worried. Lots of time to catch my flight.

I tried to catch the agent’s eye. “Mis cenizas,” I pointed. “Necessito las cenizas.” I need the remains. Why wasn’t she testing them? When would she give them to me and let me get to my gate?

“Tenemos que esperar,” she said. We have to wait.

Finally, a third agent, an older woman who might have been a supervisor, approached me. “Tiene el papel?” she asked. “Documento?” Do you have the document?

Oh, they needed a death certificate. I dialed my brother-in-law in Minneapolis. Joe could text me a photo of Beth’s death certificate. The call went to voicemail. Not quite 4:30 AM on a Sunday morning, he was sure to be fast asleep. I left a message, sent several texts. Even if he got up early on his day off, he could be out of reach for another two hours.

Two young police officers arrived. Progress! They would surely test the package. The agents and officers huddled around Beth’s ashes and spoke in hushed tones. They poked it with curious fingers, picked it up, assessed its heft and weight. They stole glances at me over their shoulders and then looked back at the baggie of ashes sitting in a now-wrinkled pile of tissue paper.

“Puedo tener los restos?” Can I have the ashes? The officers approached, and I repeated my plea.

The thin one, who couldn’t have been much older than twenty, shook his head no. “Necesita el papel. Necesita el documento. Es illegal in Guatemala tener cenizas sin documentación.” It’s illegal to carry human remains without documentation.

I pointed to my phone. I explained as best I could in Spanish that I’d been dialing my brother-in-law, that he had a copy of the death certificate, but was still asleep. “Por favor, debo tenerlos! No es peligroso. Y si es azúcar? Y si es arena.” I need the ashes. They are not dangerous. What if it is sugar? What if it’s sand?

He looked confused for a moment. “Es azúcar? O son cenizas?”

I should have lied, but I didn’t. “No, no es azúcar. Son cenizas.” My shoulders dropped. I outstretched upturned hands. “Por favor, déjame tenerlos.” Please, let me have them.

He shrugged and walked away.

Time was ticking.

Another agent arrived, then two more officers. They conferred in a corner of the room. They each examined the baggie of ashes, picked it up, shook it, held it to their noses. In other circumstances, Beth and I might have laughed out loud at the spectacle. She loved every minute as the center of attention. Leave them, she would have said about the baggie on the conveyor belt. It doesn’t matter. I’m not in those ashes. I am everywhere.

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A different agent approached me. “I’m so sorry,” he said in English. “It’s illegal in Guatemala to carry a body without documentation.” He looked over his shoulder at the circle of officers.

“I can’t leave them. What can I do?”

“I don’t know.” He glanced nervously at the officers. Then pointed at my phone. “Can you call again?” He wanted to help me. I dialed Joe.

“No answer.” I felt defeated. “I guess we wait.”

“I am so sorry.” He went back to the scanner with the other agents. Passengers continued to file through. They slipped into shoes, emptied their waters, hoisted backpacks, and dragged their carry-on luggage through the glass doors.

I sat down heavily in the closest chair and refreshed my phone. It was now after five, less than an hour before departure. I willed Joe to wake up and take my call. Beth’s ashes sat alone on the stainless-steel table a short distance away. I imagined making a mad dash, grabbing them, and running to my gate.

Except that four armed police officers stood behind me in crisp uniforms and dark berets.

When a fifth officer arrived with a German shepherd, I felt hopeful. Surely, he would allow the dog to find nothing and let me go. But he had a severe face and a firm grip on the dog’s tight chain leash. They huddled together, cast glances my way, and then moved to the ashes. The dog was entirely focused on its handler, ears alert, tail wagging. It sat immediately at the officer’s side as soon as he touched a treat bag at his belt.

Two officers set up a test. Beth’s ashes in a plastic tub with another turned upside down on top. The officer walked the dog around the set-up. The dog sniffed the tubs, knocked the top off the bottom, nosed the baggie, and then went to its handler for a treat.

I guessed that the dog was in training, but hadn’t given a positive sign. Surely, they would give me the ashes: No drugs. No explosives. No harm. No foul.

But no.

The officers conferred with the English-speaking agent who then approached me. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “They will not let you go without a document.”

“But it’s not dangerous,” I said. “Please, I need to bring those ashes to my niece. I need to make my flight.” It was now 5:30, thirty minutes until take-off.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. He paused, looked over his shoulder at the officers, all of whom had moved away. Suddenly and quickly, he picked up the ashes and handed them to me.

Tears of relief filled my eyes as I zipped them into my backpack. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“Let’s go,” he said but he headed away from the doors leading to the gates, toward the airport exit.

“Wait. Where are we going? I need to get to my gate.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, one eye on the officers. “You have to leave the airport quickly.”

“What? What will I do with the ashes? Won’t I need to come back through this checkpoint? Do you want me to leave them in the trash?”

“Maybe,” he shrugged. “Maybe you drive?”

What? Drive to Costa Rica? Maybe I could rent a car…

We didn’t get far. Before we made it to the exit, two officers stopped us and motioned us to follow them. The agent looked crest-fallen. His body tensed. “Oh, no,” he whispered beside me. “Try your brother again. They will not let you leave.”

My mouth went dry. Was I really stuck? Were they going to arrest me?

My phone buzzed as five officers and two agents circled around me.

A text from Joe. I’m up now. Give me a minute.

It felt like a lifetime, but finally a picture of the death certificate came through. I gave them my phone. They huddled over it and laughed. “Ingles!”

