A journey

It's so odd, after after so many decades on this earth, for one's body to finally decide to obey the dictate to lose weight. I started on weight loss meds a couple of years back, with barely any loss at all, though the weekly stick did have the welcome effect of stopping my inexorable march upward on the scale. I mean, I only had to look at calories and the scale would begin to climb. And the food noise was unremitting. I battled it every second of every day for my entire life, bare knuckling in it a constant effort not to scarf down carbs in response to my body's out of control insulin flood feening for more, more, more. The silencing of the food noise was a revelation, the ability to eat only when I was hungry and stop when I was full, like normal people, made me want to cry. I saw, for the first time, that I wasn't lacking in discipline and moral will when it came to food, as most people believe about fat people, but my body chemistry needed medical help, the way a diabetic person needs medical help, the way people with high blood pressure need medical intervention, the way many other physical conditions need the support of medicines to help balance a body that is unable to regulate itself. 

So when my doctor prescribed the medicine, I didn't resist, especially when she cited corollary benefits shown in studies, such as a twenty percent reduction in the incidence of coronary heart disease, which runs rampant in my family. There were the immediate benefits—weight gain arrested, food noise silenced, a newly healthy relationship with eating, and a sudden disinterest in rather unhealthy previous dietary staples such as bacon, which now tastes a bit wrong—but actually losing weight? I wasn't one of the quick responders, I barely lost five pounds. Then my insurance stopped covering the medicine and I had to stop taking it. My doctor subsequently went off into a concierge practice and I elected not to pay the hefty annual fee to go with her. Instead, I found a new doctor, who I like a lot. She's also much younger than I am so she's unlikely to retire on me, as many of my previous doctors have done. She helped me wrangle a way to get back on the meds in the spring of this year, and I've been on the weekly protocol since then. The food noise abated again, the weight I had regained, not that much, fell off, and then, as before, I stagnated for a good long while. I shrugged, deciding that not gaining and having a non-obsessive relationship with food, instead on one ruled by insulin tornadoes, was worth it. 

Meanwhile my doctor kept talking to me about stopping my longstanding bad habit of taking a Tylenol PM every night to help me sleep combined with three naproxen tablets for my constant body pain, plus various random doses of ibuprofen or naproxen during the day to knock back the joint pain and body aches. She kept telling me how bad it was for my organs, offered me alternatives to manage the pain. I didn't want any alternatives. I have an addictive personality, and I imagined myself getting hooked on powerful pain meds—that's what was in my head. She did mention at one point that the anti-inflammatory OTC meds I was taking were contraindicative of weight loss, but she didn't really dwell on that. It was all about damage to my liver and kidneys and stomach lining and such, but I had decided, after so many years of these bad practices, that I must be invulnerable to such effects. And I think of myself as an intelligent human!

Then I ran across an article that said the ingredient that induces sleep in Tylenol PM, which is the same ingredient in Benadryl (don't feel like looking up the pharmaceutical name), was linked to Alzheimers. That finally gave me pause. Hmm, I thought, the darn pills aren't even working. I still wake up at 3AM every night and can't get back to sleep till almost daylight, and I still feel groggy and unrested in the morning. And then I thought about the pain meds, and realized that they, too, put hardly a dent in my joint and body aches, so why was I swallowing them like candy? Overnight, I stopped taking them all, the Tylenol PM, the Advil, and the Aleve. My pain symptoms were no better or worse, but what I did notice is that fairly soon I was starting to sleep through the night more often and wake feeling far more refreshed, even on those nights when I'd awoken in the wee hours. And on those nights when I woke up, I usually managed to get back to sleep more easily, too.

But here's the real kicker. Right around that same time, I began to lose weight. Now, that was also around the time when, encouraged by my health conscious son, I began to prioritize getting 100 grams of high quality protein into my diet each day, and I believe that also made a huge difference. Whatever the reason, since July, I have lost thirty pounds, which has put me in territory not seen since my daughter was in preschool. But here's the other kicker, I look no different to myself, except older in the face and saggier in the body, and no one has really noticed I've lost weight. Even so, my clothes are definitely looser. 

According to the scale, this last month, the weight loss seems to be accelerating, as if my body has decided, okay, I see you seem to be serious about this journey we're on, so I'll get in gear. But may I be honest? It's actually freaking me out a bit. I'm not used to seeing the scale regularly going down, and I secretly wonder if maybe I'm sick and don't know it. But I had my annual check up earlier this month, and all my blood work numbers looked great. My body must be like, Jeez, woman, you sure are difficult to please!

