The Joy of Cooking

Big ideas about baking

This summer, a cupcake really got me thinking.

My college roommate Michele made a delicious batch of coconut cupcakes for our group of friends one weekend in July. We were all floored.

“Ooh!” I thought. “I have to make a cake in a couple of weeks. Maybe I should make these instead!” I was planning to make a birthday cake for my friend and coworker Julie once school started again, and I thought maybe I should try these.

Michele called making the coconut cupcakes “a production”—a bunch of steps, ingredients, and time—but said they were worth the effort. She was confident I was up to the task.

I wasn’t so sure.

Those who know me well might be surprised to hear that I was thinking of baking at all, given that historically, I’ve chosen to spend very little time in the kitchen, and also given that I’m far from Mother Theresa when it comes to doing things for others. But I’ve actually done a lot of boxed-mix baking over the last 15 years.

And last summer, I decided I wanted to try to up my game after tasting an incredible cake made from scratch for a friend’s 56th birthday party. I asked Susan, the baker and friend of the birthday girl, if she would teach me how to make it. She graciously offered to have me come over to her house for a tutorial.

The cake “we” made together when I went to her house was one of the best I’ve ever eaten, and I thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon of baking with Susan.

Sadly, I never made that cake on my own. About three-quarters of the way through, I realized I should have been taking notes on the tips that weren’t in the written recipe, and I felt I had missed too many nuances to attempt it. Plus, it’s a big cake, and you don’t know if it’s good until you bring it somewhere and start serving it.

So, when it came time to bake for my friend Julie’s birthday a few weeks later, I retreated to my comfort zone (boxed cake mix and store-bought icing) and made the gem below.

The cake tasted good and perhaps could have come in second in a bake-off with 8-year-olds. I owe the presentation to a logistical error. On a long walk from my car to the school building, instead of carrying it horizontally in front of me, I held it at my side, like a book. When I removed the lid, I found half the icing was stuck to the top.

I was determined to do better when Julie’s birthday rolled around this year and thought Michele’s cupcakes might do the trick. I would just pay closer attention to details this time.

I decided to do a practice run first, and I’m glad I did. It was quite an eye-opener. For starters, Michele wasn’t wrong when she told me it would be labor-intensive. It took the better part of an afternoon to make a single batch of cupcakes, and I don’t think I’ve ever made a bigger mess in my kitchen.

Also, I learned that my measuring skills are atrocious. I won’t blame the Tarrytown Public Schools entirely, but I will say that the time we spent in elementary school in the 1970s preparing for America’s conversion to the metric system was not time well spent.

Siri helped fill in the gaps. I’m pretty sure she would have rolled her eyes at some of my questions if she had eyes. (“Siri, how many cups are in a pound and a half?”)

In the end, the cupcakes were good enough to serve, and I brought them to a friend’s house to share, but I decided to play it safe and make a modified version of them for school–boxed mix for the cupcakes, and the icing from the fancy recipe.

With Julie and the modified coconut cupcakes last month

Baking for coworkers’ birthdays was something of a tradition at my last school. My friend and coworker’s wife was a fantastic baker and generously agreed to make a cake any time she was asked. People would hear there was a birthday in the English department and mysteriously show up for our lunch gatherings. Those were good days.

I’ve started to bake a little for coworker birthdays recently. The recipe for a cake I made for a friend at work in June came from my department chair in Massachusetts 25 years ago. When I was moving to Washington, D.C., in 2001, she made a cake for my going-away party. It was the first time I ever heard myself say, “I just must have this recipe!” She explained how to make it and which Bundt pan to get, and I’ve made it many times since then.

The most recent version of the cake I learned how to make 25 years ago

A bunch of years ago, I made that cake just before winter break and left it in the teachers’ room with an unsigned note that said “Happy Holidays!” Several coworkers asked who had made the cake, and when I told them I had, no one believed me.

In fairness, that was probably because I’ve been so vocal over the years about how I hate to cook and how my signature dish is pizza toast. But I’ve realized that baking is different. My sister, a talented cook who regularly puts together wonderful, elaborate meals, says she doesn’t love baking because it’s so calculated and usually doesn’t allow for creativity.

That’s exactly why I like it. A persnickety person like me loves a formula that has to be followed to a T. Cooking meals, even with a recipe, can yield unpredictable results and often feels like an exercise in frustration, but baking usually turns out well as long as I follow the directions.

Long before I was baking or enjoying cakes with coworkers, my mom was setting the stage. She always made sure everyone felt special on their birthday, including making their favorite meal and whatever dessert they requested.

When I started teaching at an alternative high school in 2009, where I had small classes and students with major challenges, I thought about how some of them might not have people at home making their birthday special, as my mom had done for us. I decided to bake for student birthdays.

I’m at a much bigger school these days, with many more students, so now I bake once a month to celebrate the birthdays from each class.

I mention this not to toot my own horn, but to say that I owe the idea to my mom. I started doing it a couple of years before she was diagnosed with dementia, and now that she’s gone, it feels like a way of honoring her memory. I think of her each time I bake for young people.

My mom and grandpa wishing me a happy 2nd birthday with a zoo-themed cake my mom had made

Truth be told, I’m generally not a people pleaser. Youngest children rarely are.

So I’ve been surprised at how much I’ve grown to enjoy doing something that makes other people happy. Maybe there is something to the studies that show that doing things for others also benefits the doer.

I also see that people often connect cakes and other baked goods with memories and traditions. My sister makes the same Bundt cake for nearly every family birthday because that’s what her people request. She offers every year to make something different, something more complex, and everyone always wants the same cake.

Likewise, a good friend of mine hosts a birthday dinner for me every year and always asks what I want. I ask for the same cake each time–the simple yellow cake with chocolate frosting that my mom used to make.

So although I’ve been making and eating homemade treats for years, it was only this summer, and the coconut cupcakes, that made me recognize that baked goods can connect us to memories of family, special occasions, and sometimes to cherished relationships with people who are no longer in our lives.

To others, this may not be “New News,” as the Kelce brothers would say, but to me it is. Whether it’s a boxed mix or made from scratch, baking for others is a simple way of putting good out into the world.

Am I a Quitter?

My brush with a CPAP machine (and other modern miracles)

As soon as I heard the words “suction” and “backdraft,” I knew I was out.

I was talking with a sleep technician arranged by my healthcare provider, and told him I found it hard to swallow while wearing the new CPAP mask my doctor had prescribed.

“Yeah, you’ll feel a backdraft,” he said. “That sensation will go away.”

Backdraft? In my windpipe?

He went on to use phrases like “seal of the oral cavity” and “lung pressure adjusts into the back of the throat,” while explaining that I would need to learn to breathe only through my nose while sleeping.

I also remember him saying something about suction, though my memory is fuzzy on the details. I just know that when I heard that word, I thought “oh, hell no.”

I was diagnosed in January with moderate sleep apnea, a condition where the throat muscles or tongue relax and close off the airway during sleep, causing breathing to start and stop.

The best treatment for this condition, I was told, was a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) device with a mask.

I had heard of these machines but had never actually seen one until it arrived in the mail. The one I received included a box, a long plastic tube connected to headgear, and something called “nasal pillows.”