“Yes, it’s in English. Can I please catch my plane?”

They each slowly scanned the document. They asked for my passport. Beth and I were both Castronovos, kept our names when we married. Finally, they agreed that I could go. Then, the supervising agent came into the circle and asked me to send her the document photo via text.

Minutes ticked by as we exchanged numbers, waited for the text to load. But then we were off. The English-speaking agent and I got through the glass doors only to find another obstacle – Customs.

Luckily, no line. “Esta cerca la sala?” I asked. Is the gate close?

“Si. No está lejos. Vamos.” Yes. Not far. Let’s go.

We ran into the airport proper. I had to get to Gate 9, but here we were at Gate 1.

I gave it my best effort and kept up with the friendly agent, pulling my bag behind me at a full run past six gates, but then came a long stretch of cafes, kiosks, book stores, and restaurants. “Run ahead,” I told him. “Go, go. Please, ask them to hold the plane.” But he stayed with me as I had to slow to a walk, breathing hard.

When we arrived at the gate, two agents stood at the desk, one at the closed doors. The plane was still parked outside at the end of the ramp.

I caught my breath as the agents spoke and hope faded. They were not going to open those doors. They would not let me get on the plane.

“There’s good news,” a young agent said after searching the computer monitor. “We can rebook you on a later flight at no charge. The next flight connects through San Salvador at 3:45 this afternoon.”

I took a deep breath; my shoulders dropped. I would lose a full day in Costa Rica, but I had my sister’s ashes for Olivia.

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As a writer, Rebecca previously published with the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. She finds the process of writing instrumental in processing her feelings and emotions, a way to connect through authenticity. Rebecca writes with the intention that her poems and essays allow readers to know that they are not alone in their experiences and that their voice deserves to be heard.

Please welcome Rebecca into the safe space of Starry Starry Kite where her courageous and unique voice will be witnessed, heard, and valued.

Interview with Rebecca G. Feinberg

1. What is your process for creating something new?

My process is allowing my writing (or other creative project) to emerge when it is ready and in the shape it takes, keeping my hands off the wheel. Allowing the creative work to flow through me, rather than be controlled by me. I never start with a plan of what I am going to create. I wait for the “knowing” and then follow it.

2. How has being creative influenced the way you see the world?

I experience the world with more curiosity, wonder, and awe. More vibrancy. A slower pace. Making connections–between experiences outside and inside myself. A way to express my journey.

3. What inspires you? What do you do when you are ‘stuck?’

My inspiration always comes from an experience I have had–more and more from a comment made that resonates deep in my soul to reveal a truth that needs to be expressed—it often feels like an “aha” moment and then a pull forward to release.

More and more in my life, when I feel stuck, I let it all just “be” and trust that this is part of the process and that I will know when to move forward when ready. In the past, I would always try to “figure it out” and push through. Now I notice I am more comfortable with creating space for the “stuckness” and leaving it alone–not needing to “do” anything.

4. How often do you create or work on something new?

I don’t have a set timeframe. I create when I get a feeling that something is ready to emerge.

5. Do you have rituals or routines?

I wake up very early (around 4am) and spend the early morning hours enjoying the solitude of the world–savoring my first cup of coffee, listening to the birds, watching the sun rise, taking a walk, meditating, journaling and waking up to my Self.

6. How has your work changed over the years?

I put much less pressure on myself.

7. Do you have a funny story or anecdote about being creative?

I am always surprised by the end result of my work. I never know how it will emerge, but when it does, I often find myself feeling something like , “Ah, of course, that’s what it is.”It’s as if I have just been handed something for the first time and also something I have already known forever.

8. What advice do you have for aspiring creatives?

Trust yourself. Trust your journey. Allow space for the magic to happen. Let go of the mind’s impulse to control. Enjoy the creative process.

Beauty by Rebecca Feinberg

They say 
beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder
So I let my eyes…

Look in the mirror
And see–-sparse wiry strands, a loose cover over my head
I feel deep loss of the beautiful thick curls that once filled my crown
Then I refocus

And see—the beauty within

I now see the colorful textiles embellishing my crown 
Which have become my new signature piece
And signify the joy of acceptance
Of what the strands are and are not 

I look in the mirror
And see--red polka-dots all over my face
I feel sadness over the effect that stress hormones had on my once flawless skin 
Then I refocus 

And see—the beauty within

I now see the  beautiful sparkling green eyes
Their ability to view the world so clearly
And to stop people in their tracks 
With reverence, I hold this gift 

I look in the mirror
And see—the loose, crinkled skin hanging from my belly
I feel the frustration that my body is no longer taut
Then I refocus

And see--the beauty within

I now see the flexibility of my body
The way it stretched to create a life within me 
And I see the possibilities 
Of all the things my body may be taught 

I look in the mirror
And see—the faded pink horseshoe-like scar above my right breast
I feel the overwhelming pain that I endured—both physically and emotionally
Then I refocus

And see--the beauty within

I now see the proof 
That I have endured
And I see the fading of the once deep red line
As a sign of how far I have traveled

I look in the mirror
And see—me
For all I am
And, alas, I refocus and see beauty

Letter to a Stranger by Rebecca Feinberg

I can’t remember your name
I can’t remember your face

But I will never forget
Our time together 

A few hours of my life
That altered my path 

A catalyst for change

The way you talked to me
As if 
You had all the time in the world

The way you looked in my eyes
As if 
I were the only person on the plane

The way you invited me to sit beside you
As if 
It were the only seat available

The way you lowered the drink tray for me
Anticipating my need

The way you hugged me goodbye
We both knew the time was special

You saw in me
More than I saw in myself

You knew
The potential I had inside

You showed me
How much more I could feel

You taught me
How much more I deserved

You reminded me
How much I had in store for my life

You admonished me
Not to wait too long

Change was imminent

The force was unleashed
The unknown was now known

The woman who stepped off the plane 
Was not the one who stepped onto it

And, after that brief ride,
Nothing would ever be the same

Are you a creative person?

