Photo Caption: Me, my sister Debby, pregnant with Jacob, and my wife Lori. Circa 1986

This week held two emotions. One felt a lot like loss.

I visited Lori three days in a row, bringing supplies and meeting with staff and the nurse about her knee pain. But the knees weren’t what brought on the loss.

It was the distance between my wife and me.

She smiled when she saw me, but then forgot I was there. I became part of the environment—a movement on the television set, a staff person handing her breakfast, someone walking by. I would call it inattentiveness if she didn’t have Alzheimer’s.

On Tuesday, she was in a wheelchair because her knees hurt. A staff person was wheeling her into the social room when I arrived, so he parked her beside a couch. I sat next to her and reached for her hand.

“How are you?” I asked.

Her answer was several dozen words that sounded like conversation, except there were so many replacement words that I couldn’t understand what she was saying.

“How is the pain in your knees?”

This time, the answer was short and clear.

“It hurts still.”

Her eyes drifted to the television behind me. I turned to look. Lion cubs and their mother were feasting on another animal. Then Lori looked straight ahead and began whispering.

One, two, three...

I realized she was counting. She made it to twenty or beyond. She’s been counting like this since the L2 compression fracture in December. It must provide some kind of comfort. A rhythm. Something predictable.

By then, she was no longer aware of my presence. I got up to check the supplies in her room.

Two weeks earlier, I’d ordered 72 Depends briefs and twelve packages of adult-sized wipes. The wipes were there, but I couldn’t find the briefs.

I asked one staff person. They didn’t know.

I asked another, “How many briefs does she need each day?”

“Depends on the day.”

I knew the staff had “borrowed” briefs from other residents when Lori needed a change and hers weren’t available, so it was certainly possible someone had borrowed hers for somebody else.

It’s like that in memory care.

Sometimes Lori is wearing clothes that aren’t hers. Sometimes somebody else is wearing hers. One day, she proudly told me she’d “bought” the new tennis shoes she was wearing. They weren’t hers and were too small.

The robotic stuffed puppy I bought her disappeared by the next day.

Residents wander into one another’s rooms and pick up things they think belong to them—or simply things they like. Lori does it, too.

So, I decided a monthly subscription for Depends would solve at least one problem. Seventy-two briefs, $53, five percent off if I subscribed.

Perfect.

Except I accidentally sent them to my house.

The box arrived that evening.

The next morning, I drove it over to Bonaventure. I put one bag of 36 in her bathroom cabinet and the other in her closet, inside the box where staff could easily see it when they dressed her.

Then I asked the director of memory care how many I should plan on.

“At least three a day,” she told me. “But if she has a blowout, it could be three more and two showers. Sometimes we need eight in one day. I’d estimate an average of five.”

Five a day.

I’ve been grateful for the staff at Bonaventure many times, but that conversation made me even more so.

I’ve dealt with only two of Lori’s “accidents” myself. It is no easy thing, even when you have adult wipes, a shower, clean clothes, and backup briefs available.

These people do it every day.

They clean her. Dress her. Help her when she hurts. Find her things. Lose her things. Find them again. Redirect her when she’s confused. Keep her safe when she no longer understands what safe means.

I went home and changed the subscription from monthly to every two weeks.

And, this time, I changed the shipping address to Bonaventure, Room 14.

When I first moved Lori there, we started her in assisted living to see how she would do. She’d previously lived in assisted living at The Gardens, where she wore a bracelet that supposedly kept the exit doors locked when she approached them. An alarm would sound, and most of the time a staff member would steer her away.

Bonaventure didn’t have the bracelet.

Lori took several long walks on her own.

She was lost, of course.

Eventually Adult Protective Services got involved, which led to Lori moving into memory care.

While she was still in assisted living, I began noticing that Lori was collecting things.

At Easter, she collected decorations from the tables outside other residents’ rooms. She collected shoes. She would fill grocery bags with some of her own clothes and then leave the bags somewhere else in the building.

I spent a lot of time investigating the lost and found and returning things.

Finally, the assisted living director told me about Lori’s new kleptomaniac tendencies. I gave her permission to check Lori’s room anytime something went missing.

Lori wasn’t a kleptomaniac before Alzheimer’s.

The assisted living director called me one morning to tell me about an incident.

Staff did 4 a.m. checks on some residents. I’d specifically asked them not to wake Lori at 4 a.m. She didn’t need the check, and I wanted her to sleep.

One night, however, the staff couldn’t find another resident.

They looked everywhere.

Finally, they had to call the assisted living director in the middle of the night and tell her they had a missing man.

The director started brainstorming places they might not have checked.

Then she had an idea.

“Check Lori Dick’s room.”

Sure enough, they found him.

The missing man was asleep on the floor of Lori’s bathroom closet.

My wife was peacefully asleep in her twin bed in the next room.

That’s my wife. She collects anything that looks interesting or needs help.

Before Alzheimer’s, she collected people, too, although we called it helping. Someone needed a place to stay, a ride, a meal, a pastor, a friend—Lori noticed. Alzheimer’s apparently removed some of the boundaries.

Easter decorations. Shoes. Other people’s belongings.

And, on at least one occasion, an entire man.

I can laugh about that.

I need to be able to laugh about that.

What was harder to laugh about this week was sitting beside her, holding her hand, and realizing she had forgotten I was there.

And then I came home.

There are stories waiting for me here.

I’m still editing and writing, getting ready to send three pieces out into the world—to a journal and several university presses.

And LoriO has her writing mojo back. She’s on a tear, and she is so happy.

I love seeing that.

Every so often, one of us emerges from an office and invites the other one to play a hand of cards. We report our progress. We laugh. Then we go back to our separate rooms and keep moving forward with our creativity and our stories.

The distance between those two parts of my life felt enormous this week.

In one room, I sat beside my wife, held her hand while she counted to twenty, and watched her forget I was there.

In another, stories were being created.

I don’t know that one balances the other.

Maybe life isn’t a scale.

Maybe loss and joy don’t have to cancel each other out. Maybe they simply occupy the same life, sometimes on the same day.

This week, they did.

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Photo Caption: Tairi Blair visiting my dear friends and my wife, Lori Dick’s best friend, Rev. Dr. Nancy Wilson (middle), and wife, Paula Schoenwether (left), at their home in Florida. Check out the birds photo behind us. Paula is an amazing photographer! Photo credit: Lori L. Lake

I missed my Substack last week.

A few people noticed and reached out to make sure I was okay, which was both touching and slightly embarrassing. Apparently, if you tell people pieces of your life regularly and then suddenly disappear, they notice.

It’s nice to be cared for.

The explanation is considerably less dramatic: I was overwhelmed. Family gatherings, writing deadlines, editing deadlines, travel—and then the trip home from Florida, which turned into approximately twenty hours of packing, airports, delayed flights, and long layovers.

I prefer nonstop flights. I have discovered that Portland PDX does not always share this preference.

The good news is that I have no major travel planned for the next couple of months, other than family visits, and I am very happy about that. I’m ready to stay home for a while.

Especially because something exciting is happening here.

California Wheelin’ is becoming the book I hoped it could be.

I’m deep into my third round of editing, and instead of feeling tired of the manuscript, I’m more engaged with it. I’m seeing the places where the story may touch someone’s heart, places where it might offer a little wisdom without announcing that it has wisdom to offer, and places that still make me laugh out loud.

The characters have become my friends.

Adrien wants to be perfect. Unfortunately, her boss would also like her to be perfect, which is a heavy burden for a twenty-eight-year-old woman trying to direct a national Girl Scout bicycle trip.

Then there’s Zander.

Dr. Zander is a physician, a lesbian, and a woman who believes deeply in God. Adrien finds this combination thoroughly confusing.

She also finds Zander SOOO captivating.

That creates a problem.

Nancy is different. Nancy is steady. She is the person behind the scenes who has offered Adrien something she desperately needed: a secure and safe home life. There is real love there. But Adrien has dreams Nancy doesn’t share, including dreams of having children someday. Sometimes two people can love each other and still want different lives. That may be one of the harder things we have to learn about love.

And then there are the girls.

Thirty-six high school Girl Scouts riding bicycles more than 500 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles, camping along the way, discovering California and discovering themselves.

They are so much fun to write.

I’m drawing on nearly forty years of my own involvement with Girl Scouts, both as a troop leader and as a professional employed by the organization. I love being able to highlight an organization whose mission has endured: building girls of courage, confidence, and character.

I get to watch these fictional girls struggle, make mistakes, irritate each other, surprise themselves, and become stronger. They face hills they aren’t sure they can climb—and sometimes the hill is an actual hill.

And all around them is California.

Highway One. The ocean. Eucalyptus trees. Campgrounds. Fog. Heat. Wind. Long stretches of road where your legs are tired and the next hill looks impossible.

I love this world.

Now I’m getting close to doing something considerably scarier than sending thirty-six teenagers down the California coast on bicycles.

I’m going to send California Wheelin’ to literary agents.

I’ve been carefully researching agents, looking not simply for someone willing to represent the book, but for someone who understands what I’m trying to do with it and has the experience and enthusiasm to help it find the right publishing home. There are some fascinating people in this business.

I also know querying can be frustrating. So I’ve set a timeline for myself. I’m going to seriously pursue representation and see whether I find the right agent.

That probably means California Wheelin’ will not be published by December as I once hoped.

And I’m okay with that.

If I find the right agent, wonderful. If I don’t, I have another path. I have decades of marketing, strategy, and business experience, and LoriO has publishing experience. We can indie publish—but if we do, I want to do it thoughtfully. That means advance reader copies, reviews, planning, promotion, and giving the novel a proper launch.

Or at least as proper a launch as a woman doing this for the first time can manage.

Meanwhile, I recently submitted three short stories to various awards and contests. I should hear something in October. Because some of the submissions require anonymity, I’m not going to identify the stories or competitions right now.

And if nothing happens, I may nurse my wounds privately, because everyone knows how reluctant I am to share painful things.

Ha!

Okay. We all know that isn’t true.

One of the things I’m learning about a writing life is that rejection and disappointment aren’t evidence that you shouldn’t be doing it. They’re part of doing it. You write something. You make it as good as you know how to make it. You send it somewhere. And then you start working on the next thing.

Florida also gave me something I didn’t expect: a stronger sense of where I belong as a writer.

I loved the Golden Crown Literary Society conference.

Photo caption: Me at the GCLS conference. Carrying a warm jacket because the A/C is freezing! Photo Credit: Cindy Rizzo

I met new friends and some of my heroines. I found a community among the authors, readers, and publishing professionals there. The conference program was excellent, and I thoroughly enjoyed being on panels. I also had five minutes for a spotlight reading from California Wheelin’.

Five minutes is not very long.

But it is long enough to introduce people to your characters and then abandon them at exactly the moment you hope they want more.

Even better was listening to everyone else read. So many different voices and stories. It was enormously entertaining.

After the conference, LoriO and I stayed in Florida for three more days with ten dear friends, including my wife’s best friend, Nancy Wilson. After all the conference activity, it was wonderful to simply be together. We shared meals, long conversations, laughter, and a beautiful sunset on the beach. I’ve posted a photo of most of us there.

