"I’m feeling so weak and dizzy,” my daughter says, flopping onto the couch with an exhausted sigh.

They’ve been going through some health challenges and they’ve just come home early from work. They’ve been to the doctor. They’re proactively trying to make things better. And yet, my parentified GenX brain still chides silently, Then stop whining and do something!

And every time my brain makes that unspoken judgment, I hate myself just a little. Because intellectually, I know what my kid needs: They need someone to say, “God, that sucks! I’m so sorry. I really hate that you’re going through this.” And instead, my first instinct is to say, “Tough it out. You’ve got this. Have you checked in with your doctor? What’s next?”

I just want to fix things, the way I used to when my kid was nine as opposed to almost 29. But clearly, I can’t give my daughter a kiss on the top of the head to make it all better. They don’t need me to problem-solve, they just need my presence. That’s what the moment requires.

And it’s really fucking hard.

I grew up in the “rub some dirt on it” generation. Our parents left us alone at precariously young ages to figure out our own problems and solve them without much help. And so, I’ve long embraced my role as the oldest child, only girl, and the mature kid who was “wise beyond her years.” I’ve assigned myself the role of “fixer,” and when I can’t fix something, I flail.

But I can’t fix my kid’s health issues. And even though I suspect they’re going to be OK, right now they need me to validate, witness, and be the person who gives a hug instead of an answer.

If I’m not the answer person, then who am I?

My daughter and I have had variations on the same conversation over the years. They open up about a problem; I offer solutions. They discard most of the solutions and present me with 15 reasons why those solutions won’t work for them. I get cranky and say, “OK, whatever! Do what you want. Why do you even ask me?”

Their answer is usually… telling.

“I didn’t ask for anything! I’m just letting you know what I’m going through.”

And usually, I don’t want to hear that. Because it negates everything I’ve grown up believing myself to be: the fixer, the problem-solver, the wise-beyond-her-years one. Why won’t my kid just accept my solutions? Wouldn’t most people feel grateful to have a fixer in their corner?

When I was laid off in 2024, I felt some relief at first. I hated my corporate job, which seemed to be getting worse with each new upper manager who flowed through the revolving door. I got a decent severance, and I could use my unemployment benefits to keep from spending the money I’d tucked into savings. But as the months wore on, the panic set in. My savings was nearly depleted, my unemployment benefits were expiring, and I was, to use the vernacular of job seekers everywhere, fucked.

Over the course of a year, I sent out more than 1,000 résumés and landed six interviews.

Then came the advice.

“Have you looked into working for the state? My cousin just got a job with—”

Gosh, the realization that I live in a capital city where state offices are ubiquitous almost escaped me! Thanks for the suggestion.

"What if you signed up for [Uber/DoorDash/Amazon Flex], just temporarily?”

Why didn’t I think of that? It’s possible I gave up on stuff like DoorDash because in our small city I couldn’t make enough to make my car payment let alone my mortgage and it was taking energy I didn’t have away from the work I needed to be doing to, you know, actually survive.

All these people thoughtfully and kindly trying to fix my life for me. When what I mostly needed was for someone to see me, validate what I was experiencing, and say, “God, that sucks!"

And for each “solution,” I anxiously offered 15 reasons why they could never work, all while feeling ungrateful because I wasn’t more accepting of their ideas.

Eventually, it was a friend from the choir community I belong to who put forth a solution I could work with. Callie had never offered job hunting tips. She was compassionate, contributed to the GoFundMe I was forced to put online to survive (as did so many other beautiful souls, for which I’m humbled), and then gently shared a “trickle” income source she thought might help just a little—managing Zoom tech for the Quaker community she belonged to. And because this wouldn’t sap my energy like delivering subs during the lunch rush, I accepted.

And then I met a lovely community of progressive, justice-minded people whose entire worldview revolves not around offering answers but asking questions. It doesn’t matter if you’re a new “seeker” or an elder who’s been practicing Quakerism for a lifetime—Quakers consistently have more questions than answers. And although I’m agnostic, I’m absolutely here for that whole vibe. Each Sunday, I preside over the Quakers’ silent worship, making sure people who can’t come to the Meetinghouse are able to join remotely. There’s no preacher, no pulpit, just a community sitting in silence, pondering. Occasionally, someone will rise to share a “message”—some thought or idea moving within them. And often, those messages are profound and world-shaping.

So, when the Quakers needed to hire an office manager—a role they call Hearthkeeper—I was asked whether I’d like to apply. Of course, I said yes. And I was offered the position for fair pay, albeit on a very part-time basis. It wasn’t enough, but it was at least enough to help me pay my monthly mortgage. The rest, I cobble together writing on Substack (thank you, subscribers!), freelancing for Grammar Girl, writing for a local arts publication, and taking whatever odd gigs I can find.

I’m still barely scraping by. But I am somehow scraping by.

My redemption (well, my ability to hang on by my fingertips, at least) didn’t come in the form of a quick-fix solution offered by a well-meaning friend or family member. It didn’t start with someone saying, “Maybe you should…” but rather someone saying, “I know this isn’t much, but if you’re interested…”

And I think that’s all it takes, really. We all want to fix others’ discomfort, ostensibly because we hope to improve things for them. But in reality, I’ve learned that the urge to fix is often born out of our own discomfort. We don’t like to see people we care about struggling. We want everything to go back to good, or at least to whatever “normal” feels like for us.

Now, I look at my daughter and everything I want to say bubbles to the surface of my conscience. Have you tried…? Did you do…? Are you getting enough…? What about…?

I push those words down carefully. They come from a place of love, but I know they’re not what’s needed in this moment. I step forward, open my arms, embrace my child, and say, “God, that sucks!”

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“Which way?” Ra asks. My daughter is driving today, but only I know how to get where we’re going. I’ve been there before, they have not.

“Just keep heading south,” I say, fluttering a hand dismissively in a southerly direction.

“This way?” they point straight ahead.

“Yes,” I snap. South, for fuck sake. South is south!

“Why are you like this?” Ra whines. “You know I don’t know directions like you do.”

I slide down in the seat, crossing my arms over my chest. And before I know it, I’m thinking judgmental thoughts I don’t want to be thinking. Who doesn’t know which way south is? Aren’t the cardinal directions elementary school stuff?

Turns out they are, yes, but people generally have a much worse sense of direction than most of us assume. In other words, if you don’t know which way’s north… you’re in good company.

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I went down a rabbit hole recently and discovered that human navigation typically splits into two categories: egocentric (self-centered) and allocentric (world-centered). Most people rely on egocentric route-following using landmarks. (“Turn left by the gas station.”) But people with high spatial intelligence are allocentric. They rely on a sort of god’s-eye view of the landscape.

I’m an allocentric navigator. Ra? Not so much.

A researcher named Nora Newcombe and the folks at the Hegarty Spatial Thinking Lab have a name for what I do: “survey mapping.” It’s not just a good sense of direction; it’s more like carrying a fixed mental grid of the world that doesn’t shift when your body does. The map stays put; you move through it.

What’s even wilder is what linguist Lera Boroditsky found studying people whose languages don’t use words like “left” and “right,” only absolute directions, like north and south. Those people develop what amounts to an internal compass so finely tuned it operates below conscious thought. They don’t calculate where north is. They just... know. The same way you know which way is up.

The catch is that this background operating system can go offline.

* * * *

I’m 25. I’ve just moved to Ashwaubenon, a little suburb southeast of Green Bay, Wisconsin, to follow my fiancé, Peter, who just took an exciting new job there. But he asks me to get my own separate apartment, which seems strange.

“I’m not ready for you to move in yet,” he tells me. He has to get things settled with Patty, he says. I’ve been told she’s his ex girlfriend, and that she suddenly showed up on his doorstep with a baby saying it was his. Peter has embraced his infant son, Brandon, and I’m going along for the ride.

“If Patty finds out about you,” Peter warns me, “I don’t know what she’ll do. She’s psycho. She’ll take Brandon and run to get even with me. I’ll never see my son again.”

“But why would she be upset about me?” I ask. “If you’re broken up, then you’re both free to be with other people, right?”

Peter shakes his head. “You don’t know her,” he says. “In her mind, I broke her heart, and if she can’t have me, no one can. I can’t let her know about you until we have some sort of custody order.”

I accept what he’s saying—I have no choice—but it still feels off. Just as Ashwaubenon does. For some reason, although I never get lost—in fact, I find it almost impossible to get lost even when I’m trying to—every time I get onto the freeway with the intent of heading south, I end up going north and having to turn around when I realize I’ve screwed up. I’m baffled. Why does this little city have me so disoriented?

And then, only a month or so after I move into my own apartment, Patty moves in with Peter. It’s just temporary, he tells me. Her mom kicked her and the baby out of their house. Patty has nowhere to go. He has to provide a place for Brandon, doesn’t he? And just as soon as he gets some money set aside to file for custody rights, he’ll send her packing. After all, she’s making a nearly two-hour commute, one way, to go to work in Milwaukee every day. Over time, that’s going to wear her down, right? And then she’ll go.

But she stays. And I’m forced to stay hidden. I’ll never quite understand why I bought into it all, except that Peter could be incredibly convincing. When I think about my naivety now, I’m ashamed I didn’t cut Peter loose then and there.

Things with the Peter and Patty situation continue to escalate. Patty often spends the week down in West Allis, staying with her mom to avoid the commute.

“If she’s just staying with her mom all week anyhow, then what was the point of her mom kicking her out?” I ask.

Peter says that Patty’s mom views her staying as a houseguest as different from, and somehow more palatable than, her actually living there.

So, during the week, I stay with Peter. And that means navigating around Patty’s things. Her clothing strewn everywhere. Her hygiene products all over the bathroom. Peter calls her “hurricane Patty,” because she leaves his place a mess.

And during the week, I clean it. I don’t want to see Peter living like that, do I? And what of Brandon, the baby I’d met many times? Peter brings him by when he takes Patty’s car to gas it up for her commute. Do I want to see Brandon living in squalor? Of course not.

So I live separately from my fiancé. I clean up after his baby mamma. (Or so I thought. I would later learn that Peter was the hurricane.) And I continue to turn north when I want to go south.

* * * *

I would have to write a novella to recount all of the things that happened in Green Bay in detail, so I’ll summarize instead.

Patty stayed for many months. Autumn turned to winter turned to spring. I stayed with Peter during the week and cleaned around Patty’s things while Peter reassured me he slept on the couch every night despite the absence of blankets or pillows.

(“I put them away every morning.” OK, but you put those things away and nothing else? Really?)

One night, I walked past Peter’s apartment, as I often did, and saw candlelight flickering in the bedroom window.

(“You don’t get it. The woman loves candles. She literally lights candles every night.” I walk by almost every night, and I haven’t seen candles before.)

And then, while cleaning, I found a Rough Rider condom wrapper on the floor on Peter’s side of the bed. I was on birth control. I believed I was in a committed relationship. We didn’t use condoms.

(“She forced me to! She was trying to seduce me. You don’t get it—she’s literally crazy!” Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Why is he doing this to me? I trusted him!)

The condom incident led me to buy a pack of straight razors and sit in my bathtub holding a blade poised over my wrist for over an hour while the water turned cold before crawling out, drying off, and lying in bed cold and demoralized.

And I kept turning north when I wanted to go south.

Weeks later, I contacted an attorney. I asked her about custody law. I explained Peter’s situation and his “Patty the psycho” narrative. Looking back, I’m sure the attorney saw me as pathetic. But to my shock, Peter actually followed through. He filed the suit, evicted Patty (who would prove to be pretty “psycho” in the future, even forcing me to file a restraining order against her), and I moved in.

It was around that time, when I stopped cleaning up after my own humiliation and took some action, that I stopped turning north when I meant to go south and started what would prove to be a very long journey toward discovering myself for the first time.

* * * *

I married Peter, convinced I could make him into the person I needed him to be instead of the man he was, someone who lied and cheated his way through life.

We had a son we named Ian. Not long after he was born, Patty discovered Peter was not only living with me, but we were married and had a child together. Peter had convinced Patty somehow that he was living with her, and the reason he was never home—he slept at our apartment nearly every single night, although not all—was due to work travel. But he was a new car sales manager, and Patty couldn’t quite bring herself to believe that someone who sold cars needed to travel constantly. She grew suspicious and eventually tracked down Peter’s real home address… and me.

When Ian was just a toddler, my grandpa—my person, someone who always made me feel safe and loved—died in his sleep of a massive heart attack. A few months later, my grandma, who now lived alone, fell on her concrete stoop and hit her head. She lay there in the cold until the neighbors found her and helped her inside. I convinced Peter that we should move in with my 78-year-old grandmother. She welcomed the company.

We lived with Grandma for a couple of years. Enough time for me to have another child, our daughter Shayla (who now uses the gender-neutral nickname I gave them when they were a teenager, Ra.) Peter and Grandma, now in her 80s, fought sometimes. I couldn’t stomach the idea of my husband raising his voice to my grandmother, and it became a source from which much conflict in our relationship flowed.

Although it was 1997 and the paint was still drying on this new technology called the Internet, Peter managed to meet women online and recruit them into sexual relationships. But of course, they all lived a few hundred miles away. Two in Minnesota. One in Missouri. Peter called them on the house landline—this was well before everyone had a cell phone—and ran up an enormous phone bill. He discovered Grandma’s credit card lying out one day and used it to pay off his delinquent account. Grandma asked my mom to review this weird charge on her bill, and all signs pointed back to Peter. Mom confronted me about it, and I immediately kicked him out of my grandparents’ home.

I wish I could say that I’d found my true north by then. But although I was back home where the freeway system was familiar and my internal map was flawless, my emotional compass still glitched. When I realized that not only would I be financially responsible for raising two children alone but that Peter would almost certainly get joint custody, I invited him back into my life. Living with Peter at Grandma’s was no longer an option, so we rented half of a duplex.

Life went on. There were some OK years, particularly when Peter opted to take medication for what his counselor labeled “complex PTSD” but privately told me was probably borderline personality disorder—something then considered mostly untreatable.

But there were many abjectly awful years, too. I continued to slog through the emotional turmoil and Peter’s abuse, which sometimes got physical. I knew that even though I no longer wanted to be with Peter, I was fused to him, locked in a dysfunctional dance until my children were grown and I could leave.

* * * *

It’s 2023. I’ve long since left Peter and moved to the Pacific Northwest. Although my son Ian opted to finish college in Wisconsin, Ra lives with me. We’re content. I’ve bought a house, Ra pays rent and contributes to bills, and we’re doing OK, just the two of us.

We’ve finished eating dinner and the TV is on, but we’re not really watching. Some random thing I’d learned that day pops into my head.

“Did you know that some people can’t visualize?”

“Yeah,” Ra says. We watch a lot of the same content on TikTok, which is where I first heard about this trait called “aphantasia.”

“There’s a test that asks you to picture an apple, and then say what color it is, as if you’re actually seeing something,” I say. “But how can that be effective? People are going to just make stuff up, right? If you ask me what color my apple is, I’ll just pick a color at random and say that’s it. What does that test even tell people?”

“Um…”

“Like, when someone tells you to picture an apple, you don’t see an actual picture of an apple. That’s ridiculous!”

“Mom—”

“We just think about the idea of—”

“I see an apple, mother.”

I quirk an eyebrow. “Do you mean ‘see’ an apple? As in, you see a real image of an apple?”

“Yes.”

I’m stunned. Almost speechless. What?

“You’re saying you actually see something? In your head?”

“Mom, I can watch a full-blown movie in my head if I want to.”

“And most people can do that?”

“As far as I know, yeah.”

“What the—?”

“Mother,” my daughter smirks. They not only love watching me make an intellectual discovery, but they’re also a little smug about having realized something about me mere seconds before I did. “You have aphantasia.”

* * * *

I’ve been putting the pieces together ever since.

Aphantasia, the inability (or diminished ability) to visualize, affects from 1 to 4 percent of the population. But people like me, with a total inability to visualize, make up 0.8 percent. (Although those numbers are likely skewed, because many people are just like I was—they don’t realize that most people actually can visualize.)

When asked to “picture” something in my mind’s eye, I always assumed that “picture” was a metaphor for “think about conceptually.” It was a revelation to realize that I lacked an ability most people had.

Then the aphantasia discovery started making other parts of my life make sense. Like my astonishingly good sense of direction. Just like a blind person compensates by strengthening other senses, my own brain had strengthened my spatial reasoning abilities. When I learned about the connections researchers were drawing between aphants (a term for people with aphantasia) and heightened abilities like spatial reasoning, something clicked for me.

