For as long as I can remember I wanted to be a mom. I was absolutely convinced I could parent better than my mother. My father was the breadwinner — king of our small kingdom — and more into himself than raising the two kids he produced and the one he adopted.
I became a mom at 40, after six pregnancy losses. I grieved every loss as my failing, since I was 37 when we started trying to have a child, but sperm degrades in men over 35. My husband was 40. Three years later, after another loss, I had our daughter. I’ve been a full-time mom since.
Along with being a mom, I’ve run a marketing consulting biz helping entrepreneurs launch ideas into startups. I taught at Cal and Stanford for close to a decade, wrote two marketing books, two novels, and two short story collections. And in all my career, I’ve never, ever, put in the amount of effort, time, money, and heart that it’s taken raising two children.
There are no words to describe the love I feel for my kids. Now in their mid-20s, they are kind people — my #1 goal raising them. They are thinkers. Productive. Grateful. Giving. Loving. I could not be prouder of them. Full stop. And while they are both at home this moment, they are moving on, as they should.
The issue: I am unclear how to let go.
Right now, I’m in my office trying to focus on writing fiction, but my mind keeps drifting to my son. He’s been with the same nonprofit for 4 yrs, and he’s been trying to find another job [on and off] almost as long. He had his first ever on-site interview last week and is waiting to hear back today. I keep listening for the back door of our house to open. He wouldn’t come out to my office a quarter acre from the house if he didn’t get the job. Since I’m not hearing the back door, I’m checking my email obsessively. He’ll email if he doesn’t get it.
Seems like I’m a bit over-invested in my son’s career, and I’ll walk that. But here’s a bit of my investment in this job he’s waiting to hear about:
I talked him into taking the in-person interview against his resistance since he’d be spending close to a grand to make it happen.
Talked him into flying instead of blowing 3 days driving and his other interviews set up for later in the week. Then I helped him set up a flight to get to his on-site interview.
I looked up BART times from SFO to be sure he’d get there on time with a short time frame from landing to getting there.
My husband drove him to the airport at 4:30a.m. to make his 7:15 flight, but I was his emotional support on the phone with him from 7:00a.m. until 10:20a.m. that morning. He called when all passengers were kicked off the first flight over an hour and a half delay. He’d be late for his interview if he waited so we worked to find another flight leaving sooner. He found one, got on it, and some guy the flight attendant didn’t like wouldn’t leave the plane when asked. My son, and all the other passengers, sat on that plane half an hour for security to come and escort the guy off. My son was now guaranteed to be late.
I dictated a text to send to the hiring manager that he’d be late for the interview, which was trickier than it sounds since he was flying in and they’d assumed he was local.
I won’t even go into the hundreds of hours I’ve spent editing our daughter’s school essays, to the tens of thousands of dollars already spent on her undergraduate degree, to emotionally and financially supporting her through college and four MCAT tests…etc.
I wonder if focusing on our son’s job prospect is an excuse to avoid writing fiction today…
Is my focus on this potential job of his justified by the hours of my life I’ve invested parenting him, and guiding his career?
Pushing him constantly to look for a new gig with every complaint about his current job.
Helping him write his LinkedIn profile, bio, and micro-messaging to potential hiring managers.
Edited his CV, including yr over yr updates.
Be his cheerleader to lift his depression with constant rejections.
Pushing him to network, go to uni and tech meetups. Socialize more!
Fully funding his master’s degree…etc.
I told myself I’d do better than my mother, and so I have. I’ve extended an open forum for our kids to share anything, and ask me anything that strikes them. I’ve challenged them to find their true feelings often masked as anger, or in defense of destructive behavior. By their measure, I am still their best friend. It’s easy to be with them back at home, sharing their day to day. But our daughter will be in med school soon. Whether this job or another, our son will be leaving soon too.
The virtually electric connection I feel with my kids will be lost with distance, and their shifting priorities. Family will take the background to their ‘real lives.’ As it should be, but nonetheless, their independence leaves me a bit lost. Our kids health and welfare have been my #1 priority from the day I knew I was pregnant. Made my body a temple of health before working at pregnancy — killed Diet Coke, all caffeine, weed, processed and fried foods, salty snacks, and passed on desserts. I also ran five miles five days a week. And in an effort to model healthy habits to our kids, I’ve continued working out daily.
My kids have been great motivators for me to model the best of myself — disciplined, motivated, creative, caring, loving freely, fully, without reservation as I do our kids. I will miss talking to them daily, keeping abreast of their lives in real time, hugging them, being their greatest advocate as they find partners to stand beside them.
The hiring manager texted my son early today they’d have a decision about the on-site job he’d interviewed for by 4:00p.m. It’s minutes away and he’s yet to hear anything. Is that bad? Or maybe he’s talking to them now and I don’t know in my office a good distance from his. I keep checking my email and listening for the back door to open. My heart is beating so hard I hear it.
I’m proud of my son for flying down to the interview, staying chill during a nightmare flight, and managing to get to the interview only a few minutes late. I passionately want him to get the job offer! A deserved win after much effort. Great life lesson. If he gets it, he’ll move out, down to the Bay, close to a thousand miles away.
Waiting to hear if he got the job, I’m battling my desire to hang on to the last of these moments we have together. He’ll be upset if he doesn’t get it, and I’ll be here to help pick him up and dust him off and push him to keep looking and applying.
Ultimately, no matter how much I help my kids, or am there for them along the way, I cannot protect them from heartbreak. And as they move on, I am too. I’ll have to find my value, the best of me beyond being their mother. I’d likely be doing just that — engaged in writing fiction right now — if I wasn’t so focused on hearing about our son’s job opp…
Women are inherently maternal—raised to put others before self. This is the cost…
I think I may be broken. Not the quirky, cute type, but really cracked, unable to compartmentalize my desires from those of the people I love. I don’t stand up for what I want because I often lose sight of what that is exactly. I feel an initial desire for or against something and often state it, but that voice is drown out by my husband, or my kids’ objections or justifications in opposition to mine. My desire to please seemingly becomes more gratifying than getting what I thought best or actually wanted.
I don’t like Disneyland, but every year we ended up at the theme park throughout our kids’ formative years. I don’t care for camping, or hiking, or petting zoos, or pumpkin patches, yet was consistently one of the few parent volunteers to chaperon our son’s Boy Scout outings, our daughter’s Girl Scout adventures, and many of their school field trips. I’ve told my husband 17,000 times I want him to plan and execute a romantic getaway for the two of us, yet in 30 years of marriage I’ve been the only one to invest the time to create memorable vacations we both appreciate.
It can be argued that I’m getting what I want with my husband happily joining me on the vacations I plan. And it’s true I was glad to turn our kids on to safe, family fun experiences going to theme parks and camping trips annually. So giving in to what I personally don’t like or want to do isn’t only negative. The problem with acquiescing to everyone else is I never know how annoyed, tense, and most recently insane I’ll feel until I’m actively engaged in doing what I fundamentally didn’t want to.
Case in point…
We’re looking to buy a home in specific areas north of San Francisco, within our very tight budget. We mistakenly moved up to the Seattle area 5 yrs ago and have been looking to come home to California since. We’ve yet to find a house we both agree on. Either my husband or I can nix any property, and the other must agree to walk away without resentment. But this rule between us has been getting harder to maintain as the years have passed.
Looking for a home is never easy, especially since this will be our last, the one we leave to our kids so they’ll never know homelessness. I look at Redfin 5x a day. Every few weeks a listing gets our hopes up that ‘this is the one,’ only to have them dashed when we visit the wreck of a house, or get outbid three times over.
Last week we found two homes in the areas we’re looking for within the price range we can afford. One was exactly where we want to be in Petaluma—a rare find with very few homes for sale in that particular neighborhood. It sold within 48 hours of listing. Halfway into our 13 hr journey driving down to see the property, we got a call from our realtor that the house went under contract with another buyer. We offered 100k over asking with contingencies of seeing the property and getting inspections, but the seller went with their first offer which our realtor claimed was also over asking and required no inspections.
The second property was in the low, dry hills of Novato—picture a fire waiting to happen cuz their insurance carrier does! The lot was tempting—over a third of a flat acre—and the cost of the house was at our threshold, but doable. The owners had turned their two bedroom into four, the additional two bedrooms a garage conversion built on a thin concrete slab. No central heating or cooling in over half of the house. In other words, the attractive listing turned out to be cheaply constructed, jury-rigged crap.
The two homes we saw have been typical of our home-buying journey, which is why we’ve yet to actually purchase a home in the very competitive housing markets we want to live. Nonetheless, we decided to extend our stay and see what came up for sale.
We stayed over a week and saw 16 properties, some new listings, some days, even weeks old. Most were overpriced wrecks. A few were clean, and my husband insisted they were “Fine!” He wants to be back in the sunshine. So do I, but these ‘fine’ homes had less than 7000 sq ft lots. Living on top of the neighbors didn’t seem ‘fine’ to me, especially coming from the 1.5 acres we have now.
We went to see a home in Novato, though it had been on the market 11 days. Any property over a week on MLS indicates there are issues with the house. As we perused the interior, we were both impressed by how clean the home was. Good layout, though dark in many rooms, but enough space for our two adult kids, and my husband and I to set up separate offices.
The kids will be moving in a year or less, I told my husband while we walked the small property. And the lot was only 7200 ft. It was in a 3/10 flood zone. It was at the base of a bone dry hill, blocking sunshine and an extreme fire hazard. There was a monthly HOA fee of $200, and the community pool that money funded was almost across the street.