Photo caption: L to R, bottom to top. Candy, Nancy, Cindy, Marsha, Vickie, Carol, LoriO, Tairi. Not shown: Darlene, Paula, and, bonus visit, Ann and her sister.

There is something about old friends that requires very little explanation. You can pick up conversations, tell the same stories again, remember people and places together, and simply enjoy being in one another’s company. Those three days were a lovely way to end the trip before the twenty-hour journey home.

I wish I had LoriO’s reading superpower. She can read an entire book in about three hours and apparently remember it all. She reads at least three books a week.

I cannot do this.

I hardly watch television anymore, either. The business of writing has simply absorbed most of my available time.

And right now, I love the immersion.

I’m also incredibly proud of LoriO. She is completely energized about her own writing. She’s editing her Adventures Unlimited manuscript, and I love seeing the joy and confidence she’s getting from the feedback—and from looking at her own work again and realizing what she has accomplished.

She is also working on a short story collection that needs only a few more stories.

They’re good.

The collection revolves around revenge, which is amusing because LoriO and I approach that subject rather differently. I tend toward forgiveness or deciding something isn’t worth carrying anymore.

LoriO apparently thinks people should pay.

At least fictionally.

It is fascinating to see all the different ways justice gets served in her stories.

There isn’t much new to report about my wife and her late-stage Alzheimer’s. She recently started a new medication for arthritis pain, and I’m checking with her care team to see whether it has made a difference this week.

Sometimes there is no larger update. There is just the next thing that might make her more comfortable.

And maybe that connects to everything else I’ve been thinking about lately.

Some seasons of life move very quickly—airports, deadlines, manuscripts, conferences, family gatherings, submissions, plans. And there are other parts of life where progress is measured in much smaller things: less pain, a good visit, recognition in someone’s eyes, a moment of laughter.

I am living in both places at once.

Maybe most of us are.

So yes, I missed a week.

But I’m here.

I’m home. I’m writing. LoriO is writing. California Wheelin’ is getting better. Three stories are out in the world waiting for someone else to decide what they think of them. And somewhere along the California coast, thirty-six fictional Girl Scouts are still pedaling south while Adrien tries desperately to keep everything under control.

She won’t.

I already know that.

Maybe that’s part of the story, too.

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Busy week in Orlando, FL, at the Golden Crown Literary Society Conference, which delayed my normal Friday post. Here it is:

Image Caption: Tairi at two (pencil drawing by Tairi Blair).

Something happened to me at the Golden Crown Literary Society conference this week that I enjoyed. I listened to Kristen Arnett talk about how she writes novels, and instead of simply making me want to read her books—although it did that too—it made me want to rummage through my own life.

She talked about finding a shape for a novel. That intrigued me. I’m accustomed to thinking about stories in terms of characters and what happens to them. Who wants what? What’s standing in the way? What happens next?

Kristen described something different. In one of her novels, the present moves forward in a fairly straight line, but the past comes in and out in a nonlinear way. In another, the wet, unstable, sinkhole-prone environment of Orlando becomes part of the way the story works. Place isn’t just where the characters happen to live. It helps shape the story.

I sat there thinking, I don’t write that way. And then: What if I did?

What would I pull out of my own life?

I don’t know. So I thought I’d try an experiment here. Instead of figuring out what it all means first, I’m going to tell you some stories and see what emerges. Come rummage around with me.

Let’s start with a house.

I moved a lot as a child. Most years in elementary school, I attended two or three different schools, scattered across Los Angeles and Orange counties. So when someone asks where I grew up, there isn’t really one answer. But there are houses I remember.

One was a duplex in Gardena, on a busy four-lane street called Western Avenue. We actually lived there twice. I moved there toward the end of kindergarten and left a few months into first grade. Then we came back again when I was eight, after a two-month attempt at living in Oregon. We left for good when I was about nine and a half.

Mr. Geiser was our landlord. He lived on one side of the duplex, and we lived on the other. The front had a large porch with concrete steps and a lion on a low column on either side. The two halves of the building mirrored each other. You entered the front of our house into a long hallway with bedrooms and bathrooms on the left, then a large living room, a kitchen, and a back porch.

The property sat on about two acres, offering considerable opportunities for children who weren’t closely supervised. There was a large chicken coop, sheds, something like a barn, fruit trees, and piles of old boards with rusty nails sticking out. I stepped on the nails more than once. Tetanus shots were a recurring feature of my childhood.

There was also another house at the back of the property. Mr. Geiser had built it for his wife, but she died. The house sat there filled with furniture and boxes. We were not supposed to go inside, so, of course, my siblings, our three cousins, and I climbed through the windows and explored it. Mr. Geiser would catch us and yell at us. We’d get in trouble. Then we’d do it again.

At some point, a hobo moved into one of the outbuildings. He talked us, kids, into bringing him a potato, which he roasted. As I remember it, none of us found this particularly remarkable.

Across Western Avenue was the Gardena Club, a casino where my mother worked. On our side of the duplex was a small vacant lot, and on the other side of that was a bar. The men from the bar had to come out the back door to use a porta-potty. This became important one summer during a terrible heat wave.

My mother decided we should go camping. By “camping,” she meant the backyard. On the concrete. Under the clothesline.

We dragged our mattresses outside and hung sheets from the clothesline to make a tent. My mother and the six of us kids slept out there for several nights. Unfortunately, the vacant lot beside us was also where the bar patrons parked. All night long, headlights swept across our sheet tent. The porta-potty door creaked open and closed. Some of the men apparently decided not to wait their turn for the porta-potty and peed against the wall.

It was quite an education.

Mr. Geiser’s side of the duplex was another world. His house was filled nearly to the top with boxes, old newspapers and magazines, and glass jars. There was hardly room to walk through the hallway. His dining room table was covered too, except for one small space where he could eat.

He saved rubber bands by wrapping them around the bottom of his cane. He licked the mustard jar. He drove a Cadillac.

He was also my grandmother’s boyfriend.

Like my mother, my grandmother was a beautiful woman, and men were important to her survival. Mr. Geiser was well off and owned several properties. Once a week, he brought my grandmother black cherry cola and vanilla ice cream, and they watched Lawrence Welk together.

One day, my mother’s car broke down, and Mr. Geiser came to rescue us in his Cadillac. He tied a rope between the back of his car and the front of ours. He didn’t want my mother’s car accidentally running into his Cadillac, so he made the rope very long.

This seemed sensible until Mr. Geiser went through a yellow light. Several car lengths later, my mother reached the intersection. The light was red. She didn’t have much choice. Mr. Geiser and his Cadillac continued merrily down Western Avenue, towing my mother and a car full of children through the red light behind him.

Scary then. Funny now.

There were other adventures on Western Avenue. A butcher shop was just up the street. When I was six, my mother gave me money and sent me there by myself to buy the heel ends of the bologna. The heel was the cheapest part. I bought the bologna and had a nickel left over.

On the way home, two boys carrying fishing poles stopped me and demanded my money. Money was precious. I wasn’t giving them our nickel. But I was scared, and I wanted my mother.

There was a problem. I called her “Mommy.” I couldn’t yell “Mommy” in front of these boys. They’d think I was a baby. So I yelled, “MOTHER!” Except I had never called my mother “Mother” in my life, and what came out was something more like, “MOTHA!”

My mother heard someone yelling, but didn’t come outside. Why would she? None of her children called her Motha.

The boys swung their fishing poles at me as I ran past them, but I made it home with the bologna and the nickel.

A few days later, I was looking out the window and saw them walking down Western Avenue in front of our house. “Mommy! Those are the boys!” My mother took off after them. Unfortunately, our dog Cookie decided to join the chase, ran between my mother’s legs, and tripped her. The boys escaped. My mother came home limping.

Then there was the time I lost my baby brother. He was about seven months old, sitting in his high chair while we ate breakfast. My mother told me to watch him while she showered. When she came back into the kitchen, she looked at the empty high chair.

“Where’s your brother?”

I didn’t know.

There was, however, a hole in the window screen beside his high chair. Apparently, my brother had managed to get out of the high chair, go through the screen, and fall out the window into the bushes. I hadn’t noticed any of this. I was probably reading the back of the cereal box.

He was fine. I have no idea what cereal it was.

So that’s one place I grew up.

I haven’t told you the important parts because I’m not sure yet what they are. That’s what I’m curious about.

When I started remembering Western Avenue, I thought I’d be writing about moving all the time. Instead, I remembered a hobo roasting a potato, rusty nails, a dead woman’s house we weren’t supposed to enter, six kids and my mother sleeping under sheets on concrete, a nickel I wouldn’t surrender, and a baby disappearing through a window. At the same time, his sister read a cereal box.

And Motha.

There are things I can see now that I couldn’t have seen then. My mother was raising three (later five) children of her own, and sometimes three cousins and my uncle lived with us while she tried to earn enough money to keep us fed and housed. She loved us. Life wasn’t easy for her.

But I’m trying not to explain these memories too quickly. That’s the experiment Kristen Arnett started for me. Maybe if I go back and look at enough of these places and stories—not searching for a plot, just paying attention to what was there—I’ll begin to see something I haven’t seen before. A pattern. An image. Maybe even the shape of a story.

So I’ll rummage around some more, and I’d love for you to rummage around with me.

What do you notice in these stories that I might be too close to see?

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I had the chance to spend time with all of LoriO’s siblings—four sisters, two brothers—and their spouses AND their dad, Frank. I genuinely enjoyed every one of them. Each person brought something different to the table: kindness, humor, generosity, wisdom, fascinating life stories, and a willingness to help. In many ways, they reminded me of LoriO herself.

Photo Caption: LoriO, her dad, and siblings at Jeannie’s beautiful lakefront home. The food and hospitality were amazing.

One family gathering isn’t enough. We’ve decided we’d like to visit each of them individually over the coming year and continue building those relationships. Family deserves that kind of investment.

One more piece of good news this week: LoriO's dad came through neck surgery very well yesterday. We're all relieved. The hope is that relieving the pressure on those pinched nerves will significantly reduce his pain and improve his mobility in the weeks ahead. We'd appreciate your continued good thoughts and prayers as he recovers

The rest of my week revolved around California Wheelin’.

I’ve been working through page after page of comments, questions, and suggestions from my editor. It’s fascinating how differently I see the novel now than when I first wrote it. After so many rounds of editing, I know these characters almost as well as real people. Their motivations are clearer. Plot holes stand out sooner. Scenes that once felt essential now seem unnecessary. Other moments deserve to be expanded because they carry more emotional weight than I realized the first time through.

I truly believe the book keeps getting stronger.

I also hope that, when it’s finally published, many of you will read it. I hope you’ll enjoy spending time with Adrien, Zander, Barbara, Mike, Savannah, and the rest of the cast as much as I’ve enjoyed getting to know them.

Photo Caption: EMT checks Lori out for a “mobile doctor’s visit.” So helpful!

Caregiving, as always, had its surprises.

On Monday, one of the med techs called to tell me Lori’s right knee was causing her significant pain and recommended she be evaluated. The wonderful physicians with Providence/Legacy arranged for an EMT to examine her, and then we spent quite a while on the phone with the doctor.

