And the waves tell the firm coast: 'Everything will be fulfilled.'

When 2024 began, I said that I didn't want to tempt fate by saying that it had to be better than 2023. It could hardly be worse, right?

I think I'm not superstitious, but I kinda am.

And though I don't always succeed, my inclination is to hope for good, hope for better.

So I was hoping for a good year. 

Hope hope and more hope.

On December 30, 2023, we visited the family of a dear friend of Nick's, who lives just outside of Oxford. In Oxfordshire. (The shire of Oxford!)

I was excited to meet him. I'd heard about him for years.

His family lives in a charming, centuries-old stone house in an ancient, quaint, no-streetlights English village that used to be one massive wealthy family's estate.

Leaving his house in rainy pitch dark, I slipped on one of the large uneven paving stones and landed flat on my shin, splitting the skin in a long line.

Since Nick and I have watched so many British murder shows, the bulk of which seem to be set in and around Oxford, we joked that I was lucky to have escaped with my life.

In retrospect, I maybe should've sought medical attention, or at least gotten butterfly tape. I don't think stitches would've worked as it was directly over bone.

But instead, we got on a flight the next day and came home. Slowly, over months and months (and months), it healed.

First it swelled and turned colors and scabbed massively. It was gruesome. I sent photos to friends who were up for the gore.

I have a big scar. I don't mind scars. I've got a lot of them.

So I began 2024 on the heels of a joyful trip, but felled by some international non-Covid crud, still deep in grief, still healing from a double mastectomy and also suddenly this random murdery British village wound. 

A year ago I was emotionally and physically struggling, with low expectations, but hope.

Last night, as I was reviewing my year, I tiptoed through my memories in the form of photos, and doing so reminded me of how blessed I am. What a lucky year I had.

Genuinely.

Despite grief, despite the leg wound, which hurt to touch for about six months, despite pneumonia in the fall, which took about five weeks to recover from, and despite some months of undiagnosed depression.

It sounds rather terrible when I list all of them. I do realize this.

But so many wonderful things happened. 

And my approach to life, after having such dramatic reminders of the vicissitudes of fate, is now to take the opportunities I can.

There are things I hope to do in this life, places I hope to see, and sooner is closer to guaranteed than later.

I'm not saying we're no longer saving for college or retirement. I'm just saying, if something is accessible, I'm going to do it.

In February, Nicole, my beloved Nicole came to hang out with our kids so Nick and I could go to a fancy dinner at Lincoln College, Oxford, where we took the above photo. Attending the event was both a pleasure and an honor.

I wanted to take a whole lot of photos, but people just ate their multiple course dinner with wine pairings like this was all normal. I didn't want to be a gauche tourist.

And then Maude came to visit. Although actually, she arrived at our house a day before we did because Virgin Atlantic switched our flights to a day earlier but didn't tell us. 

Surprise! You're leaving yesterday!

I was going to include a photo of our faces, so happy to be together. But I think the photo that depicts our friendship more accurately is this one of Maude doing plow pose and me laughing and taking a photo while Wanda takes the opportunity to sniff her butt.

In the spring, the kids and I went to Puerto Rico, which was warm and tropical and so, so beautiful. And I got to reconnect with my high school friend Maria, who I hadn't seen in over 20 years.

And then summer, my favorite season! Summer was filled with truly extraordinary experiences.

Nick joined me for the 30-year reunion of my Peace Corps omnibus. I got to see people I hadn't seen since I left Ecuador. The weekend of reconnection and reminiscence filled my entire heart.

I went to Portugal for the first time, visiting dear old friends who live there. And then Kathy joined me and we headed heading north to Vigo, Spain, to walk 101 kilometers of the Camino de Santiago.

We walked for five days, and some of it was very hard, and I have many thoughts, and our Camino experience merits at least a whole post of its own.

But from that week, strongest in my memory and heart is how much we laughed. Except for using the bathroom, we spent 24/7 together. We had a lot of time and kilometers to talk. And oh my gosh, did we laugh.

Maybe not everyone would find a glass-walled in-bedroom bathroom in a beautiful historic hotel hilarious. But we sure did.

Did I used to laugh more in my day-to-day? I don't know.

Now I realize that belly laughs are treasures. When you have someone with whom you laugh that hard repeatedly, I firmly believe you never let them go.