A description I read said nasal pillows are “two soft silicone cushions that rest gently at the entrance of your nostrils.”

After trying it on, this seemed like a more realistic description: Two portholes cut into a sponge (that smells like antiseptic) allow oxygen to be pumped directly up your nose.

I took a picture of myself in the mask and texted it to my sister. Her reply: “OMG. Not a chance I’d get a wink of sleep in that.”

My thoughts exactly.

The only one who seemed excited about the new contraption was my kitten, who took a flying leap and pounced on the tube the moment he saw it.

I lasted 24 minutes in the mask the first night. The oxygen didn’t flow evenly. If the machine sensed my breath was slowing, it pushed in a puff of air, which startled me.

The purpose of this contraption was to help me sleep better, and it seemed like it was going to have the opposite effect.

But I wanted to give the CPAP machine a fair chance, so I tried it again the next night and waited to go to bed until I was exhausted. I lasted almost an hour and a half before yanking the headgear off and throwing it across the bed.

I tried the machine a third night and lasted about 30 miserable minutes.

During the check-in with my sleep technician a few days later, he suggested a few tweaks and assured me that I would get used to the machine within four months.

Four months?

I didn’t want to give up too easily. After all, the literature on sleep apnea warns that it can lead to horrors like heart attacks, strokes, and even car accidents.

And yet, strapping a medicinal-smelling sponge to my face, with a tube that exits at the top of my head, seemed unlikely to help improve the problem that brought me to the doctor in the first place. So I told the technician I was done.

I didn’t feel good about only lasting three days with my new CPAP machine. I know it works for lots of people and addresses serious problems.

I also began to wonder if giving up too easily was a pattern for me, because this wasn’t the first time I discontinued a medical intervention that has been widely successful for others. Before the CPAP, I tried and quit Wegovy. And before that, I tried and quit Invisalign.

I started Wegovy, a GLP-1 weight loss drug, in December after finding out I was prediabetic. I’ve been more than 50 pounds overweight for close to a decade, which, in addition to the shame it carries, also feels like an invitation for serious health problems.

I decided to try the medication over my winter break, so I would be home if there were any side effects. That turned out to be a good decision. The medicine made me feel terribly nauseous.

In a follow-up visit, my healthcare provider shared that about 45% of people who try the drug experience nausea. She said that most adjust within a few weeks.

For me, that felt untenable. I work at a big, busy high school, and the thought of trying to limp through a few weeks of teaching while feeling sick to my stomach was a hard no.

I decided to table the idea of taking a GLP-1, at least until the summer. In the meantime, I would see if I could try a different approach to losing a significant amount of weight without drugs.

The good news is that I started seeing a new doctor who has a background in obesity medicine. She worked with me to set up a plan, and I’ve made slow but steady progress since January and intend to continue this approach instead of going back to a GLP-1.

Unlike Wegovy, which was just the latest chapter in a significant health struggle, my foray into Invisalign two years ago began because of a relatively minor issue. My dentist recommended it to preserve a loose tooth.

It seemed simple at first.

All I had to do was wear “trays” (clear braces) for 22 hours a day. The trays would be molded to my teeth and would be painless. The most painful part was the cost—$4,000 out of pocket.

Thinking it was better to pay now than to have an even more expensive and complicated procedure to put in a fake tooth somewhere down the road, I signed on.

But I underestimated two things. One was how hard it would be to cram my daily intake of food and beverages into two hours. The trays have to be removed if you’re having anything besides water, which seemed reasonable until I tried it.

For starters, I have various forms of caffeine throughout the day: tea, Diet Coke, and coffee. It takes a minute, because I don’t swill any of those drinks.

Now throw in snacks and meals. Going out to dinner? Having a few drinks with friends? Add that to your total time without trays. It’s surprising how easy it is to blow right past the two-hour “trayless” allotment.

Then there was teaching in Invisalign. I felt like I was wearing my old field hockey mouthguard while attempting to sound authoritative in front of a group of teenagers.

“Guysshhh! Evrbuddy shhhit downnn!”

“I meean uuuht!”

And top it off with having to take the trays in and out of my mouth while at school, in restaurants, or in other public venues. To pry them off, I had to reach deep into my mouth and give them a hard yank. That felt as mortifying as if I were to floss my teeth in public.

But I stuck it out for several months, putting the trays in at night and at times during the day, hoping to elude my dentist’s notice at check-ups.

He didn’t seem to catch on at the beginning, so I got cocky and started wearing them less and less during the day.

And, like the teenagers who sit in my classroom every day, I was annoyed when I got busted at a later appointment. I had a tense conversation with the dentist about whether I wanted to continue with Invisalign.

I insisted that I did (“yes, doctor, I do want braces!”), but as time went on, my motivation waned. I decided to kick the can down the road and just get a fake tooth when (or if) the time came.

Mark Zuckerberg must have heard me talking. As soon as I started discussing CPAP machines with friends and family, this ad started popping up on my Facebook feed.

It can be hard to know when to walk away from something that isn’t working, and sometimes quitting is the harder choice. But that doesn’t make it wrong.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I have to trust my own instincts and recognize that just because something works for lots of other people, it doesn’t mean it’s going to work for me.

As the folks from Lofta might say, it all starts with knowing what your body needs.

I still can’t say I know exactly what my body needs, even at my advanced age. But I know it isn’t trays or nasal pillows.

Another Ounce of Clarity

Learning to appreciate the impact we have on others

A few weeks ago, I was scrolling through Netflix and decided to watch a new documentary about Noah Kahan, a musician I was only vaguely familiar with.

About halfway through the film, Kahan is alone in a dressing room before the first of two sold-out shows at Fenway Park in Boston, warming up on his guitar, when a teenage girl and her father are brought in.

She’s frail, and it’s clear that she’s gravely ill; her father tells the musician they are on a “bucket list trip.”

As Kahan absorbs the meaning of that, the young woman tells him how important he’s been to her.

“You’ve gotten me through a lot of my treatment,” she tells him. “Whenever I’m anxious, or nauseous, or sad, or happy, I listen to your music.”

He seems taken aback and deflects the compliment, but also shares that he’s honored and happy to have helped in any way.

He asks if she has a favorite song, then plays it for her. She sits weeping at the beginning, but eventually starts singing along, and breaks into a big smile as she looks back at her dad, who is taking photos.

When the song is over, he gives her a big hug and smiles with her for pictures.

My first thought as I watched this scene was that Noah Kahan had no idea what an enormous impact he’d had on this young fan.

The moment was striking, especially as I watched the rest of the film, because it’s obvious that he has labored over trying to feel better about himself and the way he looks.

When he’s getting prepared by a makeup artist for a press day and is staying silent to save his voice, he writes things like “I have a face for radio,” and “they’re putting lipstick on a cow.”

He later says he’s always felt “physically ugly, facially ugly, mentally ugly.”

Watching thousands of people sing along with him at his concerts and seeing how much they enjoy his show made it clear to me that there was an enormous disconnect between his self-image and how others see him.

