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

On the Road to Find Out

On his show Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David often notices small, annoying things another person is doing and then can’t concentrate on anything else.

The same thing happened to me last week. I was waiting in line outside my local library to pick up an at-home Covid test kit and noticed the woman behind me kept inching closer to me. Everyone else was about six feet apart and many people were wearing masks. This woman was not wearing a mask or keeping any distance, and it was annoying me in a Larry David kind of way.

Each time I felt her behind me, I would turn around and glare and then move a little further away. She was gabbing on the phone (changing travel plans), and every time I moved away from her, she would step closer. I was wondering whether she was oblivious to my angry glances or if she just didn’t mind being disliked. Both, maybe?

My mental gymnastics on this issue were interrupted by a call from my son, who informed me that he was getting a tattoo in Washington, D.C. that afternoon.

We were three days away from traveling to the University of Michigan so he could begin his first semester, and I was desperately trying to avoid getting sick just before we left.

“Uh, that’s not a good idea,” I told him.

“Why not?”

“Because you are going to be exposed to additional people.”

“Well, I have an appointment and I’m going. I want to do this before I go to Michigan …”

As he was emphasizing the importance of keeping his tattoo appointment, I pressed the little red button on the bottom of my phone screen.

Bloop!

End of conversation.

“Wow,” I thought to myself, “I guess I’m a little more stressed than I realized.”

When I got home, he let me know he didn’t appreciate being hung up on and asked if I was going to apologize.

My response: “What???”

Then I yelled myself hoarse. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it was something along the lines of how I had canceled all kinds of plans and stayed in the #$%^ing house for ten days to make sure I was able to go to Michigan with him and he didn’t seem to give a #$%^ about avoiding Covid. At the end of my speech, I slammed the door to my office and sat down at my desk.

“Nice apology!” he yelled.

After briefly considering homicide, I took some deep breaths and decided to move on.

The lease on the apartment where my son lived for the last year ended a few days before Christmas, and he had moved home on the 22nd. His classes at Michigan would start the first week of January, so our plan was for him to drive with his dad and his things to Ann Arbor. I would be flying to Detroit that same day and meeting them there.

The two-part move during the holidays and the surge in the pandemic made for a tense ten days. We’ve had a lot of conflict over the last few years; that pattern was compounded by the strain of living together again – even briefly – and the nervous anticipation of the upcoming move.

Part of my stress was about fear that something might go wrong for him in this next grand adventure. When I saw this ceramic sign a few weeks before Christmas, it dawned on me that I was more worried than he was. I decided to buy it for him, but in truth it was really more of a reminder for myself that my glass-half-empty approach was not serving either of us.

Mercifully, we were all able to avoid getting sick, and last Sunday we traveled safely to Ann Arbor.

Even in freezing weather in early January, the campus was striking. Ann Arbor is a cool town, with lots of little shops and restaurants and things to do. As we walked around, I was pleased for him that he will have any number of places to explore over the next two-and-a-half years.

I was also so proud of him. If he had listened to me, he would’ve taken a gap year after high school to work and mature and then started college last fall. When I made that suggestion partway through his senior year, he asked, “What’s a gap year?” and then flatly rejected the idea.

Instead, he enrolled himself in the local community college, worked harder than he had ever worked before, and earned excellent grades. He researched four-year schools and decided where he wanted to apply, then worked with a friend of mine who does college planning to fine tune his applications.

After getting into Michigan, he lined up off-campus housing for himself – an independent unit in a large house with 11 other guys, where he will have his own kitchen, bathroom, and living area. As his dad and I helped him settle into the house, it became clear that it was a great place.

We had not spent this much time together since we were a family of three 17 years ago. As my ex-husband worked to fix a frozen pipe and I arranged things in the kitchen, it felt like the best parts of what we had been as a couple were on display. My ex-husband and I both wanted to be there to send our son off. It wasn’t discussed, but I sensed that all three of us were comforted by the time we had together as we quietly worked to set up the apartment.

After I got back to the hotel that night, I happened to hear Cat Stevens’ On the Road to Find Out, a song about a young man leaving his family to launch his life. I immediately felt a lump of emotion in my throat as the significance of the moment started to hit me.