A few years ago, I discovered a curious lifelong ability I’ve had: I can tell you which cardinal direction the head of my bed faced in every home I’ve ever lived in. Instantly. With barely a thought.

The house on Lake Nagawicka? West when I slept downstairs, north when I moved to the upstairs room.

And I’m not pulling those directions out of thin air, even though it seems like it. I’m not making them up. I just know them. The same thing is true even of temporary lodging. That Airbnb in White Salmon? East. My brother’s place in Colorado? Also East.

When my friend bought a new house and we stood in her backyard surveying her soon-to-be garden for the first time, she tried to gauge how much sunlight the spot would get.

“I wonder what direction we’re facing,” she mused.

“Northeast,” I said.

“You think?” she looked up at the gray Washington sky. I could see her doing the mental calculations in her head. Last time I was here, the sun came in the spare room window, so…

“I know,” I said, shrugging. “I’ve always had a good sense of direction.”

Aphantasia likely gifted me with incredible spatial reasoning skills. I know where my body is in space. I don’t have to spin a mental map in my head (because hey, I can’t!) to get “northeast,” I just consult my inner survey schematics for an instant answer.

Thinking about my spatial reasoning skills made me remember a long-ago test result that had baffled me at the time. I’d talked my counselor into administering an IQ test. (I suspect I just wanted to prove I was smart despite all of the naive things I was doing to survive a relationship with Peter.) My IQ score was in the “highly gifted” range (and believe me when I say that doesn’t feel like a flex given how often I struggle to use that brainpower), but my spatial reasoning score was 170. For context, that subtest is scored the same way IQ is—100 is average, 130 is gifted. The test doesn’t have much room above 170. It just kind of... runs out of scale. (When I asked AI to contextualize that for me, it said: “A 170 score isn’t just ‘good at puzzles’—it means your brain is essentially a dedicated spatial workstation.”)

Just call me Wile E. Karen, Spatial Genius. (The competition will ultimately be good for Wile E. Coyote, I’m sure. Not to mention the ACME company.)

* * * *

Last night, I was questioning AI about something that piqued my curiosity (because I believe that’s one use case AI’s good for) and the conversation turned to aphantasia and spatial reasoning. I ended up remembering that period in my life back in Green Bay where I kept going north when I wanted to go south.

And then it hit me.

“Could stress cause my internal compass to break?” I asked.

And the answer came back: Yes. Research shows that stress can dampen cognition, and spatial reasoning skills are no exception. High stress. Trauma. Survival mode. When the brain kicks into fight-or-flight, it can override the navigational circuitry entirely, leaving some people with a disorienting sense of being untethered from the grid they’ve always trusted. Spatially lost in a way that has nothing to do with geography.

Getting on that ramp the wrong way was a literal manifestation of my life at the time: I was moving in a direction that my internal “truth” knew was wrong.

And now we’re back in the car, with Ra behind the wheel. I’m in Washington state, nearly 3,000 miles away from where Peter lives now. I’m safe. And even though this isn’t where I grew up, I’m home.

“Just keep going south,” I reiterate to Ra, glancing in their direction. They mutter something about wishing they’d turned on GPS instead of using Mom-PS, which is fair. But I know what it feels like when my compass breaks. And now, I know what it takes to get it back. South is south, north is north, and for the first time in a long time, I trust myself to know the way.

John sits beside me humming and gazing out the window. He’s always humming, always thinking, always musing. He looks toward the Seattle skyline rising ahead of us.

“Emerald City!” he says. “Why do you think they call it that?”

Always asking questions, too. Always curious.

“Because of the trees, the moss, all the green stuff?”

“Mm,” he says, and in my periphery I see him bob his chin in a decisive nod. “That’s gotta be it.” I suspect he knows it is, but he likes to make sure I’m curious, too.

We’re on a “mission”—John’s term for anything he has to do that he’s deemed critical. Today, I’m driving my favorite retired soldier to go shoe shopping, and he has particular, bougie tastes. We are in search of the perfect pair of Mephisto loafers, and I already know how this is going to go. John will try on five or six different pairs, putting the salesperson through their paces. We’ll be in the exclusive shoe store for close to an hour. And we’ll leave, as we do every time, without a pair of shoes.

But it’s been a hell of a year. It’s 2020, and in March COVID descended and shut the world down. Millions died. Refrigerated semi trailers held bodies outside overflowing hospitals in New York City. We survived those long months of scuttling into grocery stores, masked and anxious, to pick up essentials. No live music, no festivals, no nights at the movies, and no dining out.

But carry-out is still a thing. And so is dining in the car.

Culinary exploration was at the heart of my relationship with John. He loved trying new types of foods and exploring new restaurants. Any time we traveled together— something we did often—his first question the moment we arrived, or sometimes even en route, was, “Well, darlin’, where we gonna eat?”

And today, after John put the poor saleswoman through her paces trying on many different pairs of Mephistos, often in multiple sizes “just in case,” we were going to look for a real Jewish deli. We’d experienced matzo ball soup at a local place the previous summer, but it had been a one-time special. We were on a mission to find the real deal somewhere in the heart of Seattle.

We left without shoes. Because of course we did. Despite John’s urgency—”I have got to get to Seattle to find them shoes!”—he was really just the world’s most dedicated window shopper. We were moving on to the “find sustenance” leg of our mission, so we sat in my Toyota Camry and Googled.

“There’s a place on Pine Street called Dingfelder’s,” I said.

“How many stars?”

“Five and a half.”

John pursed his lips and raised his eyes, pondering. “Not bad, not bad. Now, five stars would be—”

“Babe, it’s pretty unheard of for a restaurant to have five stars on Google. Four and a half is good.”

“Dingfelder’s it is, then!” he said, pointing his index finger toward the windshield and tipping it in a little “wagons, ho!” gesture. I set the GPS and off we went, our empty stomachs leading the way.

I have no doubt that when John and I rolled up on a restaurant we looked like an odd pair. He was 72, a Vietnam Veteran and former paratrooper who jumped out of the first plane he ever flew in, and a slim bow-legged Black man with the kindest eyes I’ve ever seen. I was 55, fat, and as pale-skinned as any auburn-haired, green-eyed woman of Nordic descent could be. But although we were mismatched, most people in the Pacific Northwest greeted us with delight rather than judgment.

Such was the case at Dingfelder’s, where a young man slid open the walk-up window and beamed at us. “What can I get you folks?” he asked.

We ordered two individual containers of matzo ball soup, two orders of potato latkes with sour cream and applesauce (because having both and refusing to choose sides is the power move, right?), some chocolate rugalech, and two bottles of iced tea.

When the server came back to the window with our late lunch in a big brown paper bag, he asked if we were taking our food home or needed utensils. (Dining in was still very much not a thing.) We told him we’d driven up from Olympia, so we’d be dining al fresco, or al Toyota Camry, at least. And then we returned to my car. We ate in the shade of a tree that was nearly done leafing out while the spring sunshine beamed through the window, causing leafy shadows to flicker and dance across the dashboard.

I could always tell when John and I had found The Perfect Food. During a good meal, we’d have animated discussions—we never ran out of things to talk about. But during a great meal, we were mostly silent.

Such was the case when we opened our “Grandma” matzo ball soups. John cut into a matzo ball and scooped up some of the savory chicken broth along with it, brought it to his lips, and then turned to me with raised eyebrows and an expression I could only interpret as “hot damn!”

We tore through our soup and latkes in silence—the ultimate compliment. John insisted that I take some soup home for my adult daughter, Shayla, so he ambled back to the walk-up window and ordered another soup, latkes, and some black and white cookies. “The kid needs to experience this,” he said in a hushed tone akin to religious fervor.

That COVID year was the beginning of a decline for John. As the virus stripped away all of the things he used to cope with the legacy of C-PTSD his military service left him—movie theaters he could slip into, restaurants he could linger in, music performances he could enjoy swaying and humming to—he slowly lost his spark. His kind eyes began to look haunted. He spent more time at home texting me from his recliner. I started booking quarterly Airbnb getaways to draw him out of the house and into the world, and they helped, but the psychic damage the pandemic wrought ran deep. Although I tried to keep his spirits alive, I could feel him giving up.

In 2022, John died from complications of what should have been relatively minor surgery in Madigan Army Hospital. The man who, a few months into our relationship, looked into my eyes and said with amazement, “I’ve known you all my life!” was gone.

Anger is a potent part of grief. I was angry at Madigan, at the pandemic, at circumstances, at the universe—forces that conspired to take John away. But mostly, I was bereft of the one person who knew me so intimately that eating matzo ball soup in silence, forgoing the need to fill that Camry cabin with conversation, was the ultimate declaration of a day well spent.

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I wake to a ruckus coming from downstairs.

Loud, slurred male voices. Then Mom’s voice saying, “Shhh! You’ll wake the kids!”

I pull my feather pillow over my head to block out the sound. I’m nine years old. I’m not sure who’s making the noise downstairs, but I’ve been to enough grown-up parties to know when someone sounds drunk.

The men downstairs sound drunk.

“Show me the way ta go home! I’m tired and I wanna go ta bed!”

They’re singing now. Loudly. And Mom is still shushing.

Suddenly my bedroom door opens and light from the hallway spills in. I pretend to be asleep but open one eye just enough to see Mom’s silhouette. She creeps into my room, takes the feather pillow gently from off my head, and slides stealthily back out the door, closing it softly behind her.

My pillow!

Not many things in my house belong to me. My canopy bed is one. My Breyer horses are another. My notebook, my colored pencils.

And my pillow.

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I am strangely attached to my soft, lofty, snuggly pillow. And now it has been ripped away from me in the middle of the night.

In the morning, I will learn that my uncle had been on leave from the Coast Guard, and he and his Coastie buddy had been out doing what men on leave often do. Mom had sent the two men to sleep it off in the living room, and she’d commandeered my pillow for the cause.

I slept one whole night without my pillow.

It took a while to forgive Mom, not to mention my uncle, for that offense.

Growing up, I never knew we were poor.

Only now, as an adult who has waded through a housing market crash, recession, and inflation, do I recognize the daunting challenges my impossibly young parents faced raising me. They not only endured historic inflation and economic turmoil in the 70s and early 80s, but they also lived through the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War, Watergate, Cold War tensions and rapidly shifting social norms.

My parents were fighting to feed and clothe us, pay the bills, and keep a roof over our heads. There was little money for toys or other non-essentials.

Many of my most cherished childhood possessions came from my doting grandparents, members of the Silent Generation who had survived their own years of turmoil and emerged, if not wealthy, then at least fiscally secure.

We lived in a rural Wisconsin community, so our infrequent trips to the Milwaukee suburbs for shopping at Kmart were a Big Deal. On those trips, Grandma delighted in letting me choose a gift for myself. I often came home with a Breyer horse or a Barbie. I also got a record player and little books with 45s tucked in the back sleeve. I could listen to Disney stories on the record and read along.

Turn the page when Tinker Bell rings her bell like this: Rrriiinnng!

Although I didn’t consciously register that we were poor, I knew the things Grandma gave me were special. I became possessive, eager to protect my precious resources from my rambunctious little brother and cousins, who were known for breaking and losing things.

Grandma had also given me a feather pillow clad in a quilted cover with fairytale designs on it. As an adult, I would zip on more covers to keep the feathers from leaking out. The pillow grew heavier and more dense as time passed.

I’ve since learned the thoroughly disgusting fact that dead skin cells, mites, and other detritus are what cause pillows to grow heavier with time. These days, I replace my pillows every couple of years, but back then I refused to give my beloved feather pillow up. I kept it until I was well into my 30s. If anyone dared to rest their head on it, I would swiftly pull it away and replace it with a different pillow.

No! This one’s mine!

Peter and I are fighting.

This time, for a change, it’s not about his lying or cheating. Instead, it’s about an online flirtation I’ve been having with a man I met playing the multiplayer online roleplaying game EverQuest.

“I’m working to support you and the kids so you can sleep with another man?” Peter rages.

I roll my eyes. “He lives in Bumfuck, Canada. Exactly when do you think I traveled 2,000 miles to have sex with him?”

Peter’s wild eyes are a sign things are escalating. I should surrender. I should try to soothe him. But years of twisting myself around his chaotic emotions have left me both weary and defiant.

Nothing good can come of a weary, defiant woman who’s just been accused of sleeping around by a man so deeply dishonest and fidelity-challenged that she discovers a new mistress every few months.

“Do you love him?” Peter asks.

I gaze, unflinching, into his crazed eyes.

“Yes.” I’m not sure I do, but the answer feels satisfying.

“So, you’re leaving me for him?”

“What part of Bumfuck, Canada, didn’t you understand?”

“I don’t even know what you mean by that!”

I’ve been sitting on our bed while Peter paces the room, ranting. Now, I straighten my spine and cross my arms over my chest. “It means I’m not running away to Canada any time soon. There’s no way in Hell I’m leaving my kids.”

Peter quickly does the emotional math. “You said nothing about not leaving me.”

I purse my lips and stay silent. I don’t have an answer. Everything in me tells me to get far away from Peter, but I know the reality. We would have to share custody, and I’m terrified of leaving Peter alone with the kids. Dave, the man I’m emotionally involved with online, has been a source of affection and adoration I hadn’t known I needed.

“Answer me!” Peter rages. “Is it gonna be him or me? Choose!”

I’m rarely candid with Peter. I’ve long since learned that moderating my emotions yields far better, safer results than telling him how I truly feel. But this time I can’t seem to hold back the truth simmering inside me. It rises to a boil.

“Neither!” I finally cry. “I’m fucking done with you, him, all of it!”

Peter narrows his eyes and lowers his voice to a menacing near-whisper. “Then you can slink off like the whore you are,” he says, “But the kids stay with me.”

With that, I grab the only weapon available — my feather pillow full of 30 years’ worth of dead skin cells and dust mites — and swing it at his head. It connects with a satisfying thunk.

What comes next terrifies me. Peter storms out of our bedroom and into the room our children share, waking them from a sound sleep. He locks himself in, barricading the door.

“Get the fuck out of this house!” he screams. “But you’re not taking them with you!”

Them. As though Ian and Shayla are collateral, not the precious young souls I bore and have struggled to raise amidst the daily turmoil their father causes. I can only think about how terrified they must be, awakened from a sound sleep by their volatile, rage-filled father.

My mind flashes back to about a decade earlier when Peter had clutched our nine-month-old son and uttered the words, “If you leave, I’ll kill him.”

I dial 911. Then I call my mom, who lives three miles away.

I don’t remember much of what happened during the rest of that terrifying night.

Instead, I can only summon little glimpses:

The cops coercing Peter to release the kids from their bedroom.

My daughter, dragging one of the officers into our living room to proudly show him our pet cockatiel.

Ten-year-old Ian calmly suggesting that the police might take his dad away for “anger management.”

Two cops standing in our kitchen, asking for details, and then finally coercing Peter to come downstairs and give his statement.

It’s the statement that lingers in my memory. Peter told the cops I’d been having an affair, we’d gotten into an argument, and I’d assaulted him. By all rights, he said, he should’ve been the one calling the police.

“Can you describe the assault?” one of the cops said.

“She hit me with a pillow!”

The two police officers stood dumbfounded for a moment and then tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle laughs.

“A pillow?” one of them finally asked, still grinning.

Peter glowered, hung his head, and muttered, “It’s a very heavy pillow.”

Both cops laughed again while Peter fumed.

All I remember beyond that was being given the option to stay in my home, forcing Peter to leave for the night, or to go someplace else. I opted to take the kids and leave with my mom, who showed up ready to rescue us.

I wish I could say I left Peter after that night.

But just like an old ratty pillow full of mites and skin cells, sometimes I hold onto things that don’t serve me anymore. Sometimes, I’m haunted by the fear of scarcity and the weight of uncertainty.

I didn’t make enough income to sustain my two kids alone. I hated the idea of getting a second job and working so hard that I didn’t have the energy to raise them.

But most of all, I was afraid Peter would get joint custody and that I wouldn’t be able to protect the kids when they were with him.

So, I stayed until my youngest graduated from high school. Then, I moved to the Pacific Northwest and filed for divorce.

Both of our children ghosted their father as adults. Both have expressed relief since they’ve gone no-contact.

Although Peter tried to maintain that he and I were “better as friends than a married couple,” I began avoiding his phone calls and leaving his texts unanswered. Eventually, I felt safe enough to write him an email telling him how profoundly our dysfunctional relationship had affected me and the kids and asking him never to contact me again.

So far, he has honored my request.