The film also shows an event for the Busyhead Project, a nonprofit Kahan started that promotes access to mental health services, especially in rural areas. The organization works to reduce the stigma around seeking treatment for mental health.

This young man, who is 27 at the time of filming, has already brought so much good into the world, but is almost blind to the positive effect he’s had on others.

It reminded me of a reel I saw on Instagram last year entitled “Your impact on others is greater than you’ll ever know.”

One of the greatest tragedies in life
is that you will always be loved 
more than you will ever know

Someone on the street loves your smile
and it brightens their path 
for the next few blocks

Someone you used to be friends with
still wishes to fondly call your name

Someone who regularly comes into work
is disappointed when you aren’t there to brighten their day

Someone missed you today

Someone noticed when you were gone

Someone loves you when you’re there

Someone loves you 
when you’re nowhere to be found at all

You may think you have always disappeared
when you’re no longer in the picture

But you’ve never left the frame

A day or two after I saw the Noah Kahan documentary, I happened across something else that seemed to drive home a similar message.

Emily Saliers and Amy Ray during their social media announcement

I watched an announcement on Facebook by the Indigo Girls, one of my all-time favorite bands. I’ve seen them in concert more times than I can count over the last 35 years.

One of the two singers, Emily Saliers, has had a noticeable quiver in her voice during the last several shows I’ve been to. The band’s announcement addressed that. Saliers shared that she has been diagnosed with two incurable voice conditions (she called them “movement disorders”).

At one point during their announcement, she got very emotional as she explained that her voice would never be what it once was. Her bandmate, Amy Ray, also got emotional when sharing that they didn’t want to stop touring.

“I just hope that you can have some grace with my struggles for this particular touring year,” Emily said. “We’re going to work hard to make it good, and then whatever the future holds, we’ll see. But … we want to bring you the best show that we possibly can.”

I didn’t read all 10,000+ comments on the post, but many of the ones I did read echoed what I was feeling after listening to their announcement.

I thought about how their music has been part of my life for decades, how it served as an important backdrop during the years when I was coming out and afterward, and how a vocal flaw one of the singers now has would never change that.

Singing “Closer to Fine” at a post-graduation lunch for my college roommates and our families

I loved their music from the moment I first heard it in 1989. I used to play and sing their first hit, “Closer to Fine,” when I was a senior in college, occasionally joining a couple of musicians I was friends with onstage at local bars to sing it.

As I got older, the Indigo Girls’ identity as “out” lesbians became important to me as well.

I went through an extended period where I was trying to figure out whether or not I was gay. Someone who was trying to help me solve the mystery suggested seeing how I felt the next time I went to an Indigo Girls concert.

As I looked around at all of the openly gay people at the show, I felt uncomfortable … and then mistook that discomfort as a sign that I wasn’t gay. In hindsight, I was just terribly unsettled at the thought of how coming out would flip my world upside down. Wrong barometer!

Later, when I came to my senses and came out, I made it an annual summer event to see the Indigo Girls play live at a nearby outdoor venue. The atmosphere always felt welcoming; it was a place where I could finally feel comfortable in my own skin.

As I listened to their announcement, I was sad that Amy and Emily (I refer to them as if they’re close personal friends) felt they needed to ask their fans for grace.

Like Noah Kahan, who has brought so much joy and comfort to others through his music and his willingness to be open and authentic, they seemed unaware of the profound impact they’ve had.

There are reasons all three musicians might not be able to fully appreciate their accomplishments. Kahan has described his struggles with depression and anxiety as an ongoing journey, and the Indigo Girls are understandably concerned about the significant vocal issue Emily now faces.

But it seemed to me, in the days after I watched the movie and the announcement, what a shame it was that these individuals were so focused on what they lacked.

And it occurred to me that this idea applies to me too.

Very few of us are like these three rock stars, with thousands of people screaming along to our songs, but many of us also focus on all the ways in which we’re inadequate. I know I do.

I’ve been a public school teacher for three decades, and now I’m doing some public-facing writing. I’ve generally been very critical of myself in both arenas, hoping my work has had a positive impact but fearing it hasn’t.

If I were friends with Noah Kahan and the Indigo Girls, I would encourage them to spend less time focusing on things like weight, looks, and sounding perfect, and more time appreciating any good they’ve been able to bring into the world.

And then I might try to follow my own advice.

About the Dress

Finding the Meaning in Objects

Marie Kondo has nothing on me.

Long before I heard the Japanese professional organizer’s advice to keep only things that “spark joy,” I was maintaining a spartan environment.

Years ago, a friend walked into my house for the first time and looked around. She seemed confused.

“Where’s your stuff?”

“You’re looking at it,” I said.

Though I choose to surround myself with less “stuff” than others, I know that doesn’t make me a morally superior person. I just find that a simple, uncluttered environment gives me peace. Or maybe it gives me a false sense of control in a chaotic world.

Either way, even I have held on to plenty of objects that have emotional significance. A guitar I bought almost 30 years ago. Letters from my dad. Hundreds of photos of my son and other memorabilia from his childhood. A watch from one of my grandmothers. A book from the other.

And a few years ago, I had an object made that quickly became one of my prized possessions, something I expect to keep for life: a ring that connects me to my family.

When my parents moved out of our childhood home, my siblings and I helped clear the house before it was put on the market. We each brought things back to our own houses afterward, with a plan to divide them up later if necessary. The two big things I took were the silverware and the photo albums.

Life was hectic and emotional in the months following the move, as my mother was put in hospice and then passed away. The silverware and photos sat in a room in my house for several months.

Over the summer, when school was out, I had the time and emotional energy to sift through what I had brought home. I started with the silverware. Because I don’t entertain with formal china or silverware, I knew the whole set would end up sitting in a closet.

I thought of having the silver melted down and made into a ring, but apparently, that’s a difficult process. Instead, after talking with my siblings, I decided to sell the silverware and use the money to have a new ring made.

Next, I went through the photos and began separating them into piles to send to various people. As I was doing that, I found something interesting.

Among my mother’s photo albums, one was from her parents. Tucked into the back of the album was an envelope labeled “about the dress” in my grandmother’s handwriting.

Inside were two letters written in 1955 from a mother and daughter who lived in Scotland. From what I can gather, this Scottish family lived in France near my grandmother’s family during the first four years of her life.

Both letters referenced a christening dress that my great-grandmother had made by hand. It seems that my grandmother knew this family had the dress and wrote to them asking them to send it to her.

I was struck by the fact that my grandmother wrote to two women in Scotland she had never met, more than 35 years after her mother had died, to ask for the christening dress.

I was also struck by the fact that she sent the letter in 1955 and kept the responses for the rest of her life. She died in 1989.

I never spoke with my grandmother about her own mother. I now know that my grandmother was just 23 when her mom died after being hospitalized in a psychiatric institution for a year. Even if I had asked, I don’t know that my grandmother would have shared any deep insights into what memories she carried or how she felt about her mother’s hard life and sad death.

But I found it telling that decades after losing her mother, she reached out to strangers on a different continent in an effort to retrieve a physical object, something beautiful her mother had made.