The next morning my son and I spent a little time together before my flight home. As I was saying goodbye, I started to tear up. Not wanting to do that in front of him, I told him I loved him, gave him a hug, and left quickly.

I cried the whole way to the airport. I was grateful that I was alone in the rental car so I didn’t have to feel self-conscious or explain the groundswell of emotions to anyone. I wasn’t even sure I understood how I felt.

After all, my son moved out a year ago. He’s almost 20. He is at a great school in a vibrant town, and his housing situation seems perfect for this first semester. This is the right step for him. Plus, embarrassingly irritable middle-aged women and 19-year-old young men with ants in their pants do not make good roommates, so I was not questioning the wisdom of his leaving home.

But there is something primal about leaving your child in another part of the country and heading home on your own that drives home the point that a life stage is ending.

Parenthood is a humbling experience. We care about these little people, expending more time and energy and angst and hope and love than we knew we were capable of, and then eventually we have to stand back and let them make their own way in the world.

Linda Pastan’s beautiful poem captures the experience of these watershed moments when we watch our children wave goodbye.

To a Daughter Leaving Home

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.

The house where the boy now lives now with 11 others

The middle of campus. There is a superstition that stepping on the M leads to bad grades

Downtown Ann Arbor — a stone’s throw from Central Campus

One of the many places to get Michigan gear. I do love the colors and the football helmets

Put on Your Old Green Bonnet

Last week I was in the Albany area in New York on my way to spend the evening at the home of a friend from college. I had arrived in town early and decided to walk around the campus where we went to school — Siena College in Loudonville.

My visit coincided with the start of a college search for my son, who is looking to transfer from our local community college to a four-year school in another city next spring.

As I walked around campus, so many good memories washed over me and I found myself thinking that wherever my son lands, I hope he finds what I found at Siena.

I was on the low end of the maturity scale at 17 when faced with the decision of where to go to college. More than a little apprehensive about leaving home, I actually announced to my parents that I might not go to college at all. Their response: I was more than welcome to take a year off and work … and then go to college. That did not sound appealing so I quickly rethought the idea.

As we began looking at colleges, my main goal was to find a place where I felt comfortable. I was looking for a small school within a few hours of home, with access to public transport so I could easily come home for long weekends. I looked at a handful of schools, getting a cold feeling at one college in Connecticut (no one even looked at us or said hello as we walked around campus), and a slightly warmer feeling from a couple of schools in Pennsylvania, but I didn’t like how difficult it would be to travel home without a car. I visited Siena and stayed over with a friend from my hometown who was a sophomore there. She and her friends could not have been nicer, and I finally felt I had found a school that was a good fit for me. I applied, was accepted, and decided to enroll.

Fortunately, I played field hockey and that made the transition from home to college infinitely easier. I had to report to campus a week before other freshmen for preseason practices. Though I struggled to introduce myself on the first morning of practice (I mumbled my name and hometown and was mortified when I was asked to speak up and repeat myself), the people on the team were very welcoming, and it didn’t take long before I felt that I was going to be ok.

That was the beginning of four happy years in Loudonville. What I had seen on my overnight stay as a high school senior was exactly what I found as a student. As a downstate New Yorker, I was amazed that it was the norm for people to make eye contact and say hello around campus — even when they didn’t know each other. Stunning!

Two young pups on the first day of freshman year

Because the school only had about 2,600 students, including commuters, and most people were friendly, it was easy to meet people and settle in. Life on campus was simple and manageable: classes during the weekdays, mostly in one building; meals in the one cafeteria on campus; and studying in the library at night.

On weekends, the social life mostly centered around parties in the dorms followed by trips down the hill to a cheerful establishment called Dappers. Fake IDs may or may not have been required.

It was in this environment that I not only had a ton of fun and learned a lot, but also built friendships that have lasted for more than three decades.

I know I am not the only person who went to a college, big or small, and came out with fond memories and lifelong friendships. I’m not exactly sure what it was about those four years that created such a bond, but Siena did feel special, and I think it has something to do with the simplicity of the time and place.

