THANKFUL

It’s been a really long time since I skipped a Thankful Friday post. I also have not taken a week of vacation to stay home since…well, since a really long time. I don’t want to write about the last time I stayed home for a week. Let me tell you about this week, well last week, but you get it. First, I went on a wonderful retreat with a lovely group of women. We dug for crystals and made magic under the light of a full moon. I knew that I would want a day of recuperation from this retreat and I first intended to only take off Monday. Then my friend Melissa said “We need to go see The National at Grinders!” and I said “We do need to go see The National at Grinders!” That concert was on Tuesday and I knew that I’d be cranky and tired if I went to work the next day. I looked at my vacation time and it suddenly made perfect sense to just take the whole week off from work.

So, what did I do with a whole week to myself?

Well, one day I did absolutely nothing but go grocery shopping and lay on the couch watching TV. Then there was one day when I had breakfast with my friend Jenn and cleaned a lot of the house. Like behind the toilet cleaned the house. The next day, I scrubbed the kitchen and even cleaned the dog door flap so that you can now see through it. I took everything out of my dining room hutch and took the hutch apart. Then I bought paint and new hardware. I spent one day painting the hutch. I made pizza dough. I put the hutch back together and took the Cabbage to the dentist. The new handles for the drawers required new holes drilled because I could not find anything to fit the pre-existing holes. Michael took care of this on Saturday, as well as installing a new closing mechanism for the doors. Everything was put back into place and the hutch looks like a new piece of furniture. Also, it no longer squeaks and rattles when you walk by it.

Two of my camp/self care circle buddies rode with me to the retreat and one of our topics of discussion was on how the Self Care Circle thing was working for us. This is what I told them. The goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year have gone mostly nowhere. I haven’t actively worked on at least two of those goals in months. One goal was to get to know my new camera and I’m counting the moments I pick this camera up as time spent working on that goal. Everything else has sat gathering dust bunnies, but here is how the circle has helped me. I have a visual record of all the things I do everyday with my color coded calendar and I have gotten better at not being my own personal bully. The very idea of taking time off work just to stay home would have been a hard pass not a chance concept for a past version of me. Even now, I have a growing list in my head of things I did not do last week and this would normally leave me feeling guilty and regretful. I have learned to have grace for myself and instead of being left with a not enough feeling, I feel very impressed with the things I accomplished last week. Sure, I could tell you all about the things I did not do, like get on my yoga mat or write. I barely even took any photos. I sure didn’t walk the dog (I did wash her). The things I didn’t do, doesn’t matter.

Last night in Self Care Meeting, we talked about minimalism and cleaning out spaces. I’m really good at purging my closets and books. What I am not good at is purging things from my calendar. This is where I need more space. Last week was kind of about that. It was me taking care of all those home chore tasks and projects so that I can free up time for the things I want to be doing. Now all I need to do is figure out what it is that I truly want to be doing.

WHAT WE DO ON THE WEEKENDS

Here was the original plan for Saturday. I would get up and do the weekly food gathering. Then I would go buy new gym shoes, some candy for the Cabbage’s birthday stocking, and some new makeup. After this, I would meet Michael back at the house so we could regroup for lunch. While I was doing all of the above, Michael was supposed to take the camper to the dealership for repairs and stop by Bass Pro for raccoon repellent before meeting me back at the house to regroup for lunch. After lunch, we’d hit up a hardware store and a fancy grocery store before coming home to clean the basement.

Morning went exactly as planned. It was the afternoon that got derailed. The derailing of this plan started when Michael was left unsupervised in Bass Pro. All he needed to buy was Fox Pee. That’s it, but not only did he come home with the Fox Pee, he also returned with a very cruel and inhumane trap and a pellet gun. After some serious discussion that included me suggesting he place his own ‘paw’ into the trap to demonstrate how the trap “doesn’t harm the animal”, he agreed that we should return the trap, but keep the pellet gun. I let him keep his pellet gun. He’s going to shoot at some paper targets and then the gun will go into some safe hiding place and never see the light of day again. Five years later, he’ll be cleaning out some box and find it. He’ll exclaim “When did we get a pellet gun?!?!” It will be just like Christmas for him.