I think it’s safe to assume that she went to such lengths to track down a dress made some 60 years earlier because she wanted a connection to her mother. And she may have wanted the dress to be handed down to future generations in hopes of keeping her mother’s memory alive.

Under very different circumstances, the ring I had made in 2023 serves me in the same way that I think the christening dress served my grandmother. It’s a small object that represents a bigger idea.

My ring reminds me of the silverware and all the meals I had with my family, especially on holidays and special occasions. It makes me think of my parents and the many people they welcomed into our house. It’s a touchstone that takes me back to other times.

The design of the ring, which I saw online, photographed, and brought to a local jeweler to replicate, has its own significance. The three strands of silver remind me that I’m one of three siblings. When I look at it, I think of my brother and sister, two of the most important people in my life.

When I told the jeweler why I was having the ring made, he had the idea to inscribe my family’s last name on the inside. At this transitional stage of my life (as an empty nester living solo and periodically feeling untethered), the ring is a tangible reminder that I’m an essential part of something bigger.

Many of our most prized possessions bring us back to a feeling, to a time or place that makes us happy. And when we hold onto these objects, we’re often holding onto memories.

Even a minimalist like me knows the difference between a tchotchke and something precious. And even I understand how important it is to make room for things that carry sentimental value.

I keep the ring in this dish I gave my mom for Mother’s Day one year. It was one of the few things I took from my parents’ house.

Unsubscribe to Resist

Using Our Wallets to Protest

I used to teach a story in my high school English classes called “Thirty-eight Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police.” It was a 1964 New York Times article about a woman who was killed by an assailant because her neighbors, who heard her being attacked, never called the police.

It later turned out that key details of the story were misreported, but the article led to interesting discussions with students about apathy, responsibility to others, and the role of a bystander.

I thought of the story recently and realized that I’ve been feeling like a bystander for the last year.

As I’ve watched one story after another surface about people and laws being violated by Donald Trump and his administration, I’ve had a growing sense of guilt about my own inaction. It feels like I’m witnessing a crime in real time, but have no power to stop it; it’s a horrible sense of helplessness.

Like many others, I’ve been stunned at how much damage has been done in 12 months. I expected that Trump’s second term would be a revenge and personal-enrichment tour, but its scale has been far worse than I could have imagined. I’ve spent a lot of time staring agape at the headlines and news shows, trying to make sense of what’s going on.

I’ve struggled to understand how Americans who consider themselves to be devout Christians can turn a blind eye to the cruelty of this administration. As Texas state representative James Talarico pointed out recently, the Bible is crystal clear about Jesus’s teachings to love your neighbor, feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, and care for the sick. Yet those who still support Trump appear indifferent to those lessons.

I’m particularly astounded by the callous actions of Trump’s closest advisors.

I’ll never understand why there wasn’t more outrage about Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, cutting off life-saving aid to some of the world’s poorest people. After he dismantled USAID (or as he called it, fed the agency “into the wood chipper”), 500 tons of emergency food already approved by Congress, paid for by taxpayers, and ready for distribution by USAID, rotted in warehouses.

It’s now estimated that millions of people will die, including more than four million children, between now and 2030 as a result of USAID being defunded at Musk’s recommendation.

Other advisors have also made decisions that will have a lasting, tragic impact. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has no medical training, has pushed through changes in vaccines that have been widely rebuked by physicians. He has also slashed funding for critical medical research and disseminated dangerous misinformation concerning measles that may have contributed to outbreaks.

Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, whose ancestors fled Belarus before the Holocaust to escape anti-Jewish violence and who were spared the fate of those who stayed behind, now aggressively works against people who have fled their own countries to find safety. He was an architect of the “kids in cages” policy separating children from their parents during Trump’s first term, a policy that involved such sloppy record keeping that more than 1,000 of those children have never been reunited with their parents, even after their immigration cases had been resolved.

Though Miller was reckless with other people’s children, he’s sensitive about what his own kids are exposed to. He recently sold his $3 million Arlington, VA, home and moved to a military base, saying a small community group had created an unsafe environment for his children because they wrote in colored chalk on the sidewalk in front of his house.

A few of the messages on the public sidewalk near the Millers’ home

Perhaps what has confounded me most over the last year is that some people still see Trump as a great American. I don’t think we’ve ever had a less “American” president. Even the least respected of his predecessors pale in comparison in terms of ignoring court orders, suppressing the free speech of anyone who criticizes him, using the office for personal financial gain, and turning Americans against each other.

Part of the paralysis I’ve felt since last January stems from a deliberate strategy called “flooding the zone.” Advisor Steve Bannon bragged about it in 2018, and the plan is in place once again. The goal is to throw critics off balance by introducing an unending wave of initiatives. Just as people absorb one shocking piece of news, it’s displaced by another. This strategy has definitely left me feeling overwhelmed on more than one occasion.

But it’s been a year since Trump’s chaotic second term began, and the time for being incredulous, for trying to make sense of what’s happening in our country, is over.

After watching the horrific videos of Renee Good and Alex Pretti being shot to death by federal agents in the streets of Minneapolis last month, and hearing the disgraceful government smear campaigns against both individuals afterwards, I know I need to do more than gnash my teeth with family and friends. I’ve contacted my (Democratic) senators and Congressman multiple times over the last year, but that is not enough.

One idea I heard last week sounds promising, especially if many people take it up. Scott Galloway, a professor at New York University, has organized a month-long economic strike. He points out that Trump doesn’t respond to outrage, but he does respond to market shifts.

As with all authoritarians, Donald Trump doesn’t operate in a vacuum. He’s surrounded by people and corporations who’ve helped carry out his agenda. Galloway proposes protesting the events of the last year and the acquiescence of CEOs, especially in the tech field, by cutting off economic support for companies who have aligned themselves with the Trump regime.

Examples include Apple, whose CEO, Tim Cook, went to the White House hours after Alex Pretti was killed and smiled for pictures without a word of pushback about the brutal killing. Cook has participated in other fawning incidents recently, such as presenting Trump with plaque atop a gold base.

Amazon is another example. Andy Jassy, the current CEO, was also at the event with Tim Cook. Founder Jeff Bezos was an honored guest behind Trump at the inauguration, and his company paid the Trumps $40 million for the rights to make a documentary about Melania, then spent $35 million promoting it.

These are just a few examples of many where “tech bros” and others are sidling up to Trump in hopes of currying favor that will benefit their businesses.

An economic boycott is not a new idea. But after seeing how quickly Jimmy Kimmel was put back on the air after thousands of people canceled their Disney subscriptions last fall, it seems like this type of activity could be effective.

Scott Galloway’s Resist and Unsubscribe website explains the concept in greater detail. Briefly, his point is that 70% of our economy is driven by consumer spending. Small, coordinated changes can make a noticeable impact.

Both parties in Congress have inexcusably failed to check Trump’s abuses in any meaningful way, so everyday people must step in to push back on his unconstitutional conduct. The most powerful weapon of nonviolent resistance may be to speak to Trump and his sycophants in the only language they seem to understand: money.

Removing my financial support from companies that are affiliated with this frightening regime may not be enough to stop Donald Trump and his allies from being who they are, but given the corporations’ devotion to profits, this economic strike could lead to corrective action.