“This house is fine by me. It’s fine for me. It’s big enough for all of us. It’s quiet, and it’s fine.”
It wasn’t ‘fine’ by me, but I could feel his frustration mounting. All he wanted was to move back to the Bay. The 5 yrs we’ve been in Seattle he’s complained non-stop about the grayness. The cold. The dripping rain. I, too, want to come home (I’m native CA), but not just any house in any neighborhood and end up with a house and property we don’t want like we did moving up here.
I listed a few more negatives about the house. The price point was at our limit, and our property taxes and utilities would be at least a third more. And being tied to another HOA for a pool we’d never use was a waste. Standing in the kitchen, I told my husband I did not want the house. He heard me. So did our broker who let us in.
My husband was clearly upset I was rejecting the property. A house I’d rejected earlier that day he’d also said was “Fine!” (It wasn’t fine, and not just to me because it’d been on the market for 35 days.) He ‘suggested’ we go look at the pool area as we were leaving the house, regardless that I’d just said I didn’t want the home. I followed him across the street, still on the page of a no-go, but seeing how upset he was stung.
Was I expecting too much home or land for the money we had?
Every property comes with problems. Were the issues so bad with this home I couldn’t be happy here?
Am I just being gun-shy from the mistake of moving up to Seattle?
We left that house, and while viewing others my husband spent the rest of the day trying to convince me the Novato house was “just fine!”
He thinks we can afford it, and if we live very tight, we likely can.
He likes how big the house is, with enough space for all of us to live comfortably.
The location is good, he reminded me multiple times, an area of Novato I’ve said I like.
We’d finally be back in the Bay, in sunny CA. Home!
We saw no other houses worth considering by the end of that day. My husband was tired of looking, and the Novato house had a lot going for it, he reminded me as we headed back to our hotel.
I, too, was exhausted by our endless search but was willing to keep at it, though I could tell my husband was reaching his limit. “If you don’t want this house, I want to stop looking for a year,” he told me earlier in the day. We’d previously agreed to work hard at finding a place before another dark PNW winter. Going back home and have him sour, annoyed, and pouting every gray day there wasn’t working for him, or us. It’s why I agreed to put a bid in on the Novato home. “This isn’t the house,” I told him when we docusigned the paperwork. “We’ll have to move again in a year or two, scale down when the kids move on.”
Earlier, and still, he wasn’t really listening to me. He’d told me time and again he wanted our next home purchase to be our last, but even the threat of moving again didn’t dissuade him from signing the bid.
Twenty hours later, we were dining at a Thai place in Novato and we got a call from our realtor that the sellers accepted our bid.
I put my fork full of crispy noodles down on my plate. I couldn’t breathe. I looked across the table at my smiling husband. I did not smile back. I excused myself and went outside where I paced and tried to regulate my breathing and slow my heart rate. It works, sometimes, if I tell myself to chill. It didn’t work right then.
I couldn’t think to form words. I kept seeing this too dark, too big, too expensive home we were about to buy in my head and there wasn’t one good feeling to latch on to, even the many my husband had iterated.
I went back into the restaurant and managed to tell him we had to leave, pack up our meal and go. I explained I was having a meltdown, a full blown anxiety attack I did not understand, and that I wanted to go over to the house again, see what we just bought. He didn’t question me. We went back to the house and stood on the porch since we couldn’t get in without our realtor who was off celebrating her birthday.
We stayed on the porch through sunset. It was mostly quiet the half hour we were out there. A guy played basketball by himself at the mini park next to the pool, which stayed empty even though it was a holiday weekend. The rhythmic bouncing of his ball was annoying, but oddly calming, as it gave me something to focus on. My husband touted the quiet, the house size, the end of a 5 year search, finally coming home. He dismissed my meltdown as nerves about moving, which, he informed me is right up there on the stress meter as marriage, divorce, and child birth.
I’m scared, I admitted.
“I know,” he’d said. “But we’ll make it work.”
No, we won’t. I don’t want this house. I didn’t say it aloud since I wasn’t totally sure at that point. Instead, I burst into tears and cried the 15 minute drive back to our hotel. My husband said this house is FINE. I agreed to bid on it, said YES, even though I told him a lot of valid reasons we should say NO. Now we were locked into a binding contract that I wasn’t sure we should follow through with or how to get out of.
My brain locked up. Never happened to me before. Even under extreme stress, I usually can think (rationalize?) my way through to clarity. Not this time. My husband drove in silence. I could feel him shutting down as he always does with strong emotions. He’d be no help, and likely a hindrance in me managing my panic attack. He’d castigate me for agreeing to put in a bid. And he’d have been right to do so.
Maybe what he said at the house is right and I’m just panicking over moving.
He really wants to move home and so do I. Maybe this is the best we can do.
Maybe the house won’t be so bad. It’s big enough, and quiet, even though it’s rather dark and we’re moving home for the sunshine, and the kids are moving out and we don’t need this much space, and it costs too much and we don’t need additional HOA fees, and—
Maybe I’m bat shit crazy for agreeing to buy a house I don’t want to please my husband.
He finally asked me what was going on as he pulled into a parking space at our hotel. When I told him I didn’t know and needed some space to figure it out I wasn’t lying because right then there was a war in my head. He went up to our room and I stayed in the car and wept. I struggled to breathe, and see through the blinding headache that felt like my eyes were popping out. I needed help finding clarity since my brain didn’t seem to be functioning so I called a friend.
“Make a list of the pros and cons of buying this house,” she told me after twenty minutes of listening to me freak out with the opposing voices locking up my brain. She helped me realize my full body meltdown to winning the bid was telling me something, and I should at least acknowledge it. Bless her!
Couldn’t help crying again up in our suite as I apologized to my husband for freaking out. I knew I didn’t want the house by then, but was afraid to disappoint him. Instead, I offered up my friend’s suggestion, and my husband worked with me on a pros and cons list. By midnight, it was obvious where buying the house was trending, and even he was moving toward withdrawing our bid. He suggested we decide what to do in the morning since nothing was going to happen at that hour, so we went to bed. Well, sort of, since neither of us really slept.
“You realize this could cost us forty five grand in earnest money?” my husband asked me in the morning when I informed him I was 100% sure I did not want to buy the Novato house.
“It won’t. We have an inspection contingency.” Thank God we did! In popular markets, brokers push buyers to waive all contingencies. In five home purchases, we never have, regardless if there’s ‘pre-inspections’ provided by the sellers.
The moment we docusigned our bid withdrawal my headache began to subside. I could tell my husband was relieved too, especially after our daughter called to inform us the house was priced $200k over comparable homes in the area. We hadn’t run comps before bidding. Our bad!
We left the Bay area the next day. The drive back up the coast I mused we were in the same position as when we came to check out those two houses—still homeless down there. But my husband disagreed. We learned a lot, he insisted.
Never bid on a house without an inspection contingency!
Always run comps of the area to see if the house is competitively priced.
And never, ever agree to buy a house I don’t want.
Easier said than done. Women are inherently maternal—outwardly focused. We’re raised to be caretakers, put others before self. But I, too, learned something on this last trip. Almost instinctively, I want to please so badly I rarely fight for my position in the face of opposition. I eventually (sometimes quickly) cave with resistance to my preferences and desires. And to fix this part of me, I’m gonna have to stand up, even go to battle when necessary to be heard, respected, and come away whole.
Typically, on Sunday mornings my husband and I share articles from the New York Times. He’ll often read me pieces while I prepare breakfast or vice versa, and we’ll discuss the ones that pique our interest. The year-end edition of the Sunday Magazine runs detailed obituaries on a handful of famous and infamous people who died that year. Though many are well-known — actors, x-presidents, and the like, some are more obscure, but they all share one thing in common. They all had [at least] 15 minutes of fame.
I began to feel increasingly irritated as my husband read the list of obits this morning. My mom, who also died this year will never be in the NYT. Where was the balance with the everyday hero — the dad who worked his life to support his family, or the career woman who slated her ambitions to be a mom? The nurse who stayed through the worst of Covid? The teacher that ignited their students’ passions laying the foundation for careers? The rideshare driver that played therapist to his passengers? Their stories are equally important as some one-hit wonder or marginal actor.
Even the most common among us had lives that mattered, that touched many, and their stories deserve to be told.
On my mother’s death bed she asked me, “Did I make a difference?” She stared at me with sunken eyes, her skeletal face practically begging me for an affirmative answer. And I gave her one. And, of course, it was true. She was my mom. She made a difference to me.
She turned me on to love, color, beauty, nature, music, art. She would often point out a vibrant flower, stop everything to view a sunset, and be truly awestruck by its magnificence. My mom was childlike in many ways, always curious, and loved learning. She genuinely liked most people. She was open to ideas, as long as they weren’t filled with hate or born of ignorance.
In the late 1940s, from 16 to 18 yrs old, my mother sat on the back of the bus with Blacks to protest segregation on her daily ride to the University of Florida. Christmas Day for 20 yrs she booked us, and anyone else who’d join us, to serve the homeless at Hollywood Methodist. She was a humanitarian before it was trending, and without prejudice, and, by her example, she taught me to respect all things equally.
She was a wife for nearly 50 years. My dad used to call her his ‘sunshine.’ Laughter and joy came easily to her. They danced beautifully together. He’d glide her across any dance floor in perfect sync, though he was 6’3” and 230 pds, and she a mere 5’ and slight. She sang all the time and had a beautiful voice, carrying the harmony that blended perfectly with my father’s melody.