Not only did we not have Smartphones or the internet, most of us didn’t have cars or TVs, and we didn’t have phones in our rooms. We got to know each other so well in part because we interacted and connected for longer periods of time than many people do now. I usually called my parents on Sundays from one of the payphones in the hallway on my floor and occasionally wrote and received letters. Otherwise, there weren’t a lot of outside distractions. We lived in small cinder block dorm rooms and we figured out how to keep ourselves entertained.

As an aside, rooms seem especially small when your roommate tips over the dresser while curling her eyelashes and a bottle of Obsession perfume smashes all over the floor. But I digress.

Part of our entertainment involved music. We arranged the beds to accommodate my giant 1980s stereo system. We occasionally removed one of the windows so a speaker could face outward and play music for anyone below. (You’re welcome, everyone who lived on the quad from 1987-1989. I hope you enjoyed Sweet Home Alabama.)

Today I would be hard pressed to live with that many people in such a small space. Share a bathroom with 70 women? No thank you. But at the time, I felt I was living large, staying up as late as I wanted, cooking noodles in a hot pot at midnight, and looking for high jinks around the dorm. We were a bunch of Catholic kids away from our strict parents and there was a lot of fun to be had.

Some of the best times I had at Siena were playing sports, field hockey in the fall and lacrosse in the spring. In addition to the games and practices, it was hard to beat driving around upstate New York in a van on the way to games at other schools scream-singing Build Me Up Buttercup, Sweet Caroline, and other classics. I still miss being on a team.

I wore number 56 in honor of Lawrence Taylor, my favorite linebacker

There were other parts of my four years that enriched my experience. I spent the spring semester of my junior year in Spain, and though I was insufferable when I came back for senior year, thinking I was sooooo worldly after having lived in EUROPE, it was an incredibly interesting experience that helped me grow up and expand my point of view.

I also had an on-campus internship during my senior year with the sports information department that involved writing articles for the basketball program, compiling statistics, and working in the office. One of my most profound takeaways at the time was a fascination with this newfangled thing called a fax machine, but it turned out to be valuable preparation for the work world and led to a job immediately following graduation with an Albany-area branch of GE.

The friendships I developed are what I appreciate most from my time at Siena. There were so many great people, and though I have lost touch with many of them, I still smile when I remember things we did. I’ve maintained close contact with most of my roommates and a few others. I had the good fortune of meeting a bunch of Chatty Cathies who were fun, smart, and loyal. Over the last 35 years, we have seen each other through all of life’s events — weddings, births, new jobs, moves, divorces, illnesses, and deaths. I always know I have a crew behind me for whatever comes up.

Places change over the course of 30 years; there are new buildings on campus and other shifts in the landscape, but I was struck by how the place basically felt the same as I strolled around last week, even in late July when the campus was nearly empty. There still seemed to be a palpable sense of belonging that was so present while I was a student.

After I left campus last Monday I spent the evening with two close friends from Siena. We did what we always do — laughed really hard and told stories and gave each other lots of free advice. We don’t see each other often, but when we do, we pick up right where we left off and it’s as if no time has passed.

Picking a college can end up being a pivotal decision in a young person’s life, setting a course for where they’ll live, who they’ll marry, and friends who will stay with them for the long haul. Siena was the ideal school for me at that point in my life. My wish for my son is that he finds a place where he is enveloped into a community as I was, one that grounds him and provides him with a foundation that has a positive impact on his life.

When your roommate dresses as you for Halloween

Minnie Mouse, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and Cher from Moonstruck. She’s just kicked a can down the street.
(I’m Tammy Faye)

Coffeehouse with my talented friend Jimmy

Trying so hard to follow the example and sit like a lady

Crushing it with our signature celebration move

Birthday celebration a few years back with fellow Arlingtonian and Siena grad

The crew in town for a bachelorette weekend prior to wedding #2

The fight song might be asinine (see first line in the title), but it’s a pretty campus

The dove over the altar in the chapel, the most peaceful spot on campus

True (Part-Time) Companion

If you’ve ever sat through an online meeting and learned after the fact that your microphone was on, you know that feeling of horror. It’s especially terrible when your boss is speaking to you and more than 60 of your coworkers and you learn that you have just interrupted the discussion by yelling, “Hey! Hey! Keep it moving!”