These conversations are never easy.

The doctor asked excellent questions, but Alzheimer’s changes everything. Lori can’t answer many of them herself, and I don’t always know the answers either. When was her last bowel movement? Has her hernia been bothering her? Did the pain start suddenly or gradually? Those are difficult questions when you aren’t with someone around the clock.

Everyone involved was thoughtful and kind. Together, they decided to order an X-ray and an ultrasound of her knee. I checked the chart yesterday and discovered they now wanted me to contact them, even though I had been told on Tuesday that the portable imaging team would come to her facility on Wednesday.

Sometimes healthcare feels like a full-time job.

Then there was Medicare.

I spent two and a half hours on the phone yesterday morning with my Part D prescription plan. Somehow, my coverage had been canceled back in March because I missed a payment notice. Even though it was on automatic payment.

After moving four times in the past few years, the notification apparently disappeared into the forwarding black hole. My previous apartment sat vacant while they repaired rain damage, so no one was there to realize the mail should have been redirected. Since I receive my medications every ninety days, I had no reason to suspect anything was wrong until now.

The good news is they reinstated my coverage beginning Saturday.

The bad news is I’ll likely pay the late-enrollment penalty because more than 60 days have passed.

Curiously, Lori’s identical plan—with the same payment method—never missed a beat.

Life has a strange sense of humor.

One consequence of all this is that I finally had to change my Social Security address to Oregon. My heart still considers California home. I still own a house there, vote there, and see my longtime physicians there. But with Lori’s health, Oregon is where I need to be right now.

Some decisions are made for us.

One bright spot this week was talking with both of our daughters, Katie and Erin. We had wonderful conversations yesterday, and we’ve already scheduled a visit for the third week of September. They’ll get to spend time with Lori—and, I suppose, with me too.

I’m looking forward to that.

Another project that’s consuming a surprising amount of time is redesigning my author website. Making a site look good on a desktop computer is one thing. Making it adapt gracefully to tablets and phones is another challenge entirely.

If you have a few minutes, I’d love your honest feedback.

Please visit TairiBlair.com and let me know what works, what doesn’t, and anything that confuses you. Fresh eyes always catch things I’ve overlooked.

As I prepare to query literary agents, I’ve also been thinking carefully about comparable novels. Finding books that share some of your story’s DNA isn’t about claiming they’re the same—it’s about helping agents understand where your novel might fit.

Right now I’m looking at:

• The Women by Kristin Hannah

• The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

• Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

Not because California Wheelin’ reaches the heights of those wonderful novels, but because they share elements I admire: strong character development, meaningful relationships, emotional depth, and stories that stay with readers long after the last page.

If you’ve read any of them—or if another novel comes to mind that you think might be a good comparison—I would genuinely appreciate your suggestions.

With any luck, I’ll finish incorporating my editor’s comments in another four or five days.

Then it’s time to pack.

We’re headed to Orlando for the Golden Crown Literary Society conference, followed by several days visiting dear friends in Florida. Nancy, Paula, Marsha, Cindy, Carol, Vicky—and others I haven’t seen in far too long.

I’m looking forward to hugs, conversations, laughter, and making new memories.

Life keeps reminding me that tomorrow isn’t guaranteed.

So when there’s family to know better, friends to embrace, stories to tell, or people to love...

...today seems like the perfect day to begin.

Thank you, as always, for walking this journey with me.

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Photo Caption: The media room completed!

Friday came and went.

For the first time in quite a while, I missed my Friday Substack deadline. Life simply got ahead of me.

Yesterday, Lori and I hosted part of a large sibling reunion. Her sister Angela generously volunteered to bring a taco bar Friday evening, so we spent the week getting the house ready. Like many people after a move, we’ve been living with stacks of boxes that somehow became part of the furniture.

Over the past few months we’ve been tackling two or three boxes at a time, deciding what deserves a place in our new home and what needs to move on.

The retirement community where we used to live (MSAG) had a saying about the stages of life:

1. I want that.

2. I got that.

3. Get rid of that.

We’re definitely in Stage Three.

It’s time to let go of Grandma’s china we’ll never use. The broken chair that we’ll “fix someday.” Two of our three record players. A coffee can filled with enough loose screws, bolts, and nails to rebuild half the neighborhood.

Since company was coming, we finally tackled the media room—the one room we’d been avoiding. We alphabetized books, moved shelves around, hung more artwork, and even created a corner for our old LP albums.

There’s something strangely satisfying about putting things where they belong.

The organizing wasn’t the only thing occupying my week.

I finished my application for the Sisters in Crime LGBTQ+ Pride Award, which meant returning to a story I wrote last year called The Pink and the Star. It asks a question that wouldn’t leave me alone:

What might happen if two men, each taught to fear and condemn the other, discovered one another’s humanity inside a place designed to erase it?

Working through those pages reminded me how much writing is really rewriting.

The funny thing is that I’m becoming much better at recognizing my own bad habits. Apparently I’m still far too fond of words like just, really, and quietly. My characters still nod far too often. I still catch myself explaining emotions instead of letting readers experience them. I still discover action happening in the wrong order.

The good news? I can see those problems now.

That’s progress.

I also rewrote my artistic statement at least ten times before I was finally satisfied. It begins like this:

Every story I tell begins with an insistent question.

Usually, it’s an impossible circumstance that makes me wonder, What would that feel like? What would it feel like to be a cloned child created as a replacement? What happens when someone steals the identity you gave up and then weaponizes your old name? How does love survive when memory begins to disappear?

I don’t begin with answers. I write to explore the questions honestly enough that readers will uncover their own answers in the reading.

Reading it now, I realize that’s probably the closest thing I’ve written to a personal mission statement.

My editor, Zee of Two Marshmallows (bless her!), also returned another round of edits on California Wheelin’.

Her comments are always thoughtful, encouraging, and wonderfully direct. She has an amazing ability to point out the same mistakes I apparently enjoy making over and over again.

As I worked through her edits, I decided to shorten the opening chapter so readers reach the heart of the story sooner.

And somewhere during that process, something unexpected happened.

I finally realized what California Wheelin’ is really about.

For months, when people asked, I’d say it was about a 515-mile bicycle expedition down the California coast.

Or I’d say it was a lesbian love story.

Or I’d say it was inspired by a little-known chapter of Girl Scout history.

Those things are all true.

But they’re not what the novel is about.

At its heart, California Wheelin’ is about women building something extraordinary together.

It’s about mentorship. Leadership. Trust. It’s about ordinary women creating opportunities for other women and girls to discover strengths they never knew they possessed.

The bicycle ride is simply the vehicle.

The romance matters deeply, but it isn’t the center.

The center is watching women challenge one another, encourage one another, and become better leaders because someone believed they were capable of more than they believed themselves.

Funny how it sometimes takes writing 90,000 words before you finally understand what you’ve been trying to say all along.

Maybe that’s why we write.

Not because we already know the answers.

Because we’re trying to discover them.

So now I’m curious.

When you finish a book that stays with you, what is it usually really about?

Not the plot.

The deeper thing underneath.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Photo Caption: The Willamette River and skyscape of Portland taken from The Chart House Restaurant.

Some weeks seem determined to remind us that life doesn’t arrive in neat, manageable chapters.

It simply keeps coming.

Our family concerns continued this week.

Lori’s sister, Wanda, is still recovering from the frightening fall she took at her daughter’s home. She broke her right shoulder, dislocated her left thumb, and thankfully her CAT scan showed no head injury. After six hours in the emergency room she was released, and she and her husband flew home Friday morning.

We all breathed a little easier.

Then, a week later, Wanda fainted during her follow-up appointment with her doctor. She was taken back to the hospital, where they’re keeping her for observation and additional testing.

If you’re someone who prays, we’d appreciate your prayers. If prayer isn’t your thing, we’ll gladly accept your good thoughts.

Then Thursday brought another phone call.

My sister Becky was driving home in Las Vegas when another driver turned left directly in front of her. Fortunately, she wasn’t seriously injured, but her 2005 Toyota Sienna will likely be declared a total loss. She depended on that van to get to work, and insurance will almost certainly fall short of replacing it.

As if that weren’t enough, her son lost his job last week.

He and four other employees were fired after someone on their cleaning crew allegedly took a headset while they were cleaning a building after hours. He insists he wasn’t involved, but everyone lost their jobs. He had finally found work he genuinely enjoyed, and the loss hit him hard.

What worries me most isn’t simply the accident or the lost job.

It’s that Becky and her son had finally begun climbing out of a difficult season. Both had recently found employment. They were beginning to believe life was turning around.

Then, within days, two major setbacks landed on top of each other.

I’ve been thinking a lot about resilience this week.

We often celebrate resilience as though it’s simply a matter of attitude or determination. But resilience is easier when you have savings, education, confidence, healthy role models, and people who know how to navigate complicated systems. When you’ve spent much of your life dealing with learning disabilities, poverty, limited opportunities, or repeated disappointments, every new crisis costs a little more.

Nevada’s safety-net programs help many families, but recent changes to federal SNAP eligibility have left tens of thousands of Nevadans at risk of losing food assistance, a reminder that even public support systems are stretched when families need them most.

I worry about Becky.

I worry about her son.

Mostly, I hope they find people willing to help them believe this difficult week doesn’t define the rest of their story.

Thankfully, life also gave us reasons to celebrate.

Photo caption: Recent photo shared by Lil, activities director at Bonaventure Memory Care.

Our friend Caedmon spent the weekend with us. He and my wife worked together in a lay ministry program called “Creating a Life that Matters.” Having recently lost his own mother to dementia, he understood what we were walking into when we visited Lori. Rather than being overwhelmed by the changes Alzheimer’s has brought, he quietly observed, “She’s actually doing pretty well.”

Perspective is a remarkable gift.

Photo caption: Selfie-photo of Caedmon, LoriO, and Tairi at Chart House celebrating LoriO’s 12th novel, which took her seventeen years to finish.

Saturday also marked a milestone for LoriO. (Her author name is Lori L. Lake).

After seventeen years, she finished the novel she’s been carrying with her. Seventeen years!

She also made progress on three stories for her revenge collection, giving us every excuse to celebrate with dinner at Chart House overlooking the Willamette River and the Portland skyline.

Meanwhile, I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my short story for the Sisters in Crime Pride Award for Emerging Writers.

On Monday, I spoke with Zee, my editor, who has been working through the second round of edits on California Wheelin’. She told me she’s genuinely happy with how the novel is coming together and expects to return it later this week.

Assuming all goes well, I’ll make one final pass before beginning the search for an agent.

Some people probably think I’m crazy.

Writing fiction centered on queer women isn’t exactly chasing the biggest commercial market. But you’ve probably learned something about me by now.

I’ve never been afraid of hard work.

I’d rather spend my energy creating the strongest book I know how to write and take the chance that someone else believes in it too.

If an agent comes along, wonderful. My hope is that an agent might help my stories reach more readers.

If not?

I’ll proudly welcome Indie publishing.

Either way, the work remains the same.

Write the best stories I can.

Keep learning.

Keep improving.

And hope that somewhere, someone finds exactly the story they needed.