My mom was a passionate and devoted teacher. She created an ocean science program through the Cabrillo Marine Museum she taught to underprivileged kids that is still active today. I’ve had the privilege of meeting several of her students while with my mom in the market or mall. They’d stop her in the aisle and tout her praises, often claimed they became oceanographers and biologists because of her influence. She loved kids. They were uncomplicated — what she pretended to be, even wanted to be, but wasn’t.
I sat cross-legged next to her lying on her death bed trying to exude the love I felt for this woman, my mother. But as I ran through her list of accomplishments, her expression became darker and sadder, and my “turn that frown upside down” mom started to cry. She wanted to give so much more. And she had so much more to give, but she realized, lying helpless in bed and gasping for every breath, her time had run out.
Two weeks later I stood over her grave and refused the dirt-filled shovel the clergy handed to me. I knelt and scooped a handful of moist, sweet earth from the freshly dug ground, smelled its musty richness, and then let it fall off my hand and run through my fingers as I released it onto her casket. And then I silently thanked her for teaching me to recognize natural beauty and engage with it at every opportunity.
My mom died of cancer at 73. Over 100 people attended her funeral. Another hundred or more have contacted our family since her death to give their condolences — lives she touched, who will touch the lives of others, and so on.
Andy Warhol was wrong. Most of us live and die in obscurity.
Pick any famous author, artist, or musician, and they’ll all have obsession in common. And while we, the public, enjoy the fruits of their creative labors, those closest to these individuals were/are generally left wanting more of them, more from them.
Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip, “was an indifferent and often inattentive father and husband.”
Rod Serling, of Twilight Zone fame, “worked 12 hours a day seven days a week, [and] his wife, Carol, tended to their daughters, Jodi and Anne.”
Adrienne Armstrong, wife of Billy Joe Armstrong of Greenday, said of her husband after the release of the album American Idiot, “I think it challenged us to a new level, pushed us pretty far, the farthest I ever want to go.”
The creatives above are all men. All married and all had/have children.
Now let’s explore a few famous women.
The romance novelist Jane Austen never married. She was, in fact, ‘relieved in later life to have avoided the pitfalls of married life, not least the huge risks of childbirth, “all the business of Mothering.’”
Georgia O’Keeffe, the surrealist painter, “wanted to have children but agreed with him [her husband, Alfred Steiglitz] that motherhood was incompatible with her art. She needed to focus all of her attention on her painting.”
Oprah Winfrey, the media mogul has never married. “The very idea of what it means to be a wife and the responsibility and sacrifice that carries — I wouldn’t have held that very well.” And she never had children. “If I had kids, my kids would hate me. They would have ended up on the equivalent of the “Oprah” show talking about me; because something [in my life] would have had to suffer and it would’ve probably been them.”
Ms. Winfrey had the guts to address the unvarnished, unspoken truth when she referred to the “responsibility and sacrifice,” in being a partner and mother. She understood the investment of time, physical and mental energy it takes to be a conscientious parent would have interfered, even waylaid immersion with her siren to grow a multi-billion-dollar empire.
Men have historically been the breadwinners of the family. And while this trend is slowly changing, the fact is women who seek personal excellence, especially in the arts, often have to choose between pursuing greatness and being, at least, an available partner and parent. Even today, men rarely have to make this choice.
Regardless of this sexist disparity, anyone, man or woman, obsessed with becoming great [at anything] should recognize the sacrifice and cost of pursuing brilliance.
As a wife, mother, and writer, my creative muse is constantly vying for prominence in my hierarchy of desires. When my kids were babies, my creative process encountered fewer distractions. I could stay rapt in storytelling, run dialog in my head while watching them play at the park or practice Lil’ Kicker’s soccer. Small kids, small problems. Now the parent of two young adults, my muse is often drowned out by the very real traumas and trials of adulting my children face every day. To help them navigate these tumultuous times, I question, probe, and even invade their space to stay connected, be there for them as a sounding board, a trusted confidant, be their ground when they’re falling, or envelop them in a hug.
I chose to marry and have kids. And while I am present, available for my family, forfeiting the hours I couldhave been making it with my muse writing was a battle I engaged in daily. Much of my fiction focuses on this internal war. My novel,Reverb, illustrates the cost of a guitarist’s obsession with creating music. Disconnected confronts the reality that women can’t ‘have it all’ — be everything we want to be, and still be there for our kids and family.
We glorify the brilliant author, the renowned artist, the genius scientist, and successes in business, often secretly wish to be one of them. Entrepreneurs that have built global companies made their startups their newborns, investing their time and energy in growing the business. To become great at anything means obsessively working at that job or craft, honing a skill set with relentless practice, which is the fundamental reason why genius is so rarely achieved.
Google “Genius,” and “Einstein” is in the first several pages of search returns. Einstein had intellectually incoherent views on politics, economics, and psychology, and by most accounts from colleagues and family, he sucked at relationships. Focusing solely on math and physics, he neglected most everything else, but he was one hell of a physicist.
Obsessive practice, to the exclusion of most everything else, is a reliable indicator of achieving brilliance. And now that my kids are grown and on their own, I have more time to make it with my muse, and I do. But truth be told, while it used to matter to me to be someone, achieve ‘famous writer’ status, or at least a Wiki page, not so much anymore. I’d never have been a creative director, a founder and entrepreneurship educator. So absorbed in my own greatness, I’d never have cultivated the truly intimate relationships I now have, or earned the status of Partner and Mom if I’d chosen the road of pursuing the title of ‘brilliant.’ I’d miss too much living such a hyper-focused life. Besides, it’s so much more fun to hang at home with loved ones, watch Netflix and be entertained by those who’ve ‘made it.’ ;-}
The sweet, cloying scent of death was veiled by the sharpness of cleanser in the antiseptic lobby of the Home. Chrome handrails lined the light pink walls. A hunched elderly man clutched onto the railing as he shuffled along in slow motion. Each step looked pained. Pasty white skin, his eyelids drooped over his small black eyes which seemed vacant, as if not only his body but his mind had abandoned him.
I took in the scene and it momentarily robbed me of breath. Old scared me, sometimes worse than not getting there.
Grandma sat perched on the edge of the maroon love seat, her floral print polyester dress hung to her calves and gathered tightly around her short, crossed legs. She clutched the strap of her white vinyl purse between her bony hands resting in her lap.
“Well, it’s about time,” She sniped, as if I were late. It was 4:00 p.m., exactly when I was told to be there.
“You look lovely, Grandma.” I leaned down and kissed my grandmother’s soft white cheek. The old woman gave me a vain smile. At 84, she had flawless skin, virtually wrinkle-free, and her steel gray eyes were still rather piercing.
“And you look like you got your clothes at the Salvation Army. Why don’t you dress properly?” She spoke in a clipped English accent though she’d lived in the States for over seventy years.
I wore my hole-free black jeans, and oversized beige cotton shirt, which I actually tucked in. I even put on a bra for the occasion. The woman was delusional expecting more than that. “You ready to go, Gram?”
She stood and straightened her dress, then squared her petite shoulders and rose her chin up. “I’ve been ready to get out of here since the day your mother stuck me in this place.”
We walked to my Civic parked in the lot behind the building. I was annoyed by her bitterness, my mother’s effort to her care more than sufficient in my view. It had been the right decision to have her committed. Gram almost killed herself overdosing on medication she’d mistakenly taken twice within minutes on more than a few occasions. She was losing her memory, and her once sharp mind could no longer manage life on her own.
It was getting dark, but bits of electric blue sky peeked through the thickening clouds. The air was crystal clean, sharp with moisture. A storm was coming. It was easy to feel in L.A., maybe because they’re so rare. I settled Gram in the passenger seat then took a deep breath, sucked in the sweet wetness and released it slowly to shake off my growing anxiety.
“Try that lane, it’s moving. Don’t just sit here. Go around them. You should get off the freeway, the side streets are faster…” Grandma had a lot of suggestions though she’d never driven a day in her life. Between driving tips she talked incessantly about the ‘crazy people’ she now lived with. She swore her roommate stole her ruby necklace, one she claimed she got on Safari in Africa, though she’d never owned one and had never been anywhere but England until her teens, then the States the rest of her life. She was sure her neighbor across the hall was coming into her room at night to watch her sleep, though had no explanation why. Then she was sure she’d forgotten something back at the Home but couldn’t remember what, then couldn’t remember where we were going. She remembered after prompting, but then didn’t want to go to her evil daughter’s who had stolen everything she owned and had her ‘put away.’
I pulled into my parents’ driveway, alongside the row of rosebushes my mom and I had planted years back, a long narrow island of long-stem yellow and red roses that separated our driveway from the neighbor’s. I stopped behind my sister’s minivan, turned off the car, and looked at grandma who stared straight ahead, seemingly unaware we had arrived.
“You ready to go inside?”
“I told you, I’m not going in there. Why are we here?”
“For Thanksgiving, Gram, remember?”
“Well, I have nothing to be thankful for. Take me home.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.” It was cliché and a lie and I felt stupid for saying it, parroting my mother’s Pollyanna tripe. I considered telling grandma I know what hopeless feels like, and I too lived with a pervasive sadness and fear of the future, afraid of what’s to be, or not to be. But there was no point really. Gram didn’t acknowledge feelings, and she never showed fear. “Are you coming into the house with me or not?”
Grandma refused to get out of the car and I wasn’t about to make her. She’d always been contentious, but she’d had a quick wit and delivered it with sharp humor, both of which left her years ago, as did the radiant beauty she once possessed. She was on the fringe of life now, on her way out and almost invisible. Surely she felt it too. Maybe so many old people lose their minds because the reality of their marginal existence is just too degrading. And terror consumed me right then, bearing witness to my future.