In addition to canceling a number of my subscriptions, including everything I have with Amazon and Apple, I’m also going to look for other ways to participate more actively in resisting the rot currently underway in the United States. At the very least, I’ll feel like less of a bystander if I am taking steps, however small, to make things better.

If you have also felt powerless and disgusted, I encourage you to consider joining me in this economic boycott in any way that feels right to you.

Goodbye and Hello

Losing a beloved pet and beginning a new chapter with another

I spent the last weekend of October in a small town in western Virginia with three friends for our annual peak-leaf-viewing getaway.

The second night we were there, I had just poured myself (another) beer when I was called to the phone. As I walked over to take the call, I wondered who needed to speak to me at 10 p.m.

It turned out to be my friend Kelly. She was very upset.

“Susie, Stuey died!”

My mind went blank.

“What?”

Since 2020, Kelly and I have had an unusual cat-sharing arrangement. She had wanted to adopt a cat but was concerned about her busy travel schedule; I had also wanted a cat, but my son, who was still living with me at the time, was allergic, so it would be hard to have a pet full-time.

I suggested that Kelly get a cat, and volunteered to be the permanent, free pet sitter whenever she was out of town. She adopted a kitten named Stuey, and we had been happily co-parenting for the last five years, with Stuey splitting his time evenly between our two houses.

But now Kelly was calling to tell me that the young woman staying with Stuey at Kelly’s house for the weekend (we were both out of town) had come home from dinner and found Stuey lifeless on the kitchen floor. He was gone.

Stuey’s death didn’t make any sense to me; he was only five. We later learned from the vet that he likely had HCM, a heart condition in young cats that usually goes unnoticed and can take them suddenly and without warning.

It was too late for either of us to drive home that night. Kelly’s next-door neighbor went over to help our cat sitter and put Stuey in a box in the living room.

I immediately began trying to digest the devastating news. As I talked with my friends, who all knew and loved Stuey, I heard myself saying things like “Well, he had a great life” and “I guess he was only meant to live for five years. I’m still glad we had him.”

It wasn’t until I went to bed a couple of hours later and started scrolling through the 1,923 pictures of him on my phone that the tears welled up as the loss began to sink in.

Dozens of pictures reminded me of his personality.

The next morning, I met Kelly outside of her house as she returned from her weekend destination, and we walked inside together.

You find out a lot about yourself in moments like this.

I adored Stuey, but didn’t want to see him. He had been dead and in a box for more than 12 hours, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get that image out of my mind. I didn’t want to remember him that way.

Kelly did want to see him, and she said goodbye to him in her living room as I waited in another room. Then she moved him into the carrier we had used to transport him between our houses. Together, we were going to take him to the vet, whose office was only a mile away.

I offered to drive. When she suggested putting Stuey in the front seat, where he had always travelled, my spine stiffened, but I reluctantly agreed.

The sides of the carrier are mesh. As I walked around to the driver’s side of the car, I flashed back to all of the times I had picked the cat up at her house and baby-talked to him as I drove him back to my place. Now he would be sitting in the same position, dead.

I pictured myself driving to the vet with my head out the window, trying not to feel sick to my stomach. I was wishing I could crank my head up and sideways out the window, so it was completely outside the car. Just as I was taking a deep breath and trying to steel myself for the drive next to my fallen soldier, Kelly saved me.

“Or do you think it would be better to put him in the back seat?”

“Yes,” I garbled, “I think that would be best.” And then I promptly rolled down all of the windows.

When we got to the vet, Kelly went inside to handle the paperwork, and Stuey remained in the back seat. I got out and stood next to the car in the parking lot, providing as much company and protection as I could.

“Do you want to come in?” Kelly asked when she came out to the parking lot to get the cat. The vet was going to provide a room for a goodbye. I told her I would come into the office with her, but not the goodbye room.

Even in that moment, it struck me as weird that I could love an animal so much and want as little to do with the end arrangements as possible.

Why would I rather gnaw my hand off than face a dead cat? I wasn’t sure what that said about me, but I didn’t feel proud of how I was responding.

After we left the vet’s office, we went to Kelly’s house and spent some time reminiscing about Stuey. Then I went home. Even though it had been a couple of weeks since he had stayed with me, the house felt empty when I walked in. Quiet. Still.

I spent the rest of the day on the couch in a haze. It still didn’t even make sense. Stuey was so young. He was generally very healthy, except for being overweight. (But who isn’t?)

I eventually contacted people in my life to let them know. I phoned my son, who was shocked and sad, but also relieved to hear that I wasn’t calling about a human relative.

About an hour after we talked, he texted a handful of pictures he had taken of Stuey that I had never seen.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” he wrote, “I know he kept you company.”

And that was just it. The cat kept me company.

I’ve always heard that pets are especially good for old people and for people who live alone, and that was certainly the case for me. Even though the cat was only with me part of the time, and I wasn’t even his official owner, like most pets, it felt like he was part of the family.

Before Stuey came along, it had been more than 20 years since I had had a pet. Now it felt like there was a gaping hole in my life.

In the weeks after he was gone, I thought a lot about Stuey, and also about the arrangement of essentially sharing a pet with Kelly. It had worked out so well. When either one of us was out of town, with very few exceptions, the other person was around. And it was just fun to raise an animal in a little village. I hoped she would be interested in adopting another cat together and was happy to learn that she was.

We didn’t talk about timing. I know we both wondered how long we should appropriately remain in mourning before getting another cat. We were both really sad about Stuey, and neither of us wanted to be disrespectful to him by “replacing” him too quickly, if that were even possible.

A couple of weeks later, there was a cat adoption event near us, and Kelly asked if I wanted to go, just to start looking. I was on board.

The weeks without Stuey had coincided with the beginning of November, which is typically a low time of year for me because of the diminishing light and shorter days. The idea of starting the process of bringing life back into the house made me feel hopeful.

On the day of the event, as we were getting out of the car at the pet shelter, we agreed again that we would not be getting a cat that day. We were just dipping a toe back into the pool.

An hour and a half later, we came out with a kitten, a soft, seven-month-old tabby cat who likes to play and who purrs loudly. He’s a Mackerel tabby, we were told, so we settled on Mackie as a name.

He has adjusted quickly to life at both houses, doing lots of inspecting, pushing things onto the floor, and finding the best places to take naps. It’s been great to have a furry friend around the house again.

I’m glad we didn’t wait any longer to get our new guy, because waiting wouldn’t have changed how I feel about Stuey. I still have 1,923 pictures of him on my phone, and no one will ever replace him.

Mackie, who looks a little like his predecessor, minus the white paws

Important business: attempting to catch a fly on the window

My new companion also seems to like sports

Giving Up the Ghost

Christmas and Expectations

When I was a young adult, I remember hearing that the holidays were hard for many people. I understood what the words meant, but because my family’s holidays had always been uncomplicated and upbeat, I didn’t appreciate what people were talking about when they said it.

Then I got married, adopted a child, and got divorced. And I began to understand why holidays might be hard.