This was what happened to me a few weeks ago during a virtual faculty meeting. My cat walked across my keyboard and turned on my microphone. I’m still not sure which key he stepped on, but it isn’t the first time he’s discovered things about my laptop that I was unaware of. (Who knew it had airplane mode?)

To let the cat know that this was wrong behavior, I shouted and quickly scooted him off the keyboard before adding (loudly), “Not on my computer!”

It didn’t take long for my work friends to start blowing up my phone. The first message I received is below. Mercifully, the assistant principal (a cat owner herself, as it turns out) immediately muted me, so the only comments that went public were brief. I’m told there was an awkward silence after my outburst and then my principal continued on with his remarks.

The next day I was in school laughing about the event with a coworker before things got awkward again.

“Your cat is so funny!” she told me.

“Yeah, and the thing is, he’s not really even my cat!” I answered.

She looked confused. “Huh?”

It was then that I explained the unconventional cat-sharing arrangement I am part of these days. Last fall, my friend Kelly was debating getting a cat but had concerns about her busy (pre- and post-Covid) travel schedule. I offered to be the permanent, free pet sitter any time she went out of town, and voilà — a plan was born. Kelly asked her niece, who fosters abandoned cats in New Jersey, to procure us our new best friend — something very young and very cute. The one condition of his adoption: Kelly was asked to keep the name given to him by the pet adoption group.

A couple of months later, a kitten named Stuey arrived. He had been found in an apartment complex just across the river from Philadelphia. Apparently, he was one of the most sought-after kittens in the litter because he didn’t run away from people like some of his siblings.

The origins of his name are unclear, but I personally hope he’s named after Stuart Little, the charismatic little rodent from the book and the movie, and not Stewie Griffin, the smug baby who speaks in a British accent on the TV show Family Guy. But who knows. He could be named after somebody’s grandpa.

Either way, for reasons even I don’t understand, I find myself calling him Bubbe (pronounced Bubbie), which is the Yiddish word for grandma. Hopefully this does not offend any Jewish grandmothers.

Though Kelly has not traveled much because of the pandemic, we have gotten into a routine where Stuey spends a week or two with me each month. Our running joke is that Stuey has two moms and that Kelly and I are like exes sharing custody. But unlike the moms in the classic 1980s book Heather Has Two Mommies, Kelly is not interested in women; I am the only one of Stuey’s moms who dates ladies.

Regardless of the fact that this was never a coupling, it is remarkably close to joint parenting. We incessantly discuss every aspect of Stuey’s behavior — his sleeping habits, favorite foods, etc., etc. In fact, we talk about him so often that friends and family who are much less intrigued by the cat’s every move are politely begging us to take it down a notch. Stuey himself seems well adjusted to having two homes. He may be the only cat I know who willingly walks into his pet carrier when it’s time for him to travel to his “other house.”

I love cats and always thought that I would get a kitten of my own as soon as I was able, but as it turns out, I’m perfectly happy with this rather bohemian arrangement. My son is allergic to pet dander, so it didn’t make sense to get a cat while he was living with me. However, he moved into his own apartment in December, so that’s not an issue anymore.

I am finding myself surprisingly comfortable with an empty house and a quiet period, especially after a year and a half of full-time single parenting and a tumultuous few years before that when I was preoccupied with the beginning and shortly thereafter the ending of a marriage. As self-absorbed as it may sound, the idea of not committing full-time to anything right now as I decompress feels like exactly the right move.

The time I do spend with Stuey is everything I had hoped for. He makes me laugh. I never quite know where he is going to pop up around the house. He loves to sit on my lap purring while I watch TV. He splits his time evenly — 50% snuggling, 50% biting, scratching, and running around the house like a maniac. I’m hoping the percentages will shift a little as he gets older.

After being dismissed from my afternoon class

Is this the elevator that goes to the basement?

Biting and scratching aside, Stuey has helped me understand why so many people have pets. The statistics vary depending on who you ask, but most groups agree that more than half of American households include a pet, and it’s not hard to see why.