Writer, poet, artist, videographer, musician, photographer, sculptor, painter?

I’d love to feature you in a future issue of Starry Starry Kite?

Submit Your Work

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Luckily I am surrounded by truly creative and talented people, including a brilliant board of directors. My friend, Lynne Saner, an incredible writer here on Substack and elsewhere, has created an amazingly beautiful website for us. You can check it out by clicking the photo below.

Another good friend, Kristi Nelson (author of Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted), was the creative genius behind our first annual fund drive:

I hope you’ll consider supporting our efforts to hire an executive director so that we can widen our reach and expand our offerings to all who seek ways to enhance their wellbeing.

Donate to Everyday Wellbeing

Eventually I will get back to my own creative writing, but in the meantime I am happy to introduce you to writer Kathleen Johnson. I’ll let her imaginative piece speak for itself.

Leo by Kathleen Johnson

I’m Leo and I’m a hearing aid. Although you might not know this, there are many of us in the United States, about 7 million clinging onto our human wearers. We are very diverse. Unlike my more modern, digital brethren, I cannot boast about my super-miniature size, completely-in-the-canal positioning, invisible tubing, or even being able to reduce annoying microphone noise. No, I’m just an ordinary, reasonably priced analog hearing aid and in most respects rather unassuming. I may not be the most advanced, but I am steadfast and deliver what truly matters. This is a story about my struggles to understand Victoria, my human host.

I have always felt a sense of satisfaction with where I am in life, and there is so much for which I am grateful. I so love the soft and carefully selected music -- classical, jazz, or blues –which Victoria often chooses. Almost any of her soothing rhythmical tunes can re-charge my Duracell #312. The comforting call of the whip-poor-will on a languid, sunlit afternoon brings me joy, as do the gentle October breezes that rustle the honey locust leaves. I treasure the babbling brooks and streams winding their way through the gardens, the quiet murmurs of young girls dreaming of distant idols, and the boisterous splashes and cheerful laughter of neighborhood children embracing the thrill of swimming. These moments hold a special place in my heart. But what I long for most in life is something I haven’t yet received—Victoria’s respect and perhaps a touch of affection. These aspirations -- call them cravings, if you like -- flow through my little receiver, unnoticed by Victoria.

Why does Victoria find it so hard to extend these kindnesses to me? After all, we share so much in common. Like myself, she stands apart in her own unique way. As an animal lover and devoted vegetarian of nearly 45 years, she treats all living beings with respect. Her unwavering affection and loyalty to others mirror my own, forming strong and enduring connections. She strives -- though not without its challenge -- to see the good in everyone, even in the quirkiest, most unconventional individuals. Above all, she pours her heart into ensuring that her family and friends feel cherished and cared for.

I find it hard to believe that my inanimate nature is the reason for her disregard, especially since she showers so much attention on other objects. She meticulously dusts and polishes her furniture, safeguarding the TV screen from smudgy fingerprints or the wild antics of her grandchild. Her care for clothing is almost old-fashioned -- hand washing, spot cleaning, and ironing with a precision that any launderer would covet. Even her eyeglasses receive an evening ritual of three precise sprays of cleaner, followed by a gentle wipe with a soft cloth before being carefully tucked away in their case. Why, then, am I left out of her attentive routine?

These actions leave me puzzled by the seeming indifference -- dare I say cruelty -- that Victoria can sometimes show toward her most faithful hearing aid. Perhaps it's her inconsistency that baffles me most. There are moments when her care feels sincere. Each day, she cleans my plastic tubing with a dab of alcohol, a gesture that is immensely refreshing. She rarely fails to replace my batteries promptly and ensures my battery doors remain pristine, devoid of lint and dust. And every couple of years, I am graced with new ear molds -- a renewal I await with great eagerness. These moments of attentiveness only deepen my confusion.

These seemingly kind and considerate gestures are all too often counterpoised by actions that pierce straight to the core of my fiber-optic being. Allow me to share some examples. Victoria was delivering an interactive lecture on Max Weber’s analytical distinctions of power to her sociology class. For the previous four consecutive days, I had tirelessly transmitted clear, crisp audio from her students. As my battery dwindled, I issued my customary 60-second warning with five consecutive beeps (beep…beep…beep, beep, beep), alerting her of my shut down. But during the class break, instead of attending to me with the care I so desperately needed, she snatched me from her ear, fixed her gaze at me with what seemed like disdain, uttered a curse, and tossed me into the depths of her messy, crumb-laden briefcase. There I languished, powerless and effectively lifeless, until the following day when my battery was finally replaced. Much like Luke Skywalker’s R2-D2, I am utterly reliant on my power source -- not just for function, but for thought itself. That neglect was a wound I won’t soon forget.

