Inflatable thing

I lay in the darkness this morning and felt myself sinking under the waves, felt myself going under, had to fight my way back to the surface, trying to find breath, trying to breathe without the feeling of a thousand tiny knives. It came out of nowhere, and yet was so enticingly familiar, the sinking, the awareness of darkness closing in, the long sad weariness with myself, inviting me to relax into it, like I was an inflatable thing with a slow leak and suddenly, with no warning, I was empty of light and air. 

Mom, have you gone back to therapy after surgery yet?

No, I feel like I have nothing to talk about. 

Well, don’t wait till you’re in crisis. The real work happens when you’re not just trying to stem the bleeding. 

I reached for my phone in the dark and messaged my therapist that I was ready to start back, Mondays were still good and could I schedule an appointment. I put the phone down and concentrated on trying to breathe. 

What tipped me over? It might seem like the shallowest thing. Mere vanity even. My hair. I hadn’t had it cut since before my surgery. It grew willy nilly, curls popping out, refusing to be tucked in, except the top , which got straight and thin and wispy the longer it grew, only being tamed with curling foam that laid it down. I took the scissors to the rest, snipping off wayward coils to achieve a uniform shape, till the whole thing was wildly uneven. The woman I trust to cut and color this head full of different textures isn’t back in town till late April. I decided I couldn’t wait. I went to someone else yesterday for a repair job. It was a disaster. I’m scalped at the back and sides yet the top is still too long. She didn’t understand that the back and sides lie flat against my head when its too short and the top doesn’t curl till it’s shorter. So now I look even crazier. And I had her color it too because I was tired of the gray, but she went too dark so now I look wan and jaundiced against my patchy too dark hair with scalp peeking out all over. I look as if I just underwent a fairly aggressive round of chemo, which is to say when people see me, they're going to ask with concern, "Are you okayy??" 

It’s hard enough being inside this body on a good day. It’s harder after several weeks of poor sleep because I have to lie on my back because the hip is still healing inside, and sleeping on my back is uncomfortable as hell, my whole body aches by morning (except the hip) and I know, I know, I have no good reason to feel so low, I have so many blessings in my life, I know I do, but I get so tired of myself sometimes, I have a hard enough time showing up in the world, and this new scalped chic was just about the last straw. 

Every time I think I might stop writing here because this crazy world, I realize I’m literally insane and I need to write out my insanity and this place is therapy and don’t mind me I’m just here trying to keep on.  

__________

The kids are in Paris for her birthday. Here they are inside the Louvre. She’s walking fine on her braced ankle. They look like art themselves. See? Blessings. 

Every body is healing

First, the Costa Rica update: My girl was having a wonderful time, then her husband and I received this text on the day before she was to return to New York: 

What we couldn't see was that as she was texting, she was crumpled on the beach, unable to move, her ankle throbbing and ballooning. A woman photographer came over to her and held her hand and talked to her soothingly while the surfing instructor went to find a rescue vehicle. Then some men on the beach helped carry our girl to the vehicle and helped settle her inside, after which the instructor drove into town in search of a medical clinic. The first two were closed. Finally they found a pharmacy staffed by a "lovely woman doctor," according to my daughter. The doctor spoke no English, but there was a woman there who translated the Spanish, and my daughter understood that though her ankle was very painful and she could put no weight on it, no bones were broken. 

Then the doctor brought out a syringe to inject something into the swollen joint and my girl, who is needle phobic, began to hyperventilate and cry. An older Black woman who was shopping in the pharmacy heard her distress. She came over to my daughter and hugged her and stroked her head and tried to comfort her. "She began rubbing my heart," my daughter told us later, unperturbed, because the woman's actions did help to calm her as the doctor administered multiple shots to her ankle and foot. "Honestly, Mom," my daughter said afterward, her voice bright, despite the ordeal she had just been through, "I felt as if I was surrounded by angels the entire time."  

"What did the doctor inject you with?" I inquired.