There’s something primal at work with pets. Having somebody or something to take care of gives us a sense of purpose and makes us feel needed. Doctors say humans are mentally and physically healthiest when they have secure attachments to others. Pets can provide the love and companionship a person needs, especially people who find human company taxing.

Even those of us who don’t like animals more than humans understand the appeal. Relationships with pets are simple. They’re happy to see you every day. Most enthusiastically greet their owners each time they arrive home. They’re happy with simple pleasures like spending time together without conversation. And odds are better than half that you’ll win any argument that arises.

They’re also great for kids in terms of building empathy and teaching responsibility. They become important members of the family. I grew up with a cat named Boo and a three-legged dog named Inky, and I loved both of them with all my heart.

I have to admit that I began to sour on dogs about a decade ago, but that was mostly out of jealousy. When I switched teams I had no idea that the lesbian community held dogs in such high regard – so much so that several of my girlfriends seemed to prefer the company of their dogs over my company. In retrospect, I probably would have done better if I had acted less like a Grand Poobah and been willing the share the road a little more with my canine competition.

As my skin grows thicker, I’m slowly pulling out of my unjustified bitterness towards dogs. I don’t feel I have the time or energy to manage a dog on my own right now, but I am considering getting one dog or maybe even two once I retire. If I do, I plan to name them Charlie and Kathy, regardless of gender, in honor of my siblings. You’re welcome, Chibs and KTG.

And at some point, I hope to have another human companion. In the meantime, I’m good with my part-time commitment to a little furry guy from South Jersey.

Hello, Old Friend: Anxiety Returns

I was halfway over the bridge when I realized my stomach was in a knot. I was gripping the steering wheel so hard that my hands hurt. My palms were sweating. My jaw was clenched. I was in the right lane but found myself leaning left onto the door and driving on the center white line to feel as far away from the edge as possible.

After what felt like an eternity, I made it to the other side.

My first thought: PHEW!

My second thought: I have to get home on Sunday. I’m going to have to do this all over again.

I was crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland on my way to spend the weekend with some friends in Delaware, my first foray out for a non-family get-away in more than a year, and my sudden burst of fear caught me off guard.

Apparently, I’m not the only person who has this response to the Bay Bridge; it is high, long, and narrow, with ridiculously low guardrails. It has earned votes as the “scariest bridge in America,” causing so many to panic that there’s actually a company that drives people over the bridge in their own cars (one way) for the low, low price of $25.

Still, I was surprised and annoyed at my reaction. Anxiety has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, from day-to-day excessive worrying and catastrophizing to phobic feelings about bridges, tunnels, heights, and doctors. But for the last three years, I have experienced much less anxiety, thanks primarily to meditation.

I actually owe some of the shift to Ellen Degeneres. I happened to be watching her show the day her guest was Bob Roth, a Transcendental Meditation expert who taught Ellen and her wife how to do TM. She said it made a huge difference in lowering her stress level.

Though I thought the name made the practice sound weird (I somehow associated “transcending” with levitating), I knew that science had long supported the positive impact of meditation. I was struggling in my marriage at the time and was desperate to find a way to quiet my mind and make sense of what was going on. I decided to do the TM training and began meditating each morning before starting my day.

Soon after I felt a noticeable drop in my anxiety level. There was nothing magical about it; I just felt I was able to slow my thoughts and function with a greater sense of calm. I eventually found that I was doing things like crossing bridges without really thinking about it. And generally speaking, since I started TM, I have felt less angst when dealing with stressful situations. This is why I was taken aback by my experience last weekend.

I was having a great time with friends — chatting, laughing, drinking beer — but was surprised at how many times my mind kept coming back to the return trip across the Bay Bridge. I knew I was overreacting and unnecessarily expending a ton of mental energy on something that was going to last about five minutes. I just could not shake my sense of dread. It was like having a great time at a party but noticing a man in a trench coat in the back of the room with a grim, knowing stare waiting for you.

I seriously debated dodging the event altogether and taking a longer route home to avoid the bridge. Ultimately, though, I knew I would create a bigger problem for myself if I avoided it and decided against the alternate route.

