My girl

 My beloved daughter is 18 years old and about to graduate high school.

It was only yesterday (such a cliché, but never more true) that she was placed into my arms. The first time I saw her, she was scowling, wailing, and clearly as traumatized from the beautiful, gory, painful, frightening birth that we'd both just experienced. As the doctors visibly relaxed after the crisis had passed, my beloved friend Susan wept tears of joy and astonishment at what she'd witnessed, and Libby scurried around making sure that Ryan was okay, and Ryan sat there slightly stunned (destined to be her father, for which I am forever grateful, although I do wonder how I was ever his wife)...

The quivering, soft, warm, noisy, mess that was Tessa was placed in my arms, and I saw her face, and I held her to my naked chest, and she quieted, and I felt the unconditional love that I'd been told about but never experienced, either as a giver or a receiver. I knew, without question, in an ancient and primal way, that she was mine, and I was hers. We looked at each other, her eyes hazy, mine never more clear, and I was sure that this girl deserved to be love like nobody before had ever been loved, and that my care for her was infinite and extraordinary.

It's all so trite to say it. It sounds like some kind of gushing Mother's Day card, or wishful thinking, or some hallucination (from the painkillers I didn't take).

But it is the truest thing that I have ever known.

When Tessa was two and half, her petite body tinier than her friends', her hair a wisp of golden curls and waves, her blue gray eyes as big as her face, the stork's kiss birthmark on her forehead a mark of recognition, perhaps really an angel's kiss; at this age, tender and tiny and just becoming herself, tantrums and sticky smiles and gentle hugs and a deep love of ponies and horses and unicorns, I was diagnosed with cancer, and I ended her innocence in my stumbling words to explain it to her. She learned about the hospital - hopspittle, she said, and I was simultaneously charmed by her mispronunciation and horrified that words like "hospital" and "chemotherapy" were the realities of her childhood. We read "Sammy's Mommy Has Cancer" every single night, at her request, and her tiny fingers traced the pictures, pointing at the IV lines and showing me how the medicine traveled from the bag down into the mother. The cancer happened to my body, but it happened to US. She whispered me reassurances ("your hair will grow back, Mama" and "you're still pretty, Mama" and "one day the cancer will go away, Mama") and I didn't know if she was reassuring me, or herself, but I clung to her words as proof that she would be okay, that she had some internal resilience and strength that was otherworldly for such a tiny body to possess, and that I must find it in myself to be okay for her.

Diagnosed in June, by August my hair was falling out, and the day came when shaving it seemed better than watching it fall out in clumps. The deed done, tears shed, I gathered my wits and asked my serious, sad little girl what she wanted to do that day. Her answer was instantaneous: she wanted to go to the outdoor pool to go swimming.

My hesitation was real - with one breast, the scar still red and angry, and a bald head, the last thing I wanted to do was to don a swimsuit and head into public. But my hesitation was brief, because my love for my daughter was bigger than my fear, and if she had to talk about hopspittles all the time and deal with waves of fatigue that kept us at home and massive doses of steroids that made me short tempered, well, the least I could do was take her swimming on a hot, sunny August day.

The children at the pool stared. One of them pointed and gasped. The adults looked at me with sad eyes, clearer than the children about what was wrong with my body and why. I heard the whispers, saw the parents chiding their children to shush and not be rude. I plastered a smile on my face, jumped in the pool, turned to face Tessa at the edge, held out my arms, and yelled "jump!" and watched her face light up with glee as she hurled herself, fearless, into the water and my arms. The sun shone down, my daughter beamed, and we were the only people on the planet, and I thought that my love for her might actually make me invincible. Her presence called out bravery that I didn't know I had.

I'm pretty sure that Tessa is the reason I survived my cancer, and the treatment horrors, and the never ending years of it. Without her face - sometimes somber, sometimes laughing, but always watching me, I think it would have been too much, and I would have sunk into it. Nobody would have blamed me. But with Tessa watching, I did every bit of treatment, demanded more, and pushed far past my fatigue and pain and fear and side effects too gruesome to list here, and said, "More." I got lucky, there is no question of that - but mixed with that was a stubborn insistence that I needed to be there for my girl.

I sometimes wonder if my bond with Tessa is like the ones that other mothers have with their children. Perhaps I am a narcissistic ass to believe that my love for her is more fierce, more wild, more deep, more true. Perhaps this is the gift given to every mother, but I'm not so sure.

Tessa saved my life, and my gratitude for this is all consuming. But even if it wasn't for that, she has defined my life for 18 years, and her presence has guided me to be a better person than I would have been without her. I never would have had the courage to leave my marriage unless I was sure that the model of a relationship we were giving her was worse than divorce; for myself I might have lived with the sorrow and anger, but for her, I chose something better for all three of us.

One day about a year after the divorce, I came home from my not-right-but-it-paid-the-bills,mostly job, weary, and coached Tessa's homework at the kitchen table while I cooked, still in my heels-and-dress combo. Out of nowhere, Tessa stopped, looked at me, and said, "Mama, you're amazing...." and proceeded to let me know in her own words, out of the blue, that she saw me, really saw me, and that she saw the work and the love and the fatigue of reinvention and the fear of the unknown and the bravery that made me try anyway and most of all the love for her - and I wept as I hugged her and thanked her. I don't think any person has ever seen me so thoroughly in my whole life, before or since, and made me feel so whole and hopeful.

We live alone, just the two of us and our funny, large, playful, boisterous oaf of a dog. We've quarantined a year together, me complaining about her refusal to get out of bed on time for school; her complaining about how loud I am when teaching or talking on the phone. We've watched movies, avoided one another, cooked, baked, made jewelry, paddle boarded, picnicked. We've traded funny memes from social media. But even more, I think we've soaked up each other. In a year where she should have been leaving - to go to work, to go to school, to go out with friends, to go on dates - she was at home with me instead, in a large house that started to feel too small when it was our only world. We're probably a little dysfunctional: we know each others' preferences like an old married couple, and we take care of each other, and we complain constantly about the quirks and inconveniences (I want her to fill up the water pitcher in the fridge more often; she wants me to do a better job rinsing dishes before they go in the dishwasher).