I don't intend to, anyway.

In August Nick and I headed up to get the kids from camp in Maine, and took the opportunity of being so relatively close to Montreal to visit for a few days.

Oh my gosh, Montreal. What a beautiful city. India was sick, and my family was not in the mood to tourist a whole lot, but we really enjoyed strolling around the city, and we had great food.

We went to a John Fluevog store. What absolute pleasure.

On my birthday, I took a Pilates class taught by Annie, one of my lovely Bali friends.

And added to this was the joy of seeing my high school friend Monique, and getting to meet her lovely daughter.

Also! I learned that all of the Great Lakes connect to each other, and flow to the Atlantic via the St. Lawrence River.

I spent time on Lake Superior every childhood summer, and this blew my mind. Although I recently told this to some friends and they were like, yes, we learned this in school.

Was I taught that? Maybe I was busy seeing if I could hold my breath for a whole minute rather than paying attention. 

That was how I spent much of 7th grade history with a teacher I disliked. Never disruptive. Just quietly timing how long I could hold my breath, over and over.

But was American geography 5th grade? My geography is terrible. I only learned that Virginia borders Tennessee when we got Wanda, and Nick saw the town she was from and said, "That's almost Tennessee."

I actually said, "Virginia borders Tennessee?" This is the kind of thing that makes Nick tut in disappointment. 

Kind of like how I know nothing about our government and so I always ask Nick and he is all, "Didn't you major in Poli Sci at UNC?"

And then I have to remind him that yes, but only because I was a French major and my dad insisted that I add another "more useful" major, so I crammed a whole bunch of Poli Sci classes into my senior year but really didn't care and don't remember anything.

So just tell me again about Congress and the Supreme Court already for Pete's sake.

Anyway.

I learned so much US geography when Maude and I drove cross-country to move from DC to San Diego. We used paper maps, it was so long ago.

I seriously kept being like, wait, this state is next to this state? What's next?

We drove through West Virginia to Kentucky, and as such, I know they're next to each other and I've still never been to Tennessee. Although apparently some of it is right up against Virginia.

Anyway, now I've kind of derailed this with how little I know about where things are in the world.

My main point, I think, is that for me, just about every joy comes down to the people I'm spending time with.

I've left people out. And here is why.

At some point I just started listing names of friends and then I was like, oh my gosh, is this super neurodivergent that I'm about to make you a list of every single friend I spent time with last year? 

And next I'll tell you my top ten favorite birds!

I definitely don't want to be tedious.

So if you're reading this and I saw you and your name is not here, it's not because I don't love you. It's because it started to feel weird.

All this to say:

You know I love travel. Oh my gosh I do. And because of how I grew up, I often feel better out of the country than in. I leave and wish I could stay wherever it is I am.

(Except dinner is too late for me in Spain. But otherwise, absolutely.)

But for me, the most important thing in life is the people you love and who love you.

And lucky, lucky me, in 2024 I got to spend time with so many of them.

Here's hoping for a wonderful 2025 for all of us. 

I said this to myself in January last year, and I'm saying it again: Exercise, bathe. Eat a fucking vegetable. Feel lucky to be alive.

Hope for health, hope for peace, hope for love and joy. For each and every one of you.

Christmas 2024

I don't know who needs to hear this: Holidays can be so hard. 

Maybe yours are easy and fun and there are no dark moments. And if so, I'm genuinely glad for you. 

But I think, what are holidays like Christmas but traditions? Which means they're imbued with all of the emotion and memories of the Christmases that came before.

Nick bought a box of Quality Street, because his grandmother always bought them for Christmas. They're not, we have discovered, all that great.

But I understand the nostalgia that makes you buy chocolates from your childhood. Particularly those associated with a beloved grandmother.

We buy these things and we dip the madeleine in the tisane.

Memories seep from our veins.

The reason I'm writing this is that I've talked to a couple friends who are struggling, too. So I figure if there are three of us, there are more of us.

I'm here to tell you that it is OK to be sad. It's OK to be elated and devastated depending on the moment. 

It's OK to be disappointed, or wistful, or grieving, or whatever it is you may be feeling.

All of your feelings are valid, always. If you don't allow yourself to feel them, they stick around in your cells anyway.

Feel them and free them and free yourself.