My daughter, who was back in her hotel room FaceTiming with her husband and me by then, burst out laughing. "I didn't ask," she admitted. "I wasn't even curious. I guess I was just trusting the universe."

I hyperventilated a bit myself at that point, but what could I do? My husband said later the injections were probably a steroid to keep the swelling down.

For the rest of her final day at the beach in Costa Rica she iced and elevated the ankle, ordered room service for dinner, and got around in a wheelchair the hotel provided. She said everyone, to the last person, could not have been kinder and more helpful to her. The next morning, someone at the hotel made her breakfast to go for the hour and a half trip back to the airport, where she would be met by a wheelchair. While she was in the car, I was having my PT session in New York. I called my daughter so that my wonderful physical therapist, Deidre, could give her a few tips for the plane: wriggle your toes, do ankle pumps to the degree your pain will allow, move the leg back and forth from the knee, and ice the ankle if you can. 

Her brother met her at JFK, along with her sister in law and her husband. Her brother brought her crutches and showed her how to use them. On their way to his car, our girl sent her dad and me a picture of her brother pushing her in a wheelchair, big smiles on all their faces and I thought: She's still surrounded by angels. That was the moment when I finally exhaled. 

The next day, our intrepid traveler summed up her Costa Rica experience in a text she sent me: "I had an adventure. And I remembered that I trust that the world. Doesn't stop bad things from happening but I'm surrounded by good energy to bring me through those times." 

May this forever be her truth.

She went for an X-ray to confirm nothing was broken and is now doing PT, recovering slowly. She and her husband are supposed to travel to Paris at the end of the month for her birthday, and her PT person thinks she will be able to make the trip. In the midst of it all, she had a job interview yesterday for an internal transfer at her company, and was up till 3AM the night before finishing a deck for her presentation to the four-person panel. Apparently she aced it, because they offered her the job at the end of the interview. I am in awe of her.

___________

In news of my own healing, I had my six-week follow up with my surgeon this week, and everything appears to be progressing well. My son drove me to my appointment and waited for me as I underwent X-rays and the physical assessment of my gait and how the joint itself is operating. The new titanium hardware and rotating ball are playing nicely with the bone and surrounding tissue, fusing where needed, rolling as appropriate, and I have now been released from movement precautions. This means I can bend past ninety degrees again, cross my legs, turn my feet inward, bend over a jigsaw puzzle and peer closely at the pieces to my heart's content, and lean far forward to study the flow of sentence on my laptop screen, all without worrying about dislocating the new hip joint. 

I confessed to my physical therapist yesterday that my arthritis flares are back, which I suppose is to be expected given that my post surgery medications have now been stopped, including the twice daily mega doses of aspirin, which served as a blood thinner, and the morning dose of meloxicam, an anti-inflammatory to help tame swelling in the surgical leg. Both of these also nicely throttled back random body pains. But, as I told my husband when I became aware of the old aches returning, "Everything hurts, except the hip, and that is massive." 

In the past, people always insisted to me that the remedy for arthritis pain is movement. Nah, I'd think. That's just more pain. Of course it was. I was walking on a broken limb. But now, when I ache, I find that my actual impulse is to grab my trusty cane and go for a walk. It's what my instinctive brain is telling me to do, and I obey. And it does help. The pain recedes. My body feels more limber. Holy moly, walking actually feels good. 

My son and I had some errands to run after my appointment. In the Whole Foods store, as I trundled along, he said, "Is that pace comfortable for you? Because you might want to slow down." Apparently I was moving faster than he was comfortable with. I walk just fine without the cane at home, but my PT person wants me to use it in public until at least three months post surgery, as apparently the bulk of my healing will occur between six weeks (now) and three months. As well as I feel, and despite my incision being externally sealed, internal restoration is ongoing. I am also working hard in my weekly PT sessions to reawaken and strengthen muscles that I have avoided using for fourteen years. My therapist points out that the cane is a visual cue to people that I'm not yet entirely steady so please don't run me over. I find I'm becoming fond of my cane, which is ironic given how I spurned the use of one when I severely needed it. Oh, me.