It was not an easy trip home. Every time I saw a sign for the bridge my stomach sank, and for a good half hour as I approached, I felt the same tightness in my body I had experienced two days earlier. But I jackassed my way over the bridge by talking to myself loudly and making note of my progress. (“I can see the other side now!”) I can only hope that nearby drivers thought I was either singing along with a great song or enthusiastically talking with a friend on speakerphone. It was an ugly win, but a victory nonetheless. I felt a tremendous sense of relief once I made it across, something that almost approached euphoria.

And away we go — driving onto the bridge on the way home

Part of me is embarrassed to write about this. There is such a gap between what I understand intellectually (I’m going to be fine) and what I feel (my last memory will be of this bridge) in certain situations. I know I have an irrational sense of danger about a number of things. I have been driving for 36 years and I’m quite good at driving in a straight line, for example, so I should not feel a sense of terror while on the road. But knowing you’re being irrational and stopping the thought are two different things. I have felt the sting of a dismissive eye roll many times over the years when I have expressed fear, and that doesn’t make anything go away, it just drives it underground.

A lot of this doesn’t make sense to me, including why fear would crop up again so fiercely after a period of marked improvement. Or why people are afraid of some things but not others. Doctors drive me to distraction, but spiders don’t bother me in the slightest (if I come across one in my house, I get it to crawl on a piece of paper and bring it outside). Don’t bring me to the top of a skyscraper to sightsee, but I love going to parties and don’t even mind going by myself. It seems that one person’s nightmare can be another person’s oxygen.

I do know that I am hardwired for anxiety, and I can either continue to work to manage it or become increasingly debilitated by it. Last weekend I was reminded that it is not possible to declare a final victory over something just because there has been improvement. Daily meditation has been tremendously helpful but is clearly not the only step I need to take to deal with this issue, especially since it is not limited to one situation but fans out into many aspects of my life.

Anxiety has made my world smaller over the years. I hope I can reverse this and live more fully by simplifying my goal — to something like “better, not fixed.”

It’s actually pretty when you are not trying to cross it

My First Turkey

Most years, I am a carefree attendee of a large family gathering on Thanksgiving, yucking it up with other guests, occasionally offering to pass an appetizer, get someone a drink (while I am getting one for myself), or bring an extra chair to the table. Not this year.

After weighing the potential risks of spending the holiday with my parents, I decided it was important to see them and made plans to spend a quiet Thanksgiving at their home in New York. My son and I got COVID tests, packed a bunch of masks, and drove up from Virginia on Thanksgiving morning.

My sister had lined up an entire cooked meal for my parents, my son, and me and brought it over in the early afternoon. After a brief outdoor visit, she and her family returned to their pod across the county.

I’ve been known to be unhelpful at all of my previous Thanksgivings. My brother once accused me of getting bedsores on my rear end while others scurried around getting the meal together. This year, I felt it was time to reverse the trend.

Since I’m 52, some might find it a little surprising that I’ve never prepared a Thanksgiving meal. A few years ago I made three side dishes to bring up to my parents’ house (the standard-issue ones from the 70s that all require Cream of Mushroom soup), but the turkey and several other aspects of the meal were taken care of by others, so I can’t take credit.

This time I insisted that I would handle everything. My dad offered to help, but because I wanted to be the hero, I told him to just relax, eat the appetizers (that my sister had brought), and watch football. Plus, how hard could this be?

Here’s what was on the docket of — and this is key — already-prepared foods:

Turkey
Stuffing
Mashed potatoes
Gravy
Sweet potatoes
String beans
Turnips
Brussels sprouts

The first order of business was figuring out how to reheat all these dishes. The food was hot when my sister dropped it off at 1 p.m., and my parents wanted to wait until 5 p.m. to eat, so refrigeration and reheating were the challenges before me. I successfully use 350° to cook all of my batches of Duncan Hines brownies and concluded that what worked for boxed brownies should also work well for reheating an oven full of vegetables, starches, and meat.

The 10-pound turkey was whole and would need to be carved. I resisted the urge to ask my dad for help, even though he has successfully carved turkeys for 50+ years. I figured my good friends at YouTube would provide adequate instructions for my maiden turkey-carving voyage.