And I’ve long since replaced that heavy old pillow.

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I wake at 7:20. Because I don’t have anything pressing to do, I opt to stay in bed for a while savoring the delicious early morning quiet. I share my home with my adult daughter, but they’re off to work. The dogs are quiet, probably resting after having had some morning exercise and breakfast.

Today, I won’t reach for my phone.

Seconds tick by. I tell myself how blissful this is, just lying still in the thin morning light with green noise playing on the Bluetooth speaker beside my bed. So peaceful. So soothing, so… unbelievably boring.

Maybe I’ll just check today’s weather.

I whisk the phone off its charger and soon I’m not only checking the weather, I’m reading email, scrolling Substack, replying to Notes, checking Facebook to see what my friends are talking about, hitting up my favorite news sources to make sure the world’s still properly on fire. That kind of stuff.

I rarely make it through more than 10 minutes of do-nothing without reaching for digital stimulation. In part, I can blame my ADHD—the little device in my hand is an instant dopamine delivery system.

But it’s cultural, too.

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I work part-time as an office manager for a Quaker community, and my one in-office day is Tuesday. I also rehearse with my musical theater group on Tuesday nights, so rather than drive 30 minutes home only to come back into town 30 minutes later, I stay in town for dinner. I’m poor (I prefer the term “starving artist”), so I often just grab a sandwich. But occasionally I splurge on a sit-down meal. And every time I dine alone, without someone to talk to, I find myself staring at my phone.

Then I look up from my own device to see a handful of other people—even people in groups—bathed in the blue glow from a screen. I mean, I get phone scrolling if you’re alone; it can be a little awkward sitting in a restaurant by yourself. But when you’re with other people? Make it make sense.

* * * *

I find myself wondering about my childhood a lot lately. Maybe that sort of reflection is part of turning 60 and being closer to the end of my life’s timeline than the beginning. Or maybe it’s because I’m mourning something: a fracture.

The internet would’ve helped me in profound ways if it had been part of my childhood. When my parents offered “I dunno” shrugs to my many questions about life, going to college, exploring new things, I would have been able to meet those shrugs armed with the resources to do it myself, something I’ve always had a hard-earned talent for.

But I’m also grateful that I grew up without a phone in my hand or a laptop on my desk.

I’m grateful for my grandparent’s old typewriter, gifted to me when Grandma stopped being secretary of her bowling league and no longer had to type up minutes. With that typewriter, I started pecking out the stories only I could tell. And I became a writer.

I’m grateful for the hours I spent in the woods as a child, clutching a tiny camera that used 110 film and snapping close-up photos of leaves, sunbeams shining through the trees, and animal tracks. With that camera, I became a careful observer who notices, and celebrates, the tiniest of things.

I’m grateful for my grandma’s little ceramic lantern with the moss rose pattern, which came out just for special occasions. Somehow, that little lantern gave real meaning to important days. Walking into the bathroom and finding it lit there on the toilet tank, its delicate lamp oil smell wafting through the air, meant the day had significance.

But the days feel less significant now, for some reason.

I’m longing for a past that only feels perfect in retrospect. Maybe the state of the world today has me nostalgic for times that seem simpler but, in reality, were just complicated in different ways.

I do know this: I didn’t used to store my memories on Facebook.

Today, memories pop onto my Facebook feed like spring ephemerals—flowering plants that show up briefly and then fade away, leaving no trace until next season. I find myself wondering whether those memories would resurface for me at all if they didn’t live on my Facebook timeline. Maybe, instead of reappearing annually, they’d live in my body and mind. Many of them would show up randomly instead of on the exact day they happened X years ago. They’d appear because I witnessed something that reminded me of them, or joined a conversation where I could contribute that memory to the dialogue. I wouldn’t simply scroll past the good memories; I would embody them. They’d be part of my emotional life, not my digital one.

That’s what the politics of attention fractured. It broke our ability to participate in our own lives as humans by grouping us into performers and spectators, performing for algorithms like trained monkeys.

And it makes us reach for our phones at 7:20 a.m. instead of savoring the breeze coming through the window carried on a ribbon of birdsong.

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I’m lying under the eaves in my upstairs bedroom listening to the wind howl outside my 1880 brick Victorian farmhouse. Sleet clatters against the windows and the old house creaks and shudders, but I’m warm beneath my down comforter, scrolling Redfin on my phone looking at houses 2,000 miles away in Washington state.

Why not move? What’s stopping you?

My mom died suddenly just over a year ago. One moment, she was a vibrant, 65-year-old smartass with a sailor’s mouth and a nicotine addiction she tried to hide from her concerned family. The next, an ambulance whisked her to the hospital where, 24 hours later, a combination of heart disease and the flu took her life.

Just weeks before her death, I’d been sitting at Mom’s kitchen table. We were talking about how life often forced us to change directions, rethinking and reshaping our dreams.

“I have this wild idea about moving to the Pacific Northwest,” I confessed. “Ever since I visited, I keep thinking it’s where I belong.”

I expected Mom to resist . She liked being surrounded by family. But instead she chirped, “You should go!”

I laughed. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Yes,” she answered. (I warned you about the smartass thing.) When I rolled my eyes, she said, “You deserve to be happy. And I’d have a new place to visit!”

My mom had seen me struggle through an abusive marriage. Now that I’ve separated from my husband, I realize she’s willing to sacrifice her need to keep me close for my happiness.

But still, I stay. Until Mom dies.

A year after her death, I start formulating a plan in my cold, creaky house tucked under the eaves. I head to apartment websites and Craigslist and look at rental prices. They’re high, but I think I can manage. I will manage.

Nothing is holding me back. Mom is gone, my marriage is over, my kids are grown, and I’m free to go.

My strategy begins to take shape. I will allow a month between my daughter’s high school graduation and our departure west. I choose a moving date — June 28.

When I tell the kids my plans, they’re already prepared. They know I’ve been fantasizing about the Pacific Northwest, and they‘re excited to go with me.

I sell nearly all of our belongings. Then, at the end of June, with just $2,800 in my bank account and a van loaded floor to ceiling with what remains of my life in the Upper Midwest, I set sail.

I arrive in Washington on schedule. The kids and I move into a trashy but affordable apartment complex. Our compulsively weed-smoking neighbors, whose front porch smoking habits cause skunky fumes to drift through our window, refer to the place as Ghetto Glen.

It’s perfect. For now.

On clear days, when I leave the complex driveway, I see the Olympic Mountains rising in the western distance. Snow-capped Mount Rainier, part of the Cascade range, looms on the eastern horizon, its base only about an hour away. On clear, sunny days, the locals cheerfully proclaim, “The mountain is out!”

I’m content exploring Washington during our first summer there, intoxicated with freedom. I’ve left my marriage and made a life for myself and my kids in a whole new place. It feels huge, like something I hadn’t known I had the strength or conviction to accomplish.

And yet, here I am. I often stop to look around and think, Mom would have loved this place. She always did enjoy an adventure, something her life of service to my dad’s whims hadn’t afforded her often.

When I join a community chorus in September, I meet my first Washington friend. Dena is 65, the same age my mom was when she died. She’s an eclectic, creative, quirky dancer and performance artist who moved to town the same day I did.

One day, we’re hanging out at her quaint little house downtown. It’s decorated lavishly with paintings by her husband, a well-known Northwest artist who had been significantly older than her and died years earlier. Dena is also an avid collector of antiques. I look around her small but lovely (and loved) house and proclaim something I’ve only allowed myself to think so far:

“I’m going to have a house in five years.”

Dena marvels that I would have a five-year plan when she can’t even seem to manage a five-minute one.

But I reaffirm my position is strong: “It’s all I ever wanted!”

For most of my adult life, I’ve raised my kids in apartments, duplexes, and rented houses while scanning real estate apps obsessively, dreaming of a space to call my own, where I can decorate, garden, have dogs, and do whatever I want.

We live in Ghetto Glen for a year before I get a small promotion. We then move to a nicer, newer apartment complex where there’s no pungent smoke wafting through our window daily.

A year and a half later, my son has gone back to the Midwest to finish college there, so it’s just my daughter and me. I find a cute little 720-square-foot rental house in a quiet neighborhood. There, I’ll be able to hang up a bird feeder and (finally) plant some plants.

But the house is still not truly mine.

The Redfin-scrolling addiction continues. I find myself sending “perfect” houses to my daughter, who’s now fully onboard with my homeownership dream.

I’ve never had a real mortgage. Before I moved to Washington, I didn’t have so much as a credit card or an auto loan in my name. My ex-husband’s chaotic mental health issues and frequent job changes ensured that our credit score (joint, because we’d lived in a marital property state) was always well south of 600.

But I’ve since financed a car, secured a low-interest credit card or two, and seen a doctor and a dentist — all things my shaky finances and a dysfunctional marriage prevented me from doing in the past. My credit score is now in the “any better and you’re just showing off” range.

But I still don’t make much income compared to the cost of living in the Pacific Northwest. And I’ve barely been able to save, so my would-be downpayment is laughably small.

“Sarah and her husband just got a loan approved for a house.”

Five years have come and gone. It’s late 2021, and I’m no closer to getting a house thanks to the crazy real estate market the pandemic wrought. Housing inventory is low, demand is high, and prices have far outstripped value.

Sarah is my daughter’s coworker. They work at a piercing studio downtown, next to a tattoo studio, where you’re as likely to meet an unhoused person stripping casually on the sidewalk as a wide-eyed tourist taking it all in.

Every place has problems, but ours are often on full display. And yet, I love it … the beauty and the grunge, the hopefulness and the heartache.

And still, I want to put down roots.

What could it hurt trying? The worst they can say is “no.”

But “no” feels like a judgment: Not good enough. I’ve been wrestling with variations on that theme my whole life.

I ponder this for a moment. My Redfin stalking has revealed that the real estate market is starting to cool. I’ve seen a smattering of houses I might be able to afford. But it still means I’ll be competing with many other buyers who have the same idea.

I’m scared. This is too big. I’ve never done anything this big befo —

“Mom,” the kid says, interrupting my defeatist train of thought by reading my mind, “You moved us out here with a van, no furniture, and hardly any money. You can do this.”

A few weeks later, I find myself with a mortgage loan approval letter and a realtor.

I’ve already been drastically outbid on one house, and I’ve seen a few others that weren’t the right fit at any price. Sometimes, a house just feels wrong.

But the one I’m looking at now on the multiple listing service (MLS) has just come on the market. And for reasons I can’t explain, it feels right.

The pictures are awful. They look as though the realtor hastily snapped them with a cell phone. The house itself is a double-wide manufactured home built in the late 80s. It’s on its own land, almost an acre, out in the countryside but close to amenities.

Manufactured homes seem to fare much better here on the West Coast than they did back in the snowy Upper Midwest, so I’m not scared off by the fact that it’s not a traditional stick-built home. I know manufactured homes hold their value well if they’re not in a mobile home park.

I text my realtor, Juliann, and we meet at the house that evening.

It’s December, so it’s appropriately rainy, gloomy, and muddy. We’re stumbling around in the inky blackness, using our phones as flashlights.

Juliann finally opens the lock box, and I step inside.

The house is warm — the furnace still works fine — and smells faintly of emptiness and dogs. It’s been sitting vacant since October when the owner had accepted a different offer. That deal fell through, so the owner was desperate to get the home sold. The scuttlebutt was that she moved to Texas to escape the “tyranny” of a progressive state that required mandatory vaccinations for healthcare workers.

I walk through the house. I see every flaw. The place hasn’t been deep cleaned in … ever. It desperately needs new paint. The carpet is filthy and stained, which explains the dog smell.

But there’s a huge primary bedroom with an en suite bath and a walk-in closet, plus two smaller bedrooms and a guest bath on the opposite side of the split floor plan. Cosmetically, it needs help, but structurally, the house seems in good shape.

“I want it!” I proclaim. I’ve never been more certain. Despite the dog smell, the dirty walls, and the tragic carpet, this place feels like home.

Juliann urges me to look at the rest of the property, so we stumble around in the sloppy, wet darkness and find a huge storage shed and a rickety outbuilding that once served as a kennel. (I would later learn that the owner had raised and shown Westminster-winning Australian shepherds.)

“This is crazy,” Juliann says, marveling at the outbuildings and the expanse of fenced land we can barely see through the gloom. “It’s a unique property.” She tells me the owner’s agent doesn’t know what he has, and that she would have listed the home for at least $60,000 more in the current market.

One Christmas Eve day, I make a full-price offer and cross my fingers that the holidays have put off buyers and there are no competing offers. I’m also counting on the owner’s desperation.

A few days after Christmas, my offer is accepted, and I’m under contract.

For myriad reasons, it takes over three months, but on the last day of March 2022, I sign papers and became a homeowner. I dub my little corner of the world—with its newly redone luxury vinyl plank floors, fresh paint, and new roof—Almost Acre.

My five-year plan took seven, but I’ve finally put down roots in a place I love. It all started with $2,000, a van full of stuff, and a dream, but now I have a mortgage, more responsibilities than I sometimes feel able to manage, and a huge yard that will forever be a work in progress.

And I’ve never been more content.

Yes, I deserve to be happy, Mom.

Mission accomplished.

Epilogue

When I wrote this story in the spring of 2024, I’d been recently laid off from my job as an editorial manager for a big corporation with thousands of employees. I figured some other big corporation with thousands of employees would want me and that I’d be able to bank most of my severance and sail on happily.

But that wasn’t the reality.

I sent out hundreds of applications and got zero nibbles. Just a couple of phone interviews with recruiters that inevitably went nowhere. At almost-sixty, I was no longer employable by The Big Guys. (Which, if I’m honest, is a relief. And yet.)

So I decided my home was in state government. After all, I live in a capital city. But although I got interviews, the story was the same: “So sorry. We like you a lot, but we need someone with public sector experience.”

I became the weekend Zoom technician for the local Quaker community, thanks to a choir friend who connected me with the very-very part-time work. (There’s a story here that I’ll save for another time. And it’s a lovely one.) That evolved to a very part-time office manager job, which I love, but which also usually earns me just slightly less than my mortgage payment every month.

In short: I’m doing everything I can (including writing this Substack!) to keep my beloved house. And not only to keep it, but to keep it maintained. Life keeps wanting me to prove that I can accomplish hard things. And I can’t hide it anymore: I’m getting tired.

If you’re a paid subscriber to I’ll go first…, thank you! You’re part of the financial solution. And if you’re a subscriber or follower who reads for free, thank you! You’re part of the beautiful cycle of artistic encouragement. All of you keep me going!

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Every spring, I can’t wait to visit the local garden centers. My daughter and I go almost every weekend to wander among the plants, smell the earthy scent of fresh soil, and dream about what we’d do if we had unlimited disposable income.

Only I’m more than just into visiting garden centers to look at all the pretty stuff; I tend to come home with plant babies and absolutely zero idea about where they’re going in my yard. I’m more interested in the fun part — shopping for plants. Digging and planting? That sounds like work. I simply want to enjoy the fruits of my shopping labor without any additional labor. Which is a problem. Because it turns out that, when neither planted nor lovingly tended in a nursery environment, plants don’t thrive.

Often, they die. And then I have sad little plant funerals as I dump the plant matter into a wheelbarrow, headed for the compost pile. Sometimes, I reflect on the money I wasted on what inevitably became a dead plant.

But why? What perpetuates this tragic cycle of plant neglect?

Perfectionism.

This is what perfectionism looks like

I stepped back to look at Operation Plant Neglect and I think I’ve realized where I’m going wrong. Here’s what my thought process looks like each time I come home from the garden center with an armful of healthy but fearful new plant children.

1. Unload plants. The plants must be lovingly unloaded and placed somewhere near a hose, so I won’t forget to water them.

2. Wander around the garden. Now it’s time to contemplate where the plants must go. I have a lot of space, but much of it is still unprepared for planting.

3. Realize there are no good spots because the garden isn’t what it’s supposed to be yet. That bed over there is supposed to be bigger, and less rectangular so it looks more organic. And that other bed needs weeding before anything gets planted.

4. Get dispirited. This is where the perfectionism kicks my ass. Because as I wander around my garden, I realize that it’s a million miles away from being anything like I actually want it to be. Which is to say, it doesn’t look like the nearest botanical garden.

5. Neglect plants. Because I’m dispirited, I’m less into the idea of working on my horrible, flawed, no-good garden. So, you know, I’m just going to forget to water those new plant babies until they’re so dehydrated they’re crying dust.