At large in the world

My youngest is traveling solo in Costa Rica until mid week, so of course my whole consciousness is there with her, willing her safely from one place to the next, praying constantly for her well being, entreating guardian angels to surround her, and visualizing her laughing and joyful in auras of beautiful light. She just up and decided she wanted a break from the regularly scheduled programming, to reconnect with herself in a tropical place, so off she went, and now I will not take a full breath till she is back home, as much as I admire her agency and sense of the world being hers to experience as she chooses. I trust she will have a wonderful time.

How did my own mother stand it, I belatedly wonder , my traveling solo all over this country and to different parts of the world in my twenties, as a reporter for Life magazine, scouting people and places for stories, before returning with a photographer, often for weeks at a time, to develop fully realized photo essays. I had no fear for myself, but now I'm remembering some of the isolated places I ventured. Some of them opened their arms to me, like Greasewood Canyon, Colorado, and the North Woods of Minnesota, where I reported on hermits; and The Falkand Islands at the foot of South America, when I traveled to find a fleet of perfectly preserved sailing ships wrecked centuries before in their passage around Cape Horn. Other places had a distinctly unfriendly air—Cheyenne, Wyoming, where I visited an archeological dig, even felt a bit unsafe; so many gun racks in pickup trucks emblazoned with confederate flags. But how did my mother endure me being in all those unvetted regions on my own? I confess I was oblivious back then to her possible concerns. Like most twenty somethings, I felt close to invulnerable.

Here's a photo of me in my twenties in the Minnesota North Woods lake area. I've posted it before. I was there with photographer Brian Lanker for a story on a local legend known as Knife Lake Dorothy, who had lived alone on one the Boundary Waters Wilderness islands for fifty years. Then in her seventies, she was the very definition of a powerful and self-directed woman. 

I saw a factoid last night—America has only not been at war for sixteen of its two hundred and fifty years of independence. 

In times such as these, my beloved girl is at large in the world. Never wonder why I pray.

Post-its and mothers

My friend, a fellow journalist who I worked with for many years, sent me a care package that included that pink flower power coffee mug. "My favorite cup, now you have one, too, so we can be twins," the post-it stuck to the mug read. The box also contained thick, white, woolly socks, "from Canada" the post-it said (my friend is from Toronto, though she now lives in Brooklyn), and that scarf I'm wearing in the picture, made for me by her mother, the colors of the yarn chosen by my friend. How dearly I will cherish these gifts, especially that wonderful scarf, knitted by a mother's hands.

Lately, I keep hearing my own mother's voice saying, "Oh my darling, we are so blessed." She repeated it often in life, like a mantra, a refrain, as if the words themselves could weave a net of protection around her beloveds. Not to be all woo-woo, but in the midst of our mind bogglingly insane world, I feel her net of protection, still. If this is mere delusion, at least it’s an emotionally comforting one. 
 

Sitrep

In the days before my hip replacement surgery I felt my mother’s presence near me all the time. At night, I dreamed of her, and in the days, she was always somewhere in my thoughts. I knew it wasn’t that she had come for me, rather, she was there to reassure that all would be well, I would not die from this routine operation I had spent fourteen years fearing and delaying, because my cousin died from it in 2011, and my own hip gave out, bone crashing against bone, on the very day of his funeral. 

I was due at the hospital at 5:30 am, my surgery scheduled for 8 am, my surgeon’s first of the day. The streets were icy, some roads impassable, the snowbanks mountainous from the winter storm the day before, which had dumped a foot of snow on the city. My son slept over, as he would be driving his dad and me to the hospital at 4:30 am. The night before our daughter called to say she would travel from Brooklyn to get to our apartment at 4 am to be with me before I left home. I knew she was worrying about not seeing me before I went under. “I’m not going to die,” I promised her, not liking the idea of her traveling an hour alone with a strange Uber driver in the wee hours along icy roadways. “I’m coming,” she insisted. “I need to hug my mama.” She ended up going to the hospital with us, so they were all there as I underwent surgery, and they stayed all day, my whole family, husband and kids, abiding with me.