We've been in this prolonged very sparkly! Jingle bells! Ho ho ho! Candy canes! Snowflakes! Jolly! season.

Which I think can pressure people into feeling like they need to be all in the Christmas spirit. (I say Christmas because it's my holiday.) 

Whatever Christmas spirit means.

But my gosh, the pressure of the holidays. Gifts to buy, food to make, school performances to attend, last minute this and that and everything else. 

A school Secret Santa gift to buy oh my gosh for tomorrow MAMA! (I have always hated Secret Santa, and the pressure to participate at work and buy random little things for someone you don't really know, things that will ultimately wind up in that giant plastic floating island in the Pacific or wherever it is. The one that's visible from outer space.) 

Anyway.

It's so dark, at least in my hemisphere. So dark so early. 

And there's so much build up.

And now Christmas is here!

Holidays are a genuinely lovely time to gather. Holidays bring families and friends together. Sometimes it's forced, and sometimes that's hard. And sometimes you wish for more togetherness and you don't have it. And that's hard, too.

But then being together can make an absence so notable.

Being together makes it obvious who used to sit in that chair. Who isn't here with us. Whether they're no longer alive or just no longer in our lives.

That is painful.

Until last year, I'd spent exactly one Christmas away from home. 

Home was my parents' house, whichever country that might be. And I always went home for Christmas.

Home was my family. Christmas was the same ornaments we'd been putting on the tree since my childhood. In fact, they'd been putting some of them on their trees since before I was even born.

After my dad died, and family became Betty, Jordan, Nick, and me, Christmas transferred to our house. Even that first year, when we didn't really have a functional ground floor.

We could've done Christmas at my mom's house, where she had a whole working, clean kitchen and no construction dust. But we had it here, on the second floor.

Nick bought a fake tree, and now that tree is as old as Jordan. I assume it'll be our tree till we move out of this house.

My mom was all about Christmas. She made the home, whichever house, beautiful. Her gifts were always exquisitely wrapped.

In fact, I'd often give her my presents to wrap, because she loved doing it, and she make things so pretty.

So last year I said there was no way we were having Christmas at home. We had to go somewhere.

I think, honestly, my family was kind of afraid of the depth of my grief. Anything could make me cry. And I might never stop.

So last year we went to England. It was such a big deal for so many reasons.

It was, of course, still Christmas in the UK, but it wasn't our Christmas. We didn't put up a tree. We didn't wrap presents.

The trip was everyone's gift. And it was magical.

India and I wound up hugging and crying in the middle of Hyde Park on Christmas Day. You can walk, run, fly far away, but grief sticks with you.

I wanted to travel again this year, and the kids said they really wanted Christmas at home.

Of course, I'm so glad they have a strong sense of home, and home is safe and comfortable for them.

We put up the tree—same tree—but this year only lights. Nick and Jordan didn't want the extra work, and I couldn't handle the memories saturated into nearly each and every one of our ornaments.

They put Nick's train around the tree, because we didn't need to worry about Betty tripping or Wanda chewing it. Mostly it freaks her out.

My friend Meg, her mom, and I made Betty's sticky buns. None of us had ever made them before.

I'd never made yeast bread. I was very daunted.

For me, never having made them pulled up the guilt and regret that I never once helped my mom with this annual task. I never asked her if I could learn how to carry on this tradition.

I knew she wouldn't live forever—none of us will—but still, in my mind, she was never not going to be here.

Until suddenly she wasn't.

I'm not saying this Christmas holds no joy. The kids had fun disgorging stockings, which were mainly packed with treats, and opening gifts.

India got me the most amazing pair of pinky-purple Lisa sneakers. 

I made Nick my annual photo calendar. The one I used to make for my mom, who would ooh and ahh over every single photo.

The sticky buns are great, but they're not perfect. Nick and Jordan wanted to know, precisely, what we did that was different.

My mom's recipe is sketchy. She doesn't list all the ingredients up front that wind up being mentioned later. Some are not mentioned at all.

I know this is because she likely wrote it as her mom, my Grandma Lillian, described it. Most of my grandmother's recipes said things like, "Put in oven and bake until done."

And then my mom had made this recipe annually for decades. My whole life and longer. That's a lot of decades.

