My Story: Purpose

For most people, mid-life crises strike in middle age, when paunches are appearing and more hairs are grey than not. For me, the period of searching I began to jokingly refer to as my “quarter-life crisis” came calling a few years ago in early spring, a few months before I turned 21. Eight months after I got married, it was becoming clear that a bachelor’s degree was not going to be in my immediate future. My class schedule had been pared down until hardly anything remained; I spent my days going to class and doing homework for a degree that was realistically impossible at that particular moment in my life.

I felt adrift, confused, unsure of what my purpose in life was or what my next step should be. If not a college graduate, then what? My health wasn’t stable enough for even a part-time job. I desperately wanted children, but my husband and I had agreed to wait until my health was a little more manageable. Coupled with the fact that I knew that my cystic fibrosis was nearly a guarantee of a future infertility struggle, it seemed clear that motherhood was not something that would come to me easily or soon.

As the trees began to unfurl their first delicate green buds, I wrestled over and over with the feeling of being lost, purposeless, meaningless. Could there be value in a life so small, I wondered? Could there be a value in a life that was, more often than not, lived from the couch? Could there be value in a life that lacked all of the markers our society uses to define success—a degree, a job, children?

A few weeks after my soul-searching began, I reflected in a rather macabre moment that really, my “quarter-life crisis” might be considered a true “mid-life crisis,” if you consider a mid-life crisis to be the anxiety that strikes when you’ve lived half the years you can be expected to live. Currently, the average life expectancy for a cystic fibrosis patient is in the late thirties. Years later, I learned that plenty of CF patients in their early twenties experience a similar mid-life crisis.

Weeks passed. The snow in my mountain-locked home melted, leaving the earth saturated with mud and the constant sound of dripping in my ears. And still I felt empty, longing for a purpose. I had always been driven; I’d gone after the things I’d wanted with energy and zeal, and I usually got them. I had always had a purpose. I had been a daughter, a writer, a big sister and surrogate mother, a violinist, a student. I had had all number of big dreams, from publishing a book to living in Hawaii to teaching at a dance studio.

I felt, now, as though everything was being peeled away from me. I was left with only the barest of essentials, the simplest of responsibilities. The scope of my life was narrowing. I thought about these things constantly, talking them over with my husband, writing about them in my journal and on my blog, praying desperately for a purpose for my life.

And slowly, over a period of weeks, I began to find what I was looking for.

As days passed and I continued my relentless questioning, a word came into my mind again and again. Homemaker. It was not a term I had spent much time thinking about before; in the brief moments that I had, I had considered it a rather outdated phrase, one that pigeonholed a woman into a narrow frame of reference and failed to recognize her vibrant, dynamic nature.

But the word stayed. Homemaker. And as I pondered it, I had a revelation.

All my life, I had thought of "homemaker" as synonymous with "mother." After all, "homemaker" is the official term for a stay-at-home mother. When applying to college, I’d spent a lot of time checking boxes to indicate that my mom was a "homemaker." "Homemaker" was, in my opinion, the label that the corporate world had come up with to make a life of diaper changes and laundry baskets something you can put on an official document.

But as I thought about it, I realized something sensational: "homemaker" was not, in fact, the same thing as "mother." Although many mothers are homemakers, a homemaker does not have to be a mother.

I thought about the phrase: a simple compound word, really. Home-maker. One who creates a home. A woman who devotes herself to making her home a haven, a place of safety, comfort, and peace—for herself, her husband, and anyone who enters.

In that seemingly innocuous word, I found the sense of purpose I had been so desperately seeking. There were many things that I couldn’t—and still can’t—do. A year after that mid-life crisis, I officially withdrew from college. Three years since that spring of searching, I still don’t have a degree, or a job, or a child.

But I have been a homemaker. In every place that we have lived, I have worked hard to create a place of joy and love for my husband and myself. I have welcomed friends into our home for comfort, and companionship, and lots of late nights of games and laughter. I’ve discovered a passion for creating good, healthy food for my family.

I have made a home.

That moment of realization—the light-bulb instant where I realized just how much purpose could be found in such a neglected phrase—did not solve all my problems. I still had moments of guilt, and despair, and long nights where I felt worthless and obsolete. I still do.

But what that chilly spring so many years ago did do was answer one question that had haunted me for a long time before. Can there be value in a life so small?

Because what I have learned is that the answer is yes. There is always value. Even in the days where I feel most helpless—even in the days where I can hardly get off the couch—there is value. I am the maker of our home, an integral part in this family of two that my husband and I have created.

I have purpose.

In this space, Cindy Baldwin will share her evolution---the ways she has come to accept the circumstances of her life with cystic fibrosis and find great contentment within them. You can read the beginning of her story here and here. 

Inheritance

By Sheila Squillante Something happened tonight that I was totally unprepared for.

Before I describe it, I’ll back up and say that lately, my daughter, Josephine, has been asking a lot of questions about death. In particular, she wants to know, “Did my grandpa die?” My answer is always the truth: Yes, sweetie. He died. Each time the question comes, her inquiry deepens so that we have gone through, “He was your dad? Your dad died?” “How did he die?” “Why did he die?” “Where is my grandpa now?”  and, “Can he come back?”

These questions obliterate me, but I have been able to take a deep breath each time and tell her the age-appropriate truth with maybe a little quaver to my voice, maybe a quick tear, but mostly with composure. I did the same thing for my son when he began to ask these questions.

And I’ve been telling the kids about their grandfather since they were first interested in listening to stories. Josephine has been asking for “Grandpa Stories” before bed for at least a year. She has them memorized and asks for them by name: “The Snapping Turtle,” “The Red Rooster in Brewster,” The Glue Cookies.” Tonight, though, as we were finishing up a book we got from the library, turning off the light and climbing into her bed for our nightly snuggle, she burst into racking, whole-little-body-shaking sobs out of nowhere. I thought, at first, that she had physically hurt herself. I was completely thrown and I asked her what was wrong. She could barely form her mouth around the words,

“I miss my grandpa. I want him to come back.”

Oh, sweetie.

I gathered her up into my arms and held her while she cried, stroking her hair and telling her it was okay to feel sad, that I feel sad sometimes, too. That it’s okay to miss him. But that when I’m sad, I think about The Glue Cookies or The Red Rooster and it helps me feel better, closer to him. I promised her I would tell her Grandpa stories whenever she wanted me to to help her feel better, too. I told her all this while she cried and cried and I buried my face in her hair and cried too. Quietly. Mostly swallowing my grief for fear of indulging it and letting it overwhelm us both.

It’s not that I didn’t expect her to ask hard questions about death or that she would maybe someday feel a void where my father should have been in her life.

But I did not expect it to happen *now*. She is three years old.

I have become so used to my son’s rather cerebral, analytical relationship to my father’s death (the only emotion I’ve seen him express has been around the extrapolation of death-in-general to Death of Parent. Me.), that I forgot about the child whose uncanny empathy has been a primary part of her personality since she was a year old. This should not have surprised me. This is who she is.

As I helped her settle, I realized that this was the first time in more than eighteen years that I’ve had to push my own grief aside to minister to someone else’s. That it was my own daughter’s felt terrifying–I don’t want her to hurt like this–but also, in a sense, wonderfully healing.

I have always said that part of the reason I write about my father is to continue him, to enliven him for my children. Maybe I’ve been able to do that a little, and it feels good; it makes me happy.

But somehow it never occurred to me that, along with my memories, my stories, my kids would also inherit my living, persistent, still vibrant grief.

Header Image: New York Public Library. Photo by Centennial Photographic Co. of sculpture "Grief".

Deciphering Pregnancy Dreams

I remember from my first pregnancy how vivid your dreams become. It could be because I wake up approximately eight million times a night to pee, and rarely get uninterrupted sleep anymore, or chalk it up to the hormones. Either way, pregnancy dreams seem to be a manifestation of your fears and insecurities about the little baby wiggling inside you. To me they are powerful, more meaningful then regular dreams. I rarely have nightmares; they are usually real life situations with an eerie undertone. Rather they mostly end with the Miss Claval (of Madeleine books) feeling of  "Something is not right". When I was pregnant with my son Charley, I often had dreams that featured him, but I couldn’t see his face. One of those dreams took place in a city. It could have been New York or Chicago. The street was filled with quaint brownstones, the trees arching over the sidewalk, an early fall sun high in the sky. I was at lunch with a co-worker, chatting outside the restaurant when I see a peach blur go past. I recognize Charley from his cute little butt, although I cannot see his face. He is running, full speed, naked, away from a pack of boys chasing him. He is maybe three or four years old. I immediately wake up feeling guilty about working, and putting him in school.

In my most recent dream, I was pregnant with the second one. We lived in Chicago and it was November, the day before Thanksgiving. It was your typical dreary, freezing cold rainy day downtown. The sun had set early and it was pitch black, the streetlights reflecting off pools in the concrete. We lived in a huge high-rise with an elevator man. I was juggling the groceries down the street in brown paper bags, balancing them on my burgeoning belly, when the bags ripped. There I was in the rain, struggling to gather my Thanksgiving groceries off the street while simultaneously avoiding getting hit by a car. I arrive home soaking wet, my husband is working at the computer, and I am exhausted. I plop down on the couch. All at once we realize, we forgot to pick up Charley from school! We bolt upright, I take the elevator and gather my purse, but by the time I make it downstairs, he already has the BMW pulled out of the garage and squeals away, I chase after him down the street, yelling, trying to get him to stop the car, slow down!