And some other big news: I have finally scheduled my hip replacement surgery for the end of next month. I'm doing the thing, so this weight loss spree (assuming it continues) couldn't come at a better time. I've been terrified of this surgery for so many years, ever since my cousin died from a blood clot after having his hip replaced, but now I'm actually beginning to feel excited at the prospect of going through with the procedure myself. Who will I be on the other side of it? How great will it be not to walk into rooms self conscious of my penguin gait, and to feel myself planted strongly through both legs. My husband and son have both taken time off from work for that first week after my surgery to help me get back in the groove. My son says he's going to move in with us for the week. He studied exercise science and sports psychology in college, and now my husband jokes, "Our tuition dollars are finally paying off."

*

I've been gone for a while. The time was busy and eventful, too much to recap. Here is a post I started on November 15, but never finished, possibly because little Harper was here in New York with us from November 13 through December 2, and her parents were here for all but four days of that stretch as well. The time together was chaotic and exhausting and wonderful, for all of us I'd wager. Can't wait till they're back.

I’m starting therapy in December. I set my first session for then, after all the activity of the current month, with Thanksgiving and pie baking and nursery school visits for the little one. The Dallas crew is here, and little Harper is at this moment attending a playdate "interview" at a school her parents have applied to for her to attend starting next fall when they move back to New York. That’s right, our Texas outpost is moving back, and arrangements are in full swing. Harper’s parents had their interview yesterday, because getting your kid into a so-called good school in New York City is quite a dance, I remember it well. 

Here are some snaps from Thanksgiving week that tell a bit more of the story.

On Thanksgiving day, my nieces made fancy charcuterie boards that we noshed on before the main meal. This spread is becoming a new tradition, the contribution of the young 'uns while our family prepares the Thanksgiving dishes. Our daughter baked her salted caramel apple pies (seen boxed on the table) and our son made his Grandma's sweet potato casserole with seared marshmallow topping. I made my usual corn and cheese souffle and my man did the rest, turkey and stuffing, honey ham, four cheese mac and cheese, jalapeno cornbread, and sweet plantain. Our son in law contributed collard greens and this year the nieces also made a Ceasar salad, newly concerned that there would be nothing else raw and green. One cousin arrived with tender cooked lamb and gravy, and various desserts and libations were also brought by guests. Most of the attendees, however, were sleeping over with us, nine souls under our roof for the week, with four more arriving early each morning to continue the party. Next year the Dallas crew will be in their own home in Brooklyn. I wonder if they will still decamp to our apartment for the long weekend as my other nieces do? I have a feeling they, like my son and daughter and their loves, will join the daily commuting crew, especially if my Orlando and Trinidad cousins come next year, as they have promised to, as they would probably stay here. We missed them this year, we thought we would be a skeleton crew, but it really didn't seem that way. Thanksgiving felt as robust as ever.

Everything, all at once

I have no will to sort through the swirl of events that dissolve, kaleidoscopic, into one configuration after another, before we can grasp the shape and consequence of any one thing, all of it harrowing, exhausting, soul-crushing, until I retreat into numbness, seeking sanity. But hey, Zohran Mamdani won mayor of New York City on election night, and across the nation, the map turned blue in race after race, suggesting that the country is waking up, people get it, the current regime isn't really upholding the government's imperative to uplift, care for, and serve—how's that for radical understatement?

Jamaica is in a bad way, I can't even wrap my mind around how devastated the western two-thirds of the country is. I'm sure you've seen the images. My immediate family is safe, as they were in Kingston, the capital, which was mostly spared, and now they are all involved in relief efforts, coordinating with relatives abroad. This photo of Lacovia St. Thomas Anglican Church, which my parents attended when they lived in Santa Cruz in the parish of St. Elizabeth in the year I was born, is emblematic of the wreckage my poor little island is trying to come back from. 

The night Hurricane Melissa ravaged Jamaica, coming ashore in the town of Hope, my New York family was together in our apartment to mark my husband's birthday. Distracted by updates from back home, I forgot to gather the gang for a group photo, but my daughter took this picture of my husband and me just before she left. My son had plied his dad with a few cups of fancy warm sake that he had brought him, and my man was feeling quite mellow. I think we look kinda cute.

My lovely daughter in law also had a birthday this month, another one of my October people. By far the majority of my family members are born in October—my husband, son, dad, mother in law, daughter in law, closest cousin who is like my sister, the list goes on. Here is a photo my son took of my bonus daughter and me, at my daughter's wedding last year. Happy birthday, my darling girl, who called me Mom from the first day we met, the sound as natural in the ear as if our souls had known one another forever, and were simply reuniting after a brief time apart. We're all so glad our son found you, and that you chose him, too.