I got out of my car and took a deep breath of crisp, wet air, then released it slowly as I went to the back of my Civic and lifted the hatchback, gathered the pie, and the green bean casserole I’d made this morning, then slammed the hatch shut and walked to my parents’ Valley-Ranch, single-story home.
Roasting turkey and smoky firewood wafted from inside as I stepped up onto the landing and then came through the iron screen door into the house I was raised, yet never really felt at home in. I passed the bookshelves neatly packed with encyclopedias and novels into the spacious, modern living room. A large open space wrapped around the centralized fireplace to the open dining area.
Dad tended the fire and poked an iron rod at the burning logs. Sparks flared and sucked up into the chimney. My brother-in-law, Larry, seemed short and narrow standing next to my 6’3″, 220-pound father, though the men looked remarkably alike, even with twenty-five years between them. Each had speckled gray hair and short-cropped beards and wire-rim glasses. Dad wore navy Dockers and a long sleeve flannel shirt. As always, Larry looked like he’d just walked off the set of The Big Chill — Levi’s, maroon Izod sweater, and those over-complicated sneakers.
“Hey,” I announced. “Happy Thanksgiving.” I set the food I’d brought on the slate bench that wrapped two sides of the fireplace, then kissed and hugged my father. He gathered me up in his big arms and drew me in against his barrel chest.
“Hello, Baby.” It was his only term of endearment for me. “Happy Thanksgiving.” He released me and I felt abandoned amidst the pack again.
“Hey Lar. How ya doing?” I inquired when he didn’t.
“Good.” That was it. Larry didn’t turn my question around.
“Grandma’s in the car and won’t come out. Can you please go talk to her, dad?”
My father sighed heavily and shook his head before handing the iron poker to Larry and going outside. Larry rested the end of the poker on the slate bench, held it like a staff and stared at the fire, clearly uninterested in engaging with me. He was a devout Jew, a conservative, directed, precise, with no interest in abstractions like feelings. And Larry dismissed most anyone who wasn’t of like mind or income.
I collected my food and went into the kitchen. “Happy Thanksgiving everyone!” And that moment I felt glad to be there, to have family to be with. They were all I had, all I’d ever really had, as my mother so often reminded me. Everyone else came and went in L.A.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” everyone said in unison, except Scott. My eight-year-old nephew sat at the kitchen table and consumed a finger full of the custard from the pumpkin roll he’d taken a scoop out of when he thought no one was looking.
My sister Carrie sat in front of baby Adam strapped in the portable car seat on the kitchen table. She was feeding him spoonful’s of mushed-up yams that dribbled out the side of his mouth. The gross factor didn’t seem to faze her. Her mass of flaming red hair was pulled back into a tight braid and hung down her back practically to her waist. She wore a Spanish-style gauze dress with a colorful, rather loud floral pattern of red roses, and mid-calf tan cowboy boots with sharply pointed tips.
I set the food down on the stovetop above the oven where my six-year-old niece, Jessie, stood basting the turkey. Mom stood behind her, hand over her granddaughter’s and together they squeezed the soft plastic ball, sucking up gravy into the tube then squirting it back on the bird.
“Happy Thanksgiving, Auntie Ray.” Jessie looked adorably cute in her black velvet dress, her long, strawberry blond hair pulled back in a high ponytail.
“Happy Thanksgiving, baby.” I whispered as I bent to kiss my niece’s head, and before fully straightening I received my mother’s quick kiss on the cheek. Mom was barely five feet, and shrinking with age.
“Happy Thanksgiving, Dolly.” My mother had three terms of endearment for me. Dolly, Face, and ‘my baby,’ as I was her last born. “Is Grandma giving you grief?”
“She still in the car. Dad went to get her.”
“Well, she wouldn’t come in if I went out there.” Mom’s aged, sun-baked skin glowed with beads of sweat that ran along the side of her gaunt face onto the brown plastic frame of her large glasses. “She only listens to your father.” She took the baster from Jessie, pushed the turkey back in the oven and shut the door, then wiped her forehead on her shirtsleeve. “Go wash your hands, Jessie Rose,” she instructed her granddaughter. “Then see if you can help your mother with the coleslaw.”
“I’m feeding Adam now, Mom.” Carrie was in a huff. “I’ll get to it in a minute. I told you I should have brought Maria to help.”
Mom didn’t respond. She busied herself and tuned out, a technique she’d honed to avoid conflict. She got a carton of whipping cream from the fridge, poured the cream into a plastic bowl then set up the electric mixer.
I retrieved the coleslaw my sister brought from the fridge and took it back to the kitchen table. A bottle filled with dressing was on top of the cabbage mixture and I poured it over the shredded leaves until the bottle was drained. Jessie sat down at the table next to her older brother and started coloring, but within moments they were fighting, Scott hording the markers regardless of his sister’s shrill protests. Carrie ignored them. Like our mother, Carrie had the ability to shut out what disturbed her. But the kids bickering annoyed the hell out of me.
“Knock it off, you guys.” I spoke loudly to be heard over the mixer. “Scott, give your sister half the pens. And Jess, don’t grab. Ask.” I got Jessie’s attention, but Scott grabbed the only pen Jessie had out of her small hand. She tried to grab it back nearly knocking a stack of dishes off the table. “Stop! Now! Both of you.” The last bit sounded like I was screaming because mom had switched off the mixer. I grabbed half of Scott’s markers and set them in front of Jess. Carrie looked up from feeding Adam and narrowed her eyes at me, but at least the kids stopped fighting.
“This is ridiculous, Mother.” Carrie stood, wiped her son clean with the cloth she kept on her shoulder. “There is nothing for the kids to do here anymore. You don’t even have cable. They don’t want to be here. And I don’t blame them. They can entertain themselves all day at home. We should just have Thanksgiving at my house from now on.”
“No way,” I protested. I’d never felt welcome in Carrie’s home, always the unwanted guest she felt she had to invite. I looked at my mom standing at the counter near the sink, poised with the mixer over the bowl of whipped cream. I recognized my mother’s pinched expression and felt her rush of distress. “We’ve had it at home since we were born. Thanksgiving should be here.”
“You have no idea what a total hassle it is dragging three kids everywhere.” Carrie picked her son up out of the car seat and held him to her. “You only have yourself to worry about, Rachel. It’s harder for everyone having it here. If you won’t think of me, then at least think of Mom.”
I stared at my mother. “I am.” Mom looked down, busied herself with the cream. Thanksgiving was the only holiday our mother still hosted. She’d mentioned many times how much she enjoyed preparing for it, looked forward to “having the whole family safe in the nest,” even if just for a night. Carrie had co-opted all birthdays, Hallmark occasions and every Jewish holiday from Hanukkah to Passover at her 5,600 square foot McMansion in Agoura Hills. Maids and caterers graced these parties which made it easier for all in some ways. But what Carrie didn’t get is that everyone needs to feel needed, and slowly but surely, she was robbing our mother of purpose, and pleasure.
“So, I hear you’re dating that new guy you’ve been playing racquetball with.” The words seemed to fall out of mom’s mouth as if to fill the exaggerated hush.
I glared at my sister. “Well, we’re not exactly dating…”
“What do you call it then?” Carrie held her son and stroked his back in slow circles. “You’ve been playing racquetball for almost a month like every other day with him. And he’s taking you to Love Letters Saturday night, in Beverly Hills. If that’s not meant to impress, I don’t know what is.” Adam laid his little chin on her shoulder, looked at me, and burped. “I’m going to go put him down, Mom.”
“Night, beautiful.” I whispered softly as he passed, his saucer blue eyes half-mast. And I was sucked into the black hole of Want as I stood at the table tossing the coleslaw.
“Well, are you seeing him or not?” Mom handed each of the kids a whipped cream coated circle of blades. She used to give them to Carrie and me. My mouth literally watered as I watched Scott and Jessie lick off the cream.
“We’re just friends, Mom. We go out to dinner after racquetball sometimes, and we’ve hung out the last couple of weekends, but I really don’t think it’ll go anywhere.”
“Why not? And how do you know this after a month?” Mom’s thin, painted red lips stayed in a tight, flat line. “What’s he do?”
“He runs his own company shipping freight. He’s a consultant, sort of like me, but a lot more successful.”
“And what’s his name?”
I had my mother’s attention, and smiled. “Lee.”
“Does he have a last name?”
I knew why she was asking, of course. “Messer. Lee Messer.”
“Messer…” She contemplated aloud as she scooped the whipped cream into a crystal serving goblet. Then her countenance filled with lightness and she smiled. “Isn’t that Jewish?”
I shook my head, annoyed. I refrained from revealing him agnostic, afraid of dimming her brightness I was momentarily basking in. “What difference does it make, Mother? A last name doesn’t brand him a believer, and if he was, I couldn’t be with him. I’m still an atheist, mom.”
“Then you’re an idiot.” She said it deadpan, like the words just fell out of her mouth without filtering through her brain. She didn’t intend to be mean. It was almost an expression of endearment. She meant ‘idiot’ sort of like ‘my beautiful baby…’ “You condemn yourself to the fringes and then complain you’re lonely. And I know you are. What woman wouldn’t be still single and childless at 33?” My mother had a way of proceeding from instinct rather than intellect and was clueless how cutting her words were. “Why can’t you just accept who you are and embrace your community like your sister. I guarantee if you did, you’d find the life you’re still looking for.” She shook her head and turned away to put the filled goblet of cream in the fridge then went to the stove and stirred the pot of chicken noodle soup.