I am sure the last dream was my subconscious telling me I couldn’t do ‘the juggle’. I feel like there have been many articles out lately about how women manage ‘the juggle’. They mostly revolve around working women with high-powered office jobs, and how they make it work. 'It' being having kids, a career, a husband, hobbies, and myriad responsibilities. They often sound stressful and over-scheduled. I think the dream showed me that as much as I want to live in a big city and have it all---the career, the kids, the location---sometimes parenting is all about compromise. I woke up from that dream knowing that this was IT. I truly was pregnant again and would need to start making choices for my family, not just for myself. Hopefully I never forget my kids at school, or watch my son run naked down the street. Actually though, a dream I had with my first pregnancy revolved around me being in a white dress cooking pancakes in a kitchen that looked like the inside of a barn. And ironically enough, the house where we live now, kind of looks like a barn. Perhaps my pregnancy dreams predict the future? At the very least, I suppose they give me fair warning

The Kindness of Strangers

I’m never in a hurry to talk to strangers. For example, if I am going into a store, my preference is to dodge the salespeople who aim to greet me on my way in and avoid talking to anyone unless I purchase something. I know people who want to be greeted, but I am not one of those people. If I am greeted, and asked if I would like help, I always say, “no, I’m just looking.”  I respond this way even when I am actually looking for something and I don’t know where to find it. When I worked in retail, I felt like I could spot the people who feel the same as me---the lack of eye contact, the drifting to the side of the store---and I would forego greeting them in a silent show of solidarity. Now that I am a parent, strangers talk to me. Most of it is pretty much okay. Conversations at the playground with other moms hit the same themes (how old? what’s his name? and so on) and are easily ended when one’s child runs too far afield or asks to go on the swings. My son receives a lot of compliments on his general cuteness from strangers, and I know how to gracefully nod and say thank you, or even more cloyingly, tell him to say thank you. Sometimes folks ask questions about him that would be pretty hilarious to ask another adult stranger, but I do my best to give answers that will be found satisfactory while never actually revealing much about us at all.  A woman asks, “does he eat table food?” I answer, “he loves eating!” An older man asks, “Is he a good boy?” and I answer, “look at him!”

I thought about this recently when a friend on Facebook posted a link to the hilarious article “Hello Stranger on the Street, Could You Please Tell Me How To Take Care Of My Baby” by Wendy Molyneux. I read it, chuckled heartily, and took a moment to be grateful that this hadn’t happened to me terribly often in my son’s first year. There was the time when my wife and I were in Target and attempting to adjust his position in the baby carrier on my chest, and a woman stopped and said, “Do you need help, that doesn’t look like it is on right.” I roared to action, as someone who is sleep-deprived and carrying fifteen sweaty pounds on her chest is likely to do, particularly when she feels as though she really does have it under control.  I snapped back that we were fine and, confident in her moral high ground as baby carrier good Samaritan, my foil didn’t back down. The end result was more than a bit of incivility near the denim short display and my having a very frustrated spouse.

But that was nearly a year ago, and as I read the Molyneux piece, I thought about how it hasn’t happened often. I felt grateful to live in the East, where people are generally not overly perky or interested in one another (simply buying milk at the grocery store when I visit my parents in St. Louis makes me feel as though I have walked into another country what with all of the smiles and cheer).

As these stories always go, though, I had become too comfortable.  Too complacent. The three of us went to an art fair along the Hudson River this week. It was a gorgeous day, sunny, and breezy. We had brought our son in his big jogging stroller to be able to navigate over the grass. We lathered him with sunscreen and put on his baseball cap. To enter the fair, we had to go through a little aisle and down a small hill, and I lifted the front wheel of the stroller off of the ground to give myself more maneuverability on the hill.  As we entered the fair, a woman stopped us and said, “Just so you know . . .”

“Just so you know . . .”  It’s pretty rare when someone says “Just so you know . . . that sweater looks awesome on you” or “Just so you know . . . you make the best cole slaw.”  The phrase gave me the perfect amount of pre-processing time. I knew what was coming was going to be infuriating. I stopped the stroller.  I looked at the woman, a little older than my mother, and she said, “as you came down the hill with the stroller tilted, the sun was right in his eyes.”

I wanted to explain that my goal had been for him to never see the sun, never know that the sun existed, live a vampire-like existence of dusk and twilight and now that was ruined, ruined, and I would always think of how she had been the one to bring me the news.

I wanted to explain that we had been planning to spend all afternoon on that small patch of hill (one where everyone was coming and going in a single file all day, and where we were now holding up traffic), but that she was totally right, the angle of the sun made doing that totally impractical.

I wanted to roll my eyes. I wanted to snap back.  I wanted to say, “Are you serious?”

But I didn’t. I smiled and nodded.  I said nothing. She seemed surprised. She looked at me. I looked at her. A moment passed.  She said, “Now though, with the hat, he’s fine.” I nodded again, still smiling. She looked at my son.  She said, “he’s gorgeous.” I smiled, and nodded, and said “thank you.”

We moved on. My wife immediately praised me for keeping my cool. We realized that the power dynamic shifted the second I didn’t say anything in response, forcing her to backtrack to fill the silence. In fact, by the end of the interaction, she seemed embarrassed. In my previous experience of unsolicited parenting advice, I filled all of the potential silence with anger, and ended up feeling terrible. Furthermore, overly engaging with strangers is not something that I do---in anger or in any other situation. Unsurprisingly, being myself worked best, and we walked on, into the shade.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

We're huge fans of Jenny Volvovski's work. She is a member of the award-winning creative group Also with Julia Rothman and Matt Lamothe. She has been re-imagining book covers for the books that she's read, and we've thoroughly enjoyed following along on From Cover to Cover. In our minds, any project that combines reading and design is awesome. This is no exception. Here, Jenny shares her reading list, along with her re-imagined covers. 

From Cover to Cover is a project I’ve been working on for more than a year now. It has a very simple premise: I read a book, and then design a cover for it. I started it because I love to read, and always think about a book’s cover before buying the book, while reading it, and after I’m done. I also wanted to have a project independent from my client work, where I could have the freedom to do whatever I wanted, without worrying about feedback and revisions. Book covers are a great medium for graphic designers because so much content has to be condensed into a single image. The cover has to relate to what's in the book, but also not give too much away.

I wanted all the book covers I made to feel like part of a series, so I gave myself restrictions; a color palette (green, white, black) and limited type choices (Futura, typewriter, hand drawn/handmade). I always prefer working with a set of limitations, so this made the project both more challenging and more fun.

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

Skippy Dies will probably be made into a movie. It’s a very plot driven novel that follows the adventures of a couple of teenage boarding school boys (and eventually girls and teachers) at Seabrook College in Ireland. It covers typical school-age topics like love, and bullying, but also some very non-typical ones, like opening a portal to a parallel universe. The story starts with Skippy dying (this is not a spoiler) at a donut shop and that’s primarily why I chose donuts to be the main visual elements on the cover. Donuts are mentioned later on in the book as a metaphor for life. I also like to think of each donut being a metaphysical stand-in for the main characters in the book.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Cloud Atlas was recently made into a movie, and I am not quite sure how they pulled it off, but I would recommend reading the book before seeing the movie (sage advice). The book consists of 6 seemingly unrelated stories starting with travel journals of an American notary traveling in the Pacific in the 1850s, and ending (kind of) with the adventures of a clone in a post-apocalyptic future in Korea. There is a thread between all of the stories, which I will not give away, and as you turn the page and start over with each new narrative it’s really exciting to find out how the previous story relates to the next. Since so many topics, characters and time periods are part of the story, it was hard to pick a visual for the cover that made sense with all of them. So, I decided to make the focus of the cover the structure of the book. There are 6 stories, they start chronologically (earliest time period first). The first 5 are interrupted, the 6th starts and concludes at the center of the book, and then the initial 5 are concluded in reverse chronological order. So, the folded paper on the cover is a reflection of that. The type is printed on top of the paper, so some spills from one piece of paper to the other, like the overlapping stories. The shadows and the white paper give a “cloud-like” effect to the cover.

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall

Since there’s a running theme of books being made into movies, the Lonely Polygamist fits quite nicely, as reading it feels like watching the continuation of the HBO show Big Love. The book follows Golden Richards, owner of a fledgling construction business, husband to four wives, father to twenty-eight children. He of course, is unsurprisingly cracking under the weight of all the responsibility. In order to deal with the stress Golden has an affair. And not-surprisingly this doesn’t solve his problems. For the cover of the book, I made the title and author name act as a family tree for Golden Richards’ family. He is represented by the white O in the middle, his wives are the bigger letters connected to him, and the smaller letters represent the children (there weren’t exactly the right number of letters to account for all 28 children, but I thought this was close enough). And, if you look closely, one letter stands away by itself with no linear connection - representing the affair.

A date with myself at the local library

If you’ve read The Artist’s Way, you know that Julia Cameron considers regular “artist dates” to be one of the two pillars of the creative life (the other is “morning pages”). Whether you consider yourself an artist, or simply wish to live a more creative life, I’d definitely recommend this book for getting unstuck, getting inspired, or getting started. You can find out more about morning pages and artist dates by reading the book, but for the purposes of this post, an “artist date” is simply a little adventure you take on your own—something playful and restorative and separate from work.

One of my favorite artist dates is a trip to the local public library. This, for me, is quite different than a trip to a university library. As a college and graduate student (and as a student library employee), I spent plenty of time working in libraries. Many university libraries are perfectly lovely and contain their own sort of magic and possibility, with their stacks and stacks of scholarly tomes.