As always, thank you for walking this journey with me.

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Photo caption: Hung a few pictures in Lori’s new room at Bonaventure of Gresham Memory Care, Unit 14. Osteopathic Awards on the left.

Earlier this week, I thought I knew how the next few months would unfold.

By Friday, nearly every assumption I’d made had changed.

After Lori was discharged from hospice a few weeks ago, one of her physicians suggested I contact another hospice organization to see whether she might qualify again. I met with their team this week. After reviewing her case, they concluded that, for now, she isn’t eligible.

So once again, I’ve stepped back into coordinating her care.

I signed a new service agreement with her memory care community. Lori moved next door into her own room instead an unoccupied shared one. I hung several pictures she used to enjoy, hoping they might make the room feel a little more like home.

Photo Caption: Awards from MCC signed by Revs. Nancy Wilson and Nathan Meckley, pictures of our Dick family relatives in the window. On the wall, pictures Lori took and artifacts when she was in her twenties.

When hospice discharged her, they removed the hospital bed and stopped providing the supplies they had been furnishing. This week I replaced them myself—Depends briefs, wipes, hand soap, towels, toilet paper—and arranged for another bed. I’ve also enrolled her on a waiting list with a physician who makes house calls, although for now we’ll continue virtual visits with the doctor who cared for her before hospice.

None of those tasks are dramatic. They are simply the next things that needed doing.

Then, late Wednesday evening, the phone rang.

My niece, Emily, and her eldest daughter, Adelaide, near Fort Worth, Texas were on the line. Lori’s sister, Wanda, had fallen down a flight of stairs at their house. My niece told me Wanda had stopped breathing, and she immediately began CPR and rescue breathing while waiting for the paramedics.

For a while, none of us knew what to expect.

Early the next morning, Wanda’s husband, Al, called my daughter Katie with an update. Remarkably, Wanda had been released from the hospital. She suffered a broken right clavicle, a dislocated left thumb, and needed stitches in her left hand, but she was alive. CT scan seemed clear, but we need to find out why she felt so poorly in the first place.

Their long-planned trip to Cape Cod with their two granddaughters had to be canceled. Instead, they headed home to the Chicago area to begin the long process of healing.

Sometimes a single phone call changes the shape of an entire day.

Amid all of that, I found my way back to writing.

I hadn’t worked on fiction for nearly three weeks—not because I’d stopped wanting to write, but because life had been full. I had traveled to Southern California to spend time with friends and attend appointments, had dear friends visit here in Portland, then joined my siblings and our partners for a week together in Redmond, Oregon. By the time I returned home, I realized how much I’d missed sitting at my desk with a story.

This week I revised a short story that I’ll submit as my writing sample for the Sisters in Crime Pride Award for Emerging Crime Writers. The application also requires a cover letter and a biographical statement.

Writing that biography became an unexpected exercise in looking backward.

As I listed what I’ve accomplished since deciding to write fiction full-time in November 2024, I realized how much had happened in just twenty months. I’ve completed a novel, begun two more, written dozens of short stories and personal essays, seen stories accepted into multiple anthologies, received national recognition for several of them, assembled my first story collection, and had the privilege of sharing these weekly essays with all of you.

Most days, progress doesn’t feel remarkable.

It simply feels like showing up to do today’s work.

Last Friday brought one more surprise.

While visiting Bend, I arranged to visit Joannie, who owns eight Wheel Fun Rentals franchises surrounding Bend, OR. More than forty years ago, she was one of the high school girls in the Girl Scout troop I advised when I was in my twenties.

Our troop wasn’t the kind that met once a week just to earn interest patches. Those girls had plans for big adventures, and together we made it happen.

We rode our bicycles down the California coast without a support vehicle. We built our own rafts on 4 X 8 sheets of plywood, mounted them to four truck inner-tube tires, and floated down the Colorado River, two to a raft. We backpacked into the mountains. We learned to rock climb in Joshua Tree National Monument and make gourmet sandpit dinners. We spent countless weekends discovering what was possible when young women were trusted with real adventure.

As we talked, Joannie told me those experiences shaped the course of her life. They gave her a love for the outdoors and the confidence to build a career around it.

I had no idea those trips would still be influencing someone’s life more than forty years later.

And that made me wonder how often that happens without us ever knowing.

Maybe that’s true of raising children.

Maybe it’s true of caring for someone we love through illness.

Maybe it’s true of the stories we write.

Or perhaps it’s simply true of kindness itself.

This week reminded me that we don’t always get to choose what comes next. Hospice ends. Plans change. Phones ring in the middle of the night.

But we also don’t always know what we’ve already set in motion.

A room prepared with love.

A story returned to after a few weeks away.

A teenage Girl Scout who discovered she was capable of more than she imagined and carried that confidence into the rest of her life.

We spend so much time wondering whether we’re making a difference that we sometimes forget the answer may not arrive until years—or even decades—later.

And when it does, it is one of life’s pleasurable and most unexpected gifts.

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Photo Caption: Was this your week? My sister-in-law claims it’s her life. Cup seen in Sisters, OR.

The People Who Show Up

Some weeks are measured by doctor’s appointments.

Others are measured by the people who show up.

This week had both.

Two weeks ago, Lori was discharged from hospice because she had stabilized. That was good news. Really good news.

But it also meant rebuilding the support system hospice had been providing. I spent much of this week talking with doctors, arranging a hospital bed, scheduling a physician to visit Memory Care, and making sure Lori’s pain medication continued without interruption.

The good news kept coming. The hospital bed has been ordered. Her medications have been reordered.

Then the visiting physician surprised me.

After examining Lori, she suggested I reapply for hospice.

Lori is now considered Stage 7b Alzheimer’s disease. Stage 7e is the final stage.

Hospice isn’t only about preparing for death. It’s about caring for people who are living through difficult illnesses. The weekly nurse helps me understand what is happening better than the busy Memory Care staff have time to explain. The social worker checks in on both of us. The chaplain gives Lori and me the opportunity to share communion together, something that has become deeply meaningful.

Saturday, I took Lori to get her haircut.

She can barely stand now. Her quadriceps have become so weak that she needs someone to help lift her to her feet. We used a wheelchair for the outing.

After taking Lori back to Memory Care, I cried.

Not because of the wheelchair.

She smiled when I arrived. She knew me. We exchanged greetings.

Then, almost immediately, her attention shifted elsewhere. I was still sitting beside her, but I was no longer part of her world. Her disease had carried her somewhere I couldn’t follow.

I knew this day would come.

Knowing it and living it are two very different things.

Fortunately, life has a way of refusing to be only one thing.

Photo Caption: Cline Falls, OR. Mike, LoriO, Tairi, Donnay (front). Bruce and Donielle (back row).

For the past four days I’ve been sharing a three-bedroom timeshare in Central Oregon with my Blair family—my biological sister, my brother, their spouses, my partner LoriO, and me.

We have cooked dinners for one another, played cards, wandered off to do our own things, and simply enjoyed being together.

Wednesday evening, after several nights of home-cooked meals, we decided to splurge on barbecue.

Then the van door refused to close.

The power mechanism had jammed, leaving the sliding door stuck open.

What happened next was one of those ordinary moments that, afterward, didn’t feel ordinary at all.

LoriO searched online for instructions on disengaging the motor while Donnay, Mike, Bruce, and I crawled around the van, trying one idea after another. I went inside the restaurant and convinced one of the employees to loan us his multi-tool. Eventually we realized the cable had to be cut.

Everyone contributed.

LoriO found the instructions.

Someone held the flashlight.

Someone loosened the cable.

Someone cut the wire.

Someone tested the door.

Finally...

Click.

The door slid shut.

We all laughed, walked inside, and enjoyed dinner despite the noise. I even caught the last twenty-five minutes of the USA–Bosnia and Herzegovina soccer match. The U.S. won, 2–0.

What stayed with me wasn’t the broken door.

It was watching six people contribute whatever strengths they had until the problem was solved.

I thought later about how different that was from Alzheimer’s.

A broken van door can be fixed.

Alzheimer’s cannot.

But people can still gather around what is broken.

They can lend their strength, their knowledge, their patience, their presence.

Sometimes that’s enough.

One unexpected gift this week has been spending time with my brother Bruce.

I didn’t meet my birth father until I was twenty years old, so I didn’t grow up with Bruce. He’s twelve years younger than I am, and we’re still discovering each other.

He’s surprisingly quick at learning new card games—his math brain is impressive.

He’s also still a disgusting little brother who thinks it’s hilarious to fart in a closed car.

Some things, thankfully, never change.

He and his wife live only three hours away.

I’m hopeful that this week wasn’t simply a vacation.

Maybe it was the beginning of a different kind of family relationship—one built not on shared childhood memories, but on shared adulthood.

This week reminded me that even when life feels unbearably complicated, there are still hospital beds that arrive, medications that get ordered, nurses who explain things, chaplains who bring communion, siblings who crawl around broken van doors, restaurant employees who loan strangers their tools, and little brothers who still make you roll your eyes.

The problems aren’t always solved.

But sometimes, the people who show up are enough.

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Photo Caption: Fisherman on the Willamette River with Blue Heron observing.

This has been one of those weeks where I seemed to live out of a suitcase and my heart.

Last Saturday I stayed with Karen Frazier and James Tsai in Brea before we spent a glorious afternoon and evening at their beach house in Seal Beach. We watched the ocean and soccer, shared dinner at an Asian restaurant, and caught up on life the way old friends do—without worrying about the clock.

Sunday morning found me back at La Verne Church of the Brethren, a place filled with memories. From there I drove to Riverside to visit my Aunt Robbie and cousin Julie.

Robbie turns ninety-five in September.

I expected to find her propped up in bed receiving visitors. Instead, she sat upright with her legs folded crisscross applesauce, as limber as someone decades younger. We had to speak loudly because her hearing has faded, but her mind remains wonderfully sharp. Julie, as always, greeted me with warmth and humor. Together we remembered her two sisters and my own sister, all gone within the past three years. Later I talked with my cousin Jimmy, who helped me understand the circumstances surrounding his older brother’s recent death.

Every visit seemed to remind me how precious—and fragile—our connections become with time.

I also caught up with Lynn while watching Roy play and sing in his band at Union on Yale in Claremont. It had been more than a year since I’d seen Lynn, before I moved Lori to memory care in Oregon. I visited Kate Rogers and Dan Gilbert, too. Kate served on my dissertation committee many years ago, but she’s become much more than an academic mentor. She’s one of those lifelong friends who simply continues showing up.

Monday became a reunion tour through retirement communities. Meals at MSAG visiting so many friends. Then Pilgrim Place to see Cynthia. Then Carol, Lee, and so many familiar faces at Mount San Antonio Gardens. On Tuesday, breakfast at Oak Tree Lodge with longtime friends. Every stop carried stories, laughter, and memories stretching back decades.

By the time I returned home to Oregon, Wendy and Shirley had arrived for a visit. We played Song Burst, traded stories late into the evening, and joined Nate for a pontoon boat ride on the Willamette River.

Blue herons seemed to be everywhere.