She tweaked it a little—there's a rewrite that happened somewhere in the aughts, I believe—but still, there was guesswork.

For three people who'd never made them, they turned out really well.

Nick thought I was crying because of how the buns turned out. He wondered if they'd been overly critical.

When really, I was just thinking of how different Christmas is now.

Christmas Day used to be my dad annoying us by making us listen to a record of Dylan Thomas reading A Child's Chrismas in Whales, which is a great story, but we just wanted to play with our new toys. And then when the home video recorder became available in the 80s, he began annoying us by videotaping our every moment.

And then he wasn't around anymore.

My mom just quietly made everything perfect and beautiful, at, as I now know as a mom, a high personal cost.

The magic that everyone thinks of as Christmas?

That's a hell of a lot of invisible Mom work.

And she perpetuated that magic. And now it's on me. And I just don't have any sparkle right now. Maybe I will in future years.

But I deeply felt the absence of sparkle. I missed her excitement at what the kids were unwrapping. Her giggle over her gifts. The kids joining her, piling on and spilling over in the red chair to look at photos.

It's not that we haven't laughed, or enjoyed ourselves. We have.

We have joy ahead this afternoon, with a couple friends coming for Christmas dinner. Small, casual, but still people who don't live with us, which will force us to clean up and use nice plates and actual napkins and sit in the dining room, which honestly, I think is good for us.

Sometimes I admonish myself for being sad when I have so much privilege. When there are so many people who are cold and hungry. So many who literally have only the clothes on their backs.

I've done this a lot in life.

But then I tell myself exactly what I tell my friends, and what I truly believe: your feelings are valid. Your pain is valid.

Other people's situations do not diminish the validity of your feelings.

You can be happy-sad or sad-happy or sad-sad and know that there's a community that feels that same way. You might feel super alone, even surrounded by people, which for me is an extra-hard kind of alone.

But you're not actually alone. We're all made of stardust and we're all connected.

I'm no longer that bitter, bitter Mary in the preschool Christmas pageant in Bangladesh. Upset that I had to wear my PJs and the afghan Grandma Lillian crocheted. Angry that I didn't have a cool costume, like an angel.

I'm no longer her, and yet, I still am and will always be. So many contradictory things can be true at the same time.

I contain multitudes, and so do you.

So, my friends, I am sending you love on this emotion-saturated holiday. 

Big love and big hugs, and hope for love and kindness and peace for all. 

The architects of our own something: a gingerbread bus journey

Last Christmas (I gave you my heart)...

Ha. No. Although I do have a deep and abiding love of Wham!

Last year, Target had some Marks & Spencer items for sale before Christmas.

Ooh! A gingerbread London bus. Look how charming!

The kids and I were all excited. We were going to the UK for Christmas, and ooh, we were going to make an adorable gingerbread bus!

I was excited: something the kids and I could do together. A cute little family project.  

And of course it was going to look just like the picture. We had everything we needed!

The kit had the pieces, and then lumps of colored fondant that you had to roll out and make fit. But, like, you also had to cut the holes out of them for the windows and such.

Do you know how hard it is to roll out fondant and cut it into gingerbread-bus sized pieces?

In case you don't know, I will tell you: very.

It breaks. It's hard to know how much to put on one side and have enough left over for another.

We just cut it into pieces and figured we could smoosh them all smoothly together.

Which. Well. You see.

And then! Then we had to use icing to stick it all together!

It did not stick together.

Nick got involved. He's excellent at carpentry and fixing things. I had high hopes.

He used icing. And more icing. It didn't work.

So then he used glue. It may have been wood glue.

At first I was horrified. But then I realized that each and every piece of gingerbread and icing had been so manhandled, there was no way we were going to eat it.

We just wanted something to show for our many hours of effort.

He set it carefully, and we left it on the counter to dry overnight.

We're just not Christmas bus people.

Good problems

When I think of good problems to have, I think of things like, oh my gosh, we have too much ice cream and not enough room in the freezer.

This blanket is so soft and snuggly it's making it hard to get out of bed.

My pants are uncomfortable because I ate too much pie.

Ooh, the tea is too hot. I have to wait to drink it.

We have too many puppies. (Can you have too many puppies? I want a puppy.)

These are the things that spring to mind with good problems.