I distinctly remember the first several years after my husband and I split up. We had decided on an alternating schedule for our son. He would have Thanksgiving with one family and Christmas with the other. The following year, we would do the reverse.

We had also agreed to stay in Virginia for at least part of Christmas Day, even though both of our extended families were from New York, so the off-year parent could see our son for a few hours, exchange gifts, and have some version of a meal.

When my son was about five, it was an off-year Christmas on my end, so he was with me for a few hours in the morning. Then he went to New York with his dad. I had a girlfriend at the time, and she went to visit her family in another state.

That left me alone by about 1 p.m. It was a weekday Christmas–a Tuesday–and I remember sitting at the kitchen table, paying bills like it was any other Tuesday. It was pretty depressing.

Each year since then, I’ve been sure to make plans that involve something other than paying bills, and some of those holidays have been lots of fun. But none of them have had the look or feel of the Christmases I grew up with and expected to replicate as an adult.

Christmas was a big deal in my house when I was a kid.

Every year, my parents put up a tree a few weeks before the holiday, and we all decorated it together. My dad made two big wreaths and hung them on either side of the front door, then strung lights in the bushes outside. Inside, my mom put up greens and holiday decorations collected over the years. The stockings she had knitted for each family member were hung on the mantle.

Even the cat and dog got in on the action — the little red stockings are theirs

Dinner on Christmas Eve was usually spent with family friends. When we got home that night, we drank eggnog and sang Christmas carols from songbooks I can still picture.

My sister and I slept in the same room on Christmas Eve, even after we moved to a house where we had our own rooms. Whoever was up first woke the other person, usually at a ridiculously early hour. We then had to wait until 7 a.m., when my parents allowed us to go downstairs.

Next to the Christmas tree in the living room was a crèche. Baby Jesus spent the weeks leading up to Christmas lying next to the manger. On Christmas morning, my father read a very long Bible passage about the Nativity, and then one of us got to move baby Jesus into the manger. Then we (finally) got to open our gifts before going to Mass.

After church, my mom made a big brunch, and we ate on special Christmas plates her father had collected one by one over a number of years.

Christmas afternoon always involved a big gathering with my father’s brothers and their families. It was a busy day with cousins, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, food, gifts, chatter, and laughter.

My childhood Christmases probably had tensions I don’t remember or didn’t even realize were there. I just remember them being lively and full.

I have replicated a few of those traditions as an adult. I get a tree every year and put up some of the ornaments that used to hang on my parents’ tree. I also put out some decorations around the house, though in a style more minimalist than my parents. But the day is much quieter than it was when I was young, and the way I celebrate it has changed every year.

Some years my son has been with me, and some he hasn’t. Some years I’ve been partnered, and many years I haven’t. Since getting divorced from my husband, I’ve never developed a consistent, happy Christmas Day routine like I had when I was a kid or during the years we were married.

Instead, I’ve found myself cobbling together plans each year and getting through Christmas Day, rather than looking forward to it.

I recognize that other people have far weightier reasons for struggling through the holidays, especially those who have lost someone close to them.

Ironically, some of my family’s happy routines likely grew out of my mom’s response to the glum holidays she experienced as a child.

My grandmother’s father died of tuberculosis when she was four; nearly 20 years later, her mother died in a psychiatric institution; and when my grandmother was 30, her first child died of pneumonia at 19 months.

I know early death was much more common in those days. Still, that was a lot of loss for a young person to handle, and I can see how someone would feel low during the holidays many years later, thinking of all the people they were missing. I believe my mom went to great lengths to make our holidays celebratory and special so that we wouldn’t experience them as she likely did as a child.

I’m sure many people who struggle through the holidays have things under the surface that they’re thinking about, as my grandmother undoubtedly did. Holidays can shine a spotlight on anything that isn’t right in your life; any emptiness feels worse at Christmas.

It dawned on me recently that I’ve been focusing on emptiness for the past 20 years. When I was young, I always assumed I would be married for life, to a man, and have three or four children. (Wrong, wrong, and wrong.)

While I know that divorcing my husband and living a gay life was right for me, I realize that I’ve spent decades feeling sad that my makeshift holidays bear no resemblance to the Norman Rockwell-ish Christmases from my youth.

And I think it’s about time for me to give up the ghost, as they say, to stop feeling that my Christmases these days are “less than” because they don’t look like they did 50 years ago, under entirely different circumstances.

So, here’s to the setting of a new tradition from a person who has spent a lifetime seeing the glass as half empty. Here’s to recognizing that all of my Christmases, every single one of them, have been incredibly abundant and privileged.

And here’s to letting go of the expectations of how things were supposed to be and appreciating and celebrating how good things actually are.

My dad the night before my brother’s first Christmas

My second favorite Christmas gift — a cowboy hat

The mildly lopsided tree at my house last year

An ornament I made as a child, along with others from many different years and places

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

My friend Jane once shared the expression that baseball is 20 minutes of excitement crammed into three hours. Like most people I know whose eyes glaze over at the thought of the game, the end of the 2024 Major League Baseball season a few weeks ago was not a source of sadness for her.

But it was for me.

I spent most nights this past summer watching the Los Angeles Dodgers. Through the magic of the MLB app (and $75), I was able to see all of their games live or on replay. If I didn’t watch the game, I tracked the statistics on my phone the following morning, usually before I got out of bed.

Following the Dodgers this closely was a relatively new phenomenon for me. The New York Yankees have always been my team. When I was 10, I even wrote a book about their 1978 season, which culminated in a World Series victory over the Dodgers. Many of the lines in my book were plagiarized from Sports Illustrated, but since I didn’t sell any copies, it wasn’t a problem.

Cover and Page 1 of this 12-page thriller written on typing paper

If you had bumped into me in the summer of 1978, I would’ve happily bored you with statistics of my favorite players–Ron “Louisiana Lightning” Guidry, Chris Chambliss (who signed my baseball mitt at a local car dealership), Thurman Munson, and of course, Reggie Jackson.

A highlight of that summer was the playoff game on the last day of the season that pitted the Yankees against the Boston Red Sox. I watched it with my next door neighbors, my tackle football mates, and we all lost our minds when a terrible Yankee hitter named Bucky Dent (or Bucky F*cking Dent, as many Red Sox fans call him) smacked a home run to win the game.

This summer, as I watched both the Yankees and Dodgers have successful seasons, I hoped for another World Series between New York and Los Angeles. Though I spent most of my time following the Dodgers, I expected to root for the Yankees if the two teams played head to head. To my surprise, when my wish came true and the World Series started, I found myself rooting hard … for the Dodgers.

Did this make me a turncoat? A traitor? A jerk?

Maybe.

If so, I’d like to place part of the blame on the Washington Nationals. I moved to Washington in 2001 and gradually became a fan of the adopted hometown team. Each season, I went to at least a few games. One of the best days of 2019 was going to Nationals Park for a Game 7 Watch Party the night they won the World Series.

My feelings about the team abruptly shifted in 2021 when they traded two of their best players to the Dodgers in July, the first of several “business decisions” that effectively dismantled the squad. Partly out of spite, I decided to watch the ex-Nationals’ games instead of the Nationals. I discovered that a couple of players I liked from teams I hated (the Red Sox and the Atlanta Braves) were now playing for the Dodgers.