One especially magnificent bird stood beside a fisherman near the falls, patiently watching every cast. We became convinced it was hoping to steal a fish. When the fisherman actually caught one, the heron flew away in what looked remarkably like disgust.

Nature has a wonderful sense of humor.

Of course, the first thing I did after getting home was visit Lori, my wife.

I try to arrive during lunch. Usually I pull up a chair beside her, wrap an arm around her shoulders, and simply hang out while she eats.

Not this time.

Every chair nearby was occupied. Carmen sat in the space that usually remains empty, so I settled into a chair across the table.

The woman beside Lori watched her clutching a stuffed polar bear. She caught my eye, circled her finger beside her temple, and silently mouthed that Lori was crazy.

I felt my irritation rise.

“She can’t help it,” I said quietly. “That’s the stage of Alzheimer’s she’s in.”

The woman, who appears to be in her nineties and still mentally sharp, looked unconvinced. I found myself showing her photographs on my phone—Lori preaching from the pulpit, Lori with our daughters, Lori smiling through decades of life.

“She isn’t crazy,” I said. “She has Alzheimer’s. The stuffed animals comfort her. To Lori, they’re real.”

I don’t know whether I changed the woman’s mind.

Lori never noticed the conversation.

She smiled when I arrived, as she usually does now. But after a few moments she drifted back to talking with Carmen and gently rearranging the food on her plate.

There is a particular loneliness in watching the person you love become content in a world where you no longer fully exist.

I drove home with tears close to the surface.

But home reminded me of something else.

Wendy and Shirley welcomed me with stories and laughter. And LoriO wrapped her arms around me, listened while I told her what happened, and simply held me.

Sometimes there are no words capable of fixing grief.

Sometimes another person’s embrace is enough.

Today Wendy and Shirley head for Newport. Tomorrow LoriO and I will attend the wedding of one of her chosen family. Then it’s off to Redmond for a week with my sister, my brother, and our spouses—six of us sharing a three-bedroom condo, playing games, laughing too loudly, and making new memories together.

Life continues to surprise me.

In a single week I watched a ninety-five-year-old woman sit cross-legged with the flexibility of youth, saw a fisherman out fish a blue heron, spent time with friends spanning forty years of my life, grieved the growing distance Alzheimer’s creates, and discovered once again that while loss is inevitable, so is love.

Sometimes the people who carry us are exactly the people we have spent a lifetime loving.

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Photo caption: Tairi and Lori at dinner this week.

A few years ago, when Lori was first coming to terms with her Alzheimer’s diagnosis, she asked me a question.

“Will I still be able to help people?”

Of all the worries she could have voiced, that was the one she chose.

Not whether she would remember names. Not whether she would be able to drive. Not whether she would recognize family members. Not even whether she would lose pieces of herself.

She wanted to know whether she could still help people.

When my friend Helen reminded me of that conversation this week, I smiled. It was such a Lori question.

For most of her life, Lori has been a helper. As a physician, pastor, volunteer, teacher, and friend, she has spent decades listening to people, comforting them, and reminding them they matter.

The question lingered with me.

Because now, years later, I know the answer.

When I was twelve years old, my Girl Scout troop visited a nursing home during the holidays. We sang Christmas songs for the residents.

I still remember the experience.

Some residents shouted, “Help me! Help me! They won’t let me go!”

The building smelled bad. The people frightened me. I left convinced that growing old meant becoming trapped somewhere sad and forgotten.

That memory stayed with me for decades.

Memory care has been different.

Not perfect. Not easy. Not a place any of us hopes to need.

But less scary.

The memory-care neighborhood where Lori lives has two long couches, a handful of chairs, and a television that seems to be perpetually playing music, wildlife videos, old movies, or travel scenes. Some residents rarely leave their rooms. Others spend much of the day in the common area.

One woman walks laps around the hallways.

Another propels herself into corners in her wheelchair and then waits patiently for someone to help her back out.

One woman, well into her nineties, still carries on surprisingly clear conversations and often remembers details better than anyone expects.

Another wears a permanent frown and resists nearly every suggestion. One afternoon, however, she proudly showed me that she was wearing two pairs of pants.

We celebrated her accomplishment together.

Most of the residents are quiet.

What I have learned is that quiet does not mean absent.

People are still themselves in ways both obvious and mysterious.

And Lori remains herself, too.

The staff often sit her in the middle of the couch, between residents who seem lonely, anxious, or afraid.

She has a gift for that.

She doesn’t solve problems. She doesn’t give advice. She doesn’t explain.

She sits.

She listens.

Sometimes she whispers a few words.

Sometimes she touches a hand.

Sometimes she simply stays beside someone until the tension leaves their face.

There was one resident who often seemed sad. Lori spent a great deal of time comforting her. Later, when the woman became confined to a wheelchair, she withdrew into herself. I rarely see them together now.

These days, Lori spends more time with Carmen.

Carmen’s room contains what appears to be most of the stuffed animals in the facility. Bears, dogs, rabbits, and creatures I can’t identify occupy nearly every available surface and piled in a corner in her room.

Lori and Carmen visit with them all.

They stroke their fur, talk about them, talk to them, and occasionally share them with other residents.

The conversations make perfect sense to them.

And somehow, that’s okay.

Photo Caption: Bear’s first snow in Boston with our daughter.

Our friends at Mount San Atonio Gardens (MSAG) still ask about Bear, our husky-shepherd mix. When Lori and I first moved into MSAG retirement community in southern California, she walked him every day. Bear now lives with our daughter Katie and her boyfriend in Boston. Thanks to daily walks and a stricter feeding schedule, he has slimmed down from 104 pounds to 76.

MSAG residents enjoy hearing his latest adventures in the snow.

So do I.

June 18 also marked another milestone. Lori and I celebrated forty-four years together.

When we met in 1982, neither of us could have imagined this chapter of our lives. We couldn’t have foreseen Alzheimer’s, memory care, or all the ways our lives would change over four decades. But looking back, I realize that one thing has remained remarkably consistent.

Lori has always found ways to help people.

This week I flew to Southern California to visit friends and family. On Monday, I’ll spend the day at MSAG and look forward to seeing many familiar faces.

The older I get, the more I realize that helping people often looks different than I imagined when I was younger.

It isn’t always dramatic.

Sometimes helping people means solving a problem.

Sometimes it means building a career devoted to service.

Sometimes it means leading a congregation.

And sometimes it means sitting on a couch between two frightened people and helping them feel less alone.

When Lori made a decision to go to medical school and later obtain her MDiv, so she could help people, neither of us knew what Alzheimer’s would eventually take from her.

Years later, I know the answer.

Yes.

She still helps people.

Every day.

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The hospice nurse called to tell me that Lori is being discharged from hospice care. She will still live in the Memory Care unit, but hospice will no longer take responsibility for her medical care.

On paper, that sounds like wonderful news. Physically, she is doing much better. Her pain is greatly reduced, which is a tremendous relief. But caregiving rarely follows a straight line.

Now I need to find a hospital bed. I’m arranging for an in-house physician to oversee her medications and treatment. Unfortunately, I don’t think Medicare covers that service.

The bigger concern is what happens when the next problem arises.

One advantage of hospice was that the memory care staff could call hospice nurses when Lori needed help. Without that support, there is a greater chance that staff may call paramedics and send her to the hospital.

I’ve already lived through that experience once.

Lori spent seven hours in the emergency room while we waited for an X-ray and a doctor’s response. She was confused, frightened, and repeatedly tried to climb out of bed while attached to machines. I spent the afternoon and evening trying to calm her while searching for information that never seemed to come. The nurses were overwhelmed and communication was scarce. By the time we left, we were both exhausted and traumatized.

If I can avoid repeating that experience, I will.

At the same time, I’ve been living in a very different world during the mornings.

I’ve completed seven chapters and almost 15,000 words of Another Option, the second novel in my Adrien and Zander series. The book follows the events of California Wheelin’, which is currently in its final round with my editor.

Writing this story has surprised me.

The novel begins with the murder of Adrien’s brother and her desire to adopt his orphaned daughter during a time when lesbian couples had virtually no legal standing as parents. Alongside Adrien and Zander’s story are three other lesbian couples finding ways to become mothers during the 1980s and 1990s.

The research is easy.

The emotions are not.

I’ve found myself crying more than once while writing scenes based on events I lived through nearly forty years ago. Back then, people like me had few legal rights as parents and very little respect from society as potential mothers. Revisiting those years has reminded me how much has changed—and how much hasn’t.

I’m trying to write the novel in what publishers call an upmarket or commercial-literary style. In plain English, that means I want readers to keep turning pages while also giving them well-developed, complicated characters. More showing. Less telling.

Maybe by the time I reach the end of the manuscript, I’ll know how to do that a little better.

Next week I’ll be crossing another kind of border as I head to my other home in Southern California June 17-23.

Part of the trip is practical: a dental cleaning and doctor’s appointment.

But most of the trip is about people.

On Father’s Day, I’ll attend worship at LVCOB. If you’re there, please stop and say hello.

Afterward, I’ll spend time in Riverside with my ninety-four-year-old Aunt Robbie, her daughter Julie, and my cousins Carol and Jimmy. Every visit feels a little more precious these days.

Monday, I’ll be visiting Mount San Antonio Gardens. If you’re part of the MSAG community, look for me on Monday, June 22. I’ll be eating meals on campus and spending most of the day there. I’d love to catch up.

I’ll also be spending time with my daughter and nephew, visiting my Claremont Writers Group, and seeing friends Kate, Charlotte, Anne, and hopefully Lynn. Friday and Saturday I’ll visit Karen and James in Brea and enjoy what promises to be a beachy Saturday at their cottage.

In many ways, the trip feels less like travel and more like moving through different chapters of my life.

Former colleagues.

Old friends.

Family.

Writers.

Caregivers.

And then there was one more piece of happy news this week.

The editor of the Bouchercon 2026 anthology sent contributors (the authors) a graphic announcing the anthology launch party, which will take place after Opening Ceremonies in Calgary on October 22.

Bouchercon is the world’s largest mystery convention, drawing thousands of readers, writers, editors, agents, booksellers, and crime-fiction fans.

My short story, “The Double,” is included in the anthology The Lines We Cross.

The story follows Maya Rios, a U.S. Customs officer who encounters a traveler carrying her former name on a forged passport. What begins as a routine document check turns into a murder investigation and a confrontation with the identities we leave behind—and the ones we choose for ourselves.

As I prepare for next week’s journey, I keep thinking about the anthology title: The Lines We Cross.

The borders between states.

Between past and present.

Between caregiver and advocate.

Between the people we once were and the people we are still becoming.

Some crossings are dramatic.

Most happen quietly.

One step at a time.

I’ll be taking a few of those steps next week. If our paths cross along the way, I hope you’ll stop and say hello.

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Photo Caption: Portland Sage Singers. Our opening number was a fun dance. That’s me at the far right in the purple vest.

This week felt like standing in a doorway.

On Sunday, after four harried days of final proofreading, editing, second-guessing, and one last round of changes, I submitted my short story collection to the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. The deadline was midnight EST. I hit submit with about two hours to spare.