After a couple of weeks of not knowing what to do with myself—I'm not built for leisure, I keep saying—I finally have work again, editing a manuscript for a wonderful writer who has been a champion of mine, whose work has garnered every award going, not even kidding. It is always a privilege to edit her, her writing is so clean, her lines so lyrical. Meanwhile, the magazine I edit for is laying people off, as it's reducing its publication schedule to quarterly issues next year.  I haven't yet received any notice of separation, and I'm praying I get to keep that pocket change. It's not much, but it's steady, especially compared to book money, for which pay increments can be spread a year or more apart. 

Imagine me right now at that window, about to turn back to editing a manuscript in the season when the light in my house starts weaving all kinds of extra magic, with a shimmer of autumn gold. And look at that. It just started snowing.

Hurricane, also his birthday

The most major hurricane to ever hit my little island is making landfall as I type this, on the morning of my husband’s birthday. Our kids, their loves, and our nieces are coming over for cake and pizza this evening. We’ll all no doubt be huddled around the weather channel seeking news of how everyone is faring back home. We are, most of us, immigrants and the children of immigrants. In crises, our first home looms large. I suppose, other than skin, this is the reason many immigrants are seen as “other.” Because we have two homes. We never do relinquish the birth land. It lives on within us. It helped shape who we are. And today, my birth land is besieged. Our loved ones there are hunkered down. The family reunion chat has been taken over with Hurricane Melissa updates from all corners of the island. This hurricane is a slow moving monster. Dangerous storm surges are expected on the heels of 185 mph winds and forty inches or more of rain. Landslides in the mountains. Not all homes in the country areas are sturdy. We’ll have to reclaim and rebuild in the aftermath, helping in whatever small and large ways we can. 

Meanwhile, this loved guy. We’re going to celebrate him on this day, too.

This is ever the way

I have a consult with a therapist tomorrow to see if I will work with her. I worry that from her photos she looks young, barely older than my own children, and what if she knows them in these intersecting circles we inhabit. Because I will certainly talk about my children, about the particular loneliness of releasing them to their adult lives, of trusting them to navigate the rapids without my help, when all I want to do is hold their hand and guide them surely through life’s eddies the way I did when they were children, ensuring they would make it safely to the other side, physical and emotional bodies intact. 

Will a youngish therapist understand the bereft feeling that older mothers of adult children must find a place for when they realize it is the companion that has come to stay, the shadow that accompanies you everywhere, that hides behind your smile, your fierce functionality in the world, the times you will yourself not to send one more intrusive text, knowing your children are busy with their lives, remembering when you were busy with your life and assumed your own mother was going about her days, too, and she was doing that, she was fiercely functional, after all, where do you think you learned it, never mind the shadow companion you never saw.

Or maybe you glimpsed its presence sometimes, in the faraway look in her eyes, which you failed to recognize as sadness, as she released you, again and again, to your chock full life, knowing this is the way of parents such as she was, she would have it no other way, she would merely wait in the wings should you ever need her, she knew you knew she would always be there, the net arrayed beneath you, faint as gossamer, sturdy as her limitless love, this is ever the way.

__________

Scrolling on social media this morning I ran across a post that made me pause because I am contemplating reentering therapy. A woman wrote:

I told my therapist one day: "I'm not suicidal. I just don't want to be here anymore."

She looked at me softly and said, "There's a kind of suicidal no one talks about. Not the kind that screams, but the kind that fades. The kind that sounds like 'I'm just tired!' 'I don't want to do this anymore!' 'What if I didn't wake up tomorrow?'" And then she paused.

That silence hit harder than anything. Because she was right. I still got up every day. I still smiled when people asked how I was. I still replied to messages with, "I'm fine." But inside? I was gone. Numb. Hollow. Floating through my own life like a ghost. And people called it "burnout." Or "just stress." But I knew better. It wasn't exhaustion. 

It was grief.

Grief for the years I held it together when no one held me. Grief for the life that demanded performance, not presence. Grief for becoming "the strong one" before I ever felt safe enough to be weak. And the cruel part? No one noticed. Because I was still functioning. Still showing up. Too considerate to fall apart where anyone could see. That's the kind of pain that almost takes you out—the invisible kind. The quiet kind. The "I'm fine" kind.

My therapist told me, “Sometimes the bravest thing you'll ever do is finally stop pretending to be okay." And maybe that's where healing begins—not in strength, but in surrender.