I see her watching me still. There were years when she told me that everything I did was wrong, that I said it wrong, that I looked wrong, that I showed up in the world... wrong. My heart broke - what had happened? - and older women told me to stay the course, that this was part of it, that she'd come back. She did. It hasn't always been smooth. Some days I'm so confused - who is she, is this who she is, wait why doesn't she like me...and I don't like what she's doing either, come to think of it! - and there were a couple rocky years ago that came on suddenly, made my stomach hurt, and then mysteriously went away as if they'd never happened, and suddenly we were back as we were, meant to be together.

The 18 year old Tessa is exactly, and nothing, as I'd imagined her to be.

She is so much braver than I was at her age, and so much more sure of who she is. She is a master at friendship: she brings the most lovely people into her life, and into mine, and I'm blown away by the depth of these friendships, and by the drama free way in which she has navigated her high school years socially. Her knack for seeing people as they really are, their gifts and their flaws, is uncanny, and what's even more extraordinary to me is that she isn't judgmental about their flaws, but at the same time, she knows who is a good fit for her life and who brings drama she'd prefer to avoid. Her friends are from every race, shape, gender, sexuality, and socio-economic background. She is socially aware, and though I pride myself (maybe too much - something I need to be aware of) and quick to march for social justice, to stand up against bullies, to protect, to listen, to be self aware and to stand firm on issues of race, gender, sexuality, immigration, and more. She is deeply compassionate, but her standing for these things comes from something bigger than compassion, it comes from understanding that these "others" are whole, that they are fully formed, beautiful, deserving, and that they don't need another white girl preaching at them how woke she is. She will, without one bit of doubt, make the world a better place. She draws people to her - she's not "popular" in the high school sense, she is just thoroughly herself, and she has friends who love her as she loves them, and she makes friendships with ease. These gifts will serve her for the rest of her life, and watching her in the world, I am so proud of her.

She is fastidious about some things, a slob about others. She loves to read and has stacks by her bed, but she too often falls into the phone-hole and forgets to read. She sleeps in until I start to wonder if this time she died - who can stay in bed until 3pm?!

She hates school. Though it has been true for years, her loathing of the academic system and the way she is told to learn is confusing to me, troubling, but I've come to terms with it as best I can. Maybe one day she'll change her mind, or maybe she won't. Until then, I'm waiting to see the path she chooses, and hope that a semester at community college with three classes instead of seven, on a schedule she chooses, will help her to fall in love with learning.

But she and I have found an easy banter. After 18 years of shared jokes, shared space, shared experiences, shared trauma (cancer then divorce was not in my life's plans, but there it is), we have found our way to each other.

Tessa is my favorite person on the earth, and I admire her. I stare at her beauty in wonderment: how can this lovely, ethereal yet sturdy, loud yet contemplative, young woman be my child? How is it that she is so ready to run out the door, not to the house down the street to play on the swingset, but instead to people, places, and homes where I have never been? To a home of her own, a future of her own making, where I am a side character and not in the middle?

The feelings that I had the day I first held her have only magnified. Through it all, I've grown to love her a little more each day, become yet more amazed that she is so whole, fully formed, and herself, and yet she came from me.

The next years will be painful and wonderful, and I guess that's all how it's supposed to be. She once lived inside me, where I shielded her from the world, nourished her, and whispered my love to her with every heartbeat. I have held her tiny body in my arms, protecting her smallness, reveling in her strength. I have watched her go into the world - from playdates, to school, to sleepovers, to jumping in cars with friends and driving away with a casual wave - and soon she will depart from me, leaving the sanctuary of the room down the hall from me where I can hear if she's coughing or ill, where I rap on the door "c'mon, you HAVE to get up or you'll be late!" and thousands of dinners at the little table for two in the kitchen (in equal amounts "oh this is good" and "do I have to eat this?"). There will be days (okay) or weeks (ouch) or months (unbearable) where we don't speak, instead of checking in with our plans via text all day, and shared meals at night, and weekend adventures and splitting the chores and collapsing on the twin sofas in the family room to watch a movie.

Right now, she's downstairs with a boy she likes, home from their date exploring the I.D., boba tea and Thai food in takeout containers, watching a movie together.; they brought me dinner too (a kindness). Every now and then I hear the wave of their voices in laughter or conversation, a murmuring like the ocean, no distinguishable words, just a soothing sound of contentment. I wonder if she will figure out how to fall in love and stay there before I will, and I'm half appalled and half excited by this idea. If I have to choose which one of us gets to fall in love, and it can't be both of us, I choose her. I think, despite all of my mistakes, she might get it right. But if she read this (and I will ask her to, and she will) she would smile and say, "You'll find him, Mom." She has faith in me when I lose faith in myself; in this way, we are the same, because she fears a future that feels filled with unknowns, and I am certain that she will find her way.

My daughter is an adult, wrapping up the final rituals of childhood: the prom dress is on order, the graduation gown is unfolded and hanging in the closet; graduation party invitations have been sent, and received. I'm equally thrilled and scared to witness her transform from child to woman. Her body is lithe and strong, her belly flat, her hair silky and thick, her face lovely. Her mind is sharp when she wants it to be. She is, in so many ways, beyond me.

And yet, she is mine, and I am hers, and I still have things to teach her, and things to learn from her.

When she was small, for many years I sent her to sleep each night with the words, "Of all the girls, in all the world, you belong to me, and I belong to you, and we belong together. I love you so much; thank you for being my daughter."