There is a peculiar exhaustion that comes from finishing a creative project. Relief, certainly. Gratitude. A little disbelief. And perhaps a touch of emptiness. For months, these stories occupied my thoughts. They traveled with me on walks, interrupted conversations, woke me in the middle of the night with a better sentence or a solution to a stubborn problem.

Then, suddenly, they were gone.

Well—not gone. Just no longer mine to revise.

The same afternoon, the Portland Sage Singers gathered for our final rehearsal before this week’s performances. We sang Tuesday and Wednesday to enthusiastic audiences. Several friends told me this was our best concert yet, which is saying something because the bar was already high.

Part of the performance included a two-minute story I wrote and read aloud before our song about Famine. It wasn’t meant to be funny. The audience was completely silent while I read, which is always a little unnerving when you’re standing alone under stage lights. Later, choir members and friends told me it had moved them.

As writers, we rarely know how our words land. We send them out and hope they find a place to rest.

The choir has become one of the unexpected gifts of this season of my life. The people are welcoming. The music challenges me. Most of all, it gives me another creative outlet. After decades of teaching, grading, committee meetings, and deadlines, I have come to believe creativity is one of the central purposes of this chapter of my life.

Still, I admit I breathed a long sigh of relief when the curtain finally closed Wednesday night. Between the concert and the manuscript deadline, I was running on determination and adrenaline.

And then, as often happens, one ending made room for a beginning.

This week I started my next novel, Another Option. In just a few days I’ve written more than 6000 words.

The novel follows four lesbian couples in the 1980s and 1990s as they each search for a path to motherhood against enormous odds. It’s narrated by someone honest enough to admit when she got it wrong, wise enough to find humor in hindsight, and stubborn enough to keep going anyway.

Meanwhile, my first novel, California Wheelin’, is in its second round of edits with my editor, Zee, at Two Marshmallows. I expect to receive it back by the end of June. After that, I’ll begin querying agents before deciding whether to pursue traditional publishing or an independent path.

In other words, I begin again.

Not just with writing. This month I’m also taking a four-hour art class. In my first half-day class two months ago, I learned to paint mountains and trees. To my surprise, it looked like a mountain and trees. There’s something liberating about being a beginner again—about creating something simply because it brings joy.

Photo caption: My first attempt at painting with oils. It was fun to learn to use a palette knife and a fan brush.

And speaking of joy, Lori, my wife, is doing well.

One of the curious realities of Alzheimer’s is that change happens so gradually that sometimes you don’t notice it until suddenly you do. Lori is now about three inches shorter than she used to be. It’s strange looking down into her eyes when she once stood an inch and a half taller than me.

On Monday, our cousin Judith’s son Michael and his wife Kathy visited Lori and she was happy to see them.

Later, LoriO and I spent part of the day at a small airport where Michael took us flying in his Cessna. We circled Mount Hood above an old lava flow and green forests.

Then LoriO got her chance.

For fifteen minutes, under Michael’s supervision, she flew the plane.

She was focused, engaged, confident. Completely in the moment. Michael was impressed.

So was I.

This week brought endings and beginnings, deadlines and concerts, manuscripts and mountains.

Mostly, though, it reminded me that creativity has a rhythm. We finish one thing. We celebrate, or collapse, or both. Then, before long, we find ourselves standing in another doorway, ready to begin again.

And perhaps that’s the gift.

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Photo caption. Lori on May 27 2026.

In Lisa Genova’s novel Still Alice, a brilliant Harvard professor begins losing her way — literally. A familiar walk home no longer looks familiar. She’s lost for a little while, until her brain finds a workaround. It’s one of the most quietly devastating images in the book: not a dramatic collapse, but a momentary blankness where certainty used to live.

I’ve thought about that scene a lot.

Sometime around 2021 or 2022, Lori’s best friend Nancy went birding with her. They stopped to gas up their cars before going their separate ways. Nancy finished first and noticed Lori hadn’t started. When she went over to check, she found Lori unable to make her credit card work. The problem was she couldn’t remember her zip code — and couldn’t think to look for it, not on her driver’s license, not on the registration card sitting in the glove box.

When Lori finally finished, she asked Nancy not to tell me. Because I already “thought she was going crazy.”

She wasn’t going crazy. But I think she felt like she might be. And I think she was unable to tell me or admit it, likely due to the way the disease affected her brain.

For several years — roughly 2021 through mid-2023 — Lori managed to hold the world at arm’s length. What I didn’t see then, but now recognize is she had a repertoire. How’s that going for you? So where are you right now in your work? That’s interesting, tell me more. She passed the simple cognitive tests. She sang in the choir every Sunday, and she was beautiful up there, and I sat in the pew and teared up, feeling alone in a way I couldn’t explain to anyone sitting beside me.

In October 2022, I brought Lori to visit some of her long-time friends. I wanted them to see her while she was still well enough to visit. Some of them told me she seemed perfectly fine. One implied I was exaggerating. My own children suggested that Lori’s anxiety — and my worry about her — was what was causing the problem. They weren’t wrong to be scared. They were losing their mother and I was the safer parent to doubt. I understood that. It didn’t make it less lonely.

Then there was the bank.

After Lori’s mother passed, we went to make a deposit. The check was made out to Lori. I stood beside her helping her remember her social security number, her mother’s maiden name, which sub-account to use. The teller grew visibly frustrated with me and asked me to step away and let Lori answer her own questions.

I couldn’t explain why I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t say she has cognitive impairment — not without risking the transaction, and more importantly, not without devastating Lori, who was standing right there. I offered to show my driver’s license. I explained I was her wife, that I was on the account. The teller looked at me like I was trying to run a scam. All we wanted to do was deposit the check and transfer money to another account.

I felt helpless and a little crazy myself.

The caregiver occupies a strange and painful position. We often know before anyone else does. We’ve seen the small things — the hesitation before a word that used to come easily, the moment of blankness in a familiar place, the donating fifteen times a day to the same organization via text. And we carry that knowledge largely alone, because sharing it feels like a betrayal, and because many people simply won’t believe us until the evidence is undeniable.

If you’re carrying that worry for someone you love, trust yourself.

Find a caregiver support group. Call adult protective services for resources in your community. If you are part of a religious community, ask leadership about starting a support group. When my church did, people came to the first meeting who had been suffering in silence for years, caring for parents, siblings, grandparents, loved ones. Nobody knew.

I prayed a lot during those years. I bargained. Maybe it was heavy metals in her system. Maybe a brain tumor the MRI had somehow missed. Maybe a mini-stroke no one had caught. I sat in the sound booth at church running the audio board and watched my wife sing, and I bargained with God for a diagnosis that could be treated, reversed, fixed.

In April 2024, Lori was diagnosed with moderate to severe cognitive loss due to Alzheimer’s disease.

She is in memory care now, stage 7b on a scale that goes to 7e. She is recovering from a compression fracture in her lower spine. She’s lost three inches in height. She no longer remembers how to color or go to the bathroom. She’ll look at the paper, touch it, try to hand it to someone else, try to pocket the pencils. The activities director has noticed more cognitive decline. This Wednesday, she couldn’t figure out how to make the magnetic door stay open against the wall. She can still smile and be glad I’m there.

If you’re reading this while sitting beside someone whose world is slowly changing, know this:

The loneliness you feel is real.

The grief is real.

The exhaustion is real.

But you are not alone.

There are others standing beside hospital beds, sitting in memory-care dining rooms, helping with bank forms, answering the same questions, and loving someone through losses measured in inches and moments.

We see you.

And we understand.

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Photo image: Two women, one younger and one older, touching hands in friendship over a beverage (AI generated).

When I was an active Girl Scout, we sang a sweet song around campfires:

“Make new friends, but keep the old.
One is silver and the other gold.”

At twelve, I thought it meant quantity.
Collect people. Hold onto them.

At retirement age, I think it means something else entirely.

Friendship changes shape across a lifetime.

Some people walk beside us for decades.
Others arrive exactly when we need them.
Some leave too soon.
Some stay even after memory itself begins to fray.

This week marked two years since my sister Debby died.

I still reach for the phone sometimes before remembering there is no one there to answer.

My cousin Judith died six months before Debby. I miss them both. Judith’s son and daughter-in-law are flying up soon to stay a few days with me, and I realize how much that means. Judith and Debby anchored me to Southern California. They were part of the emotional geography of my life.

Without them, something shifted.

For the first time, I could imagine building a fuller life here in Portland. With LoriO. With a new geography and new friends.

Grief rearranges the map.

I’ve been thinking about friendship a great deal lately.
About my friend and neighbor, Hoppy, who taught weaving until almost the end of her life at ninety-nine. One day I asked her the secret to aging well.

By then, every friend her age had died.

She shrugged like the answer was obvious.

“I make new friends,” she told me. “Mostly younger ones.”

I think about that often.

About the courage it takes to approach someone new and risk connection again.

The singers in my choir, Portland Sage Singers, do that beautifully. They welcome people in. They linger after rehearsal. They ask questions. They stay curious about each other’s lives. It makes me happy to be part of that.

When I was younger, I used to encourage the young people in my life to put the phone down once in a while and talk to someone new. Join a group so strangers become familiar faces. You never know who might enter your life.

My new friend Mary did. A fellow writer and singer who read my collection of short stories and offered thoughtful, insightful advice.

And Zee, my editor. It’s dangerous when we get on the phone together. We always discover another story, another question, another piece of ourselves.

And I think about Lori, my wife.

Even in memory care, with so many cognitive abilities gone, she still reaches toward people. She notices when another resident looks lonely. She smiles. She listens. She comforts.

The instinct to connect remains long after many other things have disappeared.

Research says friendship matters deeply as we age. Social connection helps preserve cognition, emotional health, even longevity. Scientists can measure all that now.

Still, I doubt any of this surprises people who have been loved well.

Most of us have known it in multiple ways:
the friend who sat beside us after a funeral when everyone else had gone home,
the unexpected phone call on a hard day,
the soup, the rides, the remembering.

Attention is love in its everyday clothes.

Last week I wrote about attention.

Maybe friendship is sustained attention over time.

I’m ashamed to admit I wasn’t always very good at it, and I still fail, often, at keeping up with communication.

When I was younger, I loved my friends fiercely, but I struggled with the maintenance of friendship. Letters unanswered. Christmas cards late. Months slipping by too quickly. I welcomed connection, but I didn’t always know how to sustain it while working, caregiving, writing, surviving.

I’m better now.

Retirement changed that for me.

I have afternoons now. Entire unhurried conversations. I can fly down to Southern California and spend several days seeing old friends instead of trying to cram everyone into weekends and holidays. (I still cram a lot in). I answer more emails. Return more calls. Stay longer at the table after lunch. I can enjoy friends and family visiting us at our home for a few nights.

I’m still not perfect.

But nearly every time I leave a friend, I catch myself smiling before I even reach the car. The enjoyment I had at connecting.

The older I get, the less interested I am in impressing people.

What matters now is tenderness.
Consistency.
Showing up.

Not perfectly.
Just faithfully.

Friendship at my age carries a strange beauty because we finally understand none of this lasts forever.

Every visit matters.
Every laugh does too.

One day, those moments become the stories we tell ourselves about the people we loved.