“Living among the faithful whose belief in money supersedes the moral gospel they espouse isn’t the community I’m looking for, mother.” I sighed and shrugged my shoulders to shed my mounting tension. “And over scheduling every minute of the day with extraneous activities so I don’t have time to think, or create anything, isn’t the life I want either. I don’t want to be Carrie, Mom.”
“I don’t want you to be your sister, Rachel. I want you to be happy, and taken care of.” She stared at me like she was stating the obvious, then her expression softened to empathy, and she frowned. “My beautiful Face, why do you always insist on the hardest path.”
I’d blown it again, pushed my mom away. Non-conformity was disruptive to the woman’s psyche. And Lonely crept in, abandoning me to the outside again from the chasm now between us. I set the coleslaw aside, near Jessie. My niece was coloring a house with stickish smiling people inside. Scott’s picture showed planes dropping bombs and people on the ground getting blown up. He looked up at me.
“I don’t believe in God either, Grandma.” He stared at me as he spoke to her.
“Oh, of course you do.” Mom glared at me over the stove top but spoke to her grandson. “You don’t know what you believe at eight.”
“I did. I knew from the beginning of Saturday school what the rabbis were preaching was a bunch of crap.” I was being combative, to be sure, but my mother was so dismissive that I felt the need to validate my nephew’s pejorative statement. “And if religion is so damn important to family togetherness, why did it break up ours?” She’d chased away her first child, my half-brother, when Keith converted to Born Again Christianity to marry.
“You shut up now, Rachel. Don’t encourage him.” It was hard to see my mom’s brown eyes glaring at me behind the large glasses, but I felt her irritation.
Mom busied herself, and I felt bad I’d come back at her so aggressively. Her reaction to Keith’s conversion had fundamentally scared me. Though she didn’t disown him exactly, she made it impossible for him to attend family occasions. The last time Keith brought his family to Thanksgiving, mom cornered his 4-year-old son — her first grandchild — in the kitchen and told him he was really a Jew, instead of the Evangelos Christian my nephew was being raised. I feared the battle to come when, if I had kids, since I had no intention of raising them with any religion.
“You two at it again?” Dad scowled at me as he came into the kitchen. I felt the familiar twinge of fear, not just from his size, but growing up I’d felt the wrath of his temper. “You still fighting windmills, baby? Don’t confuse your mother with facts, Rachel.”
Mom stuck her tongue out at him in a coquettish kind of way, just the tip, childlike. Dad laughed.
“Grandma and Larry are cowering in the living room so they don’t have to listen to you two go at each other. And I don’t blame them.” Dad went to the liquor cabinet above the utility closet in the pantry and got the big bottle of gin, brought it back in the kitchen and proceeded to make martinis.
“We almost ready to sit down?” Carrie came into the kitchen and dad handed her his first completed drink. “Thank you, Dad.”
“Dinner will be ready in ten minutes.” Mom opened the oven and pulled out the turkey. My seemingly fragile little mother was impressive to watch, straddling the open oven door and hauling that heavy bird onto the stove top. The turkey could have made the cover shot for the November issue of Good Housekeeping. It was golden brown, dripping with juice, and it smelled of garlic, oregano and paprika.
“For you, my dear.” Dad handed mom a martini.
Mom wiped her hands, then the sweat from her face on the dishtowel and then took the wide rimmed glass with a gracious, “Thank you, honey.” She leaned back against the counter and contentedly sipped her martini. “Why don’t you girls start serving the salad.”
Carrie put her drink on the linoleum countertop and got the salad from the fridge. “Jessie Rose. Please go into the dining room and get everyone to sit down for dinner. Scott, go help your sister, please.” Her tone was as stern as her expression and her son only hesitated a second then followed his sister from the kitchen.
Jessie took her drawing to show off, but she and her brother left their mess of markers and pad pages scattered on the kitchen table. I began collecting them to make room for serving the salad. Carrie set the salad bowl on the table and glared at me.
“My children are Jewish. I’m raising them to have an identity and a community, both of which you seem to sorely lack. So keep your fucking mouth shut about what you believe, whatever the hell it is, or isn’t, around my kids.” She didn’t give me time to respond. She grabbed her half-empty martini and walked out of the room.
I watched my sister disappear into the dining area. The satiny fabric of the heavy white drapes that covered the back glass wall of the living room glowed warm and shimmered with firelight. I heard Larry ask his wife if she was OK, and Carrie say “dandy,” but she was “just so tired of her” (my) “crap.”
Then grandma piped in with, “You’re all full of crap.”
I looked at my mom. She glared at me, then emptied her martini and put the glass in the sink behind her. Her displeasure wrapped her like a shroud, and she transferred it as she spoke. “Please serve the salad now, Rachel Lynn.”
I did. I turned my back on my mother and put salad onto plate after plate until the kitchen table had no space for more, then carried them two at a time and served everyone before sitting to eat. Larry was touting his lucrative new strip-mall development in Malibu. Carrie beamed proudly at her husband. Dad nodded with respect. I shook my head but held my tongue. It was foolish to question the need of another 7–11 obstructing the views and scarring the fragile ecosystem along the coast to people who viewed personal wealth as social progress. I knew my opinion was unwelcome among them. Like grandma, I too was almost invisible, or at least wanted to be. And I no longer felt glad to be there. We hadn’t even gotten through the salad this time before I wanted out.
My craving to get high grew exponentially as I crawled along in traffic on the 101 in the rain after dropping grandma off. Brighter than twilight from the streetlights, with five lanes of unfettered highway, and it was beyond irritating how inane L.A. drivers became when it rained. My ire rose with every ten-minute mile, and I felt a desperate need to shed the evening.
I called Lee a hundred times in my head, imagined him coming over, us hanging out and playing Tavli all night. Talking. Laughing. Sharing… Safe with someone who actually liked me. But as I pulled onto my driveway doubt crept in. Inviting him over at 10:00p.m. might imply I was asking him to stay the night, and I had no intention of sleeping with Lee. Intercourse with him would not fulfill me, or enhance the connection we already shared. It would only complicate the friendship I was hoping to maintain.
This excerpt is from the ‘novel memoir’ DISCONNECTED, a coming of age novel for women about a romance that never should have been.
Ever fall for someone you KNEW you shouldn’t, just to be with SOMEONE?
Rachel sought what most women did—to be successful, married and in love, have healthy kids. It was hard enough attracting a man when she wasn’t heroin thin or chic like most Hollywood women, or sparkly, but not too bright, as her mom insisted females should be. But in the 1990s, finding a man wanting an equal partner, a woman beside him instead of behind him, seemed the impossible dream.
Then along came Lee…
“Smart, Honest, Vivid, Poignant,” Contemporary Historical Romance with a very sharp edge…
I’m no longer, and will never again be my kids’ demigod…
I wanted kids for as long as I can remember. Have 2. Adopt 1. I was absolutely sure I could raise them better than my mom [and dad].
I’d give them ground instead of ripping it away with critical judgments. I’d show my love unconditionally, not doled out with achievements or ‘acceptable’ behavior. I’d be the best friend they ever had, there for them when they needed me, even when they didn’t know they did but just needed to be heard. And I’ve been all this for my kids for the most part. By their measure, I am their closest confidant, even now.
Now 26 and 24, though both are back home for the moment, we almost never eat meals together and seldom interact beyond quick exchanges. My kids are moving beyond family with boyfriends, girlfriends, media becoming their greater influence. While they both still share with me intimate details of their lives, it’s different now. We truly are friends. Not mom to kid, but adult to adult. And while this is good, and right, it hurts, in almost the abstract, like I shouldn’t be feeling sad they are launching.
I am no longer and will never again be their demigod. As adults, their trust in what I say wavers, knowing my propensity to infuse parables into storytelling. They see me now, know my history, watched much of it unfold. They understand my frailties, and love me anyway, but they [rightfully] no longer believe that mine is the final word.
I was into the arts from the beginning too — drawing, sculpting, building, writing. I was obsessed with creating as far back as I can recall, so my desire to produce children wasn’t lack of other interests or just to do better than my mother. I wanted to put people into this world who would be kind, compassionate, lead with their head and their heart. I figured if each gen raised their kids to embody these traits, in some number of generations forward humans could reach our amazing potential for boundless creation, innovation, intimacy, love. My kids are kind, empathetic people and I am proud to know them, but I get I made it hard on them, pushing them to care beyond themselves in a world that generally does not.
I had kids late, in my early 40s after 6 pregnancy losses before our son, and another before having our daughter. I married late too, at 37, pursuing my career while searching for Mr. Right to father the family I wanted so badly. Together we chose to have children. And together we agreed not to raise latchkey kids as our parents had done. One of us would be home for them, at least through most of puberty.
My husband became the main income provider as a male software developer in Silicon Valley, making much more than me as a female marketing consultant and full-time parent. I focused on being there for my kids — taking them to school and picking them up daily, planning activities, groups to join, sports to play, shopping, preparing meals…etc. And talking, endless talking, being available to help them define and navigate their world. I also helped launch and market startups, taught entrepreneurship at top unis, authored 3 novels, 2 short story collections, 2 business marketing books, and an edtech course.
I’ve been busy, for sure, but now I’m tired. I don’t have a ‘second life’ like most women who had kids in their late 20s or early 30s. I’m old, or feel old.
I hate having more memories than time to make them.