But when I really need a little creative restoration, I find it at the local library. Small public libraries do not have everything—every book ever written, every article ever published, all of the newest best-sellers—but sometimes “everything” is a little too overwhelming for an artist date. Instead, when I make a trip to the library, I’m really only looking for two things: a seat by the window and a book I don’t already have at home.

I tend to gravitate toward the nonfiction section, or more specifically, the how-to books and instruction manuals. These books usually don’t try to tell you how to think, but rather, how to do. As a hardcore overthinker, I find the whole doing perspective so refreshing.

Last weekend, I discovered the wedding books section, which was delightfully sandwiched between books on dying and anthologies of fairy tales. I even found a couple of gems like Weddings for Complicated Families and Wedding Planning for Dummies. Then I wandered through the shelves and shelves of biographies and thumbed my way through a few travel guides before snagging a corner window seat.

You can learn a lot about a community through its library, especially if it’s a small one. You can notice which books made the cut for their limited holdings, which books have been donated, and which books have a waitlist twenty people long.

I love finding the particular, and I love finding the universal among those shelves. By skimming along the titles, it’s easy to discover that many of the questions that seem so personal have been asked before, and someone, somewhere has tried to answer them. How do I find my purpose in life? Which dog breed is right for me? How is my religion similar or different from others? How can I live a healthier life? Or, a favorite from last weekend, How do I move to Canada?

Everyday questions jostle for space right next to whole-life questions on those library shelves. I think I’m more interested in the questions than in the answers when I meet myself for a library artist date, which is probably why I end up with stacks of library books that I rarely finish before their due dates. They seem to have more magic in their natural habitat, offering delight simply by their juxtapositions on the shelves.

Mind Games

The carnival ride that was my day started at 4:30 AM.  This seems an unnatural hour for a human to be awake.  And yet I am frequently up at this time attending to domestic or professional responsibilities, or some combination of both.  I am not alone in this, I know.  As I haunted our still apartment, pumping fresh milk for the baby and packing my tools for the flower market, I began preparing mentally for the day ahead.  In the muggy blackness of the morning, I set out for the Manhattan Bridge---the city on the other side, still/already bustling with activity.  Driving over, I fantasized about the delicious coffee beverage I would enjoy before hitting the floral vendors, did a quick survey of all the tasks I had to complete before my 2 PM installation (including pumping two more times) and mustered up an extra helping of confidence and sense of competence.  I thought, “I have a lot going on and I am really doing it!  RIGHT ON, SISTER!”  My primary objective is always to keep that thought (or something just like it) as my ballast.  I aim to stay the course psychologically with something helpful and supportive as my guide, until I am back at home base, checked in for the night.  It is not easy, has never been easy, will never be easy.  Forthwith, a record of my efforts on this particular, not necessarily unusual, day. I came close to totaling the car when the cab in front of me decided to slam on the brakes (appropros of nothing) while crossing an intersection through a green light.  I navigated the interminable construction on Houston (fight or flight response still kicked into high gear) and eventually slid into a parking spot near the coffee place.  I took a minute to regroup---my heart still beating a little too noticeably---and thought to myself, ‘UGH, THIS CITY!’  I knew I would live a full day before most people even crack an eye.  Then, I did a reframe that went something like this, ‘So, that makes me lucky, I’ll get twice the day out of it.’  I let out a sigh (an audible dusting myself off), shoved open the car door and spilled onto the street with my bloated purse (Why always so HEAVY, Sarah?) and clipboard, ready for action.

The process of taking negative thoughts and replacing them with positive thoughts is a very simple component of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).  The basic tenet of CBT is that you can change the way you feel and behave by changing the way you think.  In the above example, my automatic thought was that this city was making me crazy.  If I continued down the path of that negative thinking, I might feel awful about my situation and then engage in self-defeating behavior.  When you interrupt the process of barreling straight from the thought bubble to the emotion to the behavior, it is like pushing the reset button over and over.  You get a fresh start on each experience and eventually, you may find that the maladaptive thinking begins to lessen.  The positive feedback loop is that the sunnier your thoughts, the happier you feel and the more effectively you move through life.  It all sounds so heel-click-y and effortless, right?  Depending upon myriad factors, including temperament, physiology, environment et al, the phrase “easier said than done” may have strong resonance here.

Among my all-time “Aha!” moments in terms of challenging negative thought patterns came years ago from a superb clinical supervisor at an outpatient psychiatric clinic.  During our supervision (a weekly meeting that’s sort of like professional therapy for therapists), we covered many esoteric concepts.  We discussed the theoretical underpinnings of the work I was doing.  We reviewed patient after patient and delved into my private response to each of them, how my past experiences and intimate feelings might impact our sessions.  We discussed psychotropic medications and which of the patients seemed to be benefitting.

One week, I came in fit to be tied about some issue at graduate school over which I was completely powerless.  It was distracting me from my work that day.  My supervisor sat and listened patiently as I described the nature of my snit.  Finally, he said, “Have I ever told you about my commute?”  Incredulous, I thought, ‘This jackass isn’t even LISTENING to me.’  I managed a, ‘No.’ And then he proceeded to tell me that he drives an hour to and from work, every day on the busiest freeway in the city.  He said that both ways, he sits in bumper-to-bumper traffic for an hour, sometimes more.  For various reasons, he did not have an option to change this commute, so he was resigned to this fate.  I flashed on the sense of helplessness and frustration that I was sure must well up inside him while sitting idle on the freeway.  I asked, ‘How INSANE must that make you?’  He replied with this: “It doesn’t make me crazy at all.  I just decide to relax and use the time to think and dream and listen to great music.”  Genius.  I couldn’t believe it---he was explaining to me that there are actually options from which to choose when interpreting your life circumstances.  For whatever reason, no amount of study or my own therapy put as fine a point on it as that miniature sketch.  My mind was officially blown.

Which brings us back to now.  During the course of the day in question, I was confronted with many, many opportunities to lose my shit.  These opportunities ranged from, “Good GRAVY, NO!” moments to “Well, that’s annoying.” interludes.  I experienced a little witching hour---right around 3PM things got dicey and I drifted into approximately 13 solid minutes of self-pity.  I gave myself permission to indulge until I was back at the apartment.  Interestingly, I found I didn’t need all the time I had allotted.

Image: Traffic on the George Washington Bridge, Dan McCoy, 1973

From North Dakota...

Dearest Clara,

You will raise a lot of eyebrows when you tell people where you’re from.  Nineteen months old and you’re already from  everywhere it seems---but I promise you the eyebrows will really pop off when you tell people that your mother grew up in North Dakota . . . Fargo to be precise.  Most people have never met anyone from North Dakota (although with all the news of oil, a lot more people seem to know about it now).  And you’ll hear a lot of jokes about being in the prairie and the wilderness.  But for all that we’ve traveled and seen, I have to say that some of the people and landscapes nearest and dearest to my heart have been from this state.

Here what I learned in my years growing up there:

• Wide open spaces are beautiful: And usually, they are beautiful because they are wide and open.  There is a reason people write songs about them.  The ability to see horizon to horizon is rare as we continue to pack ourselves into this world.  Sometimes, it can feel a bit lonely as you realize how small you are in comparison to the size of what is out there.  But most of the time I find them freeing and inspiring.  You might find yourself small, but you realize how big you can still be.
• Water is unpredictable: You would think that I would learn this lesson at the ocean, but the first time I realized the power of water, and then realized it again and again, was living next to the Red River that ebbs and flows according to what the season brings.  Water brings many gifts, but its power can come quickly and take them all away just as fast.  Don’t feel like you can outsmart water, ever.  You can be prepared though.
• Sweet and salty go together: Long before the salted caramel trend, a little shop in Fargo called Widman’s Candy, where so many close girlfriends worked in my high school years, caught on to the unique flavor that combining sweet and salty brings.  They hand-dipped their potato chips, made from North Dakota potatoes of course, in chocolate just so.  I always stop for a box when I’m home.  I always buy them with the intention of giving them as gifts, but somehow, they find their way onto my dessert plate instead.  Buy extra.
• Be part of a community: Many don’t realize it but North Dakota was once called out in a political science study for its civic engagement, which I learned about in university.  Once I thought about it, I realized it was true.  People belong to things here: bowling teams, churches, book clubs, the PTA, you name it.  And that means that they belong in general.  Be part of things, build things, and participate in your community.  After all, it will be what you make it.
• It's nice to be polite: Sometimes people in Fargo can really kill you with kindness.  They call you by name, they wish you a nice day, they go out of their way to help you at the DMV, they track down that extra set of tickets to the show you wanted to see.  It might seem overwhelming at first, almost as if it’s not genuine.  But it is---that need to be polite comes from the right place. When you are tempted to take the quicker road, take a minute to do the more polite thing.  You’ll make someone’s day, and you’ll feel better yourself.  Double-win.

We just returned from our first trip to North Dakota with you, full of sunshine and wheat fields, but this December we’ll be back for the holidays.  Winter here brings a whole new set of lessons---the first one being to bundle up! I suppose we should already start looking for a coat for you!

All my love,

Mom

The Beauty of Nowhere

I live kind of in the middle of nowhere. Which is a surprising fact if you’ve met me in real life. Friends have dropped their jaws and commented on my surprising nearness to agriculture. You see, I’m a city girl, tried and true: I like fancy coffee and large libraries, and the occasional shopping jaunt. But upon moving back from Bangladesh, it just so happened that my husband was offered a great job that just happened to be in the middle of nowhere. He drives on several gravel roads everyday just to get to work, which means I’ve given up on ever having a clean car. Technically I suppose we don’t live in the absolute middle of nowhere, but we are on the outskirts of a very small town. As someone who has always lived in the city (or at least in the suburbs) this is about as foreign as living in Bangladesh. It’s different in a new way. I like to say we’re ‘enjoying the experience,’ because an experience it is; there’s literally a cornfield in my backyard. A cornfield!