Maybe that knowledge makes friendship more sacred, not less.

Silver and gold.

The old friends.
The new ones.
The ones we lost.
The ones still arriving.

All of them precious.

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Photo caption: Toddler holding a cup with white cream on her upper lip (DepositPhotos.com)

When I was three or four years old, my mother and I used to have “coffee” together.

Mine was warm milk in a cup with a splash of coffee.

I thought it was magnificent.

I can still see the kitchen table. Still feel the warmth of the cup in both hands. Those moments felt expansive in the way childhood sometimes does, where ten minutes can feel like an entire world.

I asked endless questions.

What do birds eat?

“Worms.”

Yuck.

What do worms eat?

“Dirt.”

Double yuck.

What I remember now isn’t the answers.

It’s the attention.

Her attention to me.
Mine to her.
Two people fully engaged in each other before the day swept us apart.

As the oldest of five children, with a mother who often parented alone while working hard to keep us afloat, attention could feel scarce in our house. Not because love was absent. Because exhaustion was not.

So I learned early how to earn attention.

I became the good girl.

Respectful.
Interested.
Trying hard.

Teachers noticed.
Coaches noticed.
Girl Scout leaders noticed.

I listened carefully when adults spoke. I asked questions. I worked hard enough that people wanted to encourage me. Looking back, I realize those interactions fed something deep in me.

Attention flowed both ways.

I felt seen.
And they felt heard, appreciated, important.

I think that may be one of the hidden truths about love: paying attention nourishes both people.

Years later, when Lori and I first fell in love, we became very intentional about listening to each other.

Stephen Covey called it “seeking to understand before being understood.”

We practiced active, non-defensive listening like earnest lesbians with graduate degrees and feelings.

And honestly?

It worked.

We became good at paying attention.

Photo caption: Outdoor table with two cups, a notebook, book, and glasses with sunset in the background (AI generated).

At the end of the day, we’d sit on the patio with tea and pray together. We’d debrief our day. Discuss ideas. Admit fears. Talk through hurts before they hardened into resentments.

In those early years, I worked from home writing and editing the Girl Scout newsletter, freelancing for Inland Empire Magazine, and training full-time for the 1984 Olympics in archery. After that came graduate school, research fellowships, teaching, publishing, deadlines.

Always deadlines.

Lori saw patients all day. Her last appointment ended at five, but charting kept her late. Sometimes I wouldn’t see her until seven or eight at night.

What I craved most was simply time together.

To distract myself from loneliness, I became more productive.

A dedicated student.
Then professor.
Then department chair.

I poured attention into achievement because achievement answered back predictably.

You work hard.
You get praised.
You publish.
You advance.

Relationships don’t operate that way.

Looking back, I can see how easily urgency consumed attention.

There was always one more paper to grade.
One more committee meeting.
One more article.
One more obligation.

And slowly, almost invisibly, I began treating tea and prayer on the patio as less important than deadlines.

Not because I loved Lori less.

Because life kept presenting itself as urgent.

Some of my favorite memories from those years happened in motion.

Long car rides.
Airplane trips.
Hours trapped together with nowhere to go and nothing to accomplish except conversation.

We talked about hopes and dreams.
About wanting children.

People warned us that time accelerated once kids arrived. They told us to notice everything because childhood disappeared fast.

And when our daughters finally came into our lives thirteen years after Lori and I first got together, attention became our parenting philosophy.

We noticed everything.

“Did you see that?”

“Wow. Look at her go.”

We conferred constantly about the girls. Their joys. Their fears. Their talents. Their heartbreaks.

Lori and I parented well together. We truly did.

But somewhere inside that rhythm of carpools, tournaments, school events, aging parents, full-time careers, and household logistics, we lost some of our attention toward each other.

Not all of it.

But enough.

I was good at words.

I love you.
Thank you.
I appreciate you.

Lori expressed love through acts of service.

She’d quietly sweep through my office and remove the dirty lunch dish I’d forgotten for two days.

She’d bring me a glass of water without asking.

Cook dinner herself and call me to the table.

Meanwhile, I handled bills, appointments, repairs, insurance, transportation, practical systems that kept family life functioning.

We were both loving each other constantly.

But often through management rather than presence.

During the teenage years, most conversations revolved around our daughters, our parents, schedules, responsibilities, survival.

Then grief arrived too.

Two fathers.
A mother.
A sister.

Loss has a way of narrowing people toward function.

Then suddenly the girls left for college.

At first, I redirected my attention into work again. Students. Colleagues. Department leadership. Research. Writing.

At home, there were still papers to grade.

Always papers to grade.

Lori and I talked about reconnecting more deeply once the girls left.

But we didn’t quite know how anymore.

I didn’t understand then that Lori was beginning to lose cognitive capacity. At first it was subtle. She lost some ability to actively listen. We became less patient with each other.

In our younger years, we’d been skilled at noticing.

A tender kiss.
A long mutual hug.
Debriefing the day.
Planning the morning.

Tiny rituals of attention.

Those rituals had protected us more than I realized.

Once the girls were gone, we finally had more time together again.

But by then, something essential had become harder.

We’d talk in the morning and agreed to cuddle that night.

By evening, she’d forgotten and fell asleep immediately.

At the time, I interpreted some of those moments emotionally.

Now I understand them neurologically too.

I wish I could sit beside my younger self on that patio with tea and tell her this:

Attention matters more than you think.

Not performative attention.
Not anxious monitoring.
Not managing a household together.

Real attention.

The kind that pauses long enough to notice another person changing beside you.

Sit on the patio sometimes even when work remains unfinished.

Ask one more question.

Protect rituals that help you listen.

Tell the truth earlier when something hurts.

Do not assume there will always be more time to reconnect later.

Because habits harden quietly.

And relationships rarely collapse from one catastrophic moment. More often, they erode from accumulated inattention while two exhausted people keep loving each other the best they can.

I think about this now differently than I once did.

The philosopher Simone Weil wrote that attention is the purest form of generosity.

The Buddhist teacher Thích Nhất Hạnh said the most precious gift we can offer another person is our attention.

I think they were both right.

Even now, after Alzheimer’s changed so much, attention still feels like love to me.

I pay attention to Lori’s face when she smiles in recognition.

To the river when sunlight scatters across it in Portland.

To LoriO beside me in the rhythms of ordinary life.

To friends who tell me the truth.

To readers who write back to say, “I thought I was the only one.”

To my own exhaustion.
My own joy.
My own grief.

To writing.

Because paying attention remains, even when so much else changes.

Maybe that is one of the deepest forms of love we are capable of offering each other:

To say, with our presence,

I am here.
I notice you.
You still matter to me.

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Photo: We enjoyed making friends with Lucy Blue Tremblay and her entourage.

The Literary Adventures at Sea III, sponsored by Sapphire Publishing and Olivia Travel, was a joyful success. Somewhere between 300 and 400 women came together for a week of books, and a total of 1700 women enjoyed the music, friendship, laughter, and community on Holland America cruise line.

Photo: Diane, Anne, Tairi, and LoriO.

To everyone who picked up one of my cards and subscribed to my Substack afterward—welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.

One of the things I learned on this cruise is that Olivia travelers truly know how to build community. A Holland America staff member told us we were one of her favorite groups because we never complained while waiting in line for omelets, tacos, or salads. Instead, we turned to the women around us and asked, “Where are you from?” Conversations started everywhere—elevators, hallways, concerts, coffee lines. We were never bored.

LoriO and I loved our little balcony veranda and cozy loveseat where we could sit together and watch Alaska drift by. The scenery felt endless and beautiful.

There was always something happening on the ship. I attended literary talks and concerts, played music trivia, made art, walked nearly three miles a day, explored shops in Juneau, Sitka, and Ketchikan, and spent time with old and new friends alike. The sailing stayed smooth most days, though there were a few moments when I waddled around like a drunken sailor while the ship rolled beneath us.

The weather surprised us too—only one rainy day.

It was especially meaningful to reconnect with women I first met at the Left Coast Lesbian Writers Conference in October 2024, including Akemy Leigh, Rachel Irvine, Chris Svendsen (from Sapphire), Schileen Potter, EJ Kindred, and Jane Cuthbertson. My Claremont Writers Group friends Diane Carver and Anne Odger joined us as well, and it made me happy to watch them settle comfortably into such a warm sapphic community.

Photo: Shrinking Dawes glacier.

After the cruise, LoriO and I spent two nights visiting our friends Mico and Dinah on Whidbey Island. Wonderful food. Wonderful hosts. The kind of visit that fills your heart back up.

Then reality returned: a 5½-hour drive home, laundry piles, winter clothes put away, and life restarting again.

But good things continued waiting for me here.

Photo: Greta Cammermeyer and LoriO at Greta and Diane’s home near Langley, WA.

LoriO finally regained some energy and tackled projects around the house today. I edited nine of the ten stories recently returned by my editor, Zee from Two Marshmallows. My friends Jane and Diane are helping arrange beta readers for my manuscript before I submit it for a literary award later this year. I should hear results by October 2026.

This weekend we’ll celebrate a double birthday party for my brother Bruce and my nephew Don. I’ll also get to see my sister Donnay, my cousin Janice, and the extended family.

I visited Lori on Wednesday as well. She hasn’t changed much physically except for some knee pain. She was happy to see me, and the staff at memory care remain extraordinarily kind.

So tonight I’m sitting with a few lessons from this season of life:

Be friendly, and you’ll make friends.
Write and edit a lot, and you’ll become a better writer.
Hand out business cards, and people will encourage your dreams.
Ask for support—and offer it back in return.

Friendship. Stories. Community. Mutual care.

I feel very blessed tonight.

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Image: Two women, a sound board, guitar, with Alaskan cruise ship in background (AI generated).

I’m writing this from the edge of something I haven’t felt in a long time.

Anticipation without pressure.

On Sunday, I boarded Literary Adventures at Sea III with Olivia Travel—an Alaska cruise with 1,700 women, many of them writers, musicians, and readers.

LoriO and I are here with at least six dear friends, and I have a feeling this is going to be one of those weeks that lingers.

There are concerts.
Long meals.
Conversations that stretch longer than planned.

And, for the first time in months…

No editing.

Photo: Lori and Tairi with Lucie Blue Tremblay, folk singer songwriter originally from Canada. Great concert!

A Little Celebration

We’re celebrating the release of the anthology Her Compass Was a Woman, edited by SallyAnne Monti, which includes:

• My story, Harmony at Sea

• Lori L. Lake’s story, Missing the Boat

• and work from many other great storytellers

It’s available now on Amazon—and if you peek at the sample, you can actually read my full story there.

(Yes, the whole thing. A little gift.)

A Glimpse of the Story

Here’s how Harmony at Sea begins:

I stepped into the cruise ship’s atrium with my guitar case bumping against my shin. Smooth entrance, Claire.
The first thing to hit my ear was scales from a piano lounge, and laughter ricocheting off mirrored glass.
A harmony floating in the air like a ribbon tossed from a balcony.

That’s Claire.

A woman who used to sing.
Used to belong to music.
And isn’t quite sure she does anymore.