It went well. I am healing. My son moved in the first week to help out, along with his dad, who had taken the week off from work to tend to me. My stoic men anticipated my every need. My daughter and her husband moved in the second week, when my husband returned to work, and again, I could not have been better cared for. Honestly, the part of all this that moves me to tears every time I think of it is how completely my children stepped up for me. How present they were. How loved they made me feel. Love in action. They showed me just what that means. 

I’m three weeks into recovery now and already the gains are exponential. The full body pain I lived with for more than a decade is gone. I am walking strongly on both legs, my left leg holds me, despite my two imperfect knees, which I am learning to work with. It’s amazing how much the effort to compensate for the broken hip—because I understand now that I was walking around with a broken joint and that’s not a euphemism—threw my entire skeletal and muscular structure out of whack and how quickly those flares of pain receded once alignment was restored. I still need to rebuild muscles, strength, heal tendons, and observe no bending precautions for another few weeks, as well as continue to faithfully do my PT, learn to listen to my body when it gets fatigued because I’ve done too much (because, typical of me, with the assigned exercises, I tend toward “anything worth doing is worth overdoing”), and generally be patient with myself as full and total recovery takes up to a full year. 

Plot twist, my operated-on left leg is now the longer one. This is fairly common with this operation and it may “settle” as the muscles and tendons stretched and manipulated in the procedure tighten/strengthen over time. And if it doesn't, oh well, I'll still sway to one side when I walk but I will no longer be in pain. I have already regained a much greater range of motion, and can ambulate for increasing distances with little effort, which was impossible before. I still get tired. I’m also sleeping horribly because I’m confined to lying only on my back and I’m not naturally a back sleeper. I have to ice and elevate the swollen surgical leg several times a day, and make sure I walk every hour. I have to ice the right knee too, as it’s doing the work of the shorter leg now, and has its own issues. The physical therapist gives me quad sets to do to support the knees, as I also rehab the hip and leg that I avoided putting any weight on for fourteen years. I’m trying to be the proverbial good student, to nail this recovery journey. All is generally going well. 

I’m also back to work, because I was getting really bored, too distracted to read deeply, and watching too much TV. I can’t sit at a desk or table though, as I’m inclined to lean forward, past the verboten ninety degree angle to peer at my laptop screen, which prior to six weeks, could cause the healing hip joint to dislocate. So I sit in the recliner in the back bedroom, laptop propped on my bent right leg, and make do. I’m grateful to have work to do, the perfect project really for this extended period of physical restoration. I’m editing a wonderful and often heartbreaking coming of age memoir by an actor who’s finally getting his due. A lovely man. 

In some ways, I feel like my life is entering a brand new stage but I don’t yet know what shape it will take. In the meantime, imagine me reclined in that chair in my daughter’s former bedroom, elevating my healing leg between regularly scheduled walks, doing editing work that feels meaningful, and conjuring possibilities for a future in which mobility is no longer an obstacle.

Life inside the bubble

I got my son into watching The West Wing over the holidays and now he's off to the races with the series, on season three already. He said, "This is the first time I've glimpsed why anyone might want to work in politics," he said. "It never made any sense before." Of course, we're so far away from that vision of political life now, but it's still a comfort watch, to imagine a world in which people serve with an actual desire to make others’ lives better. My boy is such a good son. He came with me to all my pre-surgery screenings this week, drove me there and back, sat in with me on the PT recovery planning meeting, helped me order the stuff I'm going to need, and has generally made me feel very taken care of. Yes, he can be a bit bossy, but we do understand it's his love language.