Most of the time, I don’t mind living in the middle of nowhere: I get to work from home, I rarely have to drive anywhere, gas and groceries are cheaper here.  But sometimes, sometimes I miss fancy coffee so much it makes my teeth ache.  Sometimes I think I might like to be the kind of woman who sits at an outdoor café with a book and a cup of coffee, just watching the world go by.  Sometimes I wish for a post office with one of those automated machines and a library whose collection wouldn’t fit in my parents' basement. I miss the air inside an art museum, how you can just about breathe in the beauty.  I crave a Sephora and an impulse nail polish purchase.

And then I jump in the car (to console myself with a cup of gas station iced coffee) or look out the window.  And I am just struck.  Struck still by the view.  The whiny voice in my head stops cold, my breathe catches, and I just stand there, staring. The views out here, the beauty of nature, the colors of the sunset, the vastness of the sky; it takes the air right out of my lungs.  I stop thinking about overpriced coffee and salespeople on commission.  And I breathe in the air as if I’m standing among priceless works of art; I have the same humbling sensation, the same whisper that creeps through my bones, the same tingle in my soul. I’m seeing, I’m surrounded, by color and brilliance and something so beautiful and strong that it passes the mundane and edges closer and closer towards sacred.

The sky reminds me of a Georgia O’Keefe painting hanging in The Art Institute in Chicago.  I don’t remember what it is called, but it’s a huge field of blue and white or white and blue depending on your perspective.  There is no horizon, it’s just sky, and it is magnificent.  Out here, the sky is so much more than just atmosphere. It dominates the landscape, it IS the landscape.  The clouds hang heavy, as if I could reach them if I only had a ladder.  In the city, clouds seem far away and less sturdy, more of a haze.  The clouds in my sky have depth and dimension.  I imagine if I had my ladder and reached up and poked one it would bounce back like a freshly baked cake.

In my backyard, just below the clouds, is a field of corn.  It’s less green than I imagine the farmer would like (we’ve been a little short on rain here), but the golden tops of the stalks remind me of wheat in Kansas.  During the day, as the light changes the same view twists into a hundred different varieties.  Sometimes the stalks are crisp and clear in the sunlight and heat. Sometimes they’re a little hazy in the wind. In the evening, they’re bathed in the pink of a country sunset.  Again, I’m reminded of a painting, or in this case a series, Claude Monet’s Haystacks.  Monet was fascinated by light, and how it changed everything, and so he painted the same subject, a haystack, in myriad lights and seasons (he did the same with water lilies).

The corn will be gone before long, and my view as I look out my back window will be completely different.  I can’t imagine it will be anymore breathtaking than the field of gold I’m currently enjoying and obsessively photographing.  But that’s the great thing about art, it’s always surprising you.

The F Words: Anica Rissi

Cats and kittens, get ready. After something of a summer hiatus, The F Words is back - and with a super special treat. Joining us today is my dear friend Anica Mrose Rissi, young adult fiction editor extraordinaire. (Fun fact: back when I was a recruiter, I placed Anica in her very first job at Scholastic. Kismet!) In addition to having her finger on the pulse of what the youngins want, Anica is a marvelous cook and my personal ice cream guru, and I'm very excited that she's decided to share her chocolate sorbet recipe with us here today. But first? The interview! Tell us a bit about your day job. I'm an executive editor at Simon Pulse, a YA imprint of Simon & Schuster. I've always been a storyteller and story collector, so this is a dream job for me. I get to work with words, plots, characters, and ideas, and lots of creative people.

How did you learn to cook? When we were kids, my big brother and I each had one night per week when it was our job to cook dinner for the family. My brother always made quiche--because he liked it, but I think also because he knew I didn't--and I made salad and pasta or soup, and usually cake from a box. My mother quickly tired of eating the box cakes and pointed out that brownies from scratch are almost as simple to make and much, much tastier. I was probably in fourth grade then. I've been baking up a storm ever since.

Part two of this is: I learned to cook by playing with my food — adding spices, extracts, and other interesting flavors to my hot cocoa; throwing a little of this and a little of that into the soup, the pasta sauce, or the pancake batter. My mother uses cooking as a creative outlet and is always experimenting, so I learned from her example to view recipes as inspirations and rough starting points, not as strict formulas. My mother's cooking style was inspired by her Italian grandmother, whose instructions were more practical than precise. "Use a cheese that would taste good," Nana might say. "Add enough flour and cook it until it's done." I like this attitude — cooking is fun, eating is fun, and playing with flavors is fun. There's no need to be precious about it.

Do you prefer to cook alone, or with friends and family? Alone. My kitchen is tiny, and I like to put on music, dance around, and get lost in what I'm doing. But there are collaborative cooking situations that I enjoy, such as making muffins with my 5-year-old niece or cooking anything at all with my friend Terra in her not-New-York-sized kitchen. I love my friends, but just as I don't want to live or travel with most of them, I don't really want to cook with most of them either. Eating together is the fun part.

What’s your favorite thing to make? I do more baking than cooking. I like making food to share, and there's something about baked goods (savory or sweet) that seems more treat-like to me. At this time of year, I make a lot of ice creams and mix a lot of beverages (once you have a basic comfort level with custards and cocktails, there's room for infinite experimentation and tasty surprises/mistakes). I have a lot of fun getting creative with pizza toppings.

If you had to choose one cuisine to eat for the rest of your life, which would it be? I probably could live on raw seasonal vegetables, tea, cheese, and ice cream (and, I guess, vitamin supplements) for a year. I realize this is not a cuisine and that my projected life span is much longer than that. Does "local cuisine" count as an answer? Or "ginger cuisine"? (Ginger is the best ingredient ever.) Yeah, sorry, I am going to fail this question.

What recipe, cuisine or technique scares the crap out of you? I'm not afraid of cooking meat, but I have zero meat skills. I was a vegetarian for eleven years and the only meat I cook at home is duck bacon, which is a good pizza topping. (Try apple-gruyere-shallot-thyme-duck bacon-black pepper-chive pizza, or potato-rosemary-parmesan-gruyere-shallot-mustard-duck bacon pizza.)

How do you think your relationships with your family have affected your relationship to food and cooking? Huh. Suddenly this feels like a therapy session. I was raised to eat whatever I was served, eat all of it, and say nice things about it. When I am invited to someone's home, my instinct is still to take seconds and thirds as a way to show appreciation for the food being served and the person serving it, just as I felt encouraged to do at my grandparents' table. This affects what kind of guest and host I am in multiple ways that we really don't need to get into on the internet. More interesting to me is how food is a story passed to and changed by each generation, how in the repetition and retelling, basic elements of a specific dish or tradition may stay the same, but the details and side plots are continuously reshaped and rewoven, adjusted according to tastes and logistics and to incorporate new narrative threads.

Even today, home cooking is strongly associated with women’s traditional place in the family and society. How do you reconcile your own love of the kitchen with your outlook on gender roles? Honestly, I don't sweat it. I know a lot of men who spend more time in the kitchen than I do (or than their wives do) and I don't think of or experience cooking or baking as gendered activities within my friend group. Cooking is pure pleasure for me, and when I don't want to do it, I don't do it.

What riles me up are the gender role expectations and inequalities I see in kitchen cleanup. Most of my female guests are much more likely than the males to offer to help clear or wash the dishes, and I see more women than men doing those chores in the homes that I visit.

Tell us a bit about the recipe you’re sharing. When did you first make it, and why? What do you love about it? Since it's summer, let's make chocolate sorbet. It's cold, rich, and intensely chocolatey. This sorbet is delicious on its own or paired with vanilla ice cream or unsweetened whipped cream or, say, toasted almond cake.

I've been making chocolate sorbet for years and I've probably never made it the same way twice. I suggest adding bourbon below but you can leave that out completely or substitute rum, Pernod, Frangelico, Ginger Snap, or another liquor. And feel free to adjust the cocoa-to-sugar proportions. I like this sorbet more bitter than sweet, but you might want to use up to 1 cup of sugar...or of vanilla sugar.... You could also stir in up to 6 oz. of finely chopped bittersweet chocolate after you remove the mixture from the heat. (If you do that, you'll want to whisk super vigorously or run the liquid through a blender for a few seconds before you chill it.) Play with it!

Chocolate Sorbet

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (Anica recommends Valhrona) 1/3 cup sugar Pinch of salt 2 cups water, boiling 1/4 tsp. vanilla 1 to 2 tbs. good Bourbon

Combine the cocoa powder, sugar and salt in a heavy saucepan. Whisk in the boiling water. Place the pan over medium heat and stir in the vanilla and Bourbon. (Of you're forgoing the booze, up the vanilla to 1/2 tsp.)

Transfer the mixture to a bowl, cover it, and chill it thoroughly (likely about 4 hours of fridge time). Freeze in an ice cream maker just before serving.

Makes one quart.

Community, Women Writers, and Attractive Comediennes

With regards to “Community” fandom (and fashion, if you're Heidi Klum), you’re either in or you’re out. If you’re not a fan of the show, or haven’t watched it, you don’t understand what all the fuss is about. But if you are a fan, like me, then you won’t shut up about it. For those of you on the outside, “Community” is a manic, endearing, and ultimately brilliant half-hour comedy on NBC, soon to enter its fourth season. The plot centers on a group of misfit friends whose only commonality is that they attend Greendale Community College, where they regularly meet in a study group that doesn’t seem to consist of actual studying. Instead, crazy hijinks ensue! It’s produced some of the most ambitious episodes to hit prime time in years, including an entirely stop-motion Christmas episode (reminiscent of the old “Rudolph” style TV specials) and a 30-minute homage to the obscure 1980s film My Dinner with Andre.