I don't know how I got so lucky. I'd live this strange, twisty, sometimes unhappy life of mine a thousand times over if it meant I got to be her mom every time. Letting go, and letting her find her way without me, makes me gasp - can I do it? But I will, because she deserves a mom who doesn't cling, and because she deserves to fly, and because I've been watching her grow her wings, and I won't be the one to clip them. I trust that she will keep coming back to me, looping over me like an eagle, riding the currents for the sheer joy of it, but coming down to alight and visit with me before she flies off to the next adventure. I believe that she feels our connection as deeply as I do.

Tessa is the thing that I am most sure of, even when I'm not sure at all. She is good, and true, and right, and she will soar to higher heights than I did, just as I have flown past where my mother could take me.

I'm so grateful that I get to be her mother, for now and for always, even when it's hard, even when she's turning into a woman whose job it is to leave me. She will be gone, but we will still be connected, and somehow, I know it's all going to be okay, and sometimes it will even be amazing.

Tessa Katherine, I love you. It's your turn to fly. Don't mind me as I tear up here on the ground; I've got some dust on my wings, and I might not be able to keep pace with you, but I've got some plans of my own for flying, and we're going to be okay. Better than okay: my love will hold you up when you feel too tired to go on, and the strength that you've given me will never leave me, either.

What a strange, marvelous time in the life of a mother and daughter. I can hardly bear it.

Thank you for being my daughter.

Best of intentions

 Well. Nothing according to plan - that's how much  or all of my life goes.

Daily writing?

Perhaps I should have said bimonthly writing?! Even so I'd have fallen behind...

And yet, here again. Again. Where I belong.

The plan

 My life very rarely goes to plan.

But I have a plan.

Today I sat down and wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and I'm not sure if what I have is beautiful or pure crap or somewhere bland in between place, but I have a breakdown of my book by chapter, and a list of characters and their traits and relationships. There are some missing pieces - okay, there are a LOT of missing pieces - but the bones are there, and I know that there is something.

Today I wrote over 2000 words in two hours. I'm not sure if it counts because it was outlining, but I think it counts. Figuring out the order is hard for me - telling the story is the fun part, but making sure that I have a story to tell is the hard part. It's taken me a couple of years in my head (playing with the ideas) to get to this point, but now I know I'm ready.

I can't wait to introduce the world to Mary. I think you're going to love her, I think she's going to make you cringe, and I think you're going to cheer for her anyway.

Back at it tomorrow. Tomorrow will be harder because I will teach all day, and still need to walk the dog and make dinner and do the laundry...

But I'll face that tomorrow. Today, I used up all my brainpower by writing, and it was a success. Hurrah!

Visions

 I have a vision that I'm really clear on.

I've had a few visions like these in my life: of being a mother, of becoming a teacher, of surviving cancer, of getting divorced. The vision is always a little fuzzy the way that dreams are always a little confusing, but the messages are clear. I must. I will. It feels like fate, like truth, like inevitability.

And I'm having a vision of being a writer.

My whole life, I thought I was doing everything wrong and that everyone except me had it figured out. I still feel like that most of the time. I keep returning back to the Mary Oliver line, ruminating after a day spent in the fields admiring nature, "Tell me, what else is should I have done?" Oliver is right. It was her destiny to stare at grasshoppers, not because to do so is delightful or restful or something, but because only she could capture it so perfectly that the first time I read her words tears sprang into my eyes, a mixture of gratitude for beauty and the clean pain of a wound that is healing.

I do not fit into the vision that the world creates for me every day.

I don't want to wear sexy high heels and bandage dresses and prove to anyone that I am sexy.

I don't want to be a teacher who grades until 2am because that is what she thinks dedication looks like.

I don't want to spend my Saturdays scrubbing out my house of every speck of dust.

I do not want to be with people who look like they belong in magazines, doing the right things and listening to the right music.

I want to stare out my front window, watching the birds in the bird feeder, playing with phrases in my mind. Might. Light. Nightlight. Mightlight. Might? Right? Rightmight? Might. Light.

I want to read books that I love, not books I'm supposed to love.

I want to play board games with my friends, and I want them to leave by 10pm because I'm tired and done at that hour, no matter how I might wish otherwise.

It is my destiny - as it is all of our destinies - to be myself. I'm still figuring that out, but I think - no, I know - that I'm supposed to be a writer.

I do best in fits and starts. I am not good at focusing for eight hours, twelve hours, grinding it out. I keep listening to Writer's Routine podcasts and I'm startled to hear real writers - successful writers, published writers, writers who make their living writing actual books! - say things like "I only have about two hours of productive writing in me each day." Now, of course there are a handful who write around the clock, but honestly, they sound relatively unhappy and obsessive (and like what I fear I have to be in order to be successful). No, so many of them say things like "I get up and walk the dog, and then I have a cup of tea, and then I dink around on the internet a bit, and then I am filled with self loathing for all I haven't done and then around 10am I finally kick into gear and write like mad until I'm hungry and have to stop for lunch" and the like.

In short, they are doing their thing and being good at it and accomplishing more than enough and making a living by BEHAVING THE WAY I ALWAYS FEARED WAS MY WEAKNESS.

When I work hard, I'm so "on" but I work in flashes. I burn bright and words tumble out of me and my mind is clear and sharp (even when it's messy) and then...it stops. When it stops I have always thought that meant that I was bereft of talent or enough desire or that I was broken in some way. And yet - here these real writers are, and the way they write is... the same way I write?

Some of them say things like "I'm done by noon, and then I walk the dog again and go to the shops and meet a friend and go to the gym..." and I think, "This is a version of life? Not because of sloth or lack, but because it is right and true?" Of course, many of these same folks also fight deadlines, and then they put in their long days and cancel engagements, and burn bright and long and tired...

Which is exactly how I have always done it.

I am not insane for the vision of the life that I have. Others are already living that life - ordinary people who found a way to be true to themselves, to tell their stories.