6. Mourn dead plants. Yep, they’re dead alright. And so now it’s time to mourn both those beautiful plants and the money I spent on them. (Which can be significant, right gardeners? If you know, you know. Fortunately—for the plants if not for me—I’m so broke right now that I’m not bringing home many plants to murder this season.)

7. Swear I’m the worst, meanest gardener ever. I’ll tell everybody how much I suck at it. Because clearly when they look at my yard, they’re already aware that I’m a lazyass plant murderess.

Embracing the imperfect

Before I lived (and wantonly killed plants) in the Pacific Northwest, I had a sweet brick Victorian house in a small town in the Upper Midwest. It was the shadiest yard ever. (As in “shaded by trees,” not as in “sketchy.” Although I see why you went there.)

So I got into hostas. Because that’s what you do when your yard is shady.

Back then, I had my son help me dig and haul bags of dirt and compost. He did the easy manual labor while I did the difficult, labor-of-love part: I kicked back and read everything I could about growing hostas. (Listen, the kid doesn’t have sciatica, I do, okay?)

I spent the better part of six summers expanding my hosta garden. (Yes, even after my son abandoned me to get a college education. The nerve.) And it was always a mess. I’d get the weeds cleared out of one patch, and then the dandelions and thistles would show up, or the unruly scrub trees and privet hedges would grow faster than the list of criminal charges against Donald Trump. (Yes, that fast!)

My garden was ugly, ugly, ugly. It looked like this. Clearly awful.

I wanted my garden to be perfect. When I looked at it, all I could see were the weeds, the overgrown hedges and scrub trees, the fence in need of paint, and the hose I forgot to roll up and put away.

Then, one day, I got a moment of clarity thanks to a neighbor walking her dachshund.

I lived in a quiet old neighborhood filled with simple country Victorian houses and Craftsman bungalows. Many people had pleasant yards and a few had pretty gardens. I always compared my garden unfavorably to everyone else’s, certain that I’d been labeled the slacker on the block they all got together and secretly complained about.

But the dachshund lady felt differently.

I was kneeling in my front garden pulling weeds. (And probably swearing under my breath, but let’s not diminish this moment, shall we?) The dachshund lady stopped, looked down at my garden, and smiled sweetly. She greeted me and we shared some small talk about the nice weather.

Then she said something that stumped me.

“I’m constantly amazed by your beautiful garden,” she said. “Every year I say to myself, ‘Look what she’s done!’”

Obviously, she was just being nice, so I responded with a shrug and a self-deprecating, “Well, it’s a work in progress. The weeds are winning. And that privet hedge …”

She looked around. Her dachshund did, too.

“I don’t see what you see,” she said, clearly puzzled. She gestured at the landscape, sweeping her hand out in front of her like Vanna White displaying the prize showcase for a winning Wheel of Fortune contestant. (Back when they did the prize-shopping thing, that is. I’m old.)

“It’s just… I have a lot of work to do on it,” I said to dachshund lady. “It’s not quite ready for prime time.”

“You’re a perfectionist,” she observed.

“Maybe?”

“Well, don’t let the quest for perfection stop you from seeing the beauty in the imperfect,” she advised. Which was the wisest thing to say, but at the time, it sailed straight over my head.

“But I don’t want it to be imperfect,” I whined.

She waved her hand again, as though shooing away a fly. “Nonsense!” she said. “Everything’s imperfect.”

Although I dismissed it at the time, I’ve remembered what dachshund lady said ever since, because it was one of those lessons I didn’t know I needed.

Everything’s imperfect. And that’s the beauty in it.

Take a bite out of this little anecdote — it tastes just like mixed metaphors:

When I was about 20, I worked in a music store where I sold pianos and organs. Every so often, a blind man named Harry came in to tune the pianos. I adored him. He was sweet, funny, and a talented pianist. After he’d finished tuning some Kimball spinet, he’d test it out by playing a little ragtime or blues.

As old people often do, Harry died. One of the piano teachers, a woman with perfect pitch, replaced him as tuner. As she was tuning one day, I heard her sniffling and noticed she was crying. So, of course, I asked whether I could help.

She told me she missed Harry, and she just couldn’t tune a piano like him, and it made her sad.

I asked how it could possibly be true that she couldn’t tune a piano as well as Harry. After all, she had perfect pitch.

“That’s the problem!” she said. “Harry always tuned everything just a tiny bit off on purpose.”

I asked why he would do such a thing, and she grabbed a guitar off a nearby rack to demonstrate. She placed her fingers on the fretboard as if she was tuning, something I’d learned to do as a Music Center employee. She plucked two notes that should have sounded the same, but the guitar was out of tune, so they sounded horrible played together.

“Listen for the soundwaves,” she said as she cranked a tuning peg. “Hear how they get wider the closer the guitar gets to being in tune?”

I nodded. Yes, I was accustomed to this. I would tune the guitars until I couldn’t hear those waves anymore. When the strings were perfectly in tune, you couldn’t hear the whaaahm … whaaahm … whaaahm of separate soundwaves bouncing off one another. (Or whatever it is soundwaves do.)

“You want just a little wave — the widest sort of vibrato — to give the sound warmth and character,” the piano teacher/tuner said. “But I can’t seem to do that. All my ear will let me do is make it pitch perfect.”

So, there you have it. The imperfect is actually perfect.

Because the imperfect mirrors life. And life is messy, chaotic, and complicated. But that’s what gives it warmth and character.

That’s what makes it beautiful.

I’m still trying to embrace this truth, but I’m making progress. I might even let my ukulele be just the tiniest bit out of tune.

I will try to be less concerned about how my garden looks. I won’t wait for it to be perfect before I put a plant in the ground — I’ll plant them wherever I want and move them if I decide I don’t like where they landed.

I will plant around the weeds, and before the beds are perfectly naturalized. I’ll let the wildflowers grow where they want to, and leave the dandelions for the pollinators.

And I will, slowly, learn to be okay with that.

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Princess

What do I do? I bark. I’m a Shetland sheepdog. It’s my job.

That and to look gorgeous, of course.

They got me for the Kid. She wanted a “miniature collie.” I’m doing my best to forgive her for the disparaging term. Because listen, I’m not a miniature anything, OK? I’m a full-grown me, and I am exactly the size I’m supposed to be.

My Kid is something like five or six, so I’m regularly forced to forgive her indiscretions. The worst of her violations occurred after I peed on the carpet and she took Mom’s advice to “rub my nose in it” a little too literally. She scrubbed the damn floor with me!

I’m still salty, but I suppose if anyone’s to blame, it’s Mom. What was rubbing my sensitive and perfect little nose in pee supposed to accomplish?

You don’t call a dog a Princess and then rub her nose in urine, is all I’m saying.

I’m a little sad things didn’t work out because the kid clearly loved me. But the adults did not appreciate the artistry behind my barking. And then I “ran away,” which was also somehow problematic. After I returned from my one-month-long odyssey, they sent me to live with a lady who lived on a small farm with lots of animals for me to herd around while barking gleefully.

Seriously, I went to a farm. That’s not even a euphemism for … well, you know.

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Mortimer & Smokey

We were always meant to be temporary.

They fostered us. Probably because they were poor and couldn’t afford to keep two gigantic harlequin Great Danes.

Girl and the littlest one, Boy, loved us, though. Boy even sat on us sometimes because we were pony-sized. (Word of advice: Don’t do that. We are not, in fact, ponies.)

Girl seemed wistful and lonely. We think it’s because Mom and Dad were so young they didn’t actually know how to raise pups.

Once, Boy almost drowned in the lake, and Girl was the only one around to fetch help. Also, one day Girl wiped out on her bike and was unconscious for a few minutes. Mom and Dad were nowhere to be found! Someone always had to fetch them in a panic so they’d rescue their pups from danger.

We don’t believe human pups are supposed to be feral. We are civilized Danes and we disavow such treatment of younglings.

Lady

Karen is my human.

It was the Parents who adopted me from the humane society. They had me in the back of Mom’s Chevy Vega when they picked Karen up from school. The minute that 10-year-old girl climbed into the backseat of the car with me I knew without a doubt I was keeping her.

Karen is a good human. She may not be fully mature yet, but she’s remarkably advanced for a puppy, or whatever human younglings are called. She is quiet and calm. She spends a great deal of time scribbling stories into a notebook while I lounge in the sun spot at the end of our bed. She has a music machine, and I like to listen to the sounds that come out when she places one of those flat black disks on top of the machine, sets the little arm down on the disk, and starts it spinning.

We are best friends, my girl and me.

It isn’t that she’s not sometimes annoying, of course. She is young. For example, there was that time she tried to teach me to hurdle by making me endlessly jump over a fallen tree. That was exhausting! And there was that time she tied me into a laundry basket and kept pushing me down the hill beside our house so I could experience something called “sledding.”

Dogs do not sled. Although some of us pull them. But that’s not me. I am an elegant, svelte, athletic mongrel who can run 35 miles per hour beside a truck across an open farm field.

My girl has taken the best care of me. I greet her whenever she comes home by leaping and nipping at her chin to show her that she is mine and I am hers.

And I would protect her with my life.

There were wild dogs living in the fields across from our house. One day, they ventured too close. Although Karen was at school, the Parents were outside. It was my duty to fight those wild dogs and keep them away from my people.

I didn’t think. Canines do not stop to calculate risk when they move to protect the humans they love and guard. I dashed across the highway.

I didn’t see the car.

When my girl came home from school, she wandered the yard calling for me, wondering where I’d gone. Dad finally summoned the courage to approach her and drape his arm around her shoulder. His face was wet when he told her the car had taken my life.

He called me brave. For I was.

My girl will never forget me. She was 18 when I made my way to what humans call the Rainbow Bridge. I watched her mourn for many months.

I will be waiting for her when she comes to the Bridge.

After all, she is mine.

Quin & Ella

Ella here. Quin doesn’t talk much.

They tell me Quin’s name is misspelled on purpose so our names, Quin and Ella, form the word “quinella.” It has something to do with us being retired racing greyhounds.

I’m not sure I get it. I don’t think much.

Quin thinks even less. Mostly, the big galoot mopes like he’s the poster dog for Cymbalta. (Cue the sad clarinet music.)

Karen? She’s Mom. That means she’s the Boss, and the only one I listen to most of the time. I respect her because she protects me from Big Scaries, like thunderstorms and fireworks and sudden loud noises and wind and Peter.

Peter is Dad.

We greyhounds don’t like Peter much. He is loud and angry. Once, he hit Quin. Karen showed great restraint and did not run Peter over with her car when she had the chance.

We think she probably should have. You just can’t train unruly fear biters.

Quin and I went to live out our golden years with other greyhound-loving people because the Family couldn’t afford to keep us after Karen made Peter go away.

We suspect she dropped Peter off at a shelter. We are not sure what became of him, because who would want to adopt an aggressive human?

Toshi

I am a shiba inu. That’s all you need know.

I am an ancient Japanese breed, and I am perfection itself.

Karen got me from a rescue, where I was culled from a puppy mill as “defective.” Let me assure you, there is nothing defective about me. I am the picture of health according to that man in the white coat at the place that smells like medicine. Although that man was responsible for me losing my malehood, I believe he was correct when he dubbed me flawless.

It is established that I run the household. They jump when I say jump.

Except Karen.

As my predecessors the greyhounds have established, Karen is the Mom, which makes her the ultimate Boss. I try to establish my authority by doing things like guarding a tasty morsel, growling and snapping, but Karen is intimidating when she stands up and says “Leave it!” in her growly voice. And so, whatever I am guarding, I leave.

When I was four, Karen’s mom died. I did not know her mom well, because I’m not particularly interested in socializing with humans outside of my circle. But Karen was profoundly affected. Her eyes were often wet and she gave off a scent I recognized as grief. I was sad for my Person. Although I had a bed of my own, I insisted on sleeping with her to protect her from her sadness.

One night, not long after the humans had their mourning ritual, I woke to find Karen sitting up in bed trembling, with wet eyes and a grief-scent so strong I was sure it would consume her. I leaped from my spot at the end of her bed, positioned myself in front of her, and pressed my forehead to hers as she stroked my soft fur.

I stayed until she stopped trembling, her wet eyes leaving damp spots on my coat. It is the least a dog can do for the human they love.

When I was six, I traveled with Karen when she escaped the Bad Place where Peter lived. We ventured together 2,000 miles to a new home, where it always smells like pine trees and rain. I was happy to be her copilot. We were so brave!

Then I became 14. I’m not sure how it happened, but my muzzle turned white. And my brain… it was no longer cooperative. It left me terrified and anxious all the time. I imagined threats that weren’t there, and bit things that weren’t meant for biting. I even bit Karen and drew blood, although I didn’t mean to. Her sudden movement had frightened me.

It’s not an excuse; it’s a reason.

“Dementia,” I heard Mom say to Daughter one day. I didn’t know what that meant, but her voice was distressed. I understood that my life was no longer a happy, carefree one.

Not long after, we were at home and I could tell my Family was upset, although they were certainly trying to act calm for my sake. Then, Daughter said, “Dr. Hailey is here,” and moments later they gave me a remarkable treat — an entire bag of McDonald’s French fries (my favorite!) and a whole hamburger. It was the most exciting thing! I almost forgot to be frightened.

After my feast, I grew incredibly sleepy. Words floated to me through a fog.

Such a good boy. I’ll check him to make sure he’s fully asleep.

The injection will take some time to work … He won’t feel a thing … He knows you’re here and that he’s so loved …

Sliding. I am sliding away into peace. Rest. At last.

Thank you, Doctor Hailey.

Mom. My person, with wet eyes, trembling. Grief smells.

You will be OK, Mom. All will be well.

And when your time comes, I will be waiting to meet you.

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At my musical theater group’s rehearsal this week, I took my seat in the alto section next to JJ. As we greeted each other, the conversation pivoted quickly from a friendly “Hey, how are you?” to something I’ve been hearing—and feeling—more and more as 2026 progresses.

“I’ve been in such a funk the last couple of days,” she said. And that’s one thing I love about certain people in my friend group: their openness.

“Me too,” I said. “Everything just feels so… heavy.”

“Exactly. Like there’s this looming sense of dread.”

“It’s oppressive, isn’t it? And we’re far from the only ones feeling it.”

It feels good to say these things out loud: Everything’s heavy. Looming dread. Oppressive. They’re the kinds of feelings we’re biologically wired to hide so we don’t signal weakness to the rest of the herd. Evolutionarily speaking, “I’m fine” is more than a polite response; it’s practically a reflex.

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So, from the very get-go, JJ and I were breaking from the norm. When she said she’d been in a funk, she thwarted the “I’m fine” instinct and let herself be open. And that’s another thing humans sometimes do—we bond through vulnerability. (And see, that’s what my entire space here is about. We’re bonding!)

Although we’re programmed to hide weakness, sometimes we don’t. And that’s partly because we learn to hide it from the wrong people and the wrong contexts. Instead, we share with people we trust as a form of connection.

I thought about my exchange with JJ as I drifted off to sleep that night. I’ve always lived in my head, so sometimes it’s a challenge to listen to signals from my body, but as I lay there I made a point to acknowledge the sensation of a weight having lifted. My shoulders had dropped, my jaw unclenched. Warmth flooded me, and I smiled. The dread, at least for now, had dissipated with the realization that I have people in my life worth trusting. People I can mostly just be myself with and not fear judgment. That’s no small thing!

That moment was what what Deb Dana—a trauma-informed clinician, author, and lecturer who specializes in polyvagal theory—calls a “glimmer.” Here’s how she defines the term:

Glimmers are micro-moments of regulation that foster feelings of well-being. A glimmer could be as simple as seeing a friendly face, hearing a soothing sound, or noticing something in the environment that brings a smile. They are personal to each of us and one person’s glimmer may be another person’s trigger. Glimmers are a cue in the day, either internal or external, that sparks a sense of wellbeing. These tiny moments gently yet significantly shape your system toward well-being. They help you become regulated and ready for connection.

When I took a moment to recognize what that moment meant to me, to record it, and now to share it with you, I helped regulate my nervous system.

And we could all use a little more of that these days, couldn’t we?

A few things worth knowing about glimmers:

• They’re micro-moments—small, quiet sparks of joy, safety, or connection. A friendly face. A soothing sound. Something that makes you smile.

• They’re deeply personal. One person’s glimmer might be another person’s trigger.

• Your brain is wired to notice threats more than gifts, which is why glimmers slip by unnoticed… until you start looking for them.

• They’re not toxic positivity. Recognizing a glimmer doesn’t minimize your pain or tell you to count your blessings and move on. It just reminds you that your nervous system can hold both hard things and beautiful ones at the same time.