When I was little, I would fantasize about my life forward. I’d marry my BFF by mid to late 20s. We’d have kids in our early 30s. I’d be home for my kids, and a successful author too. (I was clearly naive about the time and head space required to really ‘be there’ for your kids.)
Imagining this stage of my life as a kid, I assumed my children would have launched by now (and likely would have if I’d had them earlier). I’d be well into my second act, engaged in writing fiction, and traveling to beautiful and bizarre places with my beloved husband. We wouldn’t be worried about making money anymore. We could spend freely, like never before. I wouldn’t be grieving the loss of my revered position as a mother because I’d be a selling author, and hanging with my BFF.
The kids are moving on, aging out as a mompreneur, and I still have no cachet as a writer, still relatively unknown. I’m back to being what feels like… nothing. And now there’s an additional twist. Younger, there was always time to make the future what I wanted it to be. But I’ve learned that hope, like time, is fleeting.
The life I pictured is so far from the reality I live it’s verging on surreal. I don’t feel like I’m in my body so much of the time lately, just sort of watching from the outside. I am truly lost, consumed in mourning the loss of my past, and the end of my future. No longer atop any hierarchy, like I was in my kids’ eyes when they were growing up, or my entrepreneurial students. I’m back to being nobody with hardly any time or energy left to create the future I wanted to be living by now.
I am grateful for the life I have, for my spectacular kids, my marriage, and the home we’ve built and share. But I still want more. Don’t you, (whatever your age!)? I want everyone who reads me to share my work with their fam and friends. I wanta be at my kids’ weddings, and play with my grandkids, teach them, listen to them, learn from them. I want to stay close to my kids, as integral a part of their lives as always, but now see that I won’t be as they move on.
Common advice is ‘live in the moment,’ but lately I don’t know how to shake off the suffocating weight of aging. My body reminds me often with injuries taking so much longer to heal. Society tells me I’ve become valueless. I can’t fall back asleep at 4:00am when I get up to pee for the 5th time. Back in bed I start looping on the reality I’m losing the family life I lived. And loved. Sleeping now seems… wasteful since the bulk of my life is over. I can’t get off the bullet of time, out of the tunnel I’m in railing towards the light that I know is the freight train comin’ at me.
While it’s true no one knows when they’re gonna die, let me tell ya, death begins looming — the proverbial ax over your head the older you get. Every illness I wonder if this one will take me out. Past a certain age, you don’t keep getting over it.
In 20 to 30 yrs I will likely cease to exist. My body will return to organic matter. No heaven. No hell. No afterlife awaits any of us. Like my biological clock to bear children, my life clock is running out. I can feel it coming, the light at the end of the tunnel brighter than ever now. Aging is a bitch, but I suppose it’s better than not. Love to end this blog on a cheerful note, since we all love happy endings. Thing about being alive is our ending is always the same.
Had some yard work done that required cutting concrete. My gardener gave me a quote of $150 to do the job. I accepted his bid as fair and equitable, and we agreed he’d do the work last Sunday.
He arrived promptly at 8:30 Sunday morning and began cutting our concrete patio. He used a small electric saw with a 4-inch blade, which I thought odd, since the last guy I’d seen cut concrete had a major power saw that had to be held with both hands and came with a water supply to keep the blade cool.
Our gardener struggled to cut a mere 20 inches of concrete less than a half-inch thick for over four hours. He left once, to buy new blades for his little saw. He did not take a lunch break. In fact, he took no breaks at all.
It was ninety-four degrees at midday when I brought him some ice water. Sweat dripped down his face and cut brown lines in the concrete chalk covering his skin. He gave me a crooked-tooth grin of thanks, took a long drink then wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Caliente!” (Hot!)
I nodded in agreement and pointed to his little saw. “Pequeño (Small),” I said, closing the gap between my thumb and forefinger. “Why so small? Harder to cut the concrete.” I spoke in English, as my Spanish sucks, but he got it.
He laughed. “You’re right. Yes! Si! Demasiado pequeño (too small). Herramienta incorrecta (wrong tool).” He picked up his tiny cutter. “Muy caro! Expensive! $100 for herramienta. $35 for blades. Aye yai yai!”
I was paying him $150 for the job. He’d just spent over that buying equipment to do the work. I was mind-boggled. I assumed he had all he needed to do the job when he gave me his bid. He downed the full glass of water and went back to work.
I went inside to get him more water and noticed the receipt from the equipment rental place I’d visited the previous week. I’d rented a jigsaw for a woodworking project. At the time, I inquired about renting a concrete cutter. $49.00 for 24 hours. Why hadn’t my gardener just rented the right equipment? He could have got the job done in half an hour and actually made money.
I took the receipt outside and showed it to him. “Do you know of this place? Just down the road?”
He took the receipt and studied the logo at the top of the paper. His expression brightened. “Si! Yes! Alquiler de equipos. Rents. Yes?”
“Yes! Concrete saw is $59.00 bucks for all day. Thirty minutes, a half an hour, to do the job. That’s it. Why didn’t you rent a saw?” Using hand signals and body gestures I somehow communicated.
“Ah. No. No rent. Can’t. No license. No seguro (insurance). Not legal here.”
Four years running our gardener’s been coming. He’s easily the best gardener I’ve ever had. More than a gardener, he fixes our watering system, landscapes, trims trees, and sets fences. He comes every Tuesday around 9:00am, rain or shine, and is on time, every time. He always smiles and waves when we cross paths. He is a stellar model of a dedicated hard worker for our children, and our community at large. I’ve recommended him to neighbors and soccer moms, as they have to their communities, allowing him to build a side business gardening and landscaping on weekends and evenings.
Yet, he cannot get a Green Card.
His company won’t sponsor him. He has no legal relatives here. He is not a refugee. Even if he could get one, the process of applying and then waiting for the Card takes years. My gardener needs, and in fact, has work right now. He can’t wait years to get government approval to work for a living.
Why doesn’t he leave his job for Americans and just go back to Mexico? Without him, and immigrants like him, our free-market economy would get even more expensive for us in the middle. Capitalism requires competition to keep prices of labor and costs of goods moderated.
I had three other bids on the concrete work I needed. A neighborhood contractor quoted me $1,600 to do the job. A mason didn’t want the job because it was 20 miles from his location and not worth the trip. A local handyman quoted $950, but couldn’t start the job for over two months, and required half upfront to hold my time slot. All were licensed, bonded, U.S. Citizens. With the right cutting tool, which was rentable for $59, I knew the job should take 15 minutes, 30 on the outside. I originally considered doing it myself, but the saw seemed heavier than I could manage.
I had no idea my gardener was here illegally and driving without a license until our conversation last Sunday. The man looks in his mid-40s but he told me on Sunday that he’s only 32. He’ll die young from hard labor, lack of medical care, working with poor or improper equipment, like breathing toxic concrete dust without a mask, carcinogenic construction materials, and garden poisons. If he is graced with children, and I hope he is and will pass on his excellent work ethic to them, he still will not be granted U.S. Citizenship. He is always at risk of deportation, more or less depending on who is in the White House. Like many illegals lately, he could end up having to take his American children back to live in the Mexico he left for a ‘better life’ here.
Sunday alone, our gardener put over $150 into the U.S. economy, counting just his little saw and multiple blades. He will buy his food here, pay for his housing here, his utilities, his fuel costs. He lives here and contributes to our economy with every dollar he spends. He probably pays taxes, as do many illegals working for large companies. My gardener is an employee of a huge gardening and landscaping corporation.
Next time you bite into that peach, remember it only costs $0.59 because illegals planting and picking the fruit are cheap labor. (Your iPhone is made in China for the same reason, yet Apple is rewarded with tax breaks instead of kicked out of the country). Illegals contribute billions in tax dollars and consumer spending in the U.S. annually, yet they get none of the protections of citizenship. No Medicare. No social security or unemployment benefits. No welfare or government handouts, like half the southern states. Illegals are invisible here.
I am privileged by birthright for the lifestyle we live and can provide for our kids. I haven’t a clue, and never want one, how it feels to be so far from home, without ‘inalienable rights.’ But I know one thing for sure — our gardener deserves the ‘better life’ he sought when moving here, the one [ostensibly] available to most citizens who work hard to prosper.
How to build better relationships with partners, kids, friends and colleagues…
The first year of my marriage didn’t go according to plan. The creative, smart, capable man I thought I married appeared to be a jobless, lazy, self-absorbed brat.
I’d waited 37 years to marry, ten years behind almost everyone I knew. I’d waited to find a best friend to share life with. I had this idea of the man I wanted to be with since childhood. He’d be smart. Very smart. Massively creative, anything less would bore me. Financially stable, and able to help support a family with his skill set. And fun, of course, loved exploring new places. Cute was a must. I had to be physically attracted.
My husband had all these things and more, even after we married. And similar goals of having a family remained intact, but something had changed between us. The best friend I wanted became the burden I carried the poorer we got. He refused to take on consulting, and I couldn’t support us both on my salary alone. Ten months into our marriage we’d gone through most of my life savings.
He came into our union with no savings, and no paying job. He was working at developing a tech startup when we met and continued to do so after we married. He spent his days and most nights creating software. My dear husband’s response to going broke was to make his already complex software even more complex. Marketing his startup was a mystery to him and easily avoided by immersing himself in coding. He seemed more intimate with his computer than with me. Many a night I had to please myself while he was downstairs making it with his 64-bit Alpha.