__________

Alone in my house on Sunday morning, my husband running the tech at church, the sun at my window setting gold leaves aflame, I read what that woman wrote and when I got to the word grief the sobs just broke. I had no idea they were right there at the surface, so quick to ambush me. And now wont stop. 

We keep on.

The week in review

I put up a post about the ICE invasions of Portland and Chicago but apparently only one reader was able to see it. Another reader commented that my latest post was not "notifying or showing," which made me wonder if I was being shadow banned. Very curious. It was mostly sobering photos that we've all seen anyway, images of home grown troops tear gassing and pointing military grade weapons at our own—sights none of us ever thought we'd see playing out on the streets of the land we call home. None of this is news to any of us. 

Over in my corner of the world, life is lifing, as my girl likes to say. People I love are dealing with some stuff, which I can't talk about, but which makes my heart feel as if its being squeezed in a fist, each breath shallow and incomplete, and I walk around distracted, wondering why things can't just get to a place of being settled and stay that way indefinitely. Life is always in a process of upheaval, even when it seemed one minute before that everything was just calmly going along. Some upheavals are manageable and even cheerful. Others are like a two by four to the side of the head. The life lessons never fucking stop. Why do we always have to be learning and growing and getting wiser? Can't we just be dumb and happy and insensible for a while?

A couple of mornings ago, in those moments just after waking, before rising to greet the day, when you're just drifting in your thoughts, it occurred to me that one day I will be dead and all of this will cease to matter, I won't care about any of it, and I didn't know whether that recognition was a sign of mental health or of psychosis. It did help me take a few full breaths before the dull pervasive worry came flooding back. I'm a little better now, more philosophical. What good is it to obsess about things over which I have no control? If only one could apply logic to these matters.

I did call a therapist for a consultation. No call back yet. I have the number of another therapist. Perhaps I'll reach out to her, too, cover the bases. It's probably time.

In other news, I might have a new project in the offing, if we can come to terms. I hope we can. I've become very interested in doing the project, even though I turned it down three times. But the editor kept coming back, saying the person was very interested in me, that there was no time constraint and he was willing to wait because he thought I was the perfect person. Now that I have had a chance to study the situation more closely I see why he thinks that, certain of our experiences align. And now I am wildly intrigued. Now I'm the one hoping that everything comes to fruition. Ah well, if it is meant to be, it will be. I emailed the editor this morning saying I had delivered my last project and was ready to talk. We shall see what unfolds. Breathe, my darling girl. Breathe.

Speaking of darling girls, my daughter and I had one of our theater dates last Thursday. She wanted to see Beetlejuice, a musical I had no interest in, but I always have great interest in spending time with my girl, so I agreed to join her. We went to one of our special dinners beforehand, at Hav & Mar, which is Chef Marcus Samuelsson's Chelsea eatery. The food, a mix of Southern American and Scandinavian cuisine, was divine. The chef himself was in the house, and he passed by our table and greeted us, which was like a celebrity sighting, very exciting, even in this city where one sees stars at every turn.

Spending that evening with my girl was definitely the highlight of my week. And look, I managed not to wear my usual theater-going uniform, though my seasonal red scarf was very much in evidence. I said to my husband the other day, have you ever noticed that I wear clothes in rotation, that certain outfits appear over and over for stretches of time, no variation? I noticed that before we were married, he said. I was this way as a teenager, too. Every day after school, I'd grab my dad's freshly washed blue pinstripe shirt that I'd purloined, from off the clothes line and change into it from my school uniform, just like the day before. I think it's my way of avoiding decision fatigue.

Small moments that swell the heart

My husband is in the kitchen chopping up celery and onions and thyme and potatoes to make Manhattan clam chowder. "It's soup season," he announced as he assembled his ingredients before getting started. It's blustery and cold outside, a Nor'easter expected to flood coastal areas overnight, but in here, it feels cozy. Yesterday, he went out and bought flowers to make Ikebana arrangements using driftwood he picked up on a walk by the river with our son two weeks ago. He transported the blooms home in the tote bag his son in law gave him from his flower side hustle. Today, I get to rest my gaze on these lovely visual moments just sitting on tables inside my home. Here are two of them. 