It’s hard to describe exactly what it is “Community” does—genre send-ups, surrealist humor, endless pop culture references for the 20- to 40-year-old set—but whatever it is, it’s groundbreaking. And a large part of the credit is owed to the women who work on the show.

Creator Dan Harmon, at the recommendation of a female NBC studio head, made sure that his writing staff was comprised of half women. In an interview with the AV Club, he notes the difficulty he had in finding talented women writers—not because women aren’t talented, but because there just aren’t as many women writers to choose from—but that now he wouldn’t trade the gender makeup for the world.

Harmon: “The energy is different. It doesn’t keep anybody polite. We’re not doffing our caps or standing up when they enter the room. They do more dick jokes than anybody, because they’ve had to survive, they have to prove, coming in the door, that they’re not dainty. That’s not fair, but women writers, they acquire the muscle of going blue fast because they have to counter the stigma. I don’t have enough control groups to compare it to, but there’s just something nice about feeling like your writers’ room represents your ensemble a little more accurately, represents the way the world turns.”

Credit is also owed to the amazing cast, which notably includes three incredibly talented and hilarious women: Alison Brie (Annie), Yvette Nicole Brown (Shirley), and Gillian Jacobs (Britta).

Through the combined efforts of the writers and the actresses, the three female leads on the show are fleshed-out, complex, entirely human characters. Their personas are not entirely defined in relation to a more prominent male character. They aren’t wives, or love interests, or sidekicks. Despite the ostensible central lead of the show existing in Joel McHale’s egocentric ex-lawyer Jeff Winger, there’s a near-equal weight of importance given to each of the show’s seven main characters, and the women are just as interesting and well-explored as the men, if not more so.

In a totally engaging and lovely round-table interview with the Daily Beast, the “women of Community”—the three actresses plus writer Megan Ganz—dished on what made their show’s treatment of women special. This includes the, ahem, liberated sexuality of Gillian Jacobs’ character Britta. “The thing that is unique about [Britta] is that she is never the subject of slut shaming,” says Jacobs. “Like, she’s one of the only female characters that doesn’t ever get punished for having an active sex life.”

The sexuality of the women—most notably Brie and Jacobs, who are young and, by most people’s standards, hot—is an especially interesting point, when considering the use of sexuality as the defining spectrum for so many less-developed female characters on TV. It’s the age-old Mary Magdalene vs. Eve, slut vs. prude binary, which “Community” so successfully subverts. Jacobs goes on to note that when auditioning for high school characters in the past, she was dismayed at the way their representation was filtered and distorted through the male perspective—high school girls as seductresses, confident sex mavens; Ganz adds that these male writers often “remove all awkwardness from the teen experience.” The more complex and realistic sexuality of a character like Britta, and even the more subtle sexual evolution of a character like Annie, is refreshing in a landscape of women-as-seen-by-men.

There’s no real black-and-white, right-and-wrong guide to how a woman should portray her own sexuality. As with most things, the more agency she has in the process, the better, whether she chooses to show a lot or a little (so to speak). However, I have to admit I was taken aback to see this 2011 GQ feature of Brie and Jacobs, including a crazy suggestive photograph of the actresses in barely-there lingerie portraying a porn-worthy lesbian sex scene. As beautiful as they are, and as much agency as they may have had in creating this photograph, there’s still a real “ew” factor when imagining the relationship of this piece to the audience it’s intended for. You know—men’s magazine readers.

Not that overt sexuality is bad. To illustrate my point: take this scene in “Community” where Annie sings a sexy, wide-eyed, Betty-Boop-meets-Eartha-Kitt Christmas song, in what Ganz calls a send-up of the infantilization of female sexuality. It’s hilarious, and it showcases Annie’s sexiness without being exploitative—instead, with the song’s gradual devolution into nonsense words and floor-crawling, it becomes a self-aware critique of exploitation.

I suppose part of my discomfort with the photo shoot stems from the very different tone of the two scenes, and maybe specifically from the audience each one is intended for. Art isn’t created in a vacuum—there tends to be a dialectic between the creator and the audience out of which emerges the dominant interpretation of the work. Brie and Jacobs playing sexy on “Community” to an audience of viewers (mostly) in on the joke—and (mostly) appreciative of the very real comedic and performing talents of the two—feels legitimate, like there’s an end to the venture. Brie and Jacobs playing sexy on the pages of Gentlemen’s Quarterly, within whose audience the aforementioned criteria don’t exist, within whose pages instead women are regularly set on display as object of desire and/or decoration, feels exploitative. It’s sex for sex’s sake—women as fantasy creatures. Brie and Jacobs cease to be.

I’m in no way condemning Brie and Jacobs for this editorial choice-- nor for any other "sexy" photo shoots they choose to be a part of. They’re both absolutely fantastic and, in many ways, trailblazers. It's simply instructive that in our media, even wonderfully intelligent, forward-thinking, self-aware actresses such as these are inevitably represented in the visual language of a culture obsessed with sex and, particularly, women as sex objects-- and that there's a fine, often indistinguishable line between satirical and actual objectification.

Looking Forward: Credit Due.

Just before my sixteenth birthday, my family packed up our little white clapboard house in Honolulu (where we’d lived for eight years) and moved back to Los Angeles (where I was born and had attended elementary school). My first year back on “the mainland” required me to adjust to life in a big city after spending many years in the slow, simmering heat of a tiny tropical island. I also had to cope with the stress of starting over at a new school in the eleventh grade, on top of the normal, everyday highs and lows of teenage life. It wasn't easy. By the end of my senior year, however, it became clear that the move was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Attending a small, art-centric high school helped bring me out of my shell (I was painfully shy at school prior to the move), and, as a result, I developed friendships that were deep and meaningful. I left high school feeling strong, confident, and incredibly happy. I recognize now that I’d come a very long way in just two short years.

But, again, it wasn’t an easy journey getting there. It was a stressful process, and I was often very hard on myself when I made mistakes, or faltered, or did things that I thought were awkward or embarrassing (but, in hindsight, were totally normal). I was my own worst critic and toughest judge — I expected myself to handle everything perfectly.

One day, though, just before graduation, I remember sitting on my back patio and suddenly thinking something that I’d never thought before. The thought contained just five simple words, but they resonated so clearly: I think you’re doing great. It felt so good to think those words, to believe them — because when all was said and done, I was doing pretty great. My life wasn’t perfect, but there were so many things to be proud of and to love about it. I’d been critical of all the things I thought I’d done wrong along the way, but had never given myself credit for all the things I’d done well.

I thought of this last week at a moment when I felt tempted to say - half-jokingly — that I felt like a complete mess. I was sleep-deprived, working non-stop, and feeling sluggish and scatterbrained in general. I’m failing, I thought.

Then, I thought again. The truth of the matter was, I wasn’t failing. There was a lot going on at the time and much of it was stressful, but there were other things to be happy about, too. The difference was, I was choosing to focus only on what I was doing wrong, when really, there was a lot I was doing right, as well. Why wasn't I acknowledging that?

My takeaway from all of this: when things aren’t going my way, when I'm under a lot of stress, when I'm tempted to put myself down, I should remember to give a nod to the things that are going well instead, and give myself a little credit, at the very least, for trying. Life can be painfully, overwhelmingly hard. We’re all doing the best we can, and no one’s perfect. It's a challenge to think this way, but it's so worth it: cut yourself some slack. Chances are, you're doing great.

Mind the Gap

This is what I know about London:  I’ve been there twice.  The first was a layover, where my dad and I, with 18 hours to spare before hopping on a flight to Prague, stopped into a British pub.  We ate fish and chips.  We drank Guinness; I wrinkled my nose.  We smoked cigarettes and popped into the loo and felt quintessentially, contentedly British.  The pub was near Victoria Station.  The pub was the British experience, packaged neatly for tourists who might wander in to eat fish and chips and smoke cigarettes (“they’re called fags!” I whispered to my father, urgently) and use the loo. I didn’t know this then. This is what I know about London: On my second trip to London, it rained.  It rained until the tube station flooded, leaving me stranded at a cybercafé on the outskirts of the city.  It rained until the steps at the cybercafé flooded, turning into a waterfall that gushed downwards, threateningly, towards the naked computer wires at my feet.  When the tube started working again, I took it to the bus station, where I caught a bus to Amsterdam.  In Amsterdam, it didn’t rain as much, and when it did, I was stranded in not a cybercafé, but a coffee shop of a different variety altogether.

This is what I know about London: when Zack, my boyfriend of four years, decided to apply to graduate school there, it was words on a page.  It was smiling faces on a website and funny accents in a new student video.  The surprise wasn’t that he got in, but that it was a real place that he could say yes to, and we could go.  We could click buttons on Kayak and end up with British Airways flights.  He could send off a check and receive confirmation that, in the year 2014, he would graduate, ostensibly a master of something.

This is what I know about London:  these are the things that are normal there:

1. Taxi cabs that look like chic town cars
2. Eating Cadbury Cream Eggs year round
3. Hopping on a quick flight for a weekend jaunt to Sicily or Santorini
4. Pronouncing things so that they inevitably sound lilting and lovely, even if the topic at hand is the opposite of.  Try making a British person say, “I’ve cheated on you with your sister” or “You have an inoperable tumor” or “They’re expanding the sanitation plant next door” and try not to close your eyes and sigh with content.