The little one is back in Dallas with her parents, and I miss her little face, her nonstop chatter, her busyness and rich imagination. She said to her grandma, "Let's go and play in my room," and I love that she has identified a room on our apartment as being her room. It is where she sleeps when she is here, so it stands to reason, after all.

Here's something else I love: How my daughter and her cousins love and enjoy each other. How when Harper's mom is in town, they all get together and paint the town, young women together having a supremely grand time. I told them send me pictures so I could relive my youth vicariously, and they indulged me. The next day, they lay on beds and couches all over my house, somewhat hung over, but all in agreement that the time they had was worth it. It certainly looks like it was!

My husband is upstate today, working with a small natural history musuem, teaching its science associates and student volunteers updated best practices for preserving its ichthyology collection. While he was there the snow started to come down. He's making his way home now through the still falling snow. I'm just sitting here, The West Wing playing on Netflix as I get ready to pick out end pieces for a puzzle my daughter gave me for Christmas and wait for the sound of his key in the door. Here's what it looks like right now outside my window.

And here's the very cool puzzle I'm about to lose myself in. Puzzles are my mediatation.

One more, this is me one week before my bionic hip. I look so optimistic, like I'm saying, okay fam, here we go.

Whimsy and rage

I ran across that long ago photo of myself while looking for some records for the lawyer who is drawing up our will and healthcare proxy and advance directives and other important life documents one should have in place when one is about to undergo surgery, no matter how routine. My children were four and one when that photo was taken in 1995. It ran with a story I wrote for a magazine about my father's last days and how watching him die brought into sharp focus the tender long married love between my parents. I recall the photographer told me, "Don't smile, it's a sad story," and I said, "But it's also a beautiful one."

I find myself unable to write much here. I heard a woman the other day speak of the schizophrenia of holding whimsy in one hand and explosive rage in the other. I lie in bed at night beside my husband, reading or maybe streaming something, distancing for a moment the tragedies unfolding daily, a woman, a mother of three, her head blown off by the state while citizen cameras rolled, we all saw it, we watched it again and again from many angles, the spray of red against the windscreen of her car as it meandered out of control into a telephone pole. The shooter, whose words in the immediate aftermath, caught on tape, were "Fkn bitch," was quickly whisked from the scene and rushed into hiding by the state. In the days since, his masked and heavily armed cohorts have doubled down, terrorizing American citizens with threats of the same happening to them, their only crime, caring for their fellow citizens, and simply existing with a sense of decency intact in their souls. It's all distraction, distraction, distraction from the darkest tales you can imagine, no, darker than that. And it's working, too. Another woman asked, "How do we vote our way out of this?" I have been wondering the same thing. I'm not saying don't vote, but how do we come back from where we now find ourselves? It's not that I've lost hope. My city managed to elect a bright young idealist for mayor. They'll try at every turn to stymie him, but at least he's an agent of light shining a torch into the descending night. But you see my dilemma: how can I comfortably write here when what flows from my fingers only makes me a target, too.

Christmas came and went. It was low key and undramatic inside the bubble of my whimsy. We gather, we hold each other, we laugh and love, we commune. The Dallas crew was here again this weekend, the little one had another one of those playdate things at a crunchy granola Quaker preschool her parents hope she will be admitted to for when they move back to the city later this year. She is in rare two-year-old form, testing the boundaries and her vocal range, how well I remember this stage, but also sweet as can be, brilliant and imaginative and verbal, our darling girl. 

I got laid off from the magazine last week, so that happened. I was one of thirty-six editorial staffers released from employment, including some very key personnel, suggesting the publication will be suspending print and going all digital. The Chief Content Officer quit the same day the layoffs came down, as if to say, Nosireeebob, I'm not presiding over this sh*t show. I respected it. At least I won't have to worry about juggling the editing of stories while I'm trying to rehab from my upcoming hip surgery. It's two weeks away now. I'm scared and excited. I'm really doing this thing.

The politics of hope

 

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.