There were many good days, long drives, and hikes along the Pacific coastline, filled with conversation that flowed from one topic to another in a smooth, endless dialog. Those days bonded us, reminded me why we married, and how much I enjoyed his mind, his perspectives, his passion. But things got harsher and more contentious. Eleven and a half months into marital bliss I lost our first baby in utero eight weeks into the pregnancy. And my husband engaged with his muse while I mourned our loss alone.
Time and again that first year of our marriage, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one that considered divorce. A chasm was growing between us. I’m sure he felt it too. He was just better at ignoring it, and me, which I found infuriating. I was so very lonely, and when prodded, my husband admitted he was too. We were stuck in a downward spiral which I couldn’t live with, in a relationship I didn’t want to abandon. Ultimately, fear of missing my childbearing years, and having to start from square one dating again, compelled me to stick with my marriage.
I narrowed the root of our discord down to three possible scenarios:
He fed off other people’s pain, which would make him a psychopath.
He was indifferent to anyone’s needs but his own.
He didn’t know any better.
It was improbable I’d married a psychopath. My husband was guilty of distance, but never violence. Indifference was impossible to work with. Trying to motivate people to care — that don’t — is a fool’s play. So I went with the third possibility. He didn’t know what was wrong between us, or how to fix it, so he froze, paralyzed by uncertainty.
My husband is a mathematician. His brain shuts out chaos. He craves order, creates it daily in tidy mathematical models with strict parameters. Feelings were messy, but exploring them was downright unnerving for him.
My dad once told me the difference between men and women lies in our nature. Men are self-oriented, internal. Women are maternal. Producing life grounds us outside ourselves. Therefore, it is the woman’s role to coax the man outside himself, bring him to her, even his children.
It was my job to figure out a method, a series of clearly defined, linear steps we were both beholden to take that would make our marriage work. I felt certain once a path was apparent my husband would gladly take it with me, if for no other reason than to end the perpetual arguing. And though it took me several months, I eventually came up with an equation and presented it on our vacation, because timing is everything.
We were climbing on the gigantic slabs of granite rocks and exploring the spectacular rugged shoreline of Acadia National Park in Maine. Humbled by the grandeur all around us, we connected in that shared moment. That’s when I unveiled the set of steps I’d conjured that were likely to improve our marriage. I spoke slowly, calmly, lovingly as I laid out the logistics.
We are a TEAM.
What does my partner need/want?
What do I need/want?
Compromise.
Four simple (or not so simple) steps, in this exact order.
Step #1 defines the goal, I explained to my husband. Any relationship — whether husband, lover, friend, or child and parent, must be a TEAM to effectively communicate, and manage discord. We first must acknowledge we are not competing. We’re on the same side trying to work together to solve the issue at hand.
Steps #2 and #3, I continued explaining, are about building trust — the foundation of all productive relationships. If I know you’ll consider my needs and desires before your own (#2), and you know I’m looking out for you before myself (#3), we’ll be able to establish trust knowing we’ll be there for each other before ourselves alone.
Step #4: Compromise, I told my husband, is the functional workings of any healthy relationship. With everything given, something (not necessarily the same thing) is owed. At the very least, each of us must feel heard, and understanding must be achieved before archiving any conflict. Letting issues fester is destructive, and divisive in the extreme. At best, we both get something we want, even if that something is yielding our position to support our team. And as a sidebar — ‘giving in’ doesn’t mean ‘losing.’ Concessions are more easily given by referring to Step #1.
My husband paced me across the granite slabs as we climbed the rocky shoreline. His slender form moved with grace and ease across the rocks. He scrambled ahead to help me with a vertical climb, then reached down to give me a hand. A moment later we stood on cliff’s edge overlooking the Atlantic.
“Other than I think you’re hot, I married you because I knew you were brilliant. Anything less would have bored me.” He smiled at me, then stared out at the ocean, big waves striking the shoreline sending plumes of mist around us.
We walked and talked and climbed for the next five hours, breaking down each of the four steps with specific case scenarios. After analyzing and massaging the data the rest of the weekend, and each step passing QA of course, it was agreed upon to give them a go.
For our summer vacation a decade ago we took our teen children to Acadia to share with them the park’s pristine beauty. My husband spoke of our earlier adventures there and told the kids about our long talk. He quoted the four steps, in order, and explained why each was important, then pointed out how applying them to most interactions strengthens communication and can improve almost any relationship. A big wave sprayed us all. The mist twinkling around us, I spied my husband staring out at the sea and flashed on our moment there so long ago. I held his face in my hands and kissed him.
We’ll be celebrating our 30th anniversary this coming spring. It isn’t always bliss, or easy to compromise, but continually affiriming we are a team, and adhering to the four steps has made our relationship richer, more intimate and rewarding for both of us.
Australia killed social media today for under 18. YEA AUZZIES!
My almost 24 yr old daughter came downstairs Saturday morning giggling with glee. She told my husband and I she was ‘so excited!’ Something ‘great’ had happened.
She was in a car accident 1.5 yrs ago that is resulting in a lawsuit, and I thought she’d talked to our lawyer and he gave us great news. Nope.
“I got an audition on The Button!” she said, pridefully. “It’s a really popular YouTube series.”
I went with her excitement. My beautiful daughter got an acting audition, or for her melodic singing. Or a baking show for her excellent macaron cookies!
“How many subscribers?” I asked.
“Millions! It’s a reality dating show.”
As her words registered in my head, so did dread.
“You sit at a table across from each other with a large red button between you,” she explained enthusiastically. “The show’s producers ask personal, intimate questions to push conversation.”
I bet they do. Build tension. Push the show’s platform of ‘Shaming Spectacle.’ Corrosive dread was quickly turning into explosive rage.
“If one presses the button before the other, that person is out of the game.”
“You mean rejected?” At this point, my rage was boiling over. My daughter was seemingly so addicted to her phone and social media she could not see the ugly, sick fuck piece of trash YouTube show she’d signed on for.
“Yeah. But if neither press the button, then you win a date,” she said, more cautiously seeing my expression.
My tolerance dam broke right then. “Are you stupid!? Why would you sign up for a show designed to SHAME YOU? Are people allowed to leave comments?”
“Yes, Mother, but it’s not like that.”
“What’s it like, then?” my husband asked. “How can this possibly serve you going on this show?”
“It’s not about that. It’ll be fun to be on a show I watch.”
She watches this crap!? But I didn’t voice it. “You’re supposed to be studying for your MCATs. Why do you want to go on this show that’s designed to make you feel shitty about yourself?”
“It’s just for fun,” she defended. “I probably won’t even get on.”
“And if you do, how are you going to feel with being rejected in front of millions? Or rejecting someone else?”
“Maybe I won’t be rejected.”
“And what? You’ll find Mr. Right on this bullshit show? You have MCATs in 8 wks, honey. What are you doing!?”
“I thought it would be fun to be seen by that many people,” she said flatly.
“But you won’t be seen,” my husband chimed in. “You judge everyone on the show when you’re watching. And millions will be doing the same to you.”
“Are you ready for negative comments about your looks, or things you expose when the asshole producers trigger you in front of millions?”
“I won’t read the comments.”
“Are you talking about the Red Button show?” our son comes in the kitchen.
“Yeah,” she said to her older brother. “Have you seen it?”
“Yeah. Couple times. It’s really brutal. A race to the bottom — who can push the button first. No one wants to be the one rejected. You like it?”
“Yeah. I think it’s funny.”
“She got an audition to do the show,” I filled him in.
“Your mom and I don’t think it’s a great idea.”
“Even to audition,” I said. “Won’t help your self image any if you get rejected for the show.”
“So, you don’t think I’m pretty enough to be on the show?” she asked, practically glaring at me. “You think I’m not good looking enough to get picked.”
“I see my beautiful daughter. But this isn’t about what I think. You’ve cried to me time and again you’re not pretty enough,” I manage more softly. “You’ve admitted you compare yourself with influencers, and how you feel ugly by social standards. You’ve told me you hate your nose. Don’t like your body shape. Breast size. Your face. How is this going to be ‘fun’ if you’re rejected, get bad comments, or even get a second date? At best, this show’s a distraction from your goal to get into med school. At worse, and more likely, it’ll make you feel even worse about yourself.”
“Not fun,” her brother added. “I wouldn’t do it J. Not smart,” he said as he left.
“I’m doing the audition anyway,” our daughter said, and followed him out of the kitchen.
—
Ever written a blog, personal essay, or even an email, and as you write it you realize something is fucked up with your reasoning — the point you set out to make?
I realized I may have shamed our daughter, just as the The Button is designed to shame its participants.
I wrote her an email this morning apologizing if she felt I did when I lost it after she told me she was auditioning for the game. I explained my intention was to protect her, educate her from the dangers of predatory online content. She clearly failed to understand the broader consequences of signing up for, or even frequently watching the exploitative game show.
‘Game show’ my ass. Nothing playful about The Button. I wanted to protect my beautiful baby from being publicly shamed.
Some raw facts (I didn’t iterate to our daughter, but likely should):
Social media addiction amplifies low self-esteem leading to higher rates of depression and suicide, especially in her age group.
Watching and engaging with shaming, bullying, predatory, and exploitative content increases low self-esteem, depression and suicide rates.
The development team of ignorant, arrogant, short-sighted, self-serving slime, AKA, the Cut: David Alvarez, Blaine Ludy, Marina Taylor (former), and Desmond Vieg, are making bank on what they call “a social experiment.”
‘Experiment?’ Get real! No science. No controls. These parasites are profiting from exploiting shame and destroying self-esteem of young people establishing their self-images. How ugly is that!