My vision is that I carve out this way of being for myself. That I stop running wild and anxious for what I haven't accomplished, and that I trust the process that I will do enough, that I will meet the deadline. That I can create a life with time to walk the dog, to be creative, to make my way with words, and to be enough.

My vision:

I write in the mornings. In the afternoons, I exercise, run errands, do podcasts, read, go to museums, connect with friends, volunteer at the food bank. I have time to make interesting healthy meals. I have time to date. I make more than "enough" and I have some ease (though not luxury). Sometimes I teach a semester or a quarter. Occasionally I substitute teach. Every few years I go on a book tour.

I believe in this. I know it's true. It's not a fantasy anymore, because I see it so clearly, in a way that I've seen only a handful of things in my life.

I'm not done teaching. Every day I teach, I learn. Every bit of it matters to me, and I'm proud of it. It will come to a natural end, and I hope that I neither leave it too soon nor too late.

The timeline isn't clear - this is a dreamlike state, but the vision, the feeling of the dream, is certain.

I'm ready to write, and the world is ready to read what I have to say.

I am.

 I have always wanted to be a writer. I know this, because I have always been a writer. I still remember a school assignment from around the second grade (grade two for my fellow Canadians) where we had to write a myth, and I wrote mine about how polar bears became white. I remember asking for extra pieces of paper, because I got lost in the process of writing and the story just flowed out of me, with twists and turns, and in the end I had to end it in a disappointing, sudden manner because I had to turn it in, but I felt like I could have gone on forever.

This taught me two things:

1. Brevity is not my strength; and

2. I am a writer.

I have spent the time since longing to be a writer, walking through bookstores in wonderment that behind every one of those spines was a person who was An Actual Writer who Had the Courage to Write.

But I've kept writing. Sometimes just in a little notebook, with snippets of ideas and words that call to me; sometimes in blogs (this is far from my first - I wrote my way through cancer, and then again through divorce); sometimes in email exchanges with friends (I'm talking to you, HCR); sometimes in stories that - usually at an inconvenient time when I am in the middle of something else or it's 10pm on a Tuesday - suddenly make themselves known to me and need to be written down right away, in that moment.

I have written terrible poetry, a range of essays, countless memoir pieces, and ramblings about the day to day of my life. I have written short stories, outlines for books, and one children's story. I have written in a dozen journals, filling their pages in illegible scrawl. I have written one note for publication in the NYT. I've put too much care into social media comments (before I abandoned all social media, recognizing that it was not the way I wanted to spend my life's energy).

Lately, I return over and over to the Anais Nin quote:

And finally, at long last, I think it's true.

I have spent 51 years dancing around the idea of being a real writer, the kind who actually shares her work with the world, the kind who gets paid, the kind who gets published. I have spent 51 years in longing, desperation, anonymity, ignoring every instinct that told me that this is what I was supposed to do.

Enough.

I might be nobody, it's true. But I don't think so. I think I'm somebody, and I think I have something to say, and I don't think I've wasted 51 years not doing the thing I long to do - I think I've spent 51 years getting ready for this moment.

I've read that Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks. It's so easy to reduce her brilliance into the stroke of genius that allows such a book to flow from her in less than two months, but I'd say that it took her entire life to write that book, and that what was inside of her all along bubbled out in seven weeks.

I have some ideas that have been inside me my whole life about what it means to be a woman, about how we choose right and wrong, about how to be cruel and how to be kind, about doing things our own way, despite it all. I've started writing them down in a book tentatively titled Might. (I love the double meanings of words - there is the might that is power, and there is the might that is possibility. We have all heard that might makes right, but I want to believe that it is our inherent possibility that makes right, not our wild fight to overtake another person with power.)

Not "I might write" but "I am filled with might."

I have frittered away so much time being afraid, and listening to the voices that cried "mend my life" (Oliver) instead of mending my own life.

In order for me to be whole, and heal, and live up to the potential and power of my own life, I must write, and I must be brave, and I must be willing to share how inept I am in addition to how vastly powerful and wise I am, one after the other, and both tangled together.

It's time.

I'm terrified - not that I will write garbage, but that I will not follow through. I have the insane, wonderful, exhilarating hubris that I actually have something to say, and an interesting take on new and old ideas, that - should I ever put them down, and organize them, and take the time - the world will want to read them.

I am putting myself on notice. It's time.

How will I do it? It is one thing to have will, another to have a plan. Do I have a plan?

***

1. Goodbye, television.

2. Remove the NYT from my phone. (So many articles, so little time. I love reading the news, it makes me feel smart and up to date. But the world will not suffer if I'm less well informed, and the hours I waste are quite extraordinary.)

3. Refuse to sleep before I write. I say this rather than "get up at 5am to write" or "write before bed" because I know myself too well. Some days I awaken with an idea, and other times it isn't until it's dark that I figure it out.

4. My goal is 5000 words a week. This is modest - I hope to do more.

***

I have squandered quarantine. I have fallen into sloth and television and staring out the window, dreaming without doing, and I could have written multiple books by now - after all, what else is there to do?! But to say so is also false. I did what I could do when I did it. It's not time to beat myself up, to chastise the me that came before and tell her all the things she did wrong. (I'm good at that - it's time to build a different skill.) Now it's time to be who I've always wanted to be, who I've always been capable of being, who I've always been. Now it's time to put on the outside what has always been on the inside.

Statistically, I will fail. Nobody makes any money as a writer, they say. It's an unstable profession, they say. It's a cute hobby, they say.

Well, screw that.

Bookstores are filled with books from authors who published them.

Everyone can name countless people who make a living writing books.

Lately I read a few books and thought "good grief I can do better than this!" and these are by successful authors.

The statistics area always a lie. They aren't about the individual.