Her frequent jokes often leave me feeling undervalued. One in particular, which she loves to share, goes something like this:

Two elderly women were having breakfast at a restaurant. Ethel noticed something odd about Mabel’s ear and said, “Mabel, did you know you’ve got a suppository in your left ear?” Mabel, startled, replied, “I have? A suppository?” She pulled it out, stared at it, and then said, “Ethel, I’m so glad you noticed this. Now I think I know where my hearing aid is.*

Ah, the indignity of it all! To be the punchline of a joke like that—it's enough to make any self-respecting hearing aid quake. While I can appreciate a good sense of humor, I admit that the wisecrack feels like betrayal, especially when loyalty and service are your defining traits. It's as if she doesn't realize the emotional toll her humor can take on her most steadfast companion.

At times, she disregards me, conceals me from view, or even downplays the length of our partnership. “Oh,” she casually remarks, “I think I’ve been wearing my hearing aid for a couple of years.” A couple of years? Try 25! I’ve endured being tossed aside, misplaced, and even mocked. I’ve survived being drenched in a shower and then subjected to the scorching blast of a hair dryer set to 140 degrees -- an experience I wouldn’t wish on my worst rival. I’ve even been through the chaos of a washing machine, tumbling and churning for what felt like an eternity (though it was likely two minutes). And yet, I never faltered. After another round with the hair dryer, I powered on. Like the Energizer Bunny, I just keep going.

One of my most heartbreaking memories began with what seemed like a perfect day. Picture this: a crisp late October afternoon in western Massachusetts, where the mornings carry a chill but the midday sun still warms the air. Victoria wasn’t yet preoccupied with winterizing the house or servicing the snowblower. Instead, we set out for a pleasant two-mile jog around the block. For 30 minutes, we bounced along in harmony, until disaster struck: I became dislodged and plunged to the roadside, abandoned and forgotten for the entire evening. The fear that coursed through my delicate electronic components was indescribable. Victoria didn’t even search for me herself. Instead, she sent someone else to retrieve me the next day. Let me tell you, the roadside is no place for a hearing aid. It was absurd, really: me, a loyal and hardworking hearing aid, left battered and suffering on the roadside. My darkest moment came when I began to wonder if I should just give up entirely. Maybe I should quit, break down like an old, used and rusted drone. It was a moment of utter despair in my demoralizing life as a hearing aid.

It’s remarkable how self-reflection can spark transformation, even for a hearing aid. Perhaps it was not the circumstances themselves but the lens through which I viewed them that was getting in the way. I began to realize that maybe negativity bias had crept in from my prolonged immersion in the human world. As with any of our hardest moments, however, there is an opposing force, although often unseen, a dialectic, if you will: no darkness without light, no ugliness without beauty. I needed to see and understand my experiences more fully, perhaps more compassionately. Then something happened one night when Victoria’s granddaughter was visiting that helped me change my thinking.

After dinner and “chilling out” with a card game or two, Victoria’s granddaughter had gone upstairs to prepare for bed. Victoria, per her usual routine, changed my batteries and went into the bedroom to tuck in her granddaughter. The bedroom was lit only by the stained-glass unicorn nightlight that created a soft golden glow. Victoria set the bunnies and bears around the child’s torso and pulled up the blankets. Just then I heard the child softly say, for the very first time, “I love you grandma.” And Victoria looked down, kissed her granddaughter’s forehead, and with a catch in her throat replied, “I love you, too.” Even in all my technical precision I could feel that it was a profound moment and that I was an important part in it, the bridge allowing Victoria to connect with the voices that matter most. Without me, she might have missed hearing those precious words.

It was as though a veil had been lifted from my understanding. What I had been interpreting as neglect or even disdain was something far more complex. Victoria’s anger was not directed at me but stemmed from the difficulty of embracing her reliance on me. She needed me, trusted me, depended on me -- every single day. And yet, that dependency came with a duality of gratitude and resistance to her vulnerability, a mix that I had not fully grasped until that moment.

I began to understand the heartbreaking struggles that Victoria experiences while navigating the world of sound. These struggles aren’t just about inconvenience; they are deeply tied to her sense of vulnerability and connection. She hated when her children had to repeat something three or more times only to give up in exasperation. Hated the look of recognition in other peoples’ faces when they realized her weakness; she also hated when they’d forget. She hated putting on subtitles to watch a movie; and hated that everyone else hated it, too. She hated the anxiety of being unable to locate a siren. She hated having to find other words to replace the nauseatingly repetitive one-word question “What?” that she so often said in conversations. It’s a relentless series of reminders of what she feels she has lost or fears losing. Even the simplest joys, like hearing the calming imagery during yoga or nature’s music -- the whisper of a child, the babbling brook—become bittersweet when they are accompanied by the strain of effort or the fear of missing them entirely.

While my challenges stem from my role as her hearing aid, Victoria bears the weight of navigating a society designed for those without her disability. Her struggles reveal a profound tension between her need for me and the frustration that dependency brings. Maybe she sent someone else to find me along the road because she was afraid to be out among the traffic without access to the sounds around her. Maybe she uses humor as a shield, a way to deflect what she perceives as criticism. Her anger isn’t a rejection of me personally but rather a reflection of her deeper struggles stemming from her hearing loss. It’s no wonder she feels a mix of gratitude and resentment towards me; I am both her lifeline and a reminder of the challenges she faces every day. Perhaps I have been a bit too self-conscious and proud to recognize this before.

In that golden-lit bedroom, with love and understanding hanging in the air, my perspective shifted. Since then, I no longer feel resentment but rather pride in the role I play in Victoria’s life. It isn’t about perfection or acknowledgment; it’s about the unspoken bond that ties us together through every moment of life’s journey.