Until… she steps onto a ship full of women who remember her before she remembers herself.

Later, there’s this moment:

“You’re not rusty. You stopped giving yourself permission.”

That line surprised me when I wrote it.

Because it wasn’t just Claire.

Real Life, Just Before the Cruise

Before packing my suitcase, I sent off my responses to my editor from Round 1 of Shades of Indigo, which I may rename to What We Don’t Call Harm.

Ten stories.
Pages and pages of notes.
Six already revised and returned.
Four more pushed through before I left.

Round 2 will be waiting for me when I get home.

But not this week.

This week, I’m choosing something else.

Sleeping late.
Going to bed early.
Listening instead of revising.
Letting stories come back to me instead of chasing them.

Photo: View out my balcony this morning, May 1st, in Ketchikan, Alaska.

An Update on Lori

I left my eldest daughter and my nephew, Jake, in charge of my wife while I’m gone.

Lori looked good the day before I left. We hung out during her dinner time.

There’s even talk—careful talk—about taking her off Hospice in a few weeks because she’s stabilized.

If you’ve walked this road, you know how gently we hold news like that.

But I’m holding it.

What This Week Has Been

Not productive.
Not efficient.
Not optimized.

Just… full.

Music in the hallways and stage.
Women singing without apology.
Stories shared over tea and water (wine for some, but I don’t drink).

And a reminder that I don’t have to earn my way back into joy.

Before I Go

If you’re curious, Harmony at Sea is already out in the world.

And today, Friday… I may be writing from Alaska.
Or from a deck chair.
Or from somewhere between a song and a memory.

Either way—

Pull up a chair.
I’ll have stories.

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Image: Cute dog editing on a laptop with many post-it notes (AI generated).

I’m deep in revisions this week.

Ten stories.
One manuscript.
A deadline for the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.

My editor, Zee (Two Marshmallows), just sent back the last of her first-round notes.

I’ve revised six stories so far. Four more to go.

And—perhaps foolishly—I think I might finish them before I leave for the Olivia Literary Adventures at Sea III.

We’ll see.

Here’s what I’m noticing about editing:

It feels amazing…
after I finish.

There is nothing quite like saving a file labeled:

“Title – Clean Copy – April 23.”

Done. Clear. Real.

But starting?

A different story.

There’s always that moment of resistance.

Anxiety.

A warning voice that says, “This might be harder than you want it to be.”

What’s helping me move through that:

Good readers.

Zee is generous with both kinds of feedback:

“I love this line.”
“This section works beautifully.”

And also:

“This needs more.”
“This isn’t clear yet.”

And almost every time I read those tougher comments, I think:

Yes. I see that (now).

I’m also using a mix of tools and people:

• AutoCrit (set to “literary” beta reader mode)

• Grammarly

• My friend EJ Kindred (a wonderful writer and beta reader)

• And LoriO, who listens to me puzzle things out almost every day and reminds me: “You’ve got this.”

Here’s what I’m learning:

Not all feedback is equal.

Some of it fits immediately.

Some of it doesn’t belong—especially when a tool is designed for novels and I’m writing short stories.

And some of it?

You sit with it for a minute… and realize it’s exactly right.

Also—quick note on AI tools:

They’re getting smarter.

And dumber.

At the same time.

One tool, Grammarly, told me 30% of my story was “AI-generated.”

So I tested it.

I wrote complete nonsense.

Still flagged as AI.

That told me everything I needed to know.

What I’m taking from all of this:

Use the tools.

Listen to the people.

But trust your own voice.

I have four stories left to revise.

Three days to pack.

A cruise ahead with writing friends.

And a life that still needs tending—meals, movement, my wife, choir.

So this week, my goal is simple:

Keep going.

Not perfectly.

Just steadily.

If you’re in the middle of something—writing, revising, or just figuring it out—

You probably know more than you think you do.

Trust that.

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Video: Hail falling on our driveway this week reflected my mood. Stormy and beautiful.

The last thirteen days were harder than I expected.

LoriO got sick.

Not the kind of sick with coughing and tissues and daytime television.
A different kind.

She slept.

And slept.

Odd and sometimes long hours. No energy to read, watch TV, or even listen to music. No whistling. No singing. The house went quiet in a way that didn’t feel peaceful—it felt hollow.

She moved into the guest room so she could rest. I moved through the house like a shadow. Quiet steps. Soft doors. Listening for any sign she needed something.

For seven days, that was our rhythm.

Chills. Sweats. Headaches. But no real fever. No clear answers.

On Monday (day eight), I thought we were turning a corner. She could string together a few sentences. Her voice had a little life in it.

By Tuesday, she crashed again.

No energy. And something wasn’t right.

Wednesday, we saw the doctor. Blood work. Urine test. Blood pressure low. Blood sugar low.

A kidney infection.

Antibiotics.

And finally—today (Thursday)—she’s better.

I did all the things you do when someone you love is sick.

Fluids. Blankets. Pillows. Laundry. Helping her stand. Walking beside her. Rubbing her shoulders. Pulling on her socks. Lightly touching her head when even that seemed like too much.

I showed up strong.

But inside?

I was lonely.

And, if I’m honest, scared.

It surprised me.

I’ve been through illness before. I thought I knew this terrain.

But this felt different—and the same.

Because, as most of you know, there are two Lori’s in my life.

LoriO, here with me now.
And Lori—my wife—who lives in memory care.

As LoriO grew quiet, it stirred something I recognized too well.

It reminded me of when Lori—my wife—began to disappear.

She had been so alive in conversation. So quick. So thoughtful.
We talked about everything.

And then… less.

And less.

Until the silence wasn’t just in the room. It was in her.

This week, I felt that loss again.

I cried.

Because with LoriO unable to talk, to think out loud with me, to meet me in conversation…

I was lost in a way I hadn’t expected to feel again.

Back then, I had people nearby.

Southern California. Friends who could gather around a table. Meals together. Exercise classes. Chimes practice. Church. Noise. Life.

Now I’m in Portland.

And I’m still building that circle.

This time, it was just me.

Storms. A quiet house. No easy way to say, “Can you come sit with me? I’m scared.”

And I missed her.

Not just her presence.

Her.

Our pauses during the day for hugs.
Back rubs at the table.
Kisses for no reason.
Snuggling at night.

I wanted to be held.

She didn’t have the strength.

I wanted to talk things through—the way we do—because I trust her mind, her insight, the way she sees the world.

That disappeared for a while, too.

I wrote.

And wrote.

Checked on her every hour.

Tried to stay steady.

But I wasn’t always.

I got impatient a few times.

A little sharp.

Not because she wasn’t healing fast enough—but because I was afraid.

And because, maybe selfishly, I missed us.

Today feels different.

She’s more herself.

We’ve slept in the same bed the last two nights.

My body is finally starting to calm down.

Here’s what I’m sitting with tonight:

Even when I show up strong…
I can still feel lost.
Unmoored.
Overwhelmed.

Both things can be true.

And this too—

I knew how much comfort our relationship had been giving me these past months.

I had felt it.
Trusted it.

How steady it had become.
How safe.

And when it went quiet…
I was afraid it might not come back.

Afraid she might stay somewhere inside herself—
the way she had in the beginning,
when we were still learning how to find each other.

Afraid that what we had built—
this pattern, this touchstone—
might be gone.

Like it was when my wife disappeared.

The good news?

LoriO is feeling better.

My wife is doing well, too.

On Friday, I took Lori—my wife—to get her haircut.

It was the first time she’d left memory care since Christmas, when that compression fracture made everything so painful.

Two different lives.
Two different kinds of care.
Both of them mine to hold.

There’s a five-second video of Lori walking.

Smiling.

Photo Caption: Lori Dick walking back to memory care after a haircut.

That was enough to carry me through the weekend.

So this is my confession this week:

Love makes us strong.

And it also makes us vulnerable in ways we can’t outgrow.

I’m hoping this next week brings a full return to health for LoriO.

And a return to our rhythm.

Because I’m learning—again—that the small, daily patterns of love…
are not small at all.

They are what hold me together.

And maybe this is the truest thing I know tonight:

When one voice fades and another falls quiet,
I am reminded how deeply my life has been shaped—
and saved—
by the women who have spoken love into it.

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Photo: Rev. Dr. Lori Dick preparing for worship at Founders MCC in Los Angeles. Circa: early 1990s, I think.

I went to see Lori on Easter Sunday.

She was happy to see me. She always is.

No hesitation. No searching. Just that immediate light in her face, like I’ve stepped back into a room she never stopped holding open.

There’s a woman at memory care—I’ll call her Inya.

Her hair is always done. Her clothes are careful. She speaks in a mix of some form of German and English, words braided together in a way I can’t quite follow but still somehow understand.

She clings.

Every time she sees me, she reaches for me like I’m the answer.

“Take me,” she says. “We go now.”

She believes I’m someone she knows. Or someone who can save her.

And when I tell her I can’t… she doesn’t let go easily.

Sometimes the staff can redirect her. Sometimes they can’t. Sometimes I have to leave early because her grief fills the room, and there’s no clean way to step around it.

This Sunday, I passed her room just as she was coming out.

A man followed behind her—maybe late-forty, handsome, steady in the way people are when they’re trying not to fall apart.

She was crying.

Before I even saw his face, I asked, “Are you her son?”

He nodded.

Then I saw it—his eyes, wet, holding something he couldn’t fix.

He tried to redirect her. Gently. Patiently. The way you do when love has nowhere useful to go.

I felt it in my chest. That helplessness. That quiet, breaking kind of love.

I walked Lori to lunch. We sat with Connie. Karen was there too, on Lori’s other side, like usual.

Inya came to the table.

“I need to go to doctor,” she said, in English this time. “Take me to doctor.”

Her son returned again, stepping into it.

Trying. Always trying.

There are others.

Karen—another one—who often looks angry, like the world has narrowed too tightly around her. Once, her frown left. She smiled mischievously as she showed me she wore two pairs of pants. It’s always very warm there.

Alicia walks the halls. Around and around. Movement seems to settle something inside her that nothing else can.

Georgette used to be someone Lori comforted. Now she sits in a wheelchair, her face carrying a sadness that doesn’t lift.

Maria is ninety-four and still sharp enough to win every game. I look for her every time.

There are a few men, too. Most of them confused. Most of them kind.

And then there is Lori.

My wife.

Smiling when she sees me.

Every time.

As if no time has passed at all.

As if I had just stepped out and came right back.

When I look around that room—at the longing, the fear, the searching—I understand something I didn’t expect to feel.

Gratitude.

Not the loud kind.

Not the kind that tries to make meaning out of everything.

Just this quiet knowing: It could be different.

It is different. Lori isn’t trying to escape. She isn’t crying for something she can’t name. She isn’t reaching for a door that won’t open.

She is… here.

Pleasant. Warm. Still somehow oriented toward joy. Still, the woman who cared for others. Still, the woman who makes space.

My only complaint? She’s so popular that I can rarely sit next to her.

And maybe that’s the truest thing. Even now—especially now. People are drawn to her.

I left on Sunday thinking: Whatever this disease has taken, it has not taken that.

And for that—I am deeply, quietly, grateful.

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