I am ready to tell my truth, and to trust that the world is ready for it. I am ready to find success. My goal is to have something ready to send to publishers before school returns in August, about a half a year, maybe less. This is both an eternity from now and a blink, but I think it's enough. I am not trying to write a book in six months, I'm trying to finish the book that I've been writing on for over 51 years.

It's time.

***

I plan to use this blog to document my process, to tell the story of telling my story. This space will be my warmup, my accountability, and the account of my struggles and strategies and successes.

I'm ready. I'm stiff from being curled into a tight knot, protecting my soft middle. I'd rather fail than not try...but I know, deep within, that I'm not going to fail. This is faith, and it is bigger than my fear.

I am a writer.

How much do you love me?

Growing up, I learned that the way to survive was to praise my father.

But it wasn't enough.

I could say the right words, but he wanted me to believe them. He wanted me not only to walk the party line, to show respect, to do as I was told, but most of all he wanted me to BELIEVE.

He didn't just want me to believe in him - a common enough occurrence, I'm a parent and I certainly like it when my daughter agrees with me or approve of me - he wanted me to truly like the things he liked, approve of the things he approved of, hate the things he hated. Anything less sent him into a rage, or a cold shoulder, or otherwise made my life difficult. He wanted full agreement and adoration.

When I was young, if I wanted something - clothing, toys, activities - that he didn't like, he told me I was stupid. Simple enough. Because of his German upbringing, some of his insults were in German - dummkopf and schweinhund were the two most popular ones. (They translate to "dumb head" and "pig dog" for those not versed in German insults.) It wasn't enough to do more chores, I was supposed to be grateful to do them. If he wanted something, I needed to be happy about it.

There were other insults, too, mostly about intelligence. When I disagreed, protested, or simply said something that he didn't agree with, he told me I was stupid, a cretin, a moron. "Idiot" was common, and I don't remember him telling me that he loved me, but I do recall his shouted "What's the matter with you?" or "What the hell is wrong with you?" as the most common refrain. Disagreement was a sign of lack of intelligence - choosing the wrong item on a menu, or dressing wrong, or liking the wrong movies were all cause for insult.

When I grew up, I got away. Not far away, just across town, but enough. I fought for an education, a career, a life. I carved out a little space for myself in the world, and demonstrated responsibility. I paid my bills, volunteered, held good jobs. I found community. It made me braver. I started to see that other families weren't like mine, and that I wasn't bad for wanting my own opinions, I was normal. My mind was blown. When I watched a friend tease a parent, I cringed, thinking "oh no here we go" and bracing for shouting or worse; when the parent merely laughed I was stunned. I started to learn that it was their version, not mine, that was normal.

(On one occasion when I was eight or nine, my father really gave me a take-down and called me names, and I cried. Perhaps feeling some remorse, he told me that he was just teasing, and I should know the joke. Days thereafter, with this new understanding, he dropped something and I teased him. I can still feel the sensation of his large hand impacting with my face, furious with me. "Teasing" was one directional. Message received.)

Distance made me bolder, and safer. I was a grown women, not beholden to my family. I tried to be a good daughter, but to live my own life. I didn't push back against my family, I just tried not to engage.

Not engaging is not possible.

My father can bear no disagreement, no difference. Every time I chose something different than him - the kind of car I drive (foreign, not domestic), the kind of food I eat (organic, from a wide variety of cultures), the kind of books I read (I read!)...all of it was, to him, not a choice made by a grown woman, but an indictment of his choices.

Sometimes I argued. Of course, that didn't go well. I learned to mostly keep it to myself, to mute myself. But I stepped on landmines anyway.

One Christmas a few years ago, I checked in cheerfully - despite the stress of being in my parents' home - to see which dishes I should bring for the meal. I cook a lot, and enjoy holiday cooking (as do many people). My father said, "We're getting everything pre-made at Costco this year. Don't bring anything, it's all taken care of." I told him I was looking forward to the meal, but that I also enjoyed home cooked food, so I'd supplement with a couple ideas (a home made pie, etc.). He said "No! I told you, we will have it all!" I calmly explained that I liked preparing home made food at the holidays, that it was important to me, and that I prefer home made food, but he didn't need to eat it of course." That wasn't good enough. Not only did he forbid me from bringing anything for myself or to share, he was incredibly angry that I wanted to do so. There was shouting, and actual rage, and demeaning, and questioning my integrity...because I wanted to bake a pie to eat at Christmas. I sucked it up and gave up my hope for good food.

Disappointed, I came to the meal anyway. It was all processed food from boxes and plastic containers; the gravy came in a can. I found it unpalatable and disappointing, but I didn't say so. My father was not satisfied with my cheerful company, or with the fact that he'd won (the food on the table was of his choosing). He wanted me to say that I was wrong, that I loved the Costco food, that it was better than what I would have brought, that it was preferable, that he was right all along. He wanted me to apologize for offering to bring food. My attempts at diplomacy ("I'm just glad to be here with my family" and "it's so generous of you to provide everything") were not enough. He needed me to recant on my wishes, to deny them, to tell him that I should have known better, that his food was the best in the whole world. He brought it up over, and over, and over, souring the holiday. I had to choose between placating him and being honest. (I was distant, honest...until I declared a headache that made me need to leave.)

I have dozens of examples like this. It is crazy making. It isn't enough to say "We can agree to disagree" or to say "thank you" or to say "this tastes good" he needs to know that he was right, that I was wrong, and that even the idea of disagreement was a mistake.

It wasn't about the food. It was all about his insatiable desire to be The Best, to be Right, to be Adored. His version of adoration leaves no room for difference. 

I have all kinds of theories about why it is that way. I think that when I disagreed, it triggered all of his senses of not being enough, of not being loved, of not being appreciated or understood. It triggered his own power dynamics with his own parents. It made him feel insecure, and small, and scared.

And so, like narcissists everywhere, he responded with anger, attempts to control.