Last Thursday, I went to choir practice on the East Side, a make-up rehearsal, as I’d missed my usual Wednesday afternoon West Side rehearsal due to a scheduled conference call in which I was to get my subject’s brother’s notes on the manuscript. I thought he would have edits for me—he had been my subject’s sports agent and the negotiator of all her contracts, and I’d interviewed him several times during the book writing process. We thought it best for him to read and make sure we’d got the legal details and timelines correct before we turned the final draft in to the publisher. Turns out we had, and our call ended up being a delightful hour in which he told me all the different parts of the narrative that he loved, and why. I really hope our editor is as positive about the book as my subject and her brother seem to be. We submit the final tomorrow, so we will have that answer soon enough.

And this: In talking about whether my name would be on the book’s cover (never a given in ghostwriting, a term I avoid using but which most people more readily understand), my subject said not only was she happy to give co-writing credit but that she would feel honored to have my name on the cover with hers. We were on the phone so she couldn’t see that actual tears sprang to my eyes. I have rarely encountered such a gentling down of literary ego. Granting a collaborative writer cover credit is acknowledgement enough of the work we have done together, but to say the rest—well. I cleared the frog in my throat and told her I would be honored to have my name next to hers, too.

A really cool thing happened when I got home from choir on Thursday afternoon. I’d gone for coffee after with two friends, which made my timing perfect, because as soon as I walked into my house my son called and told me to come downstairs to the street. He said that he and his crew were on their way back to their home firehouse after covering for a station in Harlem whose crew was out at a fire, and they were going to swing by in the big rig to tell me hey. He joked that it was bring your work to mom day. Seeing my boy jump down from the rig and cross the street to bring his mama over to meet the guys, I felt proud to bursting. I took pictures with his crew and his lieutenant and chatted with them and loved the brotherly camaraderie among them all. As his sister says, my son is just about the coolest kid we know. 

Here's something serendipitous: I might already know what my next project will be and I’m cautiously excited. I really think sometimes I was born lucky. At the very least, I’m hopeful.

Earth school

I ran across one of those frivolous social media memes that asked questions. One was: Who comes to mind as simply the most delightful human you know, the most delicious person to be around. My husband was sitting at the breakfast bar and I tossed it out to him to answer with me. We looked at each other and smiled, because we both knew, hands down, the answer was our daughter. It is not that our girl never has dark moods, never gets grumpy, never spirals into anxiety (look who her mother is), but she carries a light inside and around her. Somehow, when she walks into a room, the mood brightens, joy arrives, and she doesn't even know she has this power. Her smile is a radiant thing. It literally warms you, makes you feel that all will be well. She is a healer, that one, without even doing anything, even as she herself struggles through the whole rollercoaster repertoire of human experiences. How does she manage this duality? How does she confer such grace on others even in those moments when she is roiling herself? I wish I could save her from every hard emotional passage in this life. Is it too much to wish that our children should never suffer? Ha. Fortunately, she's does talk therapy, and so she is a student in the ways of actively managing the ever surging feelings and perceptions that are a feature, not a bug, of this earth school. 

I love that photo of our girl. It's from a shoot she did in her cousin's kitchen in Dallas. She makes her signature caramel apple pies every Thanksgiving, and wanted new photos for her website where people log on to make their orders. While she was in Dallas a few weeks ago, she decided her cousin's kitchen would make an elegant backdrop for those photos, so she baked a pie and pressed another cousin, who is a talented image maker and social media coordinator for Marvel Comics Universe, into service to take the photos. In years past, my girl baked the pies in her kitchen, but this year, she reached out to her godmother, who has a cake baking company and works out of an industrial kitchen in Brooklyn, to see if she could rent space alongside her during the week before Thanksgiving. Her aunt said she didn't need to pay her any rent, but she did need to get herself professionally certified before she could use the kitchen, so she's now doing that. Our girl is scaling up. 

Happy birthday my darling boy

My firstborn, whom I’ve loved with my whole entire soul and being long before this life and will love far beyond it, turns 34 today. He and his sweetheart happen to be at a wedding in Rhode Island on this birthday, one of his former housemates from junior year, when he lived with three women from his college track team. This is the fifth wedding he and his wife have attended this year I believe, their round of nuptials continues. My daughter in law sent me a photo, noting that with so many weddings on their dance card, she’s decided to simplify her life by wearing the same dress if the invitation list doesn’t overlap. Girl after my own heart, I thought. “Wise woman!” I texted her. I love that I can count on her to send me a picture of them all spruced up in different parts of the country or the world, when they travel celebrate the union of their friends. Happy birthday, my sweet boy. You and I may clash wills sometimes, though mercifully less lately, but you clearly know how to be a friend, as so many people from past eras and areas of your life continue to hold you close, and want to present on their special day.