I also found that watching the Dodgers brought back fond memories of the late 1970s, when I was at the height of my fandom, and of my charmed childhood.

I understand why the large majority of my friends and family find baseball unbearably boring. A Wall Street Journal study showed that players are standing around doing nothing during 90% of the average baseball game.

But for me, the sport is not just about how much action there is on the field, or even following a specific team. I love it because it’s tied in with so many happy memories.

I’m not just watching the game in front of me when I watch baseball, though I’m doing that too. I live alone and work from home in the summers, and baseball gives structure to many of my evenings.

It’s also a continuing drama, with storylines and characters. In the same way that many of us get attached to famous people we’ll never meet (and feel sad when a television series is over, for example), I come to care about players and their stories.

This season I came just short of falling in love with Shohei Ohtani, the Japanese superstar in his first season with the Dodgers. I stopped what I was doing every time he came up to bat, read dozens of articles about him, and followed him on Instagram. My feed is full of video clips of Shohei, his wife, and his dog Decoy. He became my Taylor Swift, someone I watched with unadulterated joy.

Shohei Ohtani prayer candle a friend made me for my birthday in October

I came to admire Ohtani not just for his tremendous athletic skills, but also for how he conducted himself. He was meticulous in his preparation for games. He was respectful to teammates and opposing players, tipping his helmet to the umpire and the opposing manager and catcher before his first at bat in each game. He was at least outwardly humble.

His demeanor brought back fond memories of the year I spent in Japan in the late 1990s. I saw in Shohei Ohtani many of the qualities that had impressed me 25 years ago when I worked with Japanese people of all ages.

He is expected to be named the National League Most Valuable Player this week. If he is, I will feel proud, as if I helped him win the award.

The Summer of Shohei aside, my most happy baseball memories connect the game to my family.

My parents’ first date was at the Polo Grounds in New York, at a Chicago Cubs-New York Mets game. The easy conversation they enjoyed that day led to 59 years of marriage and three kids.

When each of us turned 10, they took us away for a weekend by ourselves. For my “10 Trip,” my parents took me to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Many years later, when I had a son, I took him on a “10 Trip” to Cleveland to see the Yankees play the Indians.

He’s 22 now, but I still cherish the many hours I spent watching him play baseball, from the time he was four through his freshman year in high school. He loved playing, and I loved watching his games.

A line in an article I read recently resonated with me: “Baseball binds generations like no other sport.” I don’t know if this is true for everyone, but it seems about right for me.

A Small Number of Days

A week before Mother’s Day, I walked out of a bookstore in Washington, D.C., got in my car, and backed straight into a parked pickup truck. I actually watched the whole thing unfold on my car’s rearview camera; it even took me a moment to stop after my bumper made contact. The gentleman sitting in the pickup truck seemed as surprised as I was.

The bookstore I had just come out of had a prominent display of Mother’s Day cards that caught me off guard. I found myself tearing up at the sight of them and left in a hurry, only to notice as I walked to my car that there was a mural painted on the side of a building that read “Call Your Mother” in giant letters. (I later learned it was the name of a delicatessen in that block of stores.)

Earlier that day, I was thinking that I was doing better than I expected just three weeks after my mother’s death. But maybe that’s how grief works. One moment you’re feeling fine, the next you’re in a fog because you’ve had a reminder of the person you’ve lost.

My mom’s death on April 21 was not unexpected. She was hospitalized in early March with a blood infection and moved from the intensive care unit to hospice five days later after doctors shared her prognosis: the only fix for her infection was major surgery, and they weren’t sure she was even a candidate. My dad and siblings and I ultimately decided the only choice was to honor my mother’s wishes in the living will she signed years before dementia set in. There would be no extraordinary measures taken, no artificial feeding tubes or intubation, no waiving of the Do Not Resuscitate order.

It was to be a tough end to a tough few months. As we anticipated, she didn’t understand why she had to move in January to the memory care unit at Brightview, a senior living facility, or why she and my father weren’t in the same room. She never stopped asking to go home.

I believe each member of my immediate family will count the first few months of this year as some of the hardest in our lives.

My parents both caught Covid three weeks after moving in, and what was left of my mother’s cognitive skills never returned. It was only a few weeks later that she was hospitalized and subsequently transported by ambulance from the ICU near Tarrytown to Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, a facility devoted to caring for people with advanced illnesses, many of them terminal.

We didn’t expect her to be at Calvary for long. A palliative care doctor at the ICU who met with our family to discuss options examined her and said she expected my mom would live “a small number of days.”

She cautioned that it was impossible to predict exactly when the end might come; it might be sooner or much later than a few days. She was right about that. My mother ended up living for another 5 ½ weeks.

Morning walks to the water near my sister’s house brought a welcome dose of serenity

During those weeks, we spent more time together as a family than we had since my siblings and I were in high school. Expecting the end to be imminent, I stayed at my sister’s house near Calvary for three weeks, then went home to Virginia for two weeks and returned for another week. My brother came back and forth from Boston and was also a lodger at my sister’s house. Throughout our comings and goings, my sister and dad went to the hospital every day.

My brother and I commandeered the office in my sister’s house for remote work

I’m not someone who always looks on the sunny side of things. The month and a half my mom was hospitalized was a profound and dark period, to be sure. What surprised me, though, both at the time and in reflection, was that there was some beauty amidst the suffering.

One unexpected bright spot was the people we encountered at Calvary. Compared to the ICU, with its flurry of beeping monitors and people rushing in and out, Calvary was quiet and calm. But more impressive than the atmosphere was this group of individuals who have the capacity to work with the terribly ill every day. When I could bring myself to glance into other rooms as I walked up the hall, I saw people who were bloated, hazy, listless. It takes a special person to give compassionate care to the sickest among us day in and day out. And yet the nurses, aides, doctors and the social worker were, to a person, competent, gentle, and respectful with patients and their families. I found it stunning.

One of the first mornings we were there, I said to one of the nurses, “This must be a hard place to come to work every day.”

She looked confused. “No it isn’t. It’s a good place to work.”

Her brow furrowed and I was immediately embarrassed. I mumbled something about not being good with medical things before moonwalking away from the nurses’ station.

In addition to the superb group at Calvary, I was also touched by every kindness shown to me and to our family. Friends dropped off food, puzzles, bags of groceries. Drove me to and from the train station. Called, texted, and sent cards and flowers letting us know people were thinking of us. Arranged to have a meal delivered. Invited us over for drinks. Brought over a meal and spent an evening with us.

Gestures from my immediate family touched me too. My brother, who has made more than 30 lasagnas since the pandemic started as part of Lasagna Love, decided we needed a lasagna, brought down the ingredients from Boston, and made one for us. My sister, who quietly kept us all together, did scores of thoughtful things, including making me a sandwich and putting a Diet Coke in the car for me as I got ready to drive to the hospital the morning we were told that my mom was close to the end. My father continued to think about others during the saddest period of his life, showing up one morning with a birthday card and three wrapped books he had carefully chosen for my brother-in-law.