And worst of all? I couldn't use logic, truth, or reason. I couldn't change the conversation, flatter about something else, set a boundary, use counter-facts, or point out that arguing about mashed potatoes was silly and we could just let it go.

"Let it go" is not in his vocabulary.

Living like that for my entire life changed me. I became an expert at dodging, both in and out of conversation. I became an expert at finding the compliment and amplifying it. I became an expert at anticipating needs and meeting them. I became an expert at smoothing things over.

But it was never enough.

Imagine, if you can, what it's like to invoke someone's rage over a disagreement over home made vs. store bought mashed potatoes. Imagine what it's like when more important topics come up. I hope you can't imagine it. I hope this feels a little other-worldly to you. If you can understand, empathize, then I'm sorry. Sorry for both of us.

Right now, our nation is arguing with Donald Trump, not about mashed potatoes at the holiday table, but about democracy. He cannot hear anything other than what he wants to hear. Any pleading, any attempts at logic, will fall on deaf ears. Worse, like gremlins, the truth is like water, and when wet with truth, Trump will double down, over and over, exponentially, his rage increasing.

I'm sure it's because his father was an asshole and that he doesn't feel loved, and that he has a giant gaping hole inside that makes him feel like he's dying and that only pure loyalty, respect, love, and adoration can make him survive. I'm sure of these things, because I grew up with them. If you don't believe me, just look at his behavior, just listen to what he says, how he behaves. He cannot abide anything but reverence - anything less than being treated as a god causes him to lash out. I almost feel sorry for him.

But I know that we're in such a dangerous time that even my sympathy for his unmet needs is dangerous, and that if he could, he'd manipulate that sympathy, too, which he sees as a sign of weakness. Incapable of understanding another viewpoint, because it would mean possibly understanding that he did not know everything, that he was fallible. He can't be fallible, he has to be perfect, or his whole world view crumbles. He will fight with any means possible to make sure that doesn't happen. If a narcissist sees sympathy, compassion, or kindness, they see it as proof of another's weakness.

The most dangerous time in an abused woman's life is the time that she decides to leave her abuser.

I escaped my family in degrees - by going to college, by moving across town, by choosing my own path, and creating a series of boundaries every time. But in the end, my parents rejected me. I crossed the line by saying something they didn't like, and unlike in healthy families, they couldn't talk about it, negotiate, ask questions, or let it go. Instead, my father screamed at me, and told me he was ashamed of me, and that was that.

It is one of the hardest things I've ever gone through, and it still impacts me. But mostly, it was a gift. Holding my breath all the time, trying to please someone unpleasable while still remaining true to myself, was impossible, and it hurt. I don't do that anymore. I still hurt, but so much less. Who knew that the amputation could save my life? I miss the limb - how is it that I do not have a family, though they live? - but I value my life more than the limb.

But America will have to fight harder than I did. My father is not in the public eye: for him, having the last word and declaring me persona non grata is enough for him. But Trump will not stop there. He will go to any length - and based on the attempted coup in our Capitol, "anything" could be ANYTHING. Based on chants of "Hang Pence" and the President encouraging an angry mob... I shudder to think of what could come next. I couldn't imagine a coup in our halls of democracy, and yet here we are.

America is trying to leave her abuser. and she's in grave danger. With pursuit of facts, we might win. I fear we will lose a limb, too, and I'm scared about what that looks like.

But if an abuser says "How much do you love me?"  and demands 100% fealty, there is no room for anything other than godlike adoration, and we will fall short. Trump needs perfect love, and we will never be able to give it to him.

Some women are killed by their abusers as they try to leave. It seems to me that is happening to us now. It's really, really easy to back down, to try to soothe it, to hope for peace. But women DO leave without dying. Not all of them, but some of them. He might try to kill - but he won't always succeed.

But my experience, with 51 years of trying to figure out how to please someone who can't be pleased because he's hurting too much to see past his own nose, I have this advice.

Pack your bags. Have a plan. Gather your friends. Practice self care. Get a therapist. Be prepared for shouting, rage, and horrible, horrible, horrible words that will wound you in places that you did not know that you could be wounded. But - take the leap.

Being with an abusive person, whether that is a boss, a spouse, or a partner, infiltrates every minute of your life, when you're with that person or far away. But you need to get out. At first, it hurts all over, but once you realize that you're out, the relief is indescribable.

America is in an abusive relationship, and that relationship is ending. Hang in there, grit your teeth, cry, and scream at the unfairness of it all.

But when the abuser asks, "How much do you love me?" no answer will ever be good enough. You can't be good enough, you can't say the right thing, you can't make them feel good about themselves to help them to see reason and behave.

So you get out.

Surviving

 As a former breast cancer patient, I'm often referred to as a survivor. When I tell people that I've been through cancer, their first words are often "I'm sorry" (what - were you responsible?) or "Congratulations." I recognize that the former is a polite way of saying "I wish that didn't happen to you" but the latter is said as - as what? Acknowledgment that I am not dead? Proof of something about me, maybe that my cancer wasn't that bad after all, or that I fought valiantly, or something else? Other occasions where we say "congratulations" include graduations, promotions, bringing new life into the world, summiting the mountain, writing the book, winning the lottery. Perhaps people are right to say "congratulations" not for any of the former reasons except the last. I know plenty of extraordinary women (I'm thinking of Lisa and Casey right now, more than any other, but there are so many more) who fought valiantly, had an incredible attitude, did whatever it took, and died anyway. It is not because they were less deserving of life than me - to the contrary, I feel the weight of knowing that I lived, while they did not, and I wonder if I'm doing what it takes to live up to their lost legacies - it is because I had the strange and extraordinary luck to win the lottery of life over death (so far).

Surviving, I can tell you, is a mystery.