So our afternoon was spent driving out to the suburbs to the closest Bass Pro. Then there was a stop at a sporting goods close-out store, Home Depot and the Price Chopper that sells piñatas and has bulk bins of jalapeños. By the time we made it home, I lacked the energy to do anything in the basement. Which I think was Michael’s plan all along. I believe this is his plan for every Saturday, to drag me around all over the city for unnecessary reasons so that I don’t have time to clean and take care of things around the house. These are things that I end up having to do on a Sunday, usually while he’s sleeping or take vacation time just to stay home and clean. That’s what I’m doing next week. Except, I can take the basement and garage off my list because I did get around to cleaning those spaces on Sunday.

While Michael was sleeping.

Turns out I can accomplish a whole lot of chores while Michael is sleeping.

BURGLERY

There was a loud crash that came from the kitchen, waking me up around 3:30 Wednesday morning. At first I thought that Albus might be chasing a mouse or something around the dining room, but then the noises started to sound like someone rooting around in our kitchen drawers. I laid there imagining some person rummaging through our things. I peeled myself out of bed and put on a robe. Then I looked around my dark room for some sort of weapon. I grabbed a yoga bolster, opened my bedroom door, and quietly stepped out into the hallway, prepared for a pillow fight. I poked my head around the corner and made eye contact with a raccoon. The raccoon then scurried from the dinning room and into the kitchen.

I jumped back, my heart beating in my chest and whispered “I can’t do this alone.” So, I did the thing I loathe doing and went and woke Michael up. I said “Hey, I’m really sorry to do this, but there are raccoons in our kitchen and I can’t do this alone.” I don’t know what part of my sentence made Michael suddenly very alert, but he sat up and looked at me with wide open eyes and loudly whispered “There are raccoons in the kitchen?!” I nodded, still clutching my yoga bolster and said “there are raccoons in the kitchen.” By the time we made it back to the kitchen, the raccoons, two of them, had scurried out into the garage where they tried to hide in plain site. We sealed off all of the pet doors and then he proceeded to convince the raccoons to exit the garage while I started cleaning up the mess they left behind inside.

It could have been worse.

They ate the cat food that was still in the cat’s bowl and they pulled pizza out of the trash bin. They had dragged the open bag of cat food into the center of the kitchen but had yet to dump the contents out on the floor. The biggest mess was left in the dog bowl and water dish. Michael had a small planter sitting on the window ledge where he has been trying to grow a banzai tree for the last three years. The small little tree had finally reached a size where it not only had leaves, but it could be shaped. Michael had fixed a paperclip to the stem to encourage it to grow with a bend. The raccoons had knocked over the whole thing, dumping dirt and tree into the water dish and food bowl. I rescued the tree from the water dish and we set it aside so Michael can re-pot it.

As I was washing out the water dish, Micheal came back inside from clearing the raccoons out of the garage. He pouted as he delicately lifted his tree and said “I think one of the took a bite out it.” Then he looked at me and we just sort of stared at each other for a minute. He said “we had raccoons in our kitchen.” I nodded and replied “we had raccoons in our kitchen.” Then we went back to bed, except I laid there staring up at my ceiling and listening. At one point, I was sure they had come back and I got up and did a perimeter check. All of the pet doors were secure, nothing in the basement. I peeked out the front door and watched as one ran down the sidewalk. I narrowed my eyes at the creature and then I went back to bed.

Later, at a more reasonable hour, Michael was getting ready to leave for work. He paused outside of our bathroom where I stood applying face cream. He said “Thank you for asking for help earlier.” This is one of our biggest topics of disagreements. I do not ask for help. Even if it is clear to everyone around me that I need help, I will not ask for help. I will be dragging all of the groceries up the hill to the front door as Michael is on his way out to help me. He will ask “Need help?” and I always respond “No. I got it.” I can spend twenty minutes trying to open a jar, determined to not hand it over to larger hands. “Do you need help?” he’ll ask and me grunting with the brute force I am applying to the lid will mumble “No.” It drives Michael insane.