Popsicle and puzzle

 I can’t even post, really. Sometimes it’s too much. 

But here’s a picture. A space holder. Evidence of the good. 

We keep on. 

Okay, I'm going to try and mark those three wonderful days when my niece, her husband, and their magical child were here from Dallas with us, because together we created the kinds of experiences that help us keep on, that help us remember that even when the news is too terrible to bear—the lynched boy on a college campus down south who they tried to say hanged himself; the warrantless nighttime raid on an apartment building in Chicago, with doors bashed in and apartments trashed and naked children, citizens of this country, zip tied and thrown into UHaul vans with their bewildered and terrified parents; the 44-boat flotilla bringing food to a starving people, only to have their mission of mercy violently thwarted by the marauding state, and dear god, who prevents the delivery of food to people who are dying of starvation; the answer, of course, is those who are intent on their expiration—even when all that makes the heart heavy as lead, there are still those memories we made with this precious little girl last weekend, and we must not lose sight of such goodness. So here's another photo for posterity. We women, all of the tribe of Gloria, each one of us just a bit OCD, crowded around a jigsaw puzzle and who but little Harper sat in our midst, matching pieces with the rest of us, three generations of women folk in this meditation we all enjoy. It was lovely.

 

In their auntie era

This picture came up in my phone memories, and I noticed, as I hadn't before, that it captures a perfect moment in time from our trip to Dallas last May to celebrate little Harper turning two. This was in the afternoon after all the birthday party guests had left and only family members remained, and the vibe was entirely chill. That's my husband, my daughter, her husband, and Harper's mommy in the pool, the newly minted 2-year-old in the foreground, and libations, cabana towels, and pool toys scattered all around. I simply had to share.

My daughter (center) and two of my nieces happen to have been in Dallas again last week, having decamped for an aunties week with their niece, and pool time with their cousin and sister, and, as the pictures they sent me attest, some hot air balloon time as well. I told them I was going to crash one of their auntie weeks in the future, as I sat in New York feeling FOMO, but also really enjoying the idea that these four young women have each other, that they remain closer than ever in adulthood. Truly, they have taken the lesson of my mother and her eight siblings to heart, to foster familial closeness down through the generations. My mother's generation taught us to hold these bonds sacred. The lesson took root in my generation, and is now expressing itself beautifully in my children's. My cousin Karen and I often remark  that this sense of family bequeathed by "the nine" is our parents' greatest gift to us, as it was their parents greatest gift to them.

And guess who are on their way to New York City at this very moment. My Dallas niece and her husband, and their precious little ball of main character energy, will arrive at close to midnight tonight, and will be with us until Tuesday morning. My son will be picking them up from the airport and delivering them here—cousin bonds again. It's an unexpected trip. A relative of Harper's daddy who lived in Brooklyn passed away, and the funeral is on Monday. A sad reason, but I didn't know this person, so I'm not abashed to say that I am completely primed to enjoy my Dallas crew for the few days I will have them under my roof. 

Years from now, I will look at these pictures and see no hint of the other stories simultaneously unfolding in the world. Will I feel guilty about that, I wonder.

Rethinking The English Patient

Years, decades ago now, in 1996 to be exact, I went with my mom and a friend to see The English Patient at an art house theater in the city. I remember being underwhelmed, confused, unable to connect with the story, and realizing that I was missing layers of emotional resonance, as my mom and my girlfriend both rhapsodized over the film. The story of a terminally injured war attaché whose plane was shot down in the North African desert, being cared for by a young combat nurse at a bombed out abbey in Italy at the end of World War Two, the patient’s flashbacks reveal the tale of stolen passion that brought him there. The film went on to win a slew of Academy Awards including Best Picture, and my confusion deepened. It had seemed a bit like a chimera to me, the threads all frayed and dangling, nothing anchored, nothing I could sink into, nothing that slipped down into my psyche, nothing I could trust to stay with me, provoking meaningful insights, beyond the final frame. 

Tonight, on a whim, I watched the movie again and realized how much I was questing for the tangible and sure back then, but this was a war movie, the world it depicted was upside down, nothing could be relied upon, the moment was all anyone had, everything fleeting, insubstantial and changing before it could be fixed in thought or imagination, there was only the inexorable flow of events, slow and languid, then violently surging, unpredictable, exquisite in the small details of survival if one cared to notice them, and how much more fully I understand all this now, life is an insistent teacher, one might even argue that we are once again under the psychological siege of a world at war. 