• They accumulate. One glimmer won’t fix everything, but they add up, nudging your nervous system, little by little, toward regulation and connection.

• The practice is simple: See the glimmer. Stop and feel it. Appreciate it. Remember it. Share it.

This week alone, despite the nagging hum of depression, the electric buzz of anxiety, and the stultifying weight of financial instability, I’ve logged glimmers. And I do notice them helping to lift the fog. Not dramatically, but incrementally, allowing me to keep moving, keep loving, stay standing.

I noticed the chickadees and juncos queueing up in the hawthorn tree next to my back porch, waiting for me to finish filling the feeder.

I spotted big buds on my tulips and magnolia tree, ready to burst into spring color.

I watched violet green swallows swoop and dive under my eaves, performing an air ballet as they sought out a place to nest.

I breathed in the heady scent of freshly turned soil as I planted the red flowering currant shrub I never got around to planting last season.

I celebrated the first pink clusters of blooms on that shrub just days later.

I recognized my daughter’s kindness when I forgot to close up my cold frame on a chilly night and they did it for me because they’d noticed a frost warning on their weather app, saving my San Marzano tomatoes from certain doom.

Noticing those little moments has helped to prevent me from spiraling into despair as our world seems to spin more and more out of control. And although the moments are small, the impact of paying attention to them isn’t.

The world is a lot right now, and it's okay to say so. But while you're in it, keep one eye open for the glimmers. They're not a cure. They're not even a consolation prize. They're just proof that your nervous system still knows how to feel something other than dread — and that's worth paying attention to.

So that’s my invitation to you this week: don’t wait for things to get better before you let yourself feel good.

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I turned 60 yesterday, so I’m going to call on OLP (Old Lady Privilege) and switch things up today. Instead of sharing a narrative slice of my life with you—something I see as a bridge to better understanding between humans—I’m going to post a sort of mission statement.

But first, because I can’t help myself, a little personal history.

On my sixth birthday, I ask for a party. I’m an introvert. I’ve always been shy in new social situations even though I’m outgoing and loquacious (and sometimes use big words like “loquacious”) with people I know. But part of me still has the very human need to be celebrated now and again. And a party seemed like a means to that end, so I’d asked my mom if I could have one.

I was just turning six, so I wasn’t in on the adult workings of party planning. I’ve never been quite sure what went wrong and the whole ordeal was too humiliating to talk about or write into family lore. Maybe Mom didn’t get invitations out on time. Maybe my birthday was too close to Easter. Or maybe the kids Mom invited to my party just universally said, “Nah, I don’t even like her.” Because no one came. I have a photograph of me sitting in the spring green flower girl dress I wore for my aunt and uncle’s wedding, in my grandma’s living room, giving my best pained birthday girl smile. Alone.

And then I’m 13. We’re celebrating my birthday at my grandparent’s place, and Gramps doesn’t look so good. He’s sweating despite the chill, and he keeps flexing his arm and massaging his chest. So instead of lighting candles and singing “Happy Birthday,” we rush him to the hospital. He’s had a heart attack. And a few days later he has a quadruple bypass.

Now, flash forward again. We’re having a little 18th birthday gathering at my family’s farm. My grandparents usually ride together, but in this case, they take separate cars so Gramps can drive in directly from work.

Gramps doesn’t show up. Dinner grows cold on the table, and my cake sits forlorn on the counter covered in 18 unlit candles. Later, he’ll call, lost and confused. He’s had some sort of “troubles with his insulin.” Mom drives to find him. He’s OK, thank the gods.

So, I’m kind of accustomed to bad things happening on my birthday. Even if your own birthdays have always been lovely, if you google “bad things that happened in history on [your birthdate],” bad things have almost certainly happened on yours, too. My own grandma effectively stopped celebrating her annual age-up because Gramps died of a heart attack in his sleep the day before her birthday. I realize I’m not special. I just happened to get a no-show and two health crises (for the person I loved most dearly) on my Special Day.

And then there’s my birthday yesterday (also Easter), when a mentally unstable demagogue took to X first thing in the morning and posted this rant:

Ah, there’s nothing like a little war crime first thing in the morning, am I right? Thank you for your attention to this matter. (Side note: I’m not even sure DJT wrote this because the fuckin’ spelling is too on-point. But whatever.)

It’s time to reframe my whole Bad Things Happen on My Birthday worldview.

Because I’ve had enough of… all that.

Instead, just like the story of Jesus in the Temple with the moneychangers—which is decidedly a pre-Easter event, but I’m going to roll with it—I’m ready to turn some tables. Or at least flip the script.

Instead of giving my energy to the insane demagogue sitting in the Oval Office, I’m sitting here at my desk watching swallows swooping and diving and looking for places to nest outside my window. And I realize that despite all of the horrible things that are happening around us, the world is still beautiful.

People are complicated, messy creatures. Collectively, we’re tribal, fearful, young. I think we keep forgetting just how young humanity is in comparison to the rest of the cosmos. We’re toddlers, just starting to walk and talk. And any parent knows that as a toddler makes discoveries about the world, she or he also starts to develop agency. The word “no!” appears pretty early in every toddler’s vocabulary. Opinions form along with a need for autonomy.

Every toddler is capable of being loving, sweet, and profoundly beautiful.

Every toddler is also capable of being completely unhinged.

And that’s us. We’re still learning how to move and operate and collaborate in this world. We’re not very good at it yet, but we’ll get there. Eventually. If we survive.

But there’s one group of people trying to bring some beauty into this world on the regular—artists. Visual artists, yes, but also poets, writers, theater artists, musicians, even gardeners who paint the landscape with plants. They keep bringing beauty into the world not just despite the bad things that happen, but often because of them.

Artists make us cry, laugh, ponder, dream.

We “fund the arts” in big flashy ways, which is important and necessary because arts organizations need help now more than ever. And that funding absolutely helps some individual artists through grant programs and residencies. But there are scores of others quietly bringing art into the world in their own small ways, just trying to survive in a society where it’s increasingly difficult to do so, especially as an artist.

The mission I’m asking you to undertake today is simple: Find an artist you love, and then fund them.

Not in a big flashy way, but in a small one. Because small gestures add up.

I’m a writer, but I still don’t quite have the words for the lifted, buoyant feeling I get every time I’m notified that someone thinks my narrative art here on Substack is worth $5 a month.

That simple encouragement is pure artistic fuel.

Sometimes it means groceries. Sometimes it means I can buy something small I’ve been putting off. A new plant. A carton of strawberries. The little things you quietly stop allowing yourself when money is tight.

You probably spend more than $5 a month on a streaming service without thinking about it. What if, instead, you picked one artist and supported them? Not a platform. Not a company. A person.

Someone out there is making something—writing, music, art—and wondering if it matters. Wondering if they should keep going.

You don’t have to fund a bunch of people. Just one.

Find someone whose work you like.

Subscribe.

Become a patron.

It matters more than you think.

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FIND AND FUND AN ARTIST TODAY!

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Writers, essayists, journalists, memoirists

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Musicians, artists, podcasters, video creators

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Indie artists, writers, illustrators (simple support, no fuss)

And me...

I'll Go First

I'll tell you my story; you tell me yours.

By Karen Lunde

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I keep notes on my phone to help me remember ideas for essays and memoir pieces. Today, I went to look for inspiration and discovered my note from a few weeks back. It said:

Growth isn’t a learning process, it’s a living process. All your failures and trials are fertilizer for growth. You just have to apply the lessons.

I’m not even sure what prompted me to make that note, but this one’s worth exploring, because it took me almost 50 years to absorb the lesson. I’ve spent a lot of my life chasing self-knowledge and emotional wellbeing by sitting at home reading about how to know myself better and navigate my emotional life.

It turns out learning won’t do much for you if you’re not living.

If you’ve been reading I’ll go first… for a while, you may have sussed out that I spent 25 years navigating a tumultuous marriage to a mentally ill man, someone who coped with his inner demons by inflicting chaos on everyone around him. I was desperate to save him from himself and, in the process, make him into someone I could accept.

Instead, I made him miserable. I couldn’t stop him from upending my life or our children’s, but I sure had a knack for making him feel judged and controlled. Which only made his behavior more volatile.

Then one day, I found myself in my therapist’s office spouting the wisdom I’d acquired from my self-help book du jour. I had a tendency to latch onto any idea that made sense to me, worrying it away like a dog with a bone until the next juicy idea came along. In this instance, I was analyzing Peter, as I always did, picking apart his tendencies and trying to show Mindy, my counselor, how right and saintly I was and how wrong and broken my husband was.

Mindy leaned forward, wearing an expression that was equal parts empathetic and exasperated, and said the words that changed my life. Not all at once, but slowly, over years, as I let the message sink in.

“I wonder if you realize,” she said, “That you can’t be in a relationship like the one you’re in and also be healthy.”

She went on to explain that in any dysfunctional relationship, one person often looks like a hot mess while the other looks like a hero. I’d made myself out to be the latter. I was going to fix this man, save this marriage, make it work no matter what. I was the functional one, the strong one, the emotionally intelligent one.

Or was I? Maybe I was the controlling one, the stuck one, the person sagely saying “the only way out is through” when in reality the way out was just to let go and, you know, get out.

And I didn’t learn that from a self-help book. I didn’t even learn it from Mindy. I learned it by living it, and by examining my own role in what Mindy called “the dysfunctional dance” day after day until something shifted.

Each happening in my life led to new discoveries: My mom died, my kids graduated, my job changed. Then, I found myself constantly thinking about the Pacific Northwest and what it would be like to live there. Every night, I researched cities in the PNW. I pored over Redfin and looked at homes and rental properties, dreaming of escape.

And over time, I took the lessons life was teaching me on board, and I made my move. I escaped. I found my place in the world in the Pacific Northwest, and my life opened up. I stopped isolating myself in my room, curled up with The Four Agreements or Daring Greatly, and I stepped out into the world. I found my people, I found love, and I found contentment. Self-help was there when I needed it, but I soon realized that someone else’s prescription wasn’t necessarily a fit for me. I learned to take advice with a heaping tablespoon (or two) of critical thinking.

But there’s one platform that has handed me simple lessons day after day, and all I had to do was pay attention and reflect on what it had to teach me: life.

When my son was a toddler, The Lion King was his absolute favorite movie. He asked to watch the VHS on repeat. One day, he found me crying over some drama with Peter that I don’t even remember now.

“Why you cry, Mama?”

“I’m just thinking about something that happened, and it’s making me sad.”

“Happened in the past?”

“Well, yes. Not very long ago, but in the past, I suppose.”

And my adorable Ian quoted Rafiki, a wise lion-taming mandrill from a Disney movie, at me:

“The past can hurt,” he said, nodding with feigned wisdom. “But you can either run from it… or learn from it.”

And that was some self-help advice I wish I’d listened to sooner than I did.

If you’re a free subscriber to I’ll go first…, I hope you enjoyed the read! My paid subscribers get a writing prompt every Friday as a thank-you for helping me keep the written word alive, well, and human. I invite you to join us for just $5 a month!

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After my first workshop—where I had incredible participants doing brave things with writing—life got in the way, and I haven’t scheduled another one since. (Soon, gentle readers. If you live near me, soon.)

But I realized that Chanterelle Story Studio works beautifully for a workshop series. It just doesn’t quite describe what I’m doing here. So yesterday, in what felt like the right move but might have been an audacious ADHD whim, I changed the name of this publication to I’ll Go First.

I also grabbed the domain igofirst.org. So now, if you want to tell a friend they really should sign up for weekly stories and writing prompts, you won’t have to remember chanterellestorystudio.substack.com and hope they can spell “chanterelle.” (Because of course you’re sending your friends here. Maybe. I hope. OK, I’d be ridiculously flattered if you actually did that, though I’m betting you probably don’t. But still.)

No more remembering how to spell fungi common names. But why I’ll Go First?

It’s pretty simple, really. The name describes exactly what I’m hoping to do here. “Tell me a story about _____! I’ll go first…”

The “I’ll go first” part isn’t about feeling entitled or wanting to be first in line. It’s about breaking the vulnerability barrier. I’ve led too many writing workshops where I’ve asked people to write about vulnerable things, only to watch them shrink because they don’t want to feel alone and exposed. So, hey! No worries! I’ll go first. And once you’ve seen what I left on the table, all of it raw and real, maybe you’ll feel more ready to listen to your own voice, pick up a pen, and write it down.

Because there’s real power in that. It’s a little magical. And if you haven’t tried it—if you’re really more here for the reading than the writing—that’s perfectly okay. I love readers and writers. But maybe give writing a shot for a week? You might surprise yourself.

And finally: the whoops I alluded to in the title.

This morning I shared an emotional post about my mom. (We all have one of those in us. Of that I’m sure.) And as I was skimming back through the newsletter—as writers do, because we tend to obsessively double-check our work even after it’s published—I noticed I’d accidentally copied and double-pasted a section of the memoir. So it appears twice, with another segment sandwiched in between. Ugh.

Before I write it off as a “shit happens” moment, I wanted to quickly apologize for the confusion and ask you to read the story online, where I’ve fixed it and made it whole again.

Because Mom deserves that.

With heart,

Karen

We carry our folding chairs and snacks out into the darkening field. Ian and Shayla chatter with one another, an excited sibling banter, and Mom looks to me for our strategy.

“Let’s get somewhere toward the middle and near the back,” I say. “Easier to get out when the show’s over, and we’ll have a great view without straining our necks.”

“All I care about is the noise,” Mom says with childlike excitement. I can never quite tell if that childlike demeanor is affected or genuine. “Let’s make the noise!”

“I like the colors!” Ian says.

“Me too!” Shayla confirms.

“Not the noise? Are you actually your grandmother’s grandchildren? Are you sure?” Mom teases.

Ian snatches her hand. “We like noise, too, Grandma!” Always appeasing, that kid. Down the road, he’ll evolve into a first-class people-pleaser just like his mom. But he’ll also be a kind, lovely, socially aware and emotionally mature man. A mom could do worse.

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We situate our chairs and ourselves and wait, people-watching as the night grows darker. We discuss, as we always seem to, how the Bartolotta folks—the renowned Southeastern Wisconsin pyrotechnics company putting on this show—seem to loosely define the “dusk” part of “fireworks at dusk.” Mom and I ask one another what the fireworks are even celebrating. Some sort of anniversary for the tiny town of Nashotah, but what?

“Do we really care?” I laugh when we don’t arrive at a satisfying answer.

Mom shakes her head and shrugs. For her, fireworks don’t need a reason. But little Shayla adds earnestly, “I do. I care.” And that kid will develop a real taste for history trivia while blossoming into an opinionated-but-caring human with a thirst for learning new things, a strong bent toward social justice, and … well, a mom could do worse.

And then… Foomp! … Boom!

The warning firework signals that the show is about to start. People who’ve been milling about return to their blankets and lawn chairs. Fireflies blink in the distance. It’s late summer in Wisconsin—humid air, whiny pests, and an insect chorus that drowns out practically everything except—

Foomp! … Boom!

The show begins, and we watch raptly, joining the crowd: Oooo! … Aaaah!

And then, after about 20 minutes of razzle dazzle, the show just seems to end. Mom and I look at each other, equal parts puzzled and annoyed. What? No grand finale? What a bust!

Then Ian points to some figures emerging from the shadows. Three men, each with a signal flare in hand, spaced equidistant across the front of the field that’s been cordoned off for the pyrotechnicians. On some cue we can’t hear, they begin to march forward in sync, flares raised. They arrive at their destinations, lower their flares in unison, and skip away quickly before—

All hell breaks loose!

The sky fills with explosions from three different stacks of powerful fireworks. Colors light the night, shimmering across our faces and lighting our eyes in vibrant fuschias, blues, greens, and golds. Despite the cacophony of booms, Mom’s whoops of delight spur us on, and soon we’re all shouting and cheering and laughing. It’s literally the noisiest, most colorful grand finale we’ve seen, not just all year but ever.

As we make our way back to the car—my easy-exit strategy worked like a charm and we’re a few steps ahead of the surging crowd—Mom seems to vibrate with excess energy. She grabs my hand urgently and leans in, thinking she’s talking into my ear.

“That was so good I almost came!” she barks loudly, to the snorts and chuckles of surrounding people who are also trekking to their cars.

I laugh. “Really, Mom? Really?”

“What?” she says, giving my arm a playful tug. “Fireworks are better than sex!”

I like fireworks, but I beg to differ. Still, I don’t say anything to dampen her excitement. It’s best to let Mom just keep buzzing away while the spirit moves her.