The small things mattered.

A book I read about palliative care as I traveled between New York and Virginia helped me feel more at peace with the situation. It was a reminder that death is natural and certain, and sometimes the best we can do is make sure our loved one is as comfortable as possible and then just walk alongside them.

My last real interaction with my mom came two weeks before she died. I walked into her room, took her hand, and said hello. Though it’s been quite a few years since I crossed a street holding her hand, it felt familiar. “Hi Toots,” she said softly, her voice hoarse but clear, and she pulled my hand up and kissed it, then smiled.

At the lunch after my mom’s funeral. It felt a little weird taking a smiling picture for such an occasion, but the wake and funeral truly felt like celebrations of her life. She would have loved the fact that we were all together.

Perhaps the most unexpected outcome of my mom’s time in the hospital was that it made me less afraid of death. That may be in part because she was so diminished – so small and vulnerable, not at all as she was during the rest of her life – that there was no doubt this was her time to go. The mental and physical aspects of her life were over. We do only get a small number of days, after all, and hers were clearly done.

As with most mothers and daughters, ours was not a perfect relationship. There were frustrations and arguments over the years. But these last few months I have found myself coming back to one simple thought: I’m glad she was my mom.

I’m not sure either one of us could have hoped for more.

This Old House

I learned recently that my dog helped our family buy a house.

In 1977, when I was nine, my parents put in a bid on a house two blocks away. The house went on the market in the morning, and before noon, the sellers had four identical offers.

After weighing their options, they decided to accept my parents’ bid when they learned that my father was the man who always walked a three-legged dog past their house. Our dog, Inky, had been hit by a car the year before. She survived, but one of her back legs had to be amputated. While some of our neighbors didn’t know us, many of them recognized Inky, and that turned out to be the reason we ended up at 138 Kelbourne Avenue.

The rest of my family was excited about the move, but I wasn’t. I was happy that I’d be getting my own room – my sister and I would no longer have reason for regular turf wars – but I wouldn’t be able to look out the window to see if my friends were outside playing kickball or Kill the Carrier. I groused about having to walk two whole blocks to find playmates.

Little did I know that this house would serve as the backdrop for most of our family’s important life events for the next four decades.

Two months ago my parents moved out of the house and into an assisted living and memory care facility. My siblings and I have spent a lot of time at the house since then getting it cleared out so it could be sold.

Eloquent birthday poem I wrote for my dad

Going through the closets and boxes was like opening a time capsule. We discovered that my mother kept EVERYTHING. In neatly labeled boxes in nearly every room upstairs, we found drawings, music programs, and elementary school report cards (my teachers wrote things like “Susie is trying to control her silliness!” and “Susie will have to be careful of ‘attitude’ and ‘behavior’ in the future”). There were poems, postcards, letters home from college. I even found the book of cut-out letters and pictures that my mom and I made together when I was learning the alphabet in kindergarten.

In addition to the volume of memorabilia, I discovered that my siblings and I are remarkably in-sync as adults. Even though we have very different personalities and have been spread out over the Eastern Seaboard for the last 30 years, as we’ve come together to clear out the house, we have been in lockstep about what is important and what is not important. Important: supporting my dad, trying to ensure that my mom is being well cared for, breaking down the house efficiently and respectfully; not important: claiming furniture, jewelry, and other material goods from the house.

If you had told me when I was a kid that my siblings and I would be so aligned as adults, I might have been surprised. After all, some of my clearest memories in the house are the epic fights I had with each of them.

My brother Charlie was in the room next to mine and hated listening to me practice my saxophone. He claimed he couldn’t concentrate on his studies over the sound of scales and repeated renditions of “The Pink Panther.” My parents took his side and I was sent to the basement to practice so he could concentrate on his homework. That lasted a few weeks. Then he got caught listening to records instead of studying, and the jig was up. Every time I see a picture of the band KISS or hear a song from Frampton Comes Alive, it brings a huge smile to my face. Show me the way, Chibs!

My sister Kathy and I fought bitterly about the telephone. Whenever I was on the phone, she needed it. To get some privacy, I would pull the phone across the breakfast table and squeeze into the powder room, closing the door hard on the cord. Inevitably, my sister would pick up another extension and shout, “I NEED THE PHONE!” and I would shout, “I’M ON THE PHONE!” and then my mother would shout, “GIRLS! STOP SHOUTING!” Whoever I was talking to would get an earful – usually my friend Sandy, who would say, “Your sister always needs the phone!”

On days when I got in big trouble at school, my siblings were eager to get away from me. Most nights we ate dinner as a family at a small table, and you could really feel the tension when something was awry. The night after I got suspended for smoking cigarettes in 8th grade was especially unpleasant. My father dismissed my brother and sister from the table so he and my mother could interrogate me about what on earth I was thinking. I can still hear the clanging of the dishes as my siblings jumped up to get away from the table and out of the line of fire.

Apart from leaving me alone to clean up my own mess, they were generally very kind to me and the three of us were on the same side. We were The Kids and my folks were The Parents, and there was never any confusion about who was who. My parents didn’t involve us in their adult concerns, which allowed us to just be kids together.

After we finished high school and went off into the world, to college and semesters abroad and living in other cities and towns, we always came back to the house, and to my parents. The place continued to be the hub of family activity. When each of us got married and had kids, we brought other people around, and they became part of the history of the house as well.

Because I live the farthest from New York and have the least flexible job, most of the work in breaking down the house has fallen to my sister and brother. I honestly have never admired them more. They have selflessly worked to take care of detail after detail. They are reflecting back the devotion that my parents showed to us during our childhood.

One of the few things I could do remotely was to go through the many hundreds of pictures that were in photo albums and boxes. Doing that has given me a sense of the continuity that comes when a family lives in a house for 45 years. The photos showed how rituals and traditions passed from one generation to the next.

My dad was always up for having a catch with any of us in the back yard. When we had kids, he had catches with them in the back yard. Then the grandkids grew up and had catches with each other. My mom and sister did puzzles together a lot, and then my mom did puzzles with the grandkids. At Christmas we always hung the stockings my mom had made for the five of us; in later years, when spouses and children joined the family, she knitted a stocking for each of them.

I also remember watching mass on TV with my grandmother when she came to stay with us after a fall. In the last few years, I have watched mass on TV with my parents when my mom was no longer able to go in person.

When the time came to move out, the house was staged and made into a blank canvas so that others could picture how they would make a life there. Though it was very tastefully done, seeing the house on the internet as a real estate listing felt a little jarring.

When I was looking through the MLS pictures online, I caught myself clenching my jaw involuntarily when I came to the photo of what we called the “family room,” a place where we spent so much time together. It was strange to see a picture of the room all cleared out, without my parents in it.

“Wow,” I said to my dad a few days later, “Another family is going to live in the house. That’s going to be different.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “but that’s what these houses are for. They aren’t for a couple of 88-year-olds who have trouble getting up the stairs.”

He’s right, of course. Nothing gold can stay, as the poem goes, and it is time to let go and pass the house along to someone else. It’s been such a great house for our family, and hopefully the next owners will love it as much as we have.