This is what I know about London:  the Olympics are there.  Whenever I’ve been near a television, I’ve craned my head, trying to see not the amazing feats of athleticism, but the inspirational filler shots: the London Bridge, the Eye, the wide pan of the city skyline.  In the same way, I perk up when I see pictures of celebrities “caught on the scene” in Notting Hill or Soho, trim brick houses and wrought iron gates peeking out behind them.  “Ah,” I think, as my eyes and brain seek context and recognition, “There it is.”

This is what I know about London:  It terrifies me.  It renders me stumbling and stupid; it is the first place I’ve moved with no detailed level of prior knowledge.  I can’t tell you what neighborhood is the best for shopping, what neighborhood the best bars are in, what neighborhood I might get murdered but probably not.  I have two images in my head: that of the bar, and that of the café.  These two things do not a new life make (although, as a writer, I may be closer than most).

This is what I know about London:  nothing, really, but I’ll know soon enough.  It’s followed readily by---not yet.  Not yet is the part that sounds best, that tastes best as it hangs like a swimmer on a starting block, ready to dive off the tip of my tongue.  For now, I’m content to wait, to float in the tantalizing possibility of expectations.  That’s the best thing about the future, isn’t it?  Nothing’s happened yet, so anything can.

watching the sunrise

It’s been two weeks since I’ve written in this place and in the moments that have passed between then and now, I’ve gotten married. It seems fitting that this be an essay that includes a little bit of romance. When James, my husband, and I first began dating, we were interns on an island off the coast of southern Georgia. James was working on a sea turtle conservation project and one of his daily tasks was to survey the beach at dawn for nests that had been laid overnight. Every morning of that summer he started up a finicky golf cart and rode along the beach, searching for turtle tracks as he went. On more than one morning, I went along for the ride. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes and trying hard not to think about the full-day of work I had ahead of me, I would climb into the cart next to him. Moments when we came across newly laid nests had their own kind of magic, but it was the sunrises that really got me out of bed.

On one morning, another intern came along with us. She was less than enthusiastic about the early hours and when James exclaimed over the rising sun she turned to him and said,

“You’ve seen one sunrise, you’ve seen them all.”

In his typical style, James met her grumpiness with his own brand of unrelenting cheer. Grinning, he replied, simply, “I don’t think so.” Love is a tricky thing---and recognizing it can be more difficult than fairy tales would have us believe---but if there’s one moment when I realized I loved James, it’s that one. It’s a risky story to tell. Stories about watching the sun rise anywhere, let alone on remote beaches, can slide quickly into the realm of Hallmark greeting cards and can make even a hopeless romantic cringe. But the truth remains: I couldn’t help loving a man that appreciated a good sunrise.

We’ve just returned from a few days away on an island at a significantly more northern latitude. A minimoon, we’ve been calling it. Each morning that we were away we woke up to watch the sunrise. Just the two of us and the egrets and the reflection of the sun on the water.

We’re back in the city now and with a new challenge to wake up to watch the sunrise, at least sometimes.

Photo by sunrise-enthusiast, James Casey.

The Streets of Lisbon, The Views of Belem

I haven't been overseas since the beginning of 2012, which feels like the longest lapse between adventures in a decade. But my life in San Francisco is in flux and requires me to stay put. I suppose with various changes in my life, each day at home feels unfamiliar in its own way, so it's *almost* like I'm wandering in a new place, or at least experiencing similar sensations I feel when I roam the streets of a different country. But I feel the itch to explore again. To see colors I'm not used to seeing, like the oranges on the rooftops of the buildings in Lisbon. To smell whiffs of pasteis de nata, a flaky, golden Portuguese pastry I can almost taste right now. To turn a corner, to explore an alleyway, to find a picturesque hilltop miradouro from which to gaze—and dream.

Portugal, I'm thinking of you.

xo, Cheri

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Memories of Mammaries

 My friend Dorothy is a "real" writer; that is, she does it for a living. She writes for Metro newspapers and is a published co-author of a hilarious dating book,  Dating Makes You Want to Die. I asked her to contribute a story about her and her mom, to kick-start an initiative to explore other mother/daughter relationships here.  When my mom first passed away, Dorothy was there with much-needed support, including the titles of several books she thought I might find some comfort from. This piece is equally funny and reflective, just like Dorothy herself. by Dorothy Robinson

When I was newly pregnant with my baby boy Sam, my 74-year-old mother was diagnosed with cancer in both breasts. This was something of a surprise for everyone; breast cancer doesn't run in our family and Mom was diligent about having a yearly mammogram. It appeared without warning, laying claim to both her breasts. And it was fast, growing so big that just cutting the cancer out wouldn't be an option. She'd have to remove both breasts, the sooner the better.

When you undergo a mastectomy, most of the recovery is done at home. It isn't pretty.  To help with the healing process, the surgeons insert a tube in the hole where your breasts used to be, which then dangles outside out of your body. At the bottom of the tube is a suction device, resembling a tiny, clear, plastic grenade. For days and weeks after the breast is removed, the body shoots fluid to where it used to be to help clean the wound; lost, the soupy mess has nowhere to go and collects under the skin. The drains help to clear this and keep infection and pain at bay. But someone recovering from surgery needs help emptying those little grenades and keeping a log of the output. And that would be me. My 76-year-old father could hardly say the word "breast" and my brother, who lives down the street from my parents, gave me a look that said, "I fix their DVD player every week, you are doing this."

Before I heaved my pregnant self to Delaware to help while my mother recovered, I did some reading on how to help a woman who was going to lose her breasts. My mother had weathered health scares before, most notably a heart valve replacement---a much more invasive procedure, which she got through with little drama or setbacks. I figured this recovery would follow the same path. My research suggested that women undergoing a double mastectomy should get therapy to help with the psychological effects of losing their breasts. This seemed kind of nutty to me, as my mother was way past needing them. Maybe other, younger women would be affected by such a loss but not my Steel Magnolia of a mother.  A former judge and Southern WASP, she is the human embodiment of those ubiquitous "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters.

But this wasn't the case. The night before she was to undergo her surgery, I expected a usual night at home with my parents: Scotch for them, a discussion on an interesting article from that day’s Wall Street Journal with maybe a little basic cable thrown in. Instead, my mother was inflamed with sadness and anger. She wept. She yelled. She couldn't be calmed.  Wide-eyed at this woman I didn't know, I pleaded with her to take a Xanax, to have a drink---anything to calm her anxiety.  I was scared. This was not my mother. In my mind, it wasn't a big deal. It wasn't a foot or an arm. Just two lumps of flesh that had done their job. They had to go so she could live. It was a simple swap, I figured, and one that would let her continue to do important things in life, like being able to meet her new grandson. I texted my husband, who remained back at our home in New York to work, that I was surprised at her emotions. Our minister came over and, along with my brother, we held hands as a family in the living room and said a little prayer. Finally calm, she sheepishly asked me to take a photo of her breasts. Sheepishly, I did.

The surgery went well. And 24-hours after the doctors removed her breasts, she returned home, with me by her side. The nurses in the hospital rued this in-and-out policy. "A man comes in with prostate problems, he stays for four days. You get your boobs removed, and you go home in less than a day," one nurse said to us with a shake of her head, as she showed me how to clean my mother’s drains. For a week, I stood next to my sad, incomplete mother, while cells swirled within my body, creating my baby. I emptied out her blood and bits of flesh, keeping a diligent log for the nurses who would swing by our home to check on her progress.

When, six months later, baby Sam made his appearance, my mother was back to her usual self, healthy and cancer free. She has an angry scar across her chest (no matter how good the surgeon, the scar from a double mastectomy always looks like the operation was done in a back alley) and two pairs of "falsies," as she calls them in her Southern lilt, to put in her clothing to help give her shape. We can now even joke about her operation.  When she first held her week-old grandson, he tried to peck at her chest, like all hungry newborns do. "You're barking up the wrong tree there, buddy," she laughed.  That night, surged with hormones and gratitude, I wept at our good fortune.

Recently, while still on maternity leave, I spent some time with my parents at their little beach cottage to escape the oppressive heat of Brooklyn. After some trepidation at the thought of feeding the baby in front of my proper father, I finally just went for it. Soon, cocktail hour would mean sitting on the porch, my folks enjoying gin and tonics; Sam, milk.

You can read thousands of essays on the meaning of breasts, but until you place your sweet baby in front of them, you will never understand how important they are to your personhood, to your sense of self, to being a woman. To lose them is to lose a part of you; a part of your history. Finally, I understood my mother’s sadness. Perhaps if we were a more dramatic family, maybe we would have really focused on the significance of breasts and a new baby when our matriarch had just lost hers, and discuss it, like they do in therapy. Perhaps everyone did but we didn't say it out loud.  Instead, we just enjoyed each other's company under the hazy July sun. The only one who really cared about boobs or no boobs was Sam, who spent his evenings sucking happily while my mother and her new falsies looked on.