* * * *

Mom dropped a revelation on me one day as we sat at her dining room table.

“When I was pregnant with you, I wanted to be a single mom,” she said. “But you know your grandmother. She would’ve had a stroke.”

She’d told me about getting married at 18. She’d worn a blue dress my grandmother picked out, and it had been a quick and simple affair because she was four months pregnant with me. I knew she’d hated how she got married, but not that she hadn’t wanted to get married at all.

Mom had been complaining about Dad’s latest money-making enterprise. He’d planted several acres of strawberries on their sprawling farm. As the berries ripened, he demanded they be tended. By anyone but him.

“Imagine! If I’d stayed single, I wouldn’t have to get up at 6 a.m. on a Saturday to pick berries so your dad can go schmooze at the farmers market,” Mom said. She already worked a 40-hour week in the back office of the local Walmart.

“Why can’t he pick the berries himself?” I asked.

It was a rhetorical question mostly meant to commiserate. After the initial thrill of planting the berry patch faded, Dad’s self-appointed role was to wander the field looking for issues he felt like tackling. Grabbing a .22 and shooting grackles — blackbirds who loved to peck the strawberries — was a problem he’d eagerly remedy while singing, “Kill the grackle … kill the graaaaaaaackle!” in his best Elmer Fudd voice.

But weeding? Harvesting? Those things were someone else’s problem. And because we kids were grown and leading lives of our own, the weeding and harvesting fell to Mom. She looked tired.

“You know,” I said gently, “You could tell him you don’t have the energy to pick berries after working all week. He’ll just have to take care of it himself.”

“You know he won’t. And then what? I get to listen to him blame me for his crop rotting in the field?”

I’d been reading up on codependency. My own marriage was rife with it, and I was desperately trying to learn how not to enable my husband’s lying, cheating, abusive behavior.

“You don’t have to accept the blame,” I said. “What if you just said no? What’s the worst that could happen?”

“He’d be broke and rummaging through my purse for bar money. I can’t afford that. Who’s going to pay the bills?”

I had no answer. I hadn’t gotten to the “What to do if your partner steals from you when you refuse to enable them” chapter of Codependent No More.

Mom and I sat in silence for a while as she gazed out the dining room window at the offending strawberry patch. Finally, she pushed herself away from the table and rose slowly to her feet.

“Guess it’s time to make dinner. You know how your dad gets.”

Yes, I knew. I’d witnessed the scene over and over throughout my childhood. Dad would tumble through the door at around nine or ten and head directly to the microwave. The remains of the evening’s dinner would be waiting inside, already covered in cling wrap, ready for him to heat up. The routine was so familiar that our African grey parrot, Gatsby, had learned to perfectly imitate the sound of Dad’s footfalls, the beep of the microwave, and the slam of the microwave door.

If Dad came home giggly — we called this the Tee-Hee Phase — all would be well. If he was sullen, he might end up ranting and raving in his strident, tenor voice about some imagined slight before skulking off to bed. No one would get hurt, but everything about the day would suddenly get worse.

Knowing that, I couldn’t bring myself to tell Mom that setting out dinner was enabling, too. On the drive home, I wondered, as I had many times, why she continued to put up with it.

* * * *

I remember the frigid February day with cruel clarity.

I’d just come back from driving the kids to school in the wake of a heavy snow. The roads were treacherous but passable. I‘d fixed myself some coffee when my phone rang. It was my youngest brother, Dustin.

When I answered, all I heard was frantic breathing for a moment before Dustin gasped, “Sis, I need you! Maria’s giving Mom CPR.”

“What?” I cried. I didn’t take the time to ask questions; from the sound of my little brother’s voice, I knew — it was bad. “I’m coming! I’m on my way!”

I drove recklessly through the frozen countryside, sliding several times but always managing to stay on the road. I arrived to find an ambulance in the driveway in front of Mom and Dad’s little blue house.

Dustin ran to me and wrapped his arms around me. “She’s unconscious,” he said. His vacant eyes stared past me to where EMTs were loading a gurney into the ambulance. “She just … passed out. I couldn’t wake her up.”

I learned that Mom had called Dustin, who lived across the driveway on my parents’ property, asking if he’d let her dogs out because she was too sick to get out of bed. When he checked on her, she could barely breathe. She looked up at him and uttered what would be her last words:

“I think I’m dying.”

Dustin had frantically called for his wife, Maria, a surgical assistant. She gave Mom CPR for nearly 30 minutes until the ambulance arrived.

We followed the ambulance to the hospital. As we awaited word, the three of us pacing around a large, open solarium, I suggested someone call Dad. He was in Florida, where my parents had bought a rundown double-wide trailer on a spot of land in Homosassa to fix up.

Maria offered to call. She and Dad inexplicably had a better relationship than he had with any of us kids. I listened as she explained that Mom had lost consciousness and was being admitted to the hospital.

At one point, Maria cupped her hand over the phone receiver and looked at me. “He wants to know if he should come home,” she said.

“Of course!” I snapped. Was Dad so self-involved he couldn’t see that his unconscious 65-year-old wife being admitted to the hospital was an emergency?

Dad made it home in time to say goodbye.

Our family — now including my brother Scott, who’d flown in from Colorado — had been tended to and informed by a kind, soft-spoken, rheumy-eyed nurse. After we watched frantic doctors and nurses revive Mom with a defibrillator many times, with her never once gaining consciousness, he came to us.

“It’s time to make a decision,” he said to Dad. “We will absolutely continue life-sustaining measures if that’s what you want us to do. But…”

The nurse looked at me. He saw how wrecked and despondent my father was, and I believe he realized who the real decision-maker would ultimately be.

Mom didn’t have an advanced directive, but she had me.

“Dr. Olsen says, at this point, Mom’s brain has been without oxygen long enough that it’s very unlikely she would have a good quality of life even if she did wake up.” He placed one hand on Dad’s shoulder and the other on mine. “Do you want us to continue lifesaving measures?”

Dad looked at me. “We do … don’t we?” His small, plaintive voice wove itself through my nerve synapses, sending a surge of empathy to my heart.

How could I say what I had to say? I remembered all too well the conversations I’d had with my mom about death. “Don’t keep me alive with machines,” she said. “I don’t ever want to be a vegetable.”

“We do not,” I said softly, shaking my head. “She wouldn’t want that. She would want us to give her peace.”

And so, less than 24 hours after she was admitted to the hospital, we watched as nurses unhooked the machines that kept Mom’s heart beating and lungs breathing. We watched as her chest rose a few more times and then ceased to move. We each took a turn saying goodbye.

As I leaned in to kiss her rapidly cooling cheek, I whispered, “I love you, Mom. Rest now. You’ve earned it.”

* * * *

Dad unraveled after Mom died.

Without her to clean up his messes, the house quickly filled with clutter. With no one to prepare meals for him, he took to grabbing a sandwich from the local gas station. He forgot to drink water and ended up in the hospital with severe dehydration more than once.

Mom was codependent no more, but her dependent was lost without her.

While Dad fell apart, I found myself lingering on the simple refrain Mom repeated after every summer fireworks show’s grand finale. When her shouting and applause had faded, she would turn to me and exclaim, “When I die, put my ashes up in a firework!”

And so, when summer arrived, Scott helped me make Mom’s wish a reality. He arranged for some of her ashes to be placed in a firework that would be shot off during a July 4th show over Silver Lake. We were told the grand finale would happen, followed by a brief moment of silence. Then, Mom would take to the sky as a single golden willow.

I sat on the pier with Dad, watching the show. Despite all the light and noise, Mom’s gleeful whooping was glaringly absent. I nudged Dad’s shoulder with my own and said, “Mom sure loved this stuff.”

“I never understood it,” Dad said. I bristled. Even now, it was all about him. What he understood. What he found comfortable.

“We went to a show in Nashotah a few years back,” I said, ignoring his comment. “When they got to the grand finale, three guys with torches walked out into the field and lit three separate displays so they’d all go off at once. It was amazing — total chaos. You know what Mom did?”

Dad shook his head, looking up as a big red chrysanthemum exploded overhead.

“She grabbed my hand and shouted, ‘That was so good I almost came!’”

Dad snorted. “She said that?”

“In front of the kids, God, and everyone,” I said.

Just then, the Silver Lake grand finale began with a barrage of booms and a blaze of sparkling lights and colors. Dad rose and stood at the edge of the pier, his hand over his heart, face turned skyward. Colors illuminated his white-blond hair.

Then, silence descended. Dad’s frail, thin voice rang out across the water:

“I love you!”

Foomp! Sparkle! Boom!

“Did you know you stop breathing when you talk?”

I blink at Mindy, my counselor, and shake my head slightly. Stop breathing? I mean, yeah, I run out of breath sometimes, but—

Wait. Is that not normal?

I thought I was just, you know, kind of anxious. Like a rabbit hiding in the garden nervously munching a stalk of parsley under the tomatoes while a dog sniffs nearby.

Mindy clasps her hands in front of her and leans toward me. “You do,” she says firmly.
”You hold your breath when you talk. And then I mirror you, so I do it too.” She laughs nervously. “Can I be honest?”

I nod again.

“It’s kind of freaking me out! How do you cope with this?”

Good question. How did I cope with it? Mostly, I didn’t even realize I was doing it. Or, more to the point, I didn’t recognize my running out of air mid-sentence as something particularly out of the ordinary. I’d been doing it for years.

I used to be OK. I even won medals for competitive speech in high school. But now it was a struggle even to read my own writing out loud in front of others.

Dunno. Something just… changed.

But there’s a reason I’m here in Mindy’s office. It’s because my marriage is a minefield. I’m constantly navigating Peter, who feels like he has the world’s most fragile ego. (Although, I can think of one public figure who trumps my ex-husband in that department these days.) Not only that, but he’s volatile. He screams at me and the kids. He’s backed me into corners, trying to intimidate me. He’s shoved and hit me a few times.

That’s why I’m here. To solve Peter. To convince Mindy that if Peter would only just follow my lead and stop lying and cheating and being angry all the time, then our family would be just fine. Right? Hard stuff, but surely doable.

And if I solve Peter, well, then maybe I’ll be less of a nervous rabbit. Maybe I’ll take a few deep breaths.

* * * *

I didn’t solve Peter.

Instead, I ended our marriage and moved 2,000 miles west to Washington State, the one place I’d visited (ironically on a “second honeymoon” with Peter) that felt like home the moment I set foot there.

At the time, Peter and I were still trying to maintain a friendly detente. After I sold nearly everything my kids and I owned and packed what was left into my ‘98 Toyota Sienna, Peter set out with me to help manage the three-day drive. On the way, during a record-breaking heatwave, my van’s AC died and we drove all but six hours of a 30-hour trip sweltering.

My apartment wouldn’t be available until the next day, so we planned to spend the last night of our road trip in a hotel in Olympia. When we arrived, we pulled into a parking lot shaded by towering douglas firs. I stepped from the car, grinning wildly, and I breathed.

“Smell the air! It smells like pine!”

Peter looked at me and bobbed his head unenthusiastically. He was losing his partner of nearly 25 years. And sure, he cheated a lot. And yes, he had a secret girlfriend back in Wisconsin, but he was sad, OK? He wasn’t about to get excited over fresh air and fir trees.

But me?

I gulped in great big breaths of the freshest air I’d breathed in a long time.

And without even realizing it, I kept on breathing.

I still get anxious sometimes. I still hold my breath. But now I notice when it’s happening. And I know what it means.

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My addiction started in my grandmother’s mint green mid-mod bathroom.

I hadn’t yet discovered soluble fiber, so I was bored sitting there on the mint-green throne staring at the mint-green tub waiting for the train to pull into the station.

When you’re 11, everything’s boring.

I opened the cabinet under the sink to see if I could find any reading material. As I reached for the Comet, because reading a label was better than nothing, my hand grazed paper.

A magazine? Joy! A magazine was a bathroom score. But what I extracted was no Redbook or Ladies’ Home Journal; it was a Burpee Seed Catalog.

As I flipped through the pages, I found myself entranced. The flowers were beautiful. I’d never paid much attention to plant life before, but suddenly I had the urge to order some zinnias. After all, I had a babysitting job and a “junior checking account.” What was a checking account for if not mail-ordering things?

Later that day, I filled out an order form, swiped a stamp from Grandma’s junk drawer, and slipped the envelope into the mailbox. I had no idea of the path my decision would lead me down.

A few weeks later when we visited Grandma, my order was waiting.

My grandparents had a spot out in the backyard in full sun, devoid of grass because they’d burned leaves there in the fall. I planned to stealthily plant my zinnia seeds while no one was watching so everyone would be amazed when they produced multicolored blooms.

I came lurching out of the garage with a shovel in hand. It’s hard to be stealthy with a shovel. Unless you’re an avid gardener, people wonder if you’re up to something heinous.

The clay soil was harder to work than I’d expected, but not more than 30 minutes later, I’d planted my handfuls of zinnia seeds. Stealth seeding mission accomplished!

I had to bring my grandpa in on my little secret garden. I asked him not to mow the patch where I’d turned the soil. By June, my grandma started asking about the “weeds” growing in the yard. Grandpa told her he thought they might be flowers and asked her to wait it out.

“Such foolishness!” Grandma said. “We haven’t planted any flowers.”

“Let’s just wait and see,” Grandpa urged.

By mid-July, my zinnia garden was in full, riotous bloom. A dazzling pallet of colors now painted what had once been scorched earth.

“I don’t understand,” Grandma mused. “How did the flowers get there?”

Grandpa winked at me. “Must’ve been a garden fairy,” he said.

My summer experiment didn’t lead me directly into gardening. Instead, I graduated from high school, started my work life, got married (unhappily, but that’s another story), and had two kids. Mostly, we lived in apartments or duplexes because we were always broke.

I was 42 when I finally scored a house with a garden space. It was 2007, and the real estate market was starting to get dicey. We decided to enter into a rent-to-own agreement. Our landlord told us to treat the house as our own — painting and landscaping were entirely okay.

That was all I needed to hear.

This house already had some prepared beds, each with a couple of sad-looking barberry bushes. I decided I didn’t like anything with thorns, so I yoinked those barberries out of my new garden beds. Carefully.

Which, of course, meant that I needed replacements. I was too impatient to plant seeds and wait this time, so I went to a nearby nursery.

Big mistake.

Do you know what nurseries have? They have mountains of colorful, gorgeous perennials waiting for new homes. They have shapely shrubs, some of them covered with flowers. They have delightful, elegant little trees. And best of all, in May you can count on a nursery to smell like soil and mulch and all things spring.

Nurseries are pure dopamine. And dopamine is addicting.

I came home with hydrangeas to replace the barberry bushes. But it’s worth noting that, back then, I was a mom with a minivan. I filled that sucker with as many plants as I could afford. I came home with not only lovely hydrangeas, but pink double-blooming echinaceas, delphiniums, hostas for my shady spots, and just about anything else that struck my fancy.

I planted. Mostly, my perennials grew, and they looked glorious. Then they came back the following spring, and I was entranced. I started hitting up nurseries each spring as early as I possibly could, even before it was warm enough for planting. Just the idea of planting was enough to start me twitching, eager for a fix.

So, I started buying seeds.

I know what you’re thinking:

Seed starting? Damn, girl! You’re too far gone. No one can help you now.

No shit.

I researched. I visited gardening forums and became a regular. I learned what a person could do with a simple setup that included shop lights and flats of sterile potting soil. I began accumulating garden knowledge along with gardening paraphernalia.

My kids are grown now, but I have something shameful to admit — I got my kid addicted to gardening.

In fact, when the kid (who is a spritely 28) begs me to go to garden centers with them, they mock me, wailing “I learned it by watching you!” like the kid in that 80’s anti-drug commercial.

And no 12-step program will help us. We’re gone.

We have been known to make a pilgrimage to our favorite hosta pusher (Sebright Gardens in Oregon, but you didn’t hear that from me) every May.

It’s a six-hour drive round-trip. For hostas.

I have gardening friends now who share my addiction. They regularly supply me with plants. When I have some to spare (my yard is bigger and still a work in progress), I share my plants, too.

Cuz, like, don’t bogart the rudbeckia, Becky!

I’m sitting beside Peggy in the cramped office of the downtown Episcopal church. The one on a small peninsula that juts out into the lake, built in the 1880s, with the beautiful stone gothic architecture.

Peggy’s acting odd: Shifting in her seat, offering pinched smiles. She’s hesitant, where before she’d trained me for my new job as church secretary with enthusiasm.

Great. I’m about to lose this job, aren’t I?