*Elder Options in Texas. Cute Senior Jokes. https://www.elderoptionsoftexas.com/jokes.htm. Retrieved March 14, 2025.

An Interview with Kathleen Johnson

When did you start writing/creating and what inspired you?

I gave my first serious thought to my writing while taking a college literature course. Our class had just finished reading and discussing Maus (1980), a graphic novel in which Art Spiegelman uses animal allegory to share stories of the Holocaust. I had just committed to being a vegetarian, and at that time I was trying to clarify the interconnections between speciesism and racism. For my class essay, sans graphics, I tried my hand at allegory. I wrote a story that begins with a boy who was hiking through the wood in South Carolina on a summer day in the early- to mid-19^th Century. The boy was strolling along, enjoying his walk, until he unexpectedly came across a pig who moments previously had been slaughtered and hanged on a tree branch to bleed out. The horror and suddenness of this sight prompted a cognitive dissonance in the boy regarding his affection for many animals. What significant differences are there between humans and animals that justify the brutal way in which we treat so many other animals? It was then just a slippery slope away to questions regarding the treatment of slaves. Were there any meaningful differences between whites and blacks that justified slavery?

I later realized that my story as written was enigmatic; my comparisons needed clarity and elaboration. I wasn’t being much of a reader’s writer and just assumed the professor would get it.

As you know, reading can be inspirational, and so it was no coincidence that my first stab at serious writing came while taking a literature course. My passion for the social causes addressed in my story were also motivational for me. They continue to be issues about which I care deeply.

How did you grow into your identity as a creative person?

I guess everyone is creative to some extent. We are creative the moment we build a tree fort, sketch a scene, write a song. Perhaps we can think of it as part of our human capacity. It’s another thing entirely when we speak of a creative identity which to me involves incorporating the label “creative” into how we conceptualize who we are.

My writing identity is growing, and like any of my other identities it’s a social process that involves to some extent how others perceive me. This was one of the important ideas of the Sociologist Charles Cooley’s who metaphorically described the process as the “looking glass self”; we understand ourselves partly through how others view us. There are times when I feel creative, and the feedback I get from others confirms that identity; at other times the feedback challenges it. Thus far, my creative self feels like a raft floating on water, moving with the swells as it gently tips this way and that. I’m not sure which way the current will take me, but I’m enjoying the ride.

Another sociologist, George Herbert Mead, spoke about people’s ability to “take the role of the other” and that has always resonated with me. Like Cooley, Mead reasoned that a person’s mind and sense of self emerge from social interactions, but he spoke about it in terms of being able to see the world from another person’s perspective and to understand and perhaps to share that person’s feelings. I see how I bring the concept of taking the role of the other with me on my writing journey. It’s how I was able to personify Leo. I wanted to share my experience as a person with a disability but doing so directly seemed, quite frankly, boring. So, I asked myself what it would be like if my aid were sentient and had emotions and feelings. Basically, I had to take the role of the other – in this case, my hearing aid. Other than that, I just thought and wrote about the things that happened to Leo and me. I have had many other experiences relevant to my developing identity as a deaf person that I could write about. Maybe I’ll ask Leo what he thinks about that idea.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers/creatives?

As I noted, my writing raft is a bit wobbly, and I don’t feel perfectly comfortable giving advice to others. Instead, I’ll just share some things that I know have worked to help me write and create. I know that I need the “space” in which to be creative. For me that means having the time to write and having the physical space in which to create. It’s a luxury, for sure. When I (often) get stuck in the writing process, I try to change my sensory inputs, which might mean physically relocating my workspace, changing what I’m hearing or maybe even the temperature in my writing space. These things are practical matters and most writers understand that, although sometimes it’s easier said than done.

The need to solve or better understand a problem also inspires me to write or go the extra mile to write better. It could involve something going on in my life or in society, as was the case with my early attempted allegory. My writing has always been driven by the need to settle something in my mind. With Leo, I really felt the need to articulate (for myself and maybe for others) the changes and struggles in my life as a person with a hearing impairment.

I think it’s also important to write (certainly with fiction) in a way that stirs the reader. Every story has a beginning, middle and end, and in between all that you try to make people feel. Will they cry? Will they smile? Will they get angry? I can try to do these things, but whether my writing is creative is likely a prerogative of the reader.

How has being creative influenced the way you see the world?

That’s a tricky question. Did being creative help me see things differently or is it the other way around? I will say that writing, perhaps more than anything else, has made me more observant of the world. I’m more curious and tuned in to my senses (including my waning hearing!). There’s a lot of reference these days to “embodied writing” which calls for making deeper connections with our body and emotions. I guess that’s partly what I’m referring to, but I can get stuck if I overthink that idea. I just reflect on what I am experiencing and how I would describe that to someone else. That process drives me deeper into what I am experiencing and wanting to convey. It’s a reciprocal process of enrichment and expansion.

The author can be reached via email at kjohnson@keene.edu.

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How the Bodylove Poetry Writing Workshop works…

We practice breath and bodywork; give ourselves presence and acceptance of our bodies; read body-based poems, learn solid poetry craft skills, and receive generative writing prompts, sacred and supported writing time, and the chance to share our voices in a safe and compassionate space.