I believe we both have learned my limits. It’s raccoons. My limit is raccoons in my kitchen.

SPONTANEOUS

Here is what was on my weekend to-do list: laundry, grocery shopping, bin buying, camper clean out, general household cleaning, balloon ride.

I checked all of those things off my list except for the hot air balloon ride. That got cancelled because of wind, but I’m not too upset about that. When I got home from grocery shopping, Michael helped me unload the car and said “let’s be tourists today.” I was still a little bit pouty over the canceled balloon ride, but shrugged and replied “I’ve never been to the Toy and Miniature Museum.” So, we hopped on our scooters in search of lunch before heading to the museum. We found Earl’s Premier while we were looking for something else and it turned out to be a very very good accidental find. It is the kind of restaurant that feels like someplace we’d visit while on vacation. Oysters consumed, we made our way over to the Toy and Miniature Museum, marveling at tiny replicas of chairs and feeling nostalgic over toys. There was one display that contained a grouping of toys for certain years. I looked at this display and said “I had that toy from the 70s, most of those things from the 80s and that Beanie Baby from the 90s.” And since this made me feel old, I dragged Michael over to the Art Deco exhibit at the Nelson so we could look at things older than us.

When it was time for the balloon glow, we decided it would be better to ride the bus than it would be to deal with parking and I am really glad we did this. The event was filled to capacity. Luckily, Michael and I arrived early enough to not have to wait in line too long for food from a food truck, but we were meeting the Cabbage and that side of the family. They did not arrive early. I sat on our blankets as a place holder while Michael and the others scattered off to the food trucks. I waited for ever for someone to come back. I kept watching the fading light and then I’d look up at the spot where I really wanted to be to get good pictures. There were already some people camped out in that spot. Finally, I sent a text that basically read “I might not be here when you get back.” and I started climbing my up to a good vantage point.

I made it to that spot, but there were already three photographers set up there, two of them with tripods. I kind of stood back hesitantly like a wallflower. One of the women noticed me and said “Hey! You want to come over here? We can make space for you!” Then she slid some gear bags over so I could get in the space. I set my camera up on the stone wall and then proceeded to make myself as small as possible so I wouldn’t be in their way. This was unnecessary and a direct symptom of my own insecurities. Two of the women chatted with me about small talky subjects and camera preferences. Then when the show started, we all started clicking shutters and giggling. Trying to capture a balloon all lit up was like trying to capture lightning. It was like we were playing a photographer’s strange version of whack-a-mole. Eventually, I decided to leave that spot for something closer. I thanked all of them for sharing the space with me and they said they’d see me next year.

That was the best part of my day.

For a brief amount of time, I was pulled into a circle of photographers and I was treated like an equal. I got to hang out with the cool kids. I saw respect and understanding when I talked about the reasons for choosing my current camera, because I didn’t just sound like I knew what was talking about. I knew what I was talking about. The moment reminded me of all the times Chad and I went on photo walks together. In that moment, every irritation and annoyance disappeared. Tension and stress from things happening in my life melted away. In that moment, I allowed myself to stop pretending to be a photographer and just let myself be a photographer.

I stopped judging myself.

MY ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

We wandered into a very neat and tidy little independent bookshop on Granville Island in Vancouver and there was a table covered with classic books. Except, when I picked up one of the books and flipped it open, I discovered a blank page. All of the pages were blank and I knew that I had to have one of these journals disguised as books. I chose a blank copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It has been sitting on my desk ever since our return. That’s not unusual. I often buy a new notebook and then wait for a while before I start writing in the thing. I find the new, clean pages of a notebook to be the most soothing aspect of owning it. I am always hesitant to put ink or pencil lead on any of the pages for fear of messing up the beauty of the page.

Of course, after all this time I never thought of flipping that way of thinking. Instead of messing up the page, I could be adding to the beauty of the page.