Right on cue, Father Gerald pokes his head in the office door. “Karen, can I talk to you for a moment in my office?”

I sit down in the priest’s tidy office. He’s a wiry man, probably in his 60s. Tanned and leathered from years outside in the sun. He radiates the sort of health my own father always wanted me to aspire to—the rugged, outdoorsy kind. I can still hear my dad observing, as he assessed my pale skin and soft body, that I “wasn’t much of an outside girl.”

And I’m not. At least, not in the sporty way my dad hoped I’d be. I love to walk in the woods and daydream. I also love walking at night, when lights glow softly from homes and I can imagine the lives that might be happening under those roofs. Are they happy? Troubled? Is there someone in there like me, quietly reading in her room, ashamed of not being an “outside girl,” too?

Father Gerald takes a seat and pulls his chair up close to the desk, flat against his firm abdomen. He folds his hands on the blotter in front of him.

“This is hard to talk about. Peggy tells me you’re doing an excellent job. She likes your work and how quickly you learn.” He gives a humorless chuckle. “So, she’s a little upset with me right now.”

I blink. Tilt my head. Say nothing.

Father Gerald clears his throat. “So, I have a problem with overweight people. I thought I could overcome it when I hired you—you came so qualified and highly recommended—but I can’t.”

Heat climbs up my neck and blooms scarlet across my cheeks. I continue to say nothing. I’m waiting for him to get to the point, performing “fine” when inside I’m overcome with the sort of humiliation that feels like a punch in the gut.

“I’m sure you’re a lovely person. But I think— Well, I feel—” he wrings his hands and clears his throat again. “I feel if a person is fat they have some unresolved issues. Mentally speaking. There’s something going on if you need to eat so much, right?”

I draw in a deep breath. For a moment, I’m not sure how to respond to him.

I’ve been called “fat” my whole life, even when I wasn’t overweight. Something about my height (tall), my rounded back and shoulders, and my soft belly made me ripe for judgment from the very first doctor’s appointment I remember. The one where the pediatrician told Mom I had a “spare tire.”

And it’s true the only time Mom was delighted by my appearance was when my high school girls’ gym class had a weight management segment that spurred me to starve myself down two sizes by eating 400 calories a day for a month.

And yet, never had anyone fired me for being plus-sized. In fact, I’d never been fired before at all.

Now, in that sunlit office with its leaded glass windows, I fight the urge to collapse into tears. Instead, I summon the courage to draw back my shoulders, lift my chin, and say, “I believe you’re the one with unresolved issues. Mentally speaking.”

Father Gerald sighs. “Yes,” he says, “You may well be right about that. But nonetheless.” He pushes a paper toward me to sign, my notice of termination. “I just can’t have you here, you see? Every time I see you, it reminds me of this… repulsion. And when you wear those stretch pants—”

“Stirrup pants.”

He corrects himself, “The stirrup pants. They… just make your weight problem more obvious and I—”

I sign the paper and stand up. “It’s fine,” I say brusquely. “I don’t want to work for someone who can’t stand the sight of me.”

I walk out and shut the door firmly behind me, then stand there in the hallway for a moment, stunned. Did I really just say that? Did I really tell an Episcopal priest he had mental health issues? I tremble with the realization that I’ve done something so outside my comfort zone. Normally, I’m the one who quietly absorbs criticism and processes it into self-loathing.

I head back to the office where Peggy awaits. When I walk in, she looks at me with pursed lips, eyebrows knitted together in dismay. Her concern is genuine, and I fight back tears as I say, “It’s been nice working with you.”

Peggy stands and puts a hand on my shoulder. “You were doing really good work, Karen. Believe that.”

Peggy’s miserable. She drops back down into her office chair and clutches her forehead, as though fighting a headache. “It’s all him, you know,” she says. “I care about him. He’s a good man. But…”

I want to say, Can you be a good man if you’re also a bigot?

But I don’t. Instead, I shrug, shake my head, and say the words I’ve grown to hate: “It is what it is.”

* * * *

I’d felt good in those cream-colored stirrup pants and the creamy knit duster I wore with them, the one with the pearlescent buttons and tiny sequins. Pretty, even. But after that humiliating day in the Episcopal church office, I stopped wearing anything stretchy. I stuck to jeans (or buttoned dress slacks for work.) So what if those waistbands always seared a red stripe across my tummy where they dug in. Beauty is pain.

For 30 years I just dealt with discomfort. “It is what it is,” right? Plus, it wasn’t so bad. That red stripe faded by morning, just in time for me to start the process all over again.

But then one day I found myself in Old Navy in search of yoga pants. Just for slopping around at home, not for going out in public, I told myself. I pulled on some high-waisted pants and—holy shit! They were beyond comfortable. They didn’t dig in anywhere. And was it just me, or did they actually look—

“Those look nice! They’re slimming,” my daughter said when I put the yoga pants on at home.

“Like, nice enough to go out in public?” I asked.

“Yeah! They look good on you. You could wear them anywhere, with anything.”

I went to the full-length mirror in my closet, the one I almost always avoid because who wants to look at this body? My kid was right—the yoga pants looked good. Slimming, even, with no “muffin top” to roll over the waistband. And beyond that, they were the most comfortable pants I’d worn since, well, late-90s stirrup pants.

And with that, I chose to wear my yoga pants all day every day. Work, shopping, a concert, a dressy event—the right kind of yoga pants (like the ones I have made from a shiny knit fabric) can be dressed up, I’ve found. Nobody needs to know that waistband doesn’t have a zipper and a button.

Father Gerald, if he’s still among the living 30 years later, would probably hate my yoga pants or, more specifically, hate me wearing yoga pants. And honestly, that thought brings me more satisfaction than it probably should.

Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know then: comfort isn’t a consolation prize. It’s not what you settle for when you’ve given up. Comfort is what you earn when you finally stop punishing your body for existing.

Those stirrup pants made me feel pretty. These yoga pants make me feel like myself. Turns out those two things can be the same thing, and no leathered priest with unresolved issues gets a vote.

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Cobalt Scar dawns cold and clear. We shelter in a quiet corner away from the othmir and wyverns that want our blood. They’d kill us on sight due to our relentless hunting of their kind.

Manazz and I would round up the creatures, herd them into a confused cluster, and chip away at their mortality with our spells—swarms of bees, tangles of vines, blasts of searing fire.

Their deaths made us stronger. And for that, they would never forgive us.

A message floats across my screen, breaking the immersion for a moment.

– I heard a song today that felt like it was about us…

– Me too!

– I think it was by the Goo Goo Dolls

– Iris? That’s the one I was talking about!

– I think so? It goes, ‘I would give up forever to touch you…’

And just like that, I’m no longer a druid hunting wyverns beside her mentor in the frozen wastes. I’m Karen, in love with Dave, who is not my husband and lives 1,500 miles away in Canada with his wife and children.

And we’ve just named our anthem.

And I’d give up forever to touch you
‘Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You’re the closest to Heaven that I’ll ever be
And I don’t wanna go home right now

And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
And sooner or later, it’s over
I just don’t wanna miss you tonight

God! That’s it, isn’t it? This feeling. We would give up forever to touch one another, and our relationship thrives on that impossibility. We both say we love our families. We don’t want to disrupt them. We don’t want to hurt anyone, but…

Manazz holds Shayalyn tightly

– Connected…

It’s our word: “connected.” We believe we are. Across miles and a slow, unstable dial-up connection, we’ve formed an unbreakable bond, reading each other’s thoughts and sensing each other’s movements. We’re free in the game world, discovering that connection one quest goal at a time.

Peter joined me in EverQuest shortly after I started playing. That was my husband’s M.O.; whither thou goest, I shall go. Whether you want me to or not.

Peter trusted me to be loyal, and in terms of physical intimacy, I was.

He knew me to be empathetic and forgiving. He’d heard me cover for him often enough to believe I would protect his dysfunctions. I was “in on the fun.”

He trusted me to be faithful even as I confronted him with evidence of another affair.

He trusted me to keep quiet about the times he shoved me or backed me into a corner and screamed in my face—no one needed to know what went on inside our home.

He trusted me to have his back even as he stabbed me in mine.

But in EverQuest’s world of Norrath, all bets were off. Peter’s mage character was what we gamers called “squishy.” He could send in a pet elemental and hammer monsters with fire bolts and other damage spells, but if he played badly, he “drew aggro.” All of the monsters we were fighting would turn on him, and since mages tended to be soft and studious (they didn’t have many “hit points”), they died quickly.

And death in EverQuest had consequences. If you didn’t happen to have a cleric around to “rez” you, you lost a significant chunk of experience in a world where the goal was to level up. Hours of progress disappeared in a blink.

When Peter joined our adventuring groups, the dynamic shifted from one of spirited competition and friendly banter to something more like this:

Spiritmystic tells the group, ‘I need a heal! I’m dying!’

Shayalyn tells the group, ‘Toodles! Maybe you’ll learn to stop pulling aggro.’

Every session with Peter meant navigating his incompetence. In Norrath, I didn’t feel compelled to cover for him the way I did in real life.

I was a badass player; he was just a bad one.

And that felt good.

* * * *

Manazz and I teleport to the druid rings in Greater Faydark and head for Kelethin, the tree city of our wood elf tribe. None of the monsters here want to harm us. They’ve long since learned we’re stronger than they are. We ride the lifts into the forest canopy and sit overlooking the dark, mysterious landscape.

Haunting, ethereal music plays in the background as we talk.

–Tell me one bad thing you’ve done and it better be evil. Like, so evil you would say it was ‘EE-vil,’ I say to Manazz.

– Like the froo-its of the dev-il? EEE-vil?

– I love that you’re coming along with me on this. Yes. Eeeee-vil.

– Hmm. I’m a pretty good guy, I think. But when I was younger, I beat the shit out of an Indian for mouthing off to me. Pretty evil. But you could argue he had it coming?

Wait.

This isn’t fantasy anymore.

– Dave…

– It’s probably not a thing in Wisconsin because you don’t have Indians everywhere, but if you lived in Alberta, you’d understand

I don’t have much experience with Indigenous people firsthand. But I’m fully aware that the Wisconsin cities surrounding me have names that came from native roots: Okauchee, Waukesha, Oconomowoc, Pewaukee. That’s not the point, though. Nothing in my world view would permit me to feel good about harming anyone, especially someone from a people already ravaged by oppression

I could tell Dave that. But I don’t. I can’t. I need to sustain this fantasy. The one where Dave tells me I’m perfect, everything he’s ever wanted, someone he’d give up forever to touch.

I need that world.

– Now, what’s something evil you’ve done? Manazz asks.

– What? My dear, I’m a saint …

– The wyverns in Cobalt Scar beg to differ

– I grouped with Jaxyn yesterday for a while and we took out a bunch. I dinged 55 on that run. So, not truly evil, but maybe evil-adjacent?

– I hate that

– That I leveled up? That I nuked wyverns? That’s kind of the goal, right?

– That you played with Jax. I want to keep you to myself

Dave hates that I played with Jax? The kid is at least ten years younger than we are and works at Dave’s LAN center, basically a cybercafe for gamers. And as far as I could tell, Dave and Jax were friends.

Shayalyn laughs at Manazz

– I’m not joking, he says.

I log off a few minutes later, claiming exhaustion and a need to sleep so I could wake the kids up for school in four hours.

* * * *

I log in on a Monday morning after getting the kids off to school and Peter off to work. Before I can choose a destination, Jaxyn messages me.

– So, hi, Shay. I’m going to be leaving the game. I thought you should know. Maybe not forever, just a break.

– No! Why? You’re almost at the level cap. You’re on top of the world, dude!

– Can we be honest?

– Always.

– So, Dave got in my face at work last night about grouping with you. And it was bad.

– Bad how?

– He loves you. He sees me as a threat. And I don’t want to come between you guys.

But that’s ridiculous. Dave’s married. Dave has kids, too. We can’t—won’t ever—be together in the real world. And if we were, would he bully any man who dared to befriend me?

What is this thing I need from him, from this game? What am I willing to endure to sustain this fantasy of “perfect love?”

* * * *

Jax leaves with quiet integrity, never telling anyone the real reason behind his departure from Norrath. But I know. And Dave knows. And that knowing simmers between us.

Jax’s exit wasn’t dramatic, but plenty of guild drama followed as we navigated the emotional territory this online world had opened up. Guild members fell for each other. Real-life families dissolved into chaos.

One beloved guild family—a grandfather whose real-world name was Dan, his son Danny, and his daughter, Dani—also famously imploded when Dani left her husband and children to be with her EQ paramour, Symphonique, an ostentatious half-elf bard the rest of us merely tolerated.

As the mortar of our fantasy world crumbled, Dave and I doubled down on our romance. I called him late at night at the LAN center, which stayed open overnight for obsessed gamers playing CounterStrike and StarCraft.

Those calls from the U.S. to Canada ran up a $400 long-distance bill I couldn’t hide from Peter. Every call to Alberta was there in black and white, complete with dates and durations.

When Peter burst into our bedroom while I was quietly reading, I knew what was coming. He hurled a stack of papers onto the bed, eyes narrowed with hostility, and said in a low, steady voice, “Care to explain this?”

I gathered up the papers and the moment I started reading the text, I froze. This wasn’t the phone bill. They were my EQ chat logs. Irrefutable evidence of my indiscretions.

“Role-playing,” I answered calmly.

Next, Peter dropped the phone bill onto the comforter, his face an angry grimace. “And this?”

Strategy sessions for upcoming guild raids? He’d never believe it. Peter knew what lying looked like. He knew what it felt like to fabricate something until it settled into your bones and almost became the truth. How could I hope to fool someone who was himself an expert liar and cheat?

“I love Dave,” I said. “He’s my best friend.”

“You mean your lover!”

“It’s just a fantasy. I’m here, aren’t I? In our bed?”

Over the next hour, Peter humiliated me by hissing line after line of steamy chat transcripts, spitting venom at me like a cobra.

Finally, I sat up, clutching the sheets to my chest, and declared, “Enough.”

But Peter was too far gone. “Enough? It’s enough for you? Well, that’s going to be a problem.”

“So you’ve decided to hurt yourself by reading a bunch of chat logs? Fine, I guess, but that’s on you.”

“Oh, really?” His favorite phrase. “Oh, really? That’s how you see it?”

He was getting loud enough to wake the kids. He leaned down into my face, causing me to flinch back, and shouted, “You’re gonna tell me right now—do you want me or him?”

I closed my eyes. Ran a hand across my face to wipe Peter’s spittle away. Breathed in. Out. Clenched my jaw as I crossed my arms across my chest.

I summon Sullon Zek, goddess of rage and strength.

I summon Quellious, goddess of tranquility.

When I raised my eyes to meet his, it was with sudden clarity: I didn’t need divine intervention.

“Neither!” I cried. “I don’t want either one of you. Leave me the fuck alone!”

The walls reverberated as Peter slammed the door and went to sleep in the basement. By morning, he’d be playing the victim: the abused man forced onto a nasty old couch in a dank basement cluttered with Internet porn and photos of women he’d been hooking up with online. Months later, my mom would go looking for him during a visit only to find him at his desk with his sweat pants around his ankles.

He claimed he had an itch.

And he believed it was the same sort of itch that drove me to Dave.

In some ways, perhaps it was—an addiction to feeling desired, to having someone, somewhere, find me special and worth loving, even from a distance.

* * * *

I look back on that time from my new world, 2,000 miles from the place where Dave and EverQuest once consumed my life. Here, I gather with real people and form real friendships.

My days in EverQuest wound down quickly after Peter discovered my chat logs. Manazz and Shayalyn were legendary partners no more. But I stayed with the guild for a while, quietly taking over as raid leader and helping other players earn their epic weapons long after Dave skulked away to lick his wounds.

I logged into EQ a few years after everything fell apart to find my guild distractingly quiet. Dan, Danny, and their friend Ajax were still camped at their favorite hunting spots, grinding away, eternally caught in the game’s loop. (I never learned what happened to Dani, and I was too afraid to ask.) But the soothing music of Kelethin had lost its quiet charm, questing solo felt like a grind, and there was no one truly left to talk to. All that remained was a subtle longing wrapped in nostalgia.

Peter, “squishy” in every sense, clung to me after I left, trying to preserve the facade of our marriage while living with a girlfriend he’d had—and denied having—since before I moved west. And I let him because I couldn’t survive without his financial help. I was making just over $2,000 a month, paying $1,050 plus utilities for a run-down apartment, and helping support my two college-age kids.