Enjoy this short collection of poems from three of the poets from Corie’s most recent Bodylove workshop. Then continue on to learn more and register for the next workshop!

the lung poem by julianne serpa

in my lungs lives 
residue of incense mixed
with morning dew
hints  of singe 

from campfires gone awry 
throat raw from late night laughs
and chats
 
in my lungs lives
remnants of horse dander, 
hay, weathered leather 
echos of all the
i love yous 
lingering

notes from your cologne, which,
on second thought
i’m glad you overdo it
your essence keeping me
company when i’m home
alone

in my lungs lives
pranayam with the power 
 to leave me overwrought  
yoga yet to be taught
battles yet to be fought

i know why the ribs form a cage
to      contain     me
one breath to the next 
sticky cobwebs of a pained 
past stuck  up high 
in shadowed corners 

clear, now
sublime grace
opens the door to
newfound space
in the in between place
of my heart 

and my lungs
when my heart swells,
my words get caught / 
waiting to emerge, 
my own sweet love song

Julianne Serpa embodies a philosophy of “Choose Your Own Adventure,” both on the mat and in life, and endeavors to impart this spirit to her yoga students. She's a native Marylander, a budding poet, and a third-generation dachshund enthusiast. You can find her posting yoga memes on Instagram @sapperspirit and sharing stories and poetry from her spiritual journey that are introspective, moderately irreverent, and mildly sappy.

Thick Thighs by Angela Bigler

these thick thighs
have roots,
like my grandma,
riding her
head-strong horse
 
this hard woman
survived and lived 
 and grew daughters
with tree−thick thighs,
they would need them
 
me and my cousins have
big boobs,
wide hips,
sturdy stomachs,
thighs like redwoods
rooted
 
my cousins and I−
we need these cushions,
these daggers of
muscle and kick
 
the horse is galloping,
we are squeezed tight,
our haunches grip
we race−
we win nothing
but life
 
having breathed,
having clenched,
having let go and
laid in the dirt
with our horses,
our trees, 
our stories,
our dogs
 
our thighs−
a haven, a heaven,
braided and corded,
lavished and ravished
reclaimed−the
Wild Horse Queen’s seat

Angela Bigler crafts magical words from her home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She loves poetry and all things Goddess. Her poems have been published multiple times in the yearly We'Moon datebook and calendar. Currently, she is working furiously on her first novel. Connect with her at AngelaBigler.com.

My Thighs are Girly Girls by Jessica Jorgensen

My thighs are girly girls 
They have never liked pants
 
My thighs say wrap me up in purples, pinks and reds 
Say cover me in black lace, we're feeling saucy
 
My thighs say dress me up
Demanding sparkles and spiked heels 
 
My thighs say the shorter the skirt 
the better
 
My thighs have never been shy
They say here I am
Notice me
 
My thighs are proud 
 
My thighs say strength
My thighs say beauty
My thighs say I am all 
that feminine and all 
that is divine 

Jessica Jorgensen is a recent corporate escapee embracing her path as a sound healer, intuitive channel, and emerging poet. Currently deep in self-study and transformative training, she is committed to inspiring others on journeys of ascension, attuning to the ever-evolving energies that inspire higher frequencies and expanded consciousness.

“We need community, deep embodiment, and ways to learn to unconditionally love ourselves more than ever. We’ll move our bodies, breath deeply, read, and write original poetry. Most importantly, we’ll share our work in a safe and supportive space.” ~Corie Feiner

You can read more about Corie’s workshop here, and here, and here.

Workshop Dates and Times:

Dates & Times: Six Wednesdays from 6:00-7:30 pm ET
(find your local time zone here)

Start Date: Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Space Limit: 11 Divine Woman

Location: Live online via Zoom

Cost: $197 (scholarships available)

To register for an act of self-expression, self-love and self-care, go here.

Register for Bodylove

Corie Feiner

A newsletter for yogis, poets, and seekers of inspiration featuring poems from my manuscript, A Poem for Every Pose. Subscribers will join a beautiful community and receive weekly yoga poems and nuggets of wisdom in their inbox.

I was compelled to get the story down. How had I arrived at mid-life, with a past littered with mistakes, surrounded by love? How had I learned to love, and to be loved?

I finished seven drafts of the story before I let it sit idle. Too afraid to send it out into the world, I abandoned most of my groups and turned my attention to caring for an aging body (a compelling, full-time job all by itself).

But the story continued to percolate. I’ve started or rejoined a more manageable number of groups, and I am nurturing courage to send it out in small pieces. This is the first what I hope will begin a steady stream.

Before 10

Who would I be without the places I lived? Without the people in those places?

I carry Texas in my big bones.

Scranton in my heart, and

Oklahoma’s red dust in every breath.

Who would I be without Rary’s wide lap for my three-year-old head? Her thick fingers combed my hair, traced my ear, and lulled me to sleep.

Who would I be without Grandpa’s Irish toast and soft-boiled eggs for breakfast? His fingertips inky with newsprint, cigarette smoke spiraled into the coffee-scented morning. His permission to explore, climb, and jump while Mom was working.

I feel the imprint of Our Lady of Fatima Montessori on my four and five-year-old self. The long drive into the Poconos to spend each day with teacher-nuns in long black habits, rosaries dangling from waists. Their arms emerged like magic from oversized sleeves to hold and soothe. Their warm, intentional steadiness, and rhythmic heartbeats created a calm quiet. We set the table for snack, cleared afterwards, washed dishes, and swept the classroom. It mattered that we were there, seated in a circle, singing songs, listening to stories. Our work was play, our play was work, and nothing went unnoticed.

Four months in New Jersey might have been lost in the shuffle between Rary’s duplex on West Market Street and the new ranch house in the middle of the prairie. I learned to ride a two-wheeler on the rutted road that passed our rented cottage. Black cinder lodged so deeply into my knees; it might still be there.