I’ve been focusing on where I feel the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’ when I say them out loud and when I came across this particular journal, my heart leapt with a resounding yes. I had no idea what I would do with it, nor did I have a need for the book. I just knew I wanted it. I do recognize that I am beginning to fall into a recognizable habit of owning journals that never get filled up. I have a stack of notebooks in my cedar chest that only have writing on the first four or five pages, leaving the rest of the books blank. They are Chris’s notebooks. I never go in and read them, but I will never throw them away. Now I have become the person with multiple journals floating around the house. This one contains a story idea. That one is more than half full of yoga classes I prepared for teaching. Let’s not forget the mostly full Fortune Cookie notebook. That one, right now, is the winner. Not only is it only twenty or so pages away from being filled, it is filled with inspiration. Part of returning to our regularly scheduled program around here, includes me getting back into the Fortune Cookie notebook.

I sat down with that notebook on Saturday morning for the first time in a long time, and I didn’t know how to even begin. Then, just as the story really got good to me, I ran out of room on the page. There is a very disciplined side of me that almost refuses to even place a dot of ink in the new journal before I finish the Fortune Cookie notebook. But I have a packet of fine tipped colored markers setting on top of the Wonderland journal and a clear image in my head of drawing fanciful mushrooms and intricate flowers and maybe filling this one up with something other than words.

I am not an artist.

I am an artist.

Cindy’s Adventures in Learning to Be. That’s the true title of this book.

THE TIME BETWEEN SECONDS

Michael and I rode our scooters out to Lees Summit on Sunday to get our hairs cut. It is not a particularly far distance, maybe fifteen minutes from the house if you are taking the highways, but I don’t do highways when I’m on the scooter. We stick to the smaller side streets, which turn into back country roads. There is a lake and plenty of forested land between our house and our hairdresser’s. It’s a nice scooter ride. As we made our way home, I noticed a doe and her fawn bounding across a yard to my left. They reached the road just as we were nearing and we had to stop so the two could cross. When they reached the edge on the other side, the doe paused, one foot hovering and her head turned looking straight at us, while her fawn darted into the thick brush. Once he disappeared, the fawn quickly followed after. The whole moment was just mere seconds, but the seconds felt stretched out and everything was crystal clear. It was like a dance of quick, quick, slow, slow.

That evening, I wiped off my dry erase calendar clearing away the month of July. Michael moaned as he saw what I was doing and said “Not August! Not the end of summer!”. He goes back to school in few weeks and only has a week and half left to sleep in late and do what he wants. It’s funny to hear him say that summer is over when we are still having hundred degree days. Our August calendar doesn’t look too different from July’s. Still busy. Still filled up with events and appointments. A little bit of travel. Most of the things have been clustered into that week and a half. Then we are back to our regularly scheduled program.

When Josephine and I leave the house in the mornings for our walk, the sky is now dark with only a hint of light in the East. The sun is shifting and preparing for the next season regardless of temperatures. Tuesday morning, as we started onto the side walk of the park at the end of our street, I saw a fox sitting on the side walk at the bottom of the hill. He turned to look at me and then darted off into the tall brush and trees that line the park. Quick, Quick, slow, slow. Slow, slow, quick, quick. These are the dance steps of August and I’m in the process of modulating the music to slow the speed of the song that we dance to. We are traveling to St. Louis to see Andrew Bird next week. I am stuck with the idea of slow dances, the kind where you rest your head on your partners shoulder and just sway gently from side to side.

That’s how I want summer to end, in a gentle swaying motion. I want to ease into our regularly scheduled routine, like maybe getting up an hour later to go grocery shopping on Saturday mornings. Maybe I will get organized enough to start doing weekend chores on weeknights. I want to gradually need to add layers for warmth. No sudden movements, just a gradual shift onto the next season.

Quick, Quick, slow, slow.

REVERSE-THINKING IN EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

I started writing this post weeks ago after reading this article Hypothesis-driven fluorescence microscopy - the importance of reverse-thinking experimental design because it pertains to my job. The article started feeling like a personal attack. So, I started reevaluating the goals I set at the beginning of the year, but some of the blocks I’d put into a particular place shifted into a new place. It’s like I built a very specific pyramid structure with alphabet blocks sometime in January and now that structure looks like steps, really wonky steps like the ones in my basement. That last one is a doozy.