Regardless of my faulty approach of admonishing our daughter for signing up for The Button, my heart was in the right place. The Cut developers are clearly heartless. Would they entice their own kids into some twisted social ‘experiment’ for their profit? I pray they never have children. Narcissists generally make suck parents.
I’m ashamed, feel I failed as a mom that my daughter signed up to be on The Button, or even chooses to spend one minute of her life’s time watching it, essentially promoting it with her views. I thought I taught our kids to be aware of the consequences of their actions. Parenting the perils of the internet seems a constant work-in-progress now, coming up against social platforms luring kids in like the Pied Piper, and addicting them like Purdue Pharma with OxyContin.
The Cut founders are young, naive, arrogant, and ignorant in the extreme. (So is most social media, from Insta to Snap that blows away your life’s time). Ugly games like The Button teaches watchers and participants it’s OK to torment, mock, insult, shame people, for profit.
The Button creators get richer with every hit to their “mean‑spirited,” “cruel,” “superficial,” “shallow,” YouTube channel. And ‘Seen by millions’ if you join their cast of fools won’t make you rich like they’re becoming on you.
Modeling cruelty spreads it. When you View or Engage with The Button, or any online game, platform, or app that makes it acceptable, (profitable, and therefore admirable) to be cruel, you are participating in becoming so.
The fetus inside me, my potential daughter, was diagnosed XXX from a tissue sample taken during an amniocentesis my 14th week of pregnancy. We’d named her Sierra, since she made it past the first trimester, after losing two of the triplets in utero the first month.
I’d had three pregnancy losses before the triplets. I was in my late 30s, maybe too late for kids I feared, which is a pedestrian way of saying I was scared out of my fucking mind I’d never have them. And for as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted children. Sierra was wanted.
My 15th week of pregnancy another ultrasound showed us our daughter inside me. “The ghost in the machine,” my husband had said quietly. By then we’d decided raising a child — ill from birth who’d likely never survive to adulthood — was beyond our financial, parental, and emotional capabilities.
After the abortion my husband was driving us home on the icy road and I started shaking. Then I threw up all over myself, the passenger seat and the floor. We figured it was the anesthesia wearing off but it continued for days. I threw up most everything I ate. I hardly slept. I had a debilitating back ache — like someone was drilling a hole into my lower back with a power tool. And I could not stop crying.
I’ve been a staunch pro-choice supporter since I found out what it meant. Women must retain or be given back the RIGHT to control our bodies, especially since an est. 33% of men leave the woman to care for the child alone. Regardless, I’d never had an abortion, and the events of that day kept replaying, looping in my head — from crossing the line of protesters with the aid of private police hired by the clinic, to the procedure, which I was semi-conscious for throughout, and was as horrific as it sounds.
A week later my back was still killing me, waking me at night. I couldn’t sit still during the day. I figured I deserved the pain for what I’d done. The loss of my daughter was crushing. Regret consumed me. I didn’t deserve to have kids anymore. I’d wanted her so badly but was too afraid of losing her too young, of watching her suffer with little we could do to help her. I was afraid we couldn’t afford her quality care. I was afraid… And I hated myself for letting my fear rule me.
I cried waking each morning to my empty womb, then several times a day and into a restless night’s sleep through the holidays. I got up many times at night, and since I’m allergic to aspirin I paced the living room to assuage my back pain. I couldn’t sit in a car for long to go to family celebrations, and didn’t have the bandwidth to put on a face for them. Instead we stayed home and I painted an old army footlocker of my father’s in coat after coat of thick black lacquer. Took days after Christmas for the doctor to get back to my husband about the state of his wife. He prescribed me some pain medication for my back, and bed rest, and told me I’d start to feel better in a few days.
I didn’t. Days, weeks, months went by and I could not stop crying. I took the prescribed meds and it helped my back but not my state of mind. Several months after the abortion I went back to consulting and took on marketing campaigns, one of which was Toys R Us. I broke down in my car in the parking lot of the agency I’d just signed contracts, and cried throughout the two-week project in my home office. Work was not distracting enough for the self-loathing rhetoric inside my head.
Six months later and the Concord MA landscape was flush with greenery. It was my first full summer there and compared to the gray, cold winter, it was beautiful, but I didn’t really see it. It was humid, sticky, unlike California’s dry heat. It was buggy, full of mosquitos. It poured from thunderstorms and flooded our basement every time. Beyond my daily crucifixion, a gnawing hope lingered that I’d get pregnant again, so I continued working out to keep my body fit, but that was about it. We stopped going out to dinner because when I ate it was hard to swallow. I had no interest in going to the movies, seeing friends or family. Road trips stopped. Singing stopped. Listening to music stopped. If I got pregnant again, no matter what, I’d keep the baby.
I didn’t get pregnant again in the following six months. My husband and I looked into adoption. We attended a China Adoption With Love seminar, and left cautiously excited. Sort of. The black cloud did not lift. I still woke crying, and wept in quick bursts throughout most days, and often for longer in the night. My husband was rightfully concerned and asked me to see a therapist. I’ve seen many in my lifetime, starting when my mom sent me to one when I was 13. None have helped me [even remotely] to better navigate my world. I didn’t need to cry to some psychologist who’s job it is to be supportive. My husband, in his weird way, was trying to be. He’d experienced the loss of Sierra more as a matter of course — we’d decided to terminate. Move on.
I could not move on. I could not go back and do it different. Stuck in purgatory, I agreed to see a psychiatrist when my husband insisted I “do something.” I’d never seen one before, only LMHCs and LMFTs, none of which were doctors. Maybe they could prescribe something to help me stop crying all the time. Something safe for pregnancy…just in case.
A well-groomed, graying hair, bearded man in his early 60s shook my hand and introduced himself when I entered his office.
I sat on the leather couch across from his swivel chair. I’d had no contact with the man until right then as his front desk arranged the appointment. And I had no idea how psychiatry worked. Should I begin with my parents, or should I start with why I was there and what I wanted from the sessions, assuming there’d be more than one. Likely many, as therapists hope for.
“Tell me why you’re here, and what you hope to get from meeting with me,” the doctor said.
And I launched into my pregnancy with Sierra after losing three others in utero before the triplets. Took me half the session to get through the abortion since I was sobbing so hard. The psychiatrist wrote on his pad, and provided a box of tissues, but seemed unmoved by my hysteria. When I finally shut up and calmed down a bit he asked me again what I hoped to get from coming to him.
“An anti-depressant that’s safe in case I get pregnant again.”
“I’m not going to give you drugs,” he said flatly. “None are without risk if you’re trying to get pregnant.”
He gave me five, 45-minute sessions. I cried, a lot, at first. We talked about grief, about unfulfilled expectations, about loss of self, my growing thoughts of suicide — turn off, feel nothing ever again. Our last session started out as usual with me describing my week. I’d been crying less, which was good. But I continued to visualize methods to commit suicide, vacillating between a drug overdose, or carbon monoxide poisoning.
“This is our last session,” the doc said, legs crossed, his pad in his lap. Expressionless.
I stared at him sitting ‘properly’ in his swivel chair with one foot on the ground. Assessing me. I’m not sure if I was glaring at him but I didn’t look away. He was just like therapists, albeit way less supportive, though more informative with studies and statistics. And he was ending our sessions when he hadn’t helped me at all! “But I don’t feel any better,” I blurted. Seriously, what was this guy’s benefit-add for his exorbitant hourly rate.
“I’m not a therapist, here to make you feel better.” He paused, and continued to watch me. “The hard truth is it’s going to hurt every time you recall the abortion, or think about the potential child you chose not to have. It is going to hurt. As we’ve discussed, you’ll never know if you’d have lost her in utero, like you have all your other pregnancies; or you’d spared her a lifetime of hardship. Regret and self-doubt will feel overwhelming at times. When she crosses your mind in the future, it’s going to hurt. Hopefully a bit less over time, but every time you remember the events of this period in your life, it is going to hurt.” He still did not look away. But I did.
“I know,” I whispered, bawling again. “But it’s been over a year and I’m still crying all the time. I don’t know how to let it go. ‘Move on,’ like my husband has,” I said bitterly.
“Each of us processes grief in our own way and time. Regardless how long it takes you to ‘feel better’ over this loss, you’ll likely face many painful events in your life. The trick is not to let them stop you from living. Being alive means feeling — happy, sad, good, bad, whatever. And feelings are transient, sparked by circumstance. You can leave here today, go home and hang yourself in your doorway. I certainly can’t stop you.” He paused, to let it sink in, I assumed. “Or you can go live your life forward, move through the process of grieving, and further away from this loss with each new experience. Biologically, you’re still fertile, and seemingly have no issue getting pregnant. If you do, may it be healthy,” he said softly, his eyes stayed fixed on mine.
“Doesn’t matter if it is,” I proclaimed through sobs, but to this day I can’t tell you that I fully meant it knowing the chances of chromosomal damage during gestation happening again with my advanced age. “I’m going to have kids. Either birthing them or adopting them, I’m going to raise kids,” I said definitively, and in that moment the black cloud began lifting.
“I believe we’ve gone as far as we can together.”
I never saw him again. Clearly, I did not commit suicide that day. I had two healthy children — our son ten months after that last session, and our daughter two and a half years after that. As devastating the loss of Sierra, the pervasive black hole inside has filled with the inconceivably humbling love I get to feel for my kids.
Painful events will follow joyful ones throughout this process of living. Twenty plus years later, the psychiatrist’s words still resonate, helping me get through the tough times in my life now knowing that beyond recurring periods of darkness there will be times of brilliant bright light.
jcafesin.com 