A Second Baby

When I think of being pregnant for the second time I don’t think of the euphoric infant days, of baby lashes and the milky sweet scent of their baby heads. Instead I think of the black hole, the endless abyss I fell into with my son. It began when I was pregnant, and the morning sickness was so severe I spent full days in bed. Unemployed and living with my parents, I felt like I had little to hope for. I stopped writing, I stopped reading. I was bombarded with the reality that my pregnancy might not be like everyone else’s. I read blogs and magazines and saw glowing women rubbing their bellies. I rarely saw photos of them puking in the toilet, screaming at their husbands, and soaking their pillows with tears. The sickness, and how it incapacitated my life led to depression, and that depression lasted for years. Last summer I mentioned to a friend that we were thinking of a second child. She knew how much I had struggled with my first. While I was trying to recover I talked to every friend I had about the depression, the body changes, the hormonal changes. I seemed to be the only one who experienced it quite like that. She looked at me across the table at dinner and said chirpily “Well, maybe the next one will be different because you’ll want it more.” Say what?! It wasn’t as if I WILLED myself to throw up multiple times a day, lose weight, and experience such strong mood fluctuations that I alternately thought about killing myself, or the baby. I really wish those things hadn’t happened, but they did, and they had nothing to do with how much I wanted the baby. If I didn’t want him, he wouldn’t be here. I didn’t have the heart to tell this childless woman all of my struggles, so instead I nodded politely and chalked her up to yet another friend who had no idea what I went through.

I think of the times spent crying on the kitchen floor. The terracotta tile orange and grimy. I cried for my past life, for my present life, for the baby that wouldn’t stop screaming but mostly for me. I was mourning the girl I no longer was. It’s been a few years since that night when I called my husband home and we hugged on the floor and he whispered “We don’t have to have any more.” But when I tiptoe up to the loft, barefoot on the carpet, and wake him with a nudge and a concerned ‘I’m late’, that night isn’t far from my mind.

In the past few months things had been good, and on those good sunny days we thought of more children, but always in the back of my mind was the fear. The fear that it would be the same as the first time. The fear was black ink, spilling into the rational parts of my mind until I had trouble seeing how much things really had changed. I wasn’t 22 anymore, we weren’t living with my parents, we had been married for 3 years (instead of 6 weeks). But the biggest change was our son, we knew him and loved him, and wouldn’t change our story for anything, no matter the numerous twists and turns it took to get us here.

Despite being a week late, I was in denial. I was still in denial after I peed on the stick. One line was bold, strong, the other was faint, wavering, barely existing.

“Well, maybe I’m not then?”

“There’s no such thing as a little bit pregnant," My husband reminded me. So I peed, and peed again, and then a few more times just for good measure. A whole box of  them with the same answer.

“Oh my god, I’m pregnant.” I inhaled sharply, looking at our messy living room, the cracked tile we never fixed, our toddler still in his pajamas jumping on the couch. I proceeded to clean with a fervor and then promptly dropped a pan on my toe.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

There is a house---a camp, really---on a lake in New Hampshire that is owned by my husband's extended family. It houses many generations of strong women; a matriarchal household in every sense of the word. Bought in 1948 by my husband's great uncle and his wife, many of the women who now run the house during the summer and collectively supervise their kids running through the woods and swimming in the lake grew up traipsing through the same woods and swimming in the same waters. It's a family with deep roots and a well-documented tree, but one that is also made of people who have been brought in and enmeshed through skinny dips and grilled hot dogs. Stand in the kitchen long enough, and you'll hear one of the women say "did you hear about the time when..." before the rest of them break out in peals of laughter that carry down to the lake and across the water. The more time you spend here, the more clearly the ghosts materialize and give a sense of tradition to the rhythm of the day that has survived with the minimal necessary evolutions for over 60 years. Claude and Phyllis (the couple who bought camp) skinny dipping early in the morning and serving hot dogs and milkshakes for lunch; the bouncing Jack Russell terrier begging to be let in by appearing in two second intervals in the open top half of the Dutch door on the porch (after chasing a squirrel into its hole and getting his face stuck in its burrow); my mother-in-law first learning to waterski by sitting on the shoulders of her cousin as the boat pulled them both up. In these stories, the men are key players to be sure, but their narratives remain peripheral. The driving characters of the stories of camp are the women. I am weaving myself into the fabric of this family, first as a girlfriend, then a wife---a friend, a mother, an aunt. The Christmas before I married Jordy, the ladies of camp bought me a beach towel with my name embroidered on it. It was to be left here for the winters, awaiting my return each July. I took the gift as a statement: just as there was a place in the hall linen closet for my new towel, there was a place in this family for me. I've come here this week for a family vacation. My in-laws are here, and my husband has a rare break from work. This is more than a vacation, though. By coming here, I get to reconnect with women (and their kids) who I see maybe twice per year, but to whom I feel viscerally connected. They've held me in hard times, called me sister in happy times, and loved me unconditionally through both. For 64 years, the women of camp have gathered by the water, surrounded by bronzed children of various ages to discuss our lives, to discuss current events, to discuss what to make for dinner, to discuss what we're reading. We call ourselves "the ladies of the beach."

It's funny to have such a strong connection to the history of a family that is not biologically mine (in the abbreviation-language of camp, I am an NBR---a Non-Blood Relative). In many ways, I think that spending time with Jordy's family on land that they have shared for so long binds me to his family in a more raw and fundamental way than any other could. I learned to water ski the same way and in the same water that my husband and his entire family learned; my daughter jumps off the same rocks that my mother-in-law jumped off as a little girl, and we all make a daily pilgrimage to the ice cream shop where 2 generations have worked during the summer. The oldest of the third generation will be old enough to continue the tradition next year, and we are all eagerly awaiting her employment (though our waistlines may disagree). Connecting with Jordy's family this way encourages me to love him (and them) even more deeply, and in a sense for more time. Though my time moving forward is limited, I feel like with each summer here, I get time both in the present, and also in the past. It's a richer, augmented experience when you're layering summer on top of summer on top of summer. I recently picked up The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home by George Howe Colt. It's a story of a summer house, like this one, and the family that inhabits it. I just started the book, but I love the way that the house and the land are intertwined with the family and its history. The author's memories of his grandparents are similar to the memories that Jordy has, and likely similar to the memories that Emi will have as she grows up. It was handed to me as soon as I arrived, looking for something to read. I just finished 1Q84, and needed something to thumb through at the beach in-between discussions of the latest article in People or Frank Rich's column that morning. Reading is an integral weft in the social fabric of the ladies at camp. We love books, we love to read, and we love to talk about what we're reading. Here's a sample of what's made an appearance at the beach this week. If some of the reviews seem short, it's because I made people tell me what they were reading as they were running through the house on their way to the beach, the grocery store, or to watch the Olympics (the only time, save for the U.S. Open, that the television is allowed on).

Lulu, 65 The matriarch of this house, Lulu, has made it her business to extend her family. She is the wife of Claude and Phyllis' younger son, John, and is at the center (though some days she would like to be removed from it) of camp life. A fellow only child, Lulu's philosophy is that there are always enough beds, and we can always make dinner stretch to accommodate a few more. Lulu is an honorary grandmother to most of the kids here, and is an honorary mother to all of us. She is the grandmother who waterskis and swears like a sailor and finishes the crossword in the Sunday Times, and she makes it her business to keep alive the history of camp (and with it, her husband's family). When you come to camp, you inevitably hear the stories of this place, and Lulu is often the one telling them. Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichel "I love it. It's a memoir of her childhood with a very crazy mother and how food became so important in her life. She comes from a really crazy family, and she just by happenstance gets connected to a family that loves food, and she discovers that when the world isn't working well, you can make a good meal and all is suddenly right with the world."

Nancy, 70 Nancy's husband, Ricky, was raised with John, Lulu's husband. Both of their fathers were off fighting in WWII, and their mothers, Dot and Phyllis, moved in together. Both nurses, they were best friends, and each had two boys. They got double coupons and worked opposite shifts so that while one worked, the other watched all of the children. They shared jobs---Dot hated darning, so Phyllis did that, but Dot did all of the maintenance. The husbands were in the same medical corps in Italy. Ricky's family used to rent the camp next door when Claude and Phyllis bought this camp, and Nancy first came up to the lake when she and Ricky became engaged.

Nancy, through sheer luck, stayed up here the summer that I brought newly-born Emi to camp. She would rock Emi as Emi screamed and screamed, and she would sit with me through the seemingly never-ending nursing sessions telling me stories of her own family, in and out of which members of our family would dance. Asked about her favorite things about camp, she says, "The thing that always struck me was the intergenerational thing, the cocktail hour with the great grandparents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and kids, sharing stories and sharing time. All of the ages and stages and kids, and everyone just kind of took care of their own kids and other kids---kind of like how it is now. Oh, and coming down to the beach with all of these very professional, intelligent, highly educated women sharing stories from smutty magazines."

War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy "It's a book that I never in a million years thought I would read (even though I'm an English teacher), but my book club decided they would do it. I am fully immersed in it. The first 100 or so pages were difficult just because of the many characters and getting the names straight (and feeling intimidated by the fact that it's War and Peace). But once you get over that, Tolstoy is so fluid and so all-encompassing and he understands human nature and the big picture so well, but he includes detail to make it seem here and now. The writing is a narrative, so you read it for a story, but you also get a sense of the history and the philosophical and ethical issues that people thought about at that time in Russia (and even now): the nobility and the peasants; why people go to war. You're also brought back by the everydayness of the characters that he creates, and they become real. It's a great read. We were supposed to read 200 pages and meet and read another 200 pages, but I've almost finished it because I've become so involved with it."

Emily, 37 Emily and I became fast friends when she started dating Jordy's cousin, Evan (Lulu's son). She is one of the funniest people I know. She was married here at the lake, and I was one of her bridesmaids. She returned the favor for me when I married Jordy. Her daughters, 4 1/2 and 2 years old, sandwich Emi in age, and the three of them are quite a sight to behold when they are galavanting together on the beach. Emily now does the Sunday crossword with Lulu, and she's the only person I know who can beat Jordy at Scrabble.