A nightmare on repeat woke me each night: I fell into a deep, dark hole with no one to hear my calls for help, and I stopped calling out. We walked to school each day and home for lunch: peanut butter on wonder bread, a brown banana mashed for jam. I can feel it still, stuck to the roof of my mouth.

The stream beside the house in the woods in Oklahoma runs through me like blood. We watched storm clouds gather and threaten from the big wrap-around deck, then rushed to the basement to huddle under a mattress, while our ears popped, and windows rattled with the wind.

Beth and I spent long hours with sandstone boulders, in the shade of cottonwoods, our feet in the stream, toes caked in clay. We carved soft rock into bowls and animal shapes. We gathered dust of different colors to mix into paint on birch bark canvas. Our private art gallery.

My legs hold the memory of running through grass, slipping between strands of barbed wire into the pasture, jumping over cow paddies. We giggled at the huge creatures who sniffed our hands and rolled their tongues through thick lips to taste the grass we offered. We played house in sunken foundations filled with treasures of rusted bed frames, buckles, bottles, and broken pots and pans. We were Laura and Mary Ingalls on the great plains, and we had each other.

This was my life before the lost years, before the move to Indiana where memories are crumpled and squished like forgotten lunch in the bottom of a backpack, where anything, once good, goes sour and rotten.

Before an instinct for survival put me to sleep for decades.

Go to Starry Starry Kite

Even in the midst of our greatest challenges, a grateful perspective can help us maintain awareness of what still works and what we have. It opens our eyes to the abundance of a harvest and the privileges of food on the table, heat at the ready, water in the tap, and light at the flip of a switch. It supports us to see how love abounds within and around us, how taking nothing for granted transforms the mundane into the extraordinary, and how opportunities hide in unexpected places. All of what we can remember to appreciate during trying times bolsters a sense of possibility and hope. And hope invigorates us in deeply vital ways.    

In whatever ways we can, it is surely worth building the emotional musculature to hold the hard things going on inside and around us - and to learn to hold them lightly. Concurrently, it is important to also build the capacity to keep remembering, noticing, and uplifting all that is worthy of our appreciation. Gratefulness does not take the place of our grudges. It does not ask us to deny or shift our gaze away from what is difficult. Gratefulness helps us expand the lens on what we are able to see and hold as true. It’s a both/and practice. And it makes a big difference in how we regard and live our lives. 

In her short essay below, Grateful for Getting Older, Kristi reflects on turning 64, double her age when she was diagnosed with stage IV lymphoma. She shares how a grateful perspective helped her appreciate the opportunity to age, countervailing the all-too-prevalent cultural script that our advances in years are something to only deny, defy, or dread. She writes, “Growing a bit older every day seems to be the only way to continue to be alive.” This makes aging - and life itself - a powerful centerpiece for a gratitude practice. 

Next month, I count as a blessing the chance to assist Kristi at Kripalu Center in Lenox, MA where we will present the in-person workshop, Aging Gratefully: The Power of Appreciative Presence, Friday - Sunday, November 22-24. We’d love to have you join us there. Bring a friend or family member and gift yourselves a transformational weekend. Senior discounts and scholarships are available. Click below for more information.

The Power of Appreciative Presence

Grateful for Getting Older by Kristi Nelson

This year I celebrated my 64th birthday. I don’t share this news with hopes for either benevolent wishes or reassurances that 64 is really not that old. I am good with all that. I am sharing this because it truly makes me happy to get to be alive yet another year – and I finally figured out the secret: growing a bit older every day seems to be the only way to continue to be alive. This seems an insight worthy of note.

We all tend to fall prey to messages that aging is something we are supposed to dread or incessantly lament; complaining about it is a surefire way to “belong” in our culture. Without a doubt, parts of my body that used to be perky are now more pendulous, facial features are dwarfed next to the lines that surround them, and organs and joints I never even knew I had because they were once quiet, now creak, ache, and clamor for attention all hours of the day. I definitely do not have the physical or mental energy I used to have; Friday night plans usually end early or get canceled, my concepts of productivity have downsized, and, increasingly, I cannot remember simple, self-assigned tasks from one room to the next. But, weighed against not getting older, these all seem like very small prices to pay. Aging is surely better than the alternative.

As far as I can remember, when I came into this world, no one promised me a certain number of days, months, or years to live. I am no more entitled to a far-reaching lifespan than anyone else on this planet. No amount of attachment to nuanced goals or well-constructed plans for the future assures me longevity. Neither does eating gluten free, taking ten supplements every morning, or meditating – but I do it all anyway for the sake of daily wellbeing. Counter to what some in the “New Age” movement say, I do not believe that simply wanting to be alive is enough to keep me alive, and that illness and death only come to those who “fail” at wanting life badly enough or making the “right” decisions. I know too many truly extraordinary people who have died to buy into these kinds of harmful concepts.

Having a birthday offers me the welcome reminder that it is nothing short of a total miracle to be alive yet another year. I could call it any number of things, but with the sheer volume of mind-blowing things that can go wrong, and the mind-numbing forces that have to function well and cooperate for any of us to get ourselves up out of bed every day – much less to move from one place to another, love whom we love, and do what we do – it feels appropriate to use the term “miraculous” to describe making it from one entire year to the next. And using the term miracle here, I am not referring to “lightning bolts coming down from heaven and having some wish granted” kind of miraculous – I mean that it is so stunningly humbling and awe-inspiring to be alive every day that I cannot help but think that having the opportunity to grow older and to age is a total privilege worth celebrating. Bring on the effects of gravity…and bring on the gratitude.