I fought harder than just about anyone to stay alive, it's true. I took all the drugs, refused to give up when the side effects crippled me (this is not an exaggeration - thanks Femara and Aromasin).When I got third degree burns in radiation that made my radiation oncologist literally gasp at the sight and say "we're done!" I begged to continue through the pain, the ooze, the skin falling off. (Sorry not sorry. You probably didn't expect to read such a ghastly vision when you started reading this, but the truth is that those pink ribbons hide an awful lots of hideous horror.)

I survived.

But I know women who shrugged off their treatments - one who said "I don't like how the pills make me not care about sex; life is too short, so I want to enjoy sex with my husband" and despite her dire prognosis (much worse than mine) she stopped treatment, and, to the best of my knowledge, is still alive and well today. I know women (including ones I only know as an online celelbrity, like Kris Carr) who decided that conventional medicine was Bad with a capital B and went all juices and clean mountain air, and remain alive. I know many more women who made those choices and died. And yet - so many of us live, and we are declared "victors" in the "fight" who have "won" the "battle" and we gain respect and admiration from friends and strangers who applaud us for this accomplishment.

But I don't know how I lived, only that I did. How does a lottery winner win? They play the losing game, but then they get lucky. There are no magic numbers, no systems for bucking the rules - there are just some lucky winners.

But make no mistake: my confusion over the way survivors are lauded in no way negates the way that I feel about having made it fifteen years past the diagnosis that I feared would kill me. I shake my head in wonder sometimes that I get to do magical things like get mad at my teenager for not completing an assignment; or mowing the lawn; or reading a book. When I stand at the edge of the ocean and smell the waves, eyes closed to take in the sounds, scents, sensations - I still think "I nearly missed all of this, and I'm here" and it is so overwhelmingly beautiful that I think about doing a little Sound of Music twirling. (Sometimes, if nobody is around, maybe I do.)

Surviving is confusing, but it's the most beautiful thing there is. I can't explain to you what it feels like, but maybe you know: most of us have had near misses in car accidents, or fevers, or cancer, or appendicitis, or any of a thousand things that nearly kill us. But if you are one of the Really Really Lucky Ones who never had it all go upside down and then had to fight to keep your breath, what I will say is this:

I'm convinced that the depth of my sorrow and loss is only matched by the new heights of my joy.

I feel things more now. Ordinary things aren't ordinary when you think that you might have never seen them again. I understand why people sometimes kiss the ground when they arrive at their destinations, why they burst into tears upon hearing the good news.

It took me years and years to understand it myself, but as awful, painful, and impacting the cancer diagnosis and treatment was on my life, and as much I never ever want to go back and relive it, or, even worse, experience it again in the future (oh please God no, please), I am strangely grateful that it shaped me the way it did, and I like myself more for having handled it to the best of my ability.

My life changed for the better because of the combination of getting cancer and surviving it. I feel more joy, I know what matters to me, and I'm less afraid. (I've done things that would make a lot of people weep. I found my way, often with weeping, but often without. I might be the strongest person you know. Knowing that strength makes me less afraid.)

Which leads us - so much rambling, congratulations if you've made it this far - to the present.

If you're reading this, you and I both survived 2021.

***

First, let's talk about the 350,000 or so Americans who have died from COVID19, and because we know that the world is made up of many places and not just America, let's talk about the over 1.4 million people worldwide (as of November 27) who have died, and the millions and millions of people who are still fighting to regain their lives as a result of the virus. I cannot fathom numbers like that, and when I try to do so it makes my chest squeeze in an alarming way. As they keep saying, "all those empty chairs at the table" and I'm thinking of mothers mourning children, and children mourning grandparents, and new brides made new widows, and it's all unbearable.

I've been careful, and I'm not in a high risk category if I do get it, but we all know that some of it comes down to luck, good or bad. I am healthy, and I do not take that for granted for one second. Perhaps you are lucky, too. So here we are, alive. I know very few people who have actually been diagnosed with COVID, and since I'm white, educated, middle class, and in a state (and on the side of the state) that values wearing masks and distancing and has closed restaurant dining and gyms and theaters so that even those who wish to cannot go indoors and breathe on someone else... so I'm lucky. (In case you've been living under a rock or avoiding the news, I'll explain my white comment. Black and Brown people are much more likely to die of COVID. They are much more likely to get deeply ill. They are much more likely to receive subpar care. This is fact, not opinion, and if you disagree with me please do your research. It is tied to income, but not a result of income: low income folks in general do worse with everything, but low income people of color do MUCH worse. This is horrible, and not the point of this post, but needs saying as often as possible so that people do something about it.)

So, I'm lucky again.

I'm also lucky that my job moved online and I was able to work from home. Teaching online is SO DAMN HARD: the tricks up my sleeve don't work half as well online, and while my students assure me that my class is doing better than some and as well as can be hoped, we all know that people just don't learn as well online, and it makes my job frustrating and confusing. My eyes ache from staring at a screen, I feel ineffective a great deal of the time, and I fear that I'm not giving my students what they need, and my motivation is lower than ever because of all of these difficulties. But I'm grateful every minute, because my difficulties are NOTHING compared to some. I have a warm, safe, comfortable home with a quiet space to work. I didn't lose income (well, except child support, because my daughter's father is unemployed in the pandemic). I have medical benefits in case I do get sick.

So. I know that businesses have closed left and right, that so many are unemployed, that so many are sick, that so many have died. I know these things, feel them until my body tightens with the pain of it all, the immensity, the powerlessness.

But I want to talk to you about survival.

If you are reading this, whether you are ill, or you are unemployed, or you are as lucky as I am, you are reading this. You have survived 2020, for better or worse.

With survival comes joy - who among us wasn't relieved to see the clock hit midnight, hoping that the worst was behind us?

But now comes the business of making it all mean something.

Most people who win the lottery squander it. By the time they're done, they've lost friends and family, spent great quantities of money, and seem no happier than when they started it.