I don't know if you ever read, "Where'd You Go, Bernadette," but there's a part where one character calls the brain a "discounting mechanism"—discounting in that you get incrementally less excited about something new, or less upset about something terrible.

They said something about it being a survival mechanism. Humans cannot stay super excited about every new thing because then in the olden (prehistoric?) days you wouldn't process threats, or something like that.

So your brain makes sure it gets less and less shiny and exciting, or less calamitous, as time goes on.

I find this idea soothing. It makes sense to me.

You can get used to anything. 

Anything.

I have known this forever.

The problem is, it can give you a super fucked up worldview, and in the Venn diagram of life, your circle might not even have any overlap with most people's. You could just be your own adjacent circle.

Or anyway, it might feel like that. If you feel like you're always inside outside.

But just about anything can be normalized.

I'd known this for a long time, but hadn't thought about what our brains were doing. 

Discounting! If you act fast, you can have 30% of this emotion. Today only.

So on Monday, Nick went with me to my quarterly oncology checkup.

We passed the Pope, we walked across the walkway, we hung out all masked up in the very full  oncology waiting room.

Friends who'd had breast cancer told me that at first you thought and worried about it all the time. And then after a while, it becomes normal, and you just live. Which makes sense.

Because there are so many other things that require your focus in life. So what else are you going to do?

Anyway, I wanted Nick to come with me, because when I told him I didn't need him to accompany me to my annual visit with my breast surgeon, that's when she found the lump.

I'd rather he were with me than not.

Last time I saw the oncologist, so this time I was seeing Terri, the Nurse Practitioner. She's terrific. She asked me if I'd considered the new medication that she was under the impression the oncologist had suggested to me three months prior.

And I was all, maybe I was too sick to remember? Or maybe she didn't talk to us about it because she was so worried about me having pneumonia?

I couldn't remember any medication discussion, and neither could Nick.

So according to Terri, there's a medication that is not new, but it's newly available to a lower-risk group of people than before. Because I had lymph involvement, I now qualify. And so they wanted to know if I wanted to try.

I know that I had a .3 mm spot in the one lymph node they removed. I know this. And I know I didn't need chemo, and my scores were so good that radiation was optional, so after a second opinion, I decided not to.

Because there might be more in other lymph nodes, but there might not. And radiation has its own complications.

At first I worried about my decision all the time. And then, after a while, I just kind of stopped thinking about it.

I know the facts, but I don't feel them all the time. Sometimes I ruminate. Sometimes I what-if, particularly about my parents.

But I try not to do this, because it doesn't solve the past. It just hurts me now.

You have to live.

But suddenly, there I was, feeling the big anxiety feelings again.

This new medication would be in addition to, rather than replacing, my current medications, and would  further reduce the risk of recurrence.

The risks, because there are always risks, include liver injury and heart problems, so they monitor you carefully in the beginning.

So Nick and I were like, it seems like you think it's a good idea, even though it's adding another medication with possible side effects?

She said yes. If I couldn't tolerate it, then I'd just quit taking it. But no harm in trying.

It takes a while, because it comes from a specialty pharmacy, plus insurance has to approve it, and that is its own process.

So maybe I'd be starting it in the new year.

It felt like something huge, adding another medication. 

And I'm already on medication that makes my joints hurt, and it's aging my skin, and when I look in the mirror, some days I feel like I look like that actor who plays River Cartwright's grandfather. If you've watched Slow Horses.

Although a friend assured me I don't look like River Cartwright's grandfather.

But even if I do, that's just vanity. I want to be around for my kids.

So then I wouldn't want to not have tried, because what if I didn't try, and then down the road it comes back?

And then I'd be all, fuck a duck, I should have added that other medication.

Right?

This news felt so heavy.

Maybe it's because it's winter, or maybe I just got used to things being the way they are, whatever that might be.

We talked about it on the way home. Of course I should try it. Then no regrets.

Then, shortly after we got home, Terri called me. She'd spoken to the oncologist.

As it turns out, the oncologist hadn't offered it to me because I don't qualify. My risk of recurrence isn't high enough for this study. My tumor wasn't big enough in the first place. And I only had a micro-met. 

Metastasis, but super tiny, which they call a micro-met.

Like if you get introduced to someone, but only briefly. Steve? Oh, I micro-met him at a party last year. 