Peter was amicable when I filed for divorce a year later. “We’re better friends than husband and wife,” he said. “Don’t you think?” But I knew that was how he told himself he hadn’t failed us, hadn’t been abusive, hadn’t lied and cheated. As long as we were still friends, he was off the hook, right?

I wasn’t buying it. “What about alimony?” I asked.

“We don’t need that,” Peter said. “I’ll take care of you and the kids. You know that, hon.”

But I was not his “hon.” And no, he wouldn’t. If I stopped giving him what he needed from me, he’d stop giving me what I deserved from him.

All I wanted now was freedom.

“That’s fine,” I said.

And a few months later, in a courtroom full of other women ending their marriages, the judge asked whether mine was “irretrievably broken.” I stood tall, squared my shoulders, and said, “Yes.”

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who love to entertain guests and those who’d rather file their fingernails with a cheese grater.

I’m the latter.

I suspect my friends would say I’m affable, funny, savvy, good with people. But they might also say I can be flaky, shy with strangers, and a bit of a hermit. I’m not the one who always joins things; I’m the introvert who might show up if the mood suits me.

And I almost never invite people over to my house.

It’s not that I’m ashamed of my house, although sometimes it looks pretty shameful. (I’d blame the dogs, but they can’t help having fur so I guess it’s on me, in every sense.) It’s also not that I hate where I live, although sometimes my yard and garden look pretty unruly. (OK, most times. We’re being honest here, right?)

It’s that I fear being judged.

I remember vibing hard with a particular Cathy cartoon from the early 2000s about house guests. In this case, Cathy’s notoriously judgy mother is coming to visit. As Cathy frantically cleans her place, which is always a mess, her partner Irving quietly suggests that maybe, just maybe, she could let things go. Why not let her mother see that this is how they live?

“Aack! We don’t live like this!” Cathy cries.

But they do, of course. And Cathy feels eternally beset with guilt for the state of her living quarters. She wants to believe she’s a different kind of person with a different kind of lifestyle, but alas, Irving’s gentle truth bomb reveals she’s just plain Cathy, mess and all.

My own house is humble. I live in a 1988 double-wide manufactured home. I’m not ashamed of that; housing costs in the Pacific Northwest are sky high and this is what I could afford with no down payment or generational wealth to my name. My house stands as evidence that I did something big. I broke away from an abusive marriage and moved 2,000 miles West with a fully-packed van, $2,800 in my checking account, and a dream. I started over with nothing and bought a house within seven years. I have a sweet .78 acres of land in a beautiful rural area where bald eagles nest in my backyard and great horned owls hoot a greeting when I’m outside at night.

And yet.

I’m pretty sure my fear of judgment is universal—no one likes to be judged. But my upbringing no doubt heightened my awareness of it as well as my aversion to it.

When I was young, my grandma entertained her card club friends at least once a year as the Sheepshead-playing sessions migrated from one Wisconsin household to the next. When it was Grandma’s turn in the spotlight, she went… a little insane. Not only did her simple mid-mod ranch house—which always looked lived-in if not particularly unclean—have to be sanitized from stem to stern, but something foundational absolutely had to change. Sometimes that meant something as simple as hanging new curtains, but at other times it brought on a full DIY project like wallpapering, painting, or even laying new kitchen flooring.

I was almost always at Grandma’s on card club night because she recruited my mom to help with final preparations, and my mom and I were kind of a package deal. Although we always left before the guests arrived, I remember how pristine everything looked, right down to the little ceramic oil lamp, white with a pattern of pink tea roses, that sat on a handmade doily on top of the mint green toilet tank. It was only put out when company was coming over, like a talisman that said “Something special is happening.” The lamp oil had a peculiar delicate smell I can summon to this day.

My mom hated card club prep. Grandma was anxious and critical, and things always seemed to go wrong. But she laughed through it, too. Both things were true—the annoyances and the joys.

And all this effort, which began weeks before the card club descended, was to prevent one thing: judgment. Grandma cared about what people thought of her home. Her home was an extension of herself, and to have it judged unkindly was unbearable.

Which brings us back to why I don’t let (most) people into my home. I don’t want to spend weeks cleaning. I don’t want to redecorate. I don’t want the stress that comes with the impossible task of preventing people from judging me. And so I only let “safe” people come over. The kind of people who aren’t looking for a reason to turn to a mutual friend and say that the amount of dog hair hiding under my hard-to-clean-under console table was the size of a Guinea pig.

I’ve reached an age where I’m increasingly OK with being exactly who I am, so long as I’m kind, and letting other people either accept me that way or not. But I’m still not fond of criticism, and I’m always going to have ADHD-inspired rejection sensitivity. I simply haven’t evolved to the point yet where I’m comfortable letting people into my private space and saying, “Well, this is what it looks like.”

My home is my sanctuary. My judgment-free zone. It’s the one place in the world where I’m free to relax, away from anyone or anything I have to perform for. There will be dog hair. There will be dishes in the sink. There’ll be clutter, and some recycling that needs to be taken out. The plants will need watering and fertilizing. My winter seed starting setup may have a fungus gnat or two circling. The blankets on the couch will be in disarray. And every now and then, the ADHD dopamine gods willing, I’ll get a wild hair and start rearranging and tidying things.

I’ve come to realize that I don’t have to invite people into my home, even though they welcome me into theirs. I’m not that person. And I’m slowly learning to be OK with not being the hostess with the mostest. I’m simply me.

But I do miss Grandma’s oil lamp.

I share two vulnerable, relatable creative nonfiction stories every week — no paywall, no gatekeeping. If you’d like to throw a little support my way, a paid subscription is just $5 a month, and I’ll send you a weekly writing prompt as a small thank-you. (There’s also a chat community where you’re always welcome to share your thoughts or your own writing.)

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Mom is dressed in her white go-go boots. The ones I wear whenever she’s not looking so I can feel grown up.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“Dad and I are going dancing with the Bertrands.” She reaches to fasten the clasp of her necklace. After struggling for a moment, she says, “Help me.”

Mom sits on the edge of her bed so I can reach. I deftly fasten the delicate clasp of the antique necklace my great-grandma gave her.

“Will you be far away?”

“Just Milwaukee.”

Mom shrugs like it’s no big deal, but I know that’s far away. It takes almost an hour to get there when we go to the museum or zoo.

“Are we still having dinner?”

I want to eat dinner with my family tonight, but I already know it’s not likely. I see the far-off look in Mom’s eyes, the one adult me will eventually recognize as quiet desperation from a woman who started a family at 18, sacrificing her youth to raise children and support a man whose dreams were as big as his social drinking habit.

But in this story, I’m 10 years old, and I want Mom to stay home. I want to eat a dinner she’s prepared and be responsible only for the cleanup. I want to curl up next to her on the couch to watch M*A*S*H. I want her to tuck me in and whisper, “Sleep tight.”

But I will have none of these things tonight. Mom is wearing her go-go boots.

“You get to make dinner!” Mom says with cheerful enthusiasm, as if she’s awarding me a prize. It’s the same voice she uses when she tells me I’m the absolute best at doing the dishes or browning the ground beef.

The voice is a con, a sales pitch. I’ve known that for forever. Mom tells me I’m good at things so I’ll keep doing them and not complain.

I don’t blame her. She needs my help. And I like it when she tells me I’m good at things because mostly I feel like I’m not.

“What am I making?” I hear the whine in my voice and instantly hate it. I should be good and agreeable, not give Mom a hard time.

“Spaghetti,” Mom answers, putting her earrings on. “There’s sauce and noodles in the cupboard. You know how long to boil the noodles, right?”

“Ten minutes,” I mutter. “Nine for al dente.”

“Al dente!” Mom crows, laughter coloring her voice. “Where did you learn that? I swear I birthed a 40-year-old in a 10-year-old’s body.”

I haven’t quite reached the preteen eye-rolling stage, so I answer earnestly: “I was born with an baby’s body.”

Mom musses my hair. “Well, a 40-year-old’s brain, then.”

As Mom and Dad prepare to leave, I watch the Channel 6 news. The weatherman points to a map and speaks in excited tones.

“We’ve got some wild weather in store for your evening forecast,” he says. “A powerful storm system is moving rapidly into our area, bringing the potential for severe weather. Large hail, damaging winds, and even isolated tornadoes are a real possibility across much of the region tonight. We’re under a Severe Thunderstorm Watch for all Southeastern Wisconsin counties including Jefferson, Waukesha—”

I used to be afraid of thunderstorms.

When I was very small, thunder and lightning caused me to creep into my parents’ room in search of comfort. Because their full-sized bed was too small for me to share, Mom put my blankets and pillow on the floor beside her. She would reach down and hold my hand through the night to help keep me calm. She jokes that one of her arms is longer than the other as a result.

I want to call out to Mom that there are thunderstorms coming. I want her to stay home with me. But I also intuitively know she needs this night out.

The adults leave me in charge of a flock of children. My brother Scott is seven and Dustin is just one month old. My friend, Becky Bertrand, is eight and her brothers Mike and Doug are six and three.

I’m okay with being the boss. Mostly, the younger kids listen to me.

We eat spaghetti while Dustin fusses in what Mom calls his “bouncy seat.” I feed my baby brother his bottle of formula — heated up just right under hot running water and tested on my wrist like Mom does.

When it’s dark outside, I change Dustin’s diaper and put him in his crib, letting him cry for a few minutes until he soothes himself to sleep. Then, I gather the rest of the kids onto the couch and read Where the Wild Things Are and Go, Dog. Go!

Finally, I tuck everyone into bed. The boys share Scott’s room. Becky sleeps with me. I have to get up a few times to tell the boys to quiet down and go to sleep, but eventually they do.

Becky and I whisper our secrets and dreams to one another. She will get married to a rich man and become a model. I will live on my own ranch and raise horses, probably Arabians. Maybe I’ll marry a movie star, but I’m not sure which one yet. Or maybe a singer, like Shaun Cassidy. We both swoon over Shaun Cassidy.

In a while, Becky grows quiet. I hear her breathing fall into the slow, steady cadence of sleep.

I’m the only one awake.

Lightning illuminates my room, turning the hideous cabbage rose wallpaper into a gallery of gremlin faces, all waiting for me to close my eyes so they can spring. When we moved here not long ago, Mom swore she would tear down that ugly wallpaper. I wish she’d had time to before Dustin came screaming into the world.

Thunder roars. Lightning flashes again.

One Mississippi … two Mississippi … three Mississippi … four Mississ —

Boom! Flash!

One Mississippi … two Mississippi … thr —

Blam!

The storm is getting closer.

I sit up, gazing through the darkness out the large bank of windows in front of my bed. The thunder rolls with a steady rumble punctuated by resounding cracks as lightning strikes close by. In the flickering strobe of constant lightning, I see the trees in the woods flailing wildly.

I shake Becky awake. She rises, loggy with sleep, but when she takes in the scene outside my windows, her eyes grow wide.

“We have to go to the basement,” I say calmly. You should stay calm even when you’re afraid because it helps keep others calm.

“I’m scared!” Becky yelps.

“I know. But you have to help me wake up the boys. I’m going to get Dustin.”

Becky is immobile, clutching the blankets to her chest.

“Go now!” I command, and she does.

In short order, we’re all below ground, safe from tornadoes in a windowless cinderblock storage area off the kitchen that Mom calls The Back Room.

Hours pass. I wake with a start. There’s a light on in the kitchen. It wasn’t on when I shepherded the kids into The Back Room.

I wipe grit from my eyes and look around. I’d plugged in my bedroom nightlight so the little kids wouldn’t be afraid of the all-consuming blackness of an underground room. In the subtle glow, I see everyone asleep with their pillows and blankets. Even Dustin is sprawled on his back, a pacifier tucked firmly between his lips.

Two shadows appear in the doorway. I am not afraid. Even in the dim light, I know it’s Mom and Micki Bertrand. They stand there, looking at us, talking in low voices.

“ — was so panicked with the flooding and all.” Mom’s voice.

“The lightning was unreal! And that tree down in the Watson’s yard! What if — ”

“I can’t believe she brought them all down here. She’s — ”

I feel like I’m eavesdropping, which is wrong. So I clear my throat and say, “Hi, Mom.”

Mom and Micki swoop in, and Mom hugs me fiercely. She marvels yet again at how mature and responsible I am. How lucky is she to have a daughter who’s so grown-up?

Forty-eight years have passed since the night of that storm. My actions became family legend, something Mom proudly told anyone who would listen to demonstrate how mature and wise I’ve always been.

What she never realized, right up to the day she died, is that I’d appointed myself family manager from that night forward.

And the burden I laid on my shoulders was a heavy one.

It meant taking on a huge share of household responsibilities when Mom decided to stop being a “housewife” and start working at Kmart.

It meant I had a significant hand in raising my brothers, particularly Dustin.

It meant that, as a teenager, I recognized Mom wasn’t so good at arguing with my Dad, so I’d step in as her proxy, eloquently pointing out how unreasonable and demanding he was being, and enduring the brunt of his frustrations.

I still don’t know how to accept help from others. Because I manage things. That’s what I’m good at.

And I’m tired. But this is who I am, who I’ve become.

I’ve told my kids to have four words carved on my urn when I die. The stubbornly independent person’s motto:

“I’ll figure it out.”

And I will. Not because I want to — not anymore — but because I have to.

It was sometime around 2010. Obama was president. (Remember those days? Good times.) I had an “I ♥️ Obamacare” bumper sticker on my car that someone in my mixed-but-mostly-conservative and mostly white community had vandalized. And I was waiting in the checkout line at Walmart with my daughter.

The line was not moving. Like, at all. Someone up front had a great big order and the cashier was taking her time, chatting while checking them out. The rest of us had been standing for what was probably just five minutes but felt more like twenty. And the line was growing longer and longer.

Then something magical happened. We heard a store announcement:

Manager Ronda to register nine, please. Ronda to register nine!

They were about to open a new register. Score! The kid and I mosied over to register nine. A young Black man followed. We noticed that he had just a few things in his arms—some cleaning supplies and a tabletop ironing board—so we suggested he get in front of us rather than stand there holding his bulky items without a cart. He graciously accepted.

As we stood in line waiting for Ronda, we joked that maybe we’d outsmarted ourselves because no one seemed to be coming. So, we enjoyed some friendly banter as we waited, contemplating whether line-jumping again would be the power move.

Then Ronda showed up.

Another Black woman had also heard the call to register nine, and she’d beat us all there. Ronda checked her out efficiently and the woman headed out with her purchases.

That was when shit got weird.

The young Black man stepped up to the register. Rhonda nodded toward the woman who was already exiting the automatic doors, then looked at the Black man and said, “So, you’re together?"

The Black man looked confused for a moment, then said, “Oh! No, it’s just me.”

Rhonda glowered at him with a look of growing skepticism. “But you were in the store together? With her?" Rhonda tipped her head toward the door.

“No, ma’am. I’m here by myself.”

“Oh, really…”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So, you’re saying you’re in here alone?”

What the actual fuck was happening here? I glanced at my daughter and she shot back the an expression that mirrored my wtf thoughts.

The man nodded. He never lost his patience. He stayed calm, polite, and friendly, smiling through the encounter. He finished checking out and left the store with Ronda glaring after him.

Then my daughter and I checked out. Ronda brightened, newly friendly and charming. We remained matter-of-fact, both in silent agreement that we’d use cold detachment to express our displeasure with the encounter.

But we never said anything.

And we should have.

We should have called Ronda out for racial profiling.

I’ve been haunted by my inaction ever since. It happened 16 years ago, and here I am, still sitting with it, still wondering what went wrong inside my head. Was I too worried about painting a target on my own back to stand up for someone being mistreated?

I wonder sometimes whether I didn’t say anything because the man handled the situation so well himself. He was calm. He smiled. He didn’t escalate. But then it also hit me that he might have to live like this every day in our little town just to survive—to swallow his anger at injustices that were more than personal, more than just a one-off, they were systemic. He knew that objecting would make things worse and he chose to keep peace.

But that wasn’t a moment of grace for him. He was donning armor. I’d watched him deploy survival skills in a Walmart checkout, and I was too stunned and anxious to say anything about it.

It’s a moment of silence I’ll always regret.

I share two vulnerable, relatable creative nonfiction stories every week — no paywall, no gatekeeping. If you’d like to throw a little support my way, a paid subscription is just $5 a month, and I’ll send you a weekly writing prompt as a small thank-you. (There’s also a chat community where you’re always welcome to share your thoughts or your own writing.)

Paid subscribers, scroll on for this week’s prompt. Stay strong and write on!

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