"I just finished Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. I loved it up until the very end, but I couldn't put it down---I was sneaking reads during work. It was a page turner, and you didn't know what was happening. It was a good mystery, and how you felt about the characters changed throughout the book at different points. I read The Art of Racing in the Rain at the beginning of the summer. It's written from the point of view of a dog---[she looks at me raising my eyebrows and goes, "I know, but it's really good."] the dog is this smart being, but because of how he was created (with a floppy tongue, no thumbs)---he's stuck with his thoughts and knowledge of things but no way to express himself. I just started reading Sharp Objects."

Alice and Claudia, 10 I've known Alice and Claudia (sisters, daughters of Jordy's cousin) since they were toddlers, speaking in one-word sentences and eager to investigate my shoes every time I came to their house. Watching them grow has been astonishing; if ever there were two more interesting 10 year olds, I don't know them. Alice is wonderfully imaginative and creative. This week, she made a magic wand for her brother out of a twig that she had stripped the bark off of in a striped pattern, and a vine woven around and anchored with pine sap. Claudia is thoughtful and funny and up for anything. She's also incredibly creative, and her wrists are buried in brightly colored friendship bracelets that she's made. The two sisters, along with their brother and cousins, are delighted to invite Emi to play with them, and are old enough to be able to tell her stories when she's older about her first years here.

Alice The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman, Meg Wolitzer "It's about this dude who plays Scrabble, and he has a power in his fingers to read things with his fingertips. They're in a tournament in Florida. I got it for my birthday from Grandma and Grandpa. It was on the Chautauqua reading list."

Claudia The Son of Neptune, Rick Riordan "It's the second in a series the Heros of Olympus, which is the sequel series to the Percy Jackson series. It's about a boy, Percy Jackson, who's memory is taken by Hera/Juno, and he loses 8 months of his life with the wolf Lupa and her pack, learning to fight. Then he leaves the wolves and journeys to the Roman demigod camp and he's originally from the Greek demigod camp. I read the first one in the series and it was about a boy, Jason, who gets the same thing but goes from the Roman camp to the Greek camp, and he has to unite the camps before the prophesy can come true. It's so good, I've read it seven times."

After a bit of questioning, Claudia admits she's read it seven times because she's already read (or can't find) the other books in the top of the boathouse, where the girls sleep. I promise to take her to town tomorrow to get a new book to read at the local bookstore. She'll read it and give it to her sister and cousins---I imagine that it will end up in one of the bookshelves in the house, waiting for Emi to grow into it. As for our trip into town, I can't promise anything, but it will likely include an ice cream cone. I know all too well that in a blink, Claudia will be old enough to drive herself, and in another one old enough for me to take her kids for her while she catches a moment to read on the beach.

Creating Sabbath

When I was growing up, Sundays were church days for my family. We'd get up in the morning—later than on school days, but somehow, it still felt early—and elbow one another out of the way of the bathroom mirror for primping and toothbrushing. Then, we'd pack into the car and head to Sunday school and worship services. Afterwards, we'd grumble about the sermon running long and pile into the car again with hungry bellies. We usually had lunch out at some sort of "family restaurant" (bonus points if they served raspberry iced tea and had a free salad bar) and then went home for naps and homework. At the time, I didn't give much thought to what a Sabbath could be or should be. For us, it included a lot of eating, a little resting and praying, and a good dose of getting in each others' way. Sometimes I wondered what other kids did on Sunday mornings, but mostly I didn't question the shape of my week.

Fast forward through college and graduate school, and my Sabbath doesn't happen on Sundays anymore. After converting to Judaism, I began observing the Jewish Sabbath ("Shabbat"), which takes place from Sundown on Friday to Sundown on Saturday. My Sabbath not only takes place on a different day of the week, but the characteristics of the day itself are a little different too. While there are many different ways to observe Shabbat, mine centers around a festive evening meal on Friday and includes a lot of reading and resting on Saturday.

Perhaps one of the most curious differences between my childhood Sabbath and my current practice is that I no longer use phones, computers, or transportation during the "Sabbath" portion of my weekend. This probably sounds odd. And to be honest, I've never really come up with a satisfying explanation or justification of this practice. There are as many reasons for rituals as there are people who practice them, and perhaps more.

But soon after Shabbat took hold of my Friday nights and Saturdays—at first out of curiosity and then, perhaps, out of inertia—it became a nonnegotiable. It's a strange thing, to commit to doing almost nothing for a whole night and day each week. It's just a bit too long, actually, so that by Saturday evening I'm often a little restless, bored, or uncomfortable, more than ready to return to my regularly scheduled programming.

But at the busiest and most stressful moments during the week, I find that I try to conjure up something of the essence of the most recent Shabbat. It has something to do with quiet and stillness and do-nothing time. Ironically, my do-nothing time is often my most creative thinking time. While I'm not-writing, I can't help but conjure up a million different ideas to write about. Given this extra breathing room, my mind starts to play. Sure enough, I forget most of my "brilliant" ideas by Sunday morning, or as soon as I'm poised at the desk and ready to type my little heart out. But at least I know they're there, somewhere beneath the surface of daily life.

These days, I don't have to wonder what other kids do on Sunday mornings, but I do wonder a lot about how others practice "Sabbath." When and how do you like to rest? What's the shape of your weekend? Whether you've taken a sabbatical year or found ways to incorporate stillness into each day, I'd love to know, what does "Sabbath" mean to you?

Destiny's Child

I have been thinking a lot about destiny lately.  Whenever people hear the story of how my husband and I came to be together, they say something to the effect of, “It’s like you were fated to be married!”  When I describe my 180-degree career shift from social worker to florist, I get, “It was always what you were supposed to do!”  And there is the inevitable, “This was absolutely meant to be!” concerning the subject of my finally becoming a mother.  Having said all that, and acknowledging that my life feels nothing short of wondrous at times, I am not actually sure I believe in destiny.  I think what I mostly believe in is making choices. As a person with some fairly significant control issues, I battle with the notion that things are in any way preordained.  When confronting a particularly challenging set of circumstances, the concept of life unfurling “just as it should,” and according to some magical plan beyond my comprehension, sounds amazing.  I assert there is some truth to this - I have an indistinct sense that everything always “works out in the end.”  But I feel strongly that I have a hand in crafting the result and that, depending on the situation, my influence is anywhere from 85-99% of it.  The remaining 1-15% (author’s note: these numbers are not rooted in any scientific process) I suppose is some amalgamation of karma (at least my white, Jewish, suburban notion of karma) and dumb luck.  I never said it was sexy.

My husband and I have a really good thing going.  For his part, he is lovely, bright, thoughtful, totally friggin’ hilarious and a very involved father.  We share the same life goals, appreciate almost all the same cultural phenomena and have similar values around politics, social justice and generally how we want to function in the world.  How I landed him seems like magic, but the bottom line is I chose him.

We first met at summer camp, as teenagers.  Flash forward 17 years and we ended up married with a ridiculously adorable infant daughter.  This story is so ripe for the “meant to be” trope, it’s virtually impossible to resist.  And as much as I would like to wrap it up in a tidy bow, it feels critically important to appreciate how pro-active we both had to be to get here:

1)   How I knew Michael in the first place: As a child, I chose to participate in a Labor Zionist youth movement that offered a sleep-away summer camp.  Believe me, this is a highly specific choice.

2)   How I was in a position to date him: At age 34, I chose to leave my first marriage, recognizing that I had made a mistake.

3)   How we reconnected: I chose to reach out to him on Facebook, hoping we still might have some things in common.

4)   How the relationship developed: I chose to pursue our connection, despite being separated by 3000 miles.  I then chose to move across the country to give it a real chance.

5)   How we were married: I chose to make a life with someone that I not only loved but who treated me with respect and with whom I was a great match.

Don’t get me wrong: there was and is all manner of getting the vapors and birds chirping and stars trailing across the night sky.  However, the bones of what we have done and what we are doing together are the minute and monumental choices.  The future of our relationship depends entirely on these choices.  Are we going to be kind to one another?  Are we going to listen?  Are we going to stick around when things get tough?  Are we going to share domestic responsibilities . . . some of this is HUGE and some of it seems so piddly, I realize.  I would argue that every little choice piles onto the heap that tips the scales in favor of a partnership.

I was fortunate that someone like Michael was available for my choosing when I was ready.  It was also providence that our timing worked out just right.  But almost everything since has been instrumental and emotional elbow grease.

Chance has also played a role in my career.  I have been “lucky” to have a supportive husband, willing to bear the risk of my starting a business (and doing so smack in the middle of a global financial crisis!).  But I chose to leave a stable, essentially recession-proof career to go out on my own.  And every day I choose not to go back to a more secure position that carries fancy health benefits, so that I might create something more meaningful for myself.

The miniature cherub that lives in our home?  When it comes to her, things get a bit more complicated.  The relevant choice is that I decided to pursue and endure fertility treatments when it became clear that we would not have a child without assistance.  The staggering fortune is that it worked, and we had a healthy child.  Speaking of staggering fortune, we were also lucky to have the resources at our disposal for the procedures.  I will also say that had it not worked, I would have chosen among many other (equally taxing) options to have a child, all of which involve a healthy dose of rolling the dice.  Soon enough, we will be confronted with this crazy fusion of intention and chance if we decide to expand our family again.

The things of which I am most proud in my life — marriage, work, baby — have required a combination giving it up to the fates and making the arduous decisions of a warrior.  It gives me great solace to imagine that I am the author of my own future and that I don’t have to wait for “blessings” to be happy.  The good news is that means we can all change our lives for the better . . . it simply starts with choosing to believe that it’s feasible.