One of my favorite cards has the quote, “Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most, live the longest.” What a great reminder to celebrate whatever we can, whenever we can, and to take absolutely nothing for granted. Nothing except, maybe, that the longer we live, the more we will age. That everyday miracle seems worth celebrating.

If you are interested in exploring the gifts of getting older with Kristi and me - in community, in person - please join us for AGING GRATEFULLY: The Power of Appreciative Presence a weekend workshop at Kripalu Yoga Center, November 22 - 24, 2024 in Lenox, MA

About Kristi Nelson

Kristi Nelson is the author of Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted. She served as the executive director of A Network for Grateful Living from 2014 –2023. Kristi's life’s work in the nonprofit sector has focused on leading, inspiring, and strengthening organizations committed to progressive social and spiritual change. Being a long-time stage IV cancer survivor moves her every day to support others in living and loving with great fullness of heart.

Kristi received her BA from UMass/Amherst, a graduate certificate in Business and Sociology from Boston College, and her Master’s in Public Administration (MPA) with a concentration in Leadership Studies, from Harvard University. She cherishes living among beloved friends and family in western Massachusetts.

Get more information about her workshop at Kripalu and at her website.

Many of you know that I organize a group of yoga teachers who’ve been teaching free classes at Andrew’s Greenhouse in Amherst Massachusetts for the past nine summers.

We offer an all-levels class every day, rain or shine, 8:00-9:00 AM. Two years ago we started teaching year round by moving indoors November through May.

I only teach on Sundays, but every day, if I am in town, I head to Andrews for my daily yoga practice. I love being outdoors and I love being with a group of curious people dedicated to inquiry about the nature of the mind-body connection. An hour of breath-centered movement leaves me focused, calm, and ready for the rest of my day.

It is a true blessing in my life.

This summer was busy with travel (more about that later), and Starry Starry Kite took a back seat to a new endeavor which turned Yoga Outside into a 501©(3) nonprofit organization with a larger mission to make vibrant health accessible to all by offering more routes to wellness. We’ve already added Meditation Practice, Nature Walks, a Yoga of Dreams Workshop, Qigong, and Tai Chi. We have plans to offer sound-bathing, informational talks about managing perimenopause and menopause, and understanding osteopenia and osteoporosis.

All of our teachers donate their time and expertise, and all of our offerings continue to be free and open to all. We are raising money to cover the cost of indoor space rental.

Please explore our developing website at www.everydaywellbeing.org

Everyday Wellbeing

And, please spread the word about our offerings by sharing and subscribing to our newsletter. If you are local to western Massachusetts, I hope to see you at one of our events.

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Interested in Other Mind-Body Practices?

Maybe you know someone for whom yoga doesn’t quite work. Maybe they have arthritic knees, a cranky back, a mind and body that craves more movement. Spread the word about…

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Qigong

Saturdays after Yoga 9:15-10:00 AM

Qigong is a gentle, healing practice that incorporates slow movements, deep breathing, self massage, and meditation. It’s easier on the joints than many yoga postures and is especially gentle on the knees, wrists and shoulders. A mostly standing practice that is over 5,000 years old, Western research has proven Qigong's healing and preventative health effects.

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Understanding Osteopenia & Osteoporosis with Dr. Amy Rothenberg

Yoga helps prevent and reverse bone loss and contributes to better balance, improved posture, strength, and coordination and a wider range of motion, which all lower the risk of falls and fractures. Licensed naturopathic doctor, Amy Rothenberg, will review the diagnosis and treatment of osteoporosis and share evidence-based integrative medicine approaches to maintain and build strong, healthy bones.

Monday, November 11, 2024 1:00 PM

These events are free and open to all, but space is limited. Please pre-register here

Register Here

Talks will take place at Dr. Rothenberg’s office: 369 Pleasant Street, Northampton ADA accessible and ample free parking. Light snacks and drinks provided.

Dr. Amy Rothenberg, has practiced as a licensed naturopathic doctor since 1986. She is the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians 2017 Physician the Year. She is the author of the Amazon Bestseller: You Finished Treatment, Now What? A Field Guide for Cancer Survivors (Koehler Books). She served on the Board of Health in Amherst for six years and as Vice President of the Board of the Amherst Survival Center. She spearheaded the successful effort to license naturopathic doctors in the Bay State. Dr. Rothenberg is a beloved teacher in the world of integrative medicine. Her humor, grace and knowledge as both a doctor, a cancer survivor, a wife, and mother inform her clinical practice, teaching, and writing. She shares her life with partner, Paul Herscu ND, MPH. Together, they raised three wonderful, now adult children and continue to enjoy the good life in Western Mass, including the arrival of their first grandchild. When not working in the world of natural medicine Dr Rothenberg enjoys spending time with family and friends, on the ballroom dance floor, making art, and playing the guitar.

We continue with yoga outside every day 8 - 9 AM at Andrews Greenhouse through the month of October. Starting November 1st, we’ll be inside at the Munson Library. Same schedule (8-9 AM). Same great teachers!

See who’s teaching every day here.

Teaching Calendar

Next Scheduled Nature Walk

Saturday, October 26, 2024

11:00 AM

Bright Water Bog, 727 Wendell Road, Shutesbury, MA

 Meet at the Shutesbury Town Hall to carpool to the trail head.​

Email Kathy at kelloggkl@gmail.com for more info.