What life season must I have been in back when I first saw this achingly tender yet wrenching story of secret passion and betrayal? I seem to have had no bandwidth for ambiguity. Also, the young mapmaker protagonist, Count Lazlo Almasy, played by a stunningly beautiful young Ralph Fiennes, is so very evidently and brilliantly autistic, though I’m sure everyone missed that back then.

All these years later, I get why my mother loved the movie so much. She was a nuanced soul. She had lived through a war and knew more of life uncertainties. She also had that unbound Aquarius sensibility while I was locked in my Taurus practicality and was a new wife and mother to boot, with a four and a two year old at home. I was trying to construct the world as something I could tame, its threads not swaying, now gently, now furiously, with the changing wind. Now I know that life’s story is always open ended, always resolving, and then reshaping itself into something new, the ebb and flow of it never truly complete, the margins always outside our view. 

In my late stage surrender, I enjoyed the movie so much more. I’ll probably never learn to meet life with as brave and blithe a spirit as the Juliette Binoche character of the nurse Hana, however. But this time, I was able to take in lines like these last words of the character of Katherine, the mapmaker’s married lover played by Kristin Scott Thomas: 

“We die rich with lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we've entered and swum up like rivers. Fears we've hidden in like this wretched cave. I want all this marked on my body. We are the real countries.” 

We are the real countries. 

I completely missed this poetry before. 

Apparently Count Lazlo Almasy is based on a real Hungarian cartographer who was involved in espionage and was stationed in the North African desert during the Second World War. Has anyone here read the far denser Michael Ondaatje novel The English Patient that is the source material for the film? How do the book and film compare, I wonder? I gather the mapmaker is greatly romanticized in the fictionalized retelling of his story. Maybe I’ll read the book next, and try to peer more deeply into what my mother knew. 

Love as a communal resource

My son and his wife are married three years today! On this day three years ago we were in the Connecticut woods, beside a beautiful lake, celebrating their union, and it was the most incredibly magical and love-infused day and evening. The family chat was filled with salutations for the happy couple this morning, including from little Harper, who even though we didn't yet know, was also at the wedding, a secret presence in her mommy's belly, waiting to announce herself a couple of weeks later. 

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The other story of the day is that my son sustained his first on-the-job injury when the handle of a sledgehammer being used by a fellow firefighter to break down a door so they could gain access to an apartment fire, slammed him in the eye. It was a small fire so he wasn't wearing a helmet, and blood poured from the wound but they didn't pause, they rushed on in and doused the flames, before immediately heading to a second fire, this one much bigger. For this one he did put on his helmet, as there was much more smoke. "Did you wipe away the blood first?" I asked him, stupidly as it happens. "No," he said. "Too much soot and dirt was already on my face, and we had a job to do." 

The firefighters put out the second fire, my son working with blood running down one side of his face under the helmet. Afterward, they took him straight to the ER where the doctor cleaned and patched the wound and pronounced him very lucky because the skin in the crease of the eyelid was cut but the handle of the hammer didn't touch his eyeball or fracture the bone of his eye socket and so the two sides of the cut could be neatly glued back together, earning him a week of medical leave in the same week as his anniversary, with possibly a second week depending on how healed he is when he's assessed again on Friday. He came by our house last night to work out in the gym with his dad. There was just the slightest black-and-blue bruise on the right eyelid under the patch of medical glue, otherwise he looks and seems fine. May he and his fellow firefighters be safe and protected always.

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I have choir this afternoon. I started not to go, because when I looked in the mirror first thing this morning I frightened myself. I had my hair trimmed on Monday, and yikes she cut it short, or maybe she did what she always does and my hair is just thinning. The upshot is I look scalped, tugging coils of hair this way and that to cover the spaces. I contemplated just staying inside until my hair grows in, and then I thought, maybe if I wear makeup it will distract from the hair, and then I just decided, fuck it, this is me, so now I've pulled on my clothes and am sitting here confessing my vanities/insecurities until it's time to call a car, including the fact that even though I seldom remember to put on my wedding rings when leaving the house, today I slipped them on because the thought darted through my brain that I wanted people to think there was someone in the world who had decided to love this creased and folded face, or at least, abide with it, dang, how pitiful that sounds. But I'm going to choir! It starts in half an hour so I better wrap this up and get going. 

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Here's something our choir director Bernadette shared last week. It was written by one of her fellow choir directors, Bobby Reuter. Though condensed a bit here, I think it captures our communal endeavor so beautifully. 