So - surviving cancer is like winning the lottery. I got a rush of love and gratitude that was intoxicating every time I got an "all clear" scan, and on every birthday, every life event, every holiday, and watching my daughter turn from a tiny toddler (she was two when I was diagnosed) to a beautiful woman makes me well up with wonder and thankfulness. One of my many doctors - this one was supposed to put me together physically after cancer - saw how I was embracing life so thoroughly and with such joy and gratitude after I was done with the worst surgeries, chemo, and radiation, and he sat me down and said, "This phase you are in will pass. These wonderful feelings you have now will one day be replaced with more ordinary feelings; the initial rush of being alive will fade. My advice to you is to find new habits, new ways of living, while you have the energy and focus to do so."

It was the best advice that I received about surviving.

With surviving, comes some responsibility, to ourselves and to others. To ourselves, to make good of the life that we did not earn - we won the life lottery, and we're alive, when the disease that tried to kill us allowed us to escape, but some of our friends are dead from that same disease. We owe it to ourselves to live our best life, because if this isn't a wakeup call, then what is? We owe it to ourselves to care for our health: as I like to say, I didn't survive cancer to be taken down by a heart attack. It is a time to add vegetables and fruits, to go for daily walks, to meditate or do yoga. We owe it to ourselves to heed the call of our bodies to stay alive, and to do what it takes.

And, knowing how close we came to nearly losing it all, we owe it to ourselves to not merely stay alive but to really live. I'm not kidding when I talk about that Sound of Music moment that I have, with some regularity, at the edge of the small beach closest to my house. I walk the dog there, and I stand on a log, and I wonder how I ever got so lucky. I never, ever walk by without taking a moment to really take it in, to feel deep in my bones how fortunate I am. This translates to a lot of things: to time visiting with a dear friend, to camping trips, to a really good song on the radio on the commute, to shared jokes, to good food. It means stooping to look at a flower or to hunt for four leaf clovers, delighting in a favorite coffee mug. Little stuff adds up.

And there is the big stuff, too. If I had died, I would have missed so much that I long to do. I wouldn't have been there to tuck my daughter into bed at night, so for years afterwards I felt such tenderness in our nighttime ritual that I felt like I was floating. And I realized that my marriage, the shape and size of it, did not fit me at all, that I couldn't breathe within it, and so I found the courage to leave. I found meaningful work. Little things, and big things.

And with every breath I remember how lucky I am to be here at all, that some of my cancer friends weren't so lucky, and that I could have been them.

Dr. Zucker gave me a poem that I treasure to this day, Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Before you know what kindness really is,

you must lose things, 

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth...

So here we are, at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, and we survived. We have lost things. We've been stuck inside, and we've missed celebrations and hugs and the small joys of visiting in coffee shops and popping our heads into a colleague's office. We've lived with fear, and moist masks, and isolation, and economic worry. We've lost a lot of the joy of our jobs, missing handshakes and genuine laughter and bagels for everyone in the break room. We've missed game nights, dinner parties, concerts, and plays. We've been cooped up, alone or with those we love, crabby at our confinement.

And the end is in sight.

Soon, in a few months or a year, we will all be vaccinated, and we will slip back into something closer to normal life (albeit possibly with modifications). We will once again have to pretend to pay attention in the meeting instead of turning off our cameras and checking our phones or painting our nails through our boredom. We will be saddled with traffic jams, and slow waiters, and overpriced movies. We have all come through such hard times, and we have survived.

But as we look at our survival, we need to decide now how we're going to shape that survival. We are here, so we are lucky. (Maybe you are luckier than me, with a loving family and spouse and adequate savings. Maybe you are less lucky than me, without a beloved child or a comfortable home or work that is meaningful to you. This is not about ranking our luck: if we are alive, we are in luck.)

What will we do with our fortune? What lessons will we learn? Will we remember forever that to hug a friend is a joy, or will we let it slip away? Will we hold the dinner parties, or will we complain about how much work it is to clean the bathrooms and get the food prepared? Will we spring for the concert tickets? Will we remember the lessons about what we felt like we might lose forever, and live in gratitude moving forward?

I'll be honest. Five years after cancer, it was a lot easier to remember the gratitude, because regular doctor visits were reminders that I was not "normal" and that it could still all vanish in an instant. Fifteen years later, it is my habits - a gift from Dr. Zucker's reminders - that keep my gratitude alive. I have wired my brain to notice the sunsets, the sparkle of the rain, the smile of a friend. This summer, one of my favorite moments was drifting on the waves on a child's floatie (mine was a ring with a mermaid tail) next to my dear friend, who drifted on her own floatie (shaped, according to the package, like a "realistic lobster"). It was hilarious. The water was cold, the day was hot, the waves washed us - inept because were couldn't get our balance on the floaties - onto the sand and then soaked us. We are middle aged women, not playful children or flirty teens, and I laughed until it hurt. My friend - perhaps smarter than me - knew to say "yes" to my crazy idea of floating along the beach on children's toys, just for the fun of it. But for me, it was part of my commitment to simple pleasures available for the taking. The chores were done (enough). My daughter didn't need me (just then). The day was sunny. My friend was willing. I chose life.

So, we have survived. 2020 is gone, and the old calendar recycled, the new one freshly pinned to the wall. We all get to decide who we will be in 2021.

Who will I be? Will I remember, a year from now or twenty years from now, how I longed to go to book talks and art walks and happy hours? Will I take the appreciation of filling my table with my people with me into the future? Or will I fall back into old ways, taking for granted so much of my life?

With surviving comes responsibility. 1.4 million people have died so far, and won't get to make these choices. What, I wonder, do they wish they had done before they died? How many of them died content with their choices? What would they do differently if they had to do it all over again?

If I live my life the way I want to, then I honor those who did not survive.

I'm a survivor. Now I need to figure out what to do with that! I have some ideas - do you?