After scrolling through videos with titles like “Your First Turkey!” I landed on a Buzzfeed video called “How to Carve a Turkey.” I liked that it would only cost me 2 minutes and 53 seconds because I was already feeling behind schedule.

I started to become alarmed at their “you will need” list:

Two cutting boards (why two?)
A very sharp knife (shudder)
Tongs or a meat fork (I think there’s one of those around here somewhere)
Kitchen towels (to mop up the blood?)
Turkey platter (buried deep in a cabinet, I think)

The video helpfully breaks the carving process into steps. Here’s how they went.

I started the whole operation at 4:40 p.m. after promising the meal would be ready by 5 p.m., so there was no time to “rest.”

Use a kitchen towel to prevent wobbling? Wobbling was the least of my worries.

This is where I completely lost confidence. Surgically extracting the wishbone seemed VERY COMPLICATED. And gross.

Also, turkeys have wishbones? I thought that was just chickens.

(Side note: the wishbone had already been professionally removed. I just didn’t realize that, so in hindsight, I could have waited until Step 4 to lose confidence.)

Forcefully? That sounded aggressive.

If there was any forceful sawing, it involved trying to get this plastic contraption off the two legs. The turkey was already dead, so I wondered why there was a need to work so hard to prevent it from running away.

More advice involving joints and cutting with a very sharp knife. Have I mentioned my disgust for anything medical?

More importantly, this seemed like a tremendous amount of work just to get one drumstick.

I can’t be sure, but I believe this is where I abandoned ship and decided to just go it on my own. I have manhandled many a rotisserie chicken, and the turkey just seemed like a bigger version.

And thus I began the real work, starting with an effort to get the giant drumsticks off the turkey. Turns out Buzzfeed was right – this did involve quite a bit of force and hacking on both sides. I deposited the newly-separated drumsticks in the tinfoil tray and then set out to get the breast meat.

Using the sharp knife, I was able to get breast off on the right side but not cleanly. I made one cut on the left side and concluded that it would just be easier to yank the rest off than to continue using the knife.

Around this time, my son paid me a visit. He surveyed the situation and looked troubled.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

I had one hand clamped on the bird and the other hand wrenching the meat off.

“Carving the turkey!”

It felt a little like a Julia Child moment, if Julia Child were wearing a hoodie and speaking in a much lower octave.

I plopped the breast on the cutting board and started to cut. The meat shredded into small pieces.

I remembered what Mr. Mayer had taught me in 7^th grade woodshop: always cut along the grain. I kept turning the meat in hopes of finding a smooth grain, but never found one. That’s when I decided to just pull the meat off in big chunks and put it in its receptacle.

Speaking of receptacles, somewhere along the line in this sweaty 30 minutes in the kitchen I realized I needed a container for all of the turkey meat. I went to the cabinet and spotted the platter that has been used for the turkey at all family holiday gatherings since the beginning of time. However, I had already had an unpleasant experience looking for a bowl for an appetizer and decided the turkey platter was under too many other heavy bowls and dishes. I chose one of the ones on the top, which was essentially a small salad bowl.

As I turned my attention away from the turkey, I discovered that things were not going that well with the other dishes. They were cooking in a stubbornly uneven way; some were lukewarm and others were less lukewarm.

It was now 5:30 p.m. and I felt that it was time to just get this show on the road. I realized that in true 2020 fashion, this year’s meal was not going to be perfect. Attractively sliced slabs of turkey? Not this year! Multiple dishes all piping hot at the same time? Not quite.

I called everyone into the kitchen and informed them that they *might* want to heat their plates in the microwave. I realize microwaving meat is sacrilege to some people, but it was the best and only option as far as I was concerned.

In the end, here’s how the meal looked.

Tongs usually used for hotdogs can also be handy with turkey

Everyone was polite about the quality of the heating job and the less-than-glamorous presentation of the food, and overall it was a very enjoyable event.

The moral of the tale?

I gained a new appreciation for everyone who has ever served me a Thanksgiving meal. I struggled mightily to put out multiple dishes at once, and all I had to do was reheat them.

So to my mom, my sister, my Aunt Adriana, and my former in-laws, I want to say thank you. I’m amazed at how effortless you made a very complicated meal look year after year.

Consider me impressed.