"There's more to singing in a choir than simply singing. You walk into a rehearsal space carrying the week with you: the errands, the deadlines, the headlines. You open your music, take a breath, and then, with people who moments ago may have been strangers, you begin to shape sound together. In that moment, the room changes, and so do you.

"Community is forged note by note, singing is a spiritual act, and the craft of making music with others builds skills that last far beyond the rehearsal room. Every voice matters—sopranos shimmering above, altos threading warmth through the middle, tenors lighting the core, basses laying the ground. Each section holds responsibility for its own line and for how that line supports the whole tapestry of sound. In a culture that often prizes individual achievement, choral singing invites us into mutual dependence. Rehearsals blossom into friendships, and when it's time to sing in a liturgy or a concert, the choir and wider community become co-creators in a musical and spiritual experience, breathing together, listening deeply, and connecting through sound.

"The act of singing is connection, helping us process both the turbulence of the world and the quiet complexity of our inner lives. When words alone feel thin, sung words carry, and breath becomes a communal resource."

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Happy anniversary, my darling children. Your love, too, is a healing, communal resource.

Within the glare

We went to Brooklyn on Sunday for a barbecue in the back yard of our daughter and her husband. The occasion was the thirtieth birthday of one of our nieces, my husband's goddaughter Lexi, who lives in Orlando, whose sister lives in the city. Lexi had long planned that she would spend her birthday week in the city with her sister, and she and the cousins, including my son and daughter and their loves, and another niece, plus Lexi's sister and the sister's roommate, would all go out and sing karaoke on Friday night, and then have the barbecue with the same crew plus us old folks, the man and me plus another pair of aunts, on Sunday. 

Lexi arrived in the city on Monday of her birthday week to stay with her sister in Astoria, but by Tuesday it was clear she was down with something, which turned out to be Covid. Her sister and her roommate had her wear a mask but beyond that they displayed great equanimity as hosts, making the best of everything. Poor Lexi. Friday night karaoke was cancelled, but we all figured that by Sunday she would be five days into Covid, therefore not very contagious anymore, and if she wore her mask and we all stayed mostly outdoors we'd be okay to go ahead with the barbecue, and we'd salvage at least that part of the birthday celebration. So that's what we did. We had a lovely family time together, and no one has gotten sick in the aftermath, so I'm thinking the plan worked out okay. 

There's so much else I could write about, but I'm out of practice, still working my way back in. I can't begin to process what's happening in the world. There's just so much. I feel a lot less scared of it all lately. What's the point of being scared? It's not as if I can really change anything that is unfolding. I told the young 'uns that I lie in bed at night a weave light around them to keep them safe and invisible to the forces of ill. They looked at me with indulgent smiles that said there goes my crazy aunt again. All but my daughter. She came over and put her arms around my neck and laid her head against my cheek. She gives the most delicious hugs. 

I guess I'll just throw up some pictures and let this post be lame. My soul feels actually tired. The sky's glare feels too bright. The world itself is overstimulating. But I'll be okay. Oh, good news, the day I sent the manuscript, I woke up at 4AM that night and there was an email from my subject, sent at 1:31 AM Los Angeles time. She had already finished reading through Part One of the manuscript, and she wrote that she was "genuinely moved by how clearly" I'd captured her voice. She was really happy with what she had read so far. That was such a relief to hear. Okay, pictures in no particular order. 

We sang happy birthday and the birthday girl, in red, blew out her candles with a hand fan.

Younger sister of the birthday girl, who moved to the city after college and ended up quarantined with us during Covid. She and her roommate now live in Astoria, near to my son and his wife. There are the Brooklyn cousins and the Astoria cousins.

The newly marrieds celebrated a year this summer. Their Brooklyn back yard is quickly becoming a favorite family gathering spot.

While everyone else dressed up and traveled to get to the party, the Brooklyn cousins had an enchanted air of rolling out of bed and into the back yard. 

My son in law made me a bouquet of flowers in some of my favorite colors to celebrate my finishing a first draft of my manuscript.

My son and I have been getting along quite harmoniously lately, because I consciously changed my way of relating to him. He noticed, and admitted it made him change his way of relating to me, too. His wife says he often tells her that he and I are the same. Not sure that's true, but we are both control freaks for sure. We're both now releasing that a bit where each other is concerned. This is good.

One of my brainy, beautiful nieces. She too lived with us for a bit after she graduated college, while she was looking for an apartment. My daughter says we two have the same anxiety profile. It is true that we have come to understand each other quite well. 

My daughter and son in law really lucked out with that urban back yard.

My daughter with merch from her husband's social media content.

The street corn they made was the most delicious I ever tasted.