I was like, "Wait, so now I can't have this medication?"

She said, "You're too low risk. It's a good problem to have."

Which is, of course, true. Being too low risk is a good problem to have.

But then suddenly I felt like I had this amazing option taken away. Like, what if this was the solution, the thing that bumped me over into safety from a future problem I might not even have?

When, realistically speaking, it might've given me annoying side effects for three years and not made any difference.

You don't know until you know. Which I guess is true about everything.

But now it's been four days. And the discounting has begun happening. Monday felt like crisis. Tuesday less so. 

It's Friday, and I can talk about it in a more dispassionate way, because I just don't feel it so much.

And plus, now we are in the end-of-year-holidays-are-upon-us frenzy, and there are so many things to do. 

The tree us up, and that's a whole nother thing, and holiday sads do catch me unawares and wallop me every once in a while.

So actually, while I'm thinking about it, I would definitely take a coupon for a massive discount on those feelings.

Neurodivergence, or: We always hang in a Buffalo Stance/We do the dive every time we dance

OK, so, I know you're not supposed to diagnose yourself using social media.

And this is not exactly what I've done.

But I've discovered that one of the best things about memes is that they've helped me learn about my neurodivergence, and they've shown me I'm not alone.

I was diagnosed with ADHD a couple years ago. It was a huge relief. I've been very open about this and written about it a little.

This diagnoses explained so many things about me that were either pieces of me that frustrated me and made me insecure, or were things that made me feel like I was kinda quirky, and if you appreciated quirky, you might appreciate me extra.

Or not. Because it works both ways.

There were things I'd try to hide, because for a long time I wanted to seem normal. Ha. 

And there were lots of things I did that I didn't think about one way or another until someone pointed them out to me.

Now, there are numerous memes about autism and ADHD, and it seems like they share commonalities and maybe even significant overlap. I don't know anything about autism. But a lot of these memes resonate with me.

I don't assume that just because my brain works in a particular way means that someone else's brain works the same way.

But ooh, it's nice to learn that those similar-brain-working-people are out there!

I've delightedly learned that I'm not alone.

There are other people in the world who will choose a song and play it on repeat 372 times. There are people who will go back to the beginning of the song if they dissociated and missed part of it.

I honestly didn't know other people did that.

I also didn't know that other people just checked out for a while and then dropped back in and realized they'd missed a significant part of the song. Or the conversation. Or the lesson.

Whatever might be going on, that continued to go on while my brain went myriad other places. Or not really anywhere, but not here.

So sometimes I learn that all along, I've been approaching things in the same manner as other neurodivergent humans.

And then I sometimes I learn I take a neurodivergent approach from someone telling me not to do what they assume I do, because it's (apparently) what most people do.

Like, my yoga teacher is always making daily tasks into opportunities for strengthening or stretching.

So the other day he was giving us examples like when you soap yourself in the shower, do forward fold. When you're drying off, raise your straight leg up and put your foot on the sink, so you get that strengthening and stretch.

And so on.

He said not to just stand at the sink when you brush your teeth. He, personally, holds horse stance.

Use all the small opportunities.

But I was like, who stands at the sink when they brush their teeth?

(Do you?)

When I brush my teeth, I'm always wandering around trying to do also something else. Like remove or put on my socks with the other hand. Or pull on or take off my pants. Or open a jar.

I  have successfully removed my tee shirt while brushing my teeth, but it's a big hassle and the chances of getting toothpaste on your shirt are high.

The chances of flinging your electric toothbrush through the head hole and across the room are also high.

So it's really not worth it.

But I've always tasked my self with something hard to do one-handed. I guess most things are hard to do one-handed. 

This is never a time-saver, in case you're wondering.

I'm not offering up helpful tips or tricks.

No. 

It's more like it never occurred to me to stand at the sink. Why would I just stand at the sink when I can wander and even mildly complicate my life?

Who, I wondered, stands at the sink the whole time?

My husband. 

My husband stands at the sink the entire time he's brushing his teeth.

He's surely done this throughout our 16 years of marriage, because he's done this every morning and night that I've observed in the last couple weeks.

But I've never noticed, because I'm busy not successfully accomplishing tasks one handed in the next room.

Me, I'm now aiming for horse stance.

(Also, this is really the only way to eat raspberries.)