I have been writing here, spilling my guts out for all to read for twenty two years. With each posting, I think I’m being real vulnerable and brave in my sharing, but honestly, I never get that queazy-oh-my-god-i-can’t-believe-i’m-putting-this-out-there feeling when I hit the ‘publish’ button. That queazy-oh-my-god-i-can’t-believe-i’m-putting-this-out-there feeling has happened more times in this year than ever before and has had nothing to do with blogging. At the beginning of the year, I filled out a form answering some really hard question, for Self Care Circle. The questions were part of Human Design and the answers determine what kind of human you are. I am a Generator. Look, you know me. You know how I feel about auras and energy bodies, but I have to admit that there is something in the description for Generator that resonates. As a Generator, I am not a chaser of life. I am at my best when I have to make a decision or have an interaction if the moment comes to me. I need to wait for the moment.

Well, the moment came or I’ve gone off script.

I saw a thing and when I saw it, my heart said “yes!”. For a week, I sat with that yes while doing nothing but thinking about that yes. And I know I’m being vague, but I’m just going to have to be vague about the thing because the thing is not important (yet). The important part is that the thing I saw made me really question my own complacency and complete lack of ambition. I settle into whatever is comfortable and easy, never really pushing myself. This thing caused me to push. It’s made me giddy and simultaneously nauseated. I’ve had to think about what it means to feel valued and if where I am currently is meeting that need to feel valued. Is feeling valued in what I do important to me? I think it might be.

Just a little.

I have no expectations. Either something will happen in regards to my yes or nothing will. For me it’s enough that I did the thing that I was scared to do and put myself out there in a really vulnerable way.

MY HEART WANTS FRIED CHICKEN

Last week, I met with Roze, my self care vibrational advocate and guru. I’d scheduled the meeting to talk about cannabis titrations and developing a plan for taking advantage of the actual medical properties of cannabis, but before all that we chatted about other things. One of things had to do with my tendency to say ‘yes’ to everything. They told me that I needed to make space for me and that requires saying ‘no’ sometimes. Then they said the thing that wrecked me. They said “We are taught to put the oxygen mask on our own faces before helping the person next to us. Cindy, you’ve been holding your breath for a really long time.” There’s a whole a bag of feelings to unpack from this. Anger and shame and relief. Relief from being seen and understood without saying a word. Roze can see right through all of my walls and barriers. It’s something that I hate and love all at the same time.

But yeah, I’ve been holding my breath for a long time.

So, I’ve been practicing with putting my oxygen mask on first. I’m practicing with saying ‘no’ more often instead my default ‘yes’. In our time together, Roze and I established that I feel true yesses in my heart and nos in my guts. I need to pause long enough to notice if my yes is a true a yes. Do I feel it in my heart when I say it out loud? This practice of breaking my habit of ‘yes’ is so incredibly difficult. When Chris died, I jumped off into the deep end of yesses with the idea that this would keep me from becoming a recluse. I somehow got it fixed in my head that saying ‘no’ was a negative response that results in needless disappointment from others. But every time I was saying a not so truthful ‘yes’ to someone, I was saying ‘no’ to myself. I say ‘no’ to myself in so many different ways. No to foods. No to rest. No to loving this body. No to easing up on myself. No to releasing any and all guilt for the few times I give myself the ‘yes’.

We spent the holiday weekend at a lake house with Robin and Summer’s family. I told myself that I was getting up early every morning and getting in a kayak. That first morning, I stepped out onto the deck at 6:00 AM and hauled the kayak into the dock. I spent almost an hour out on the lake by myself. There were no other boats out. The lake water was smooth and calm. It was the quietist moment I have had in a really long time and it was the only morning I made it out for the kayaking experience. After that, I said ‘no’ to the early morning wake up time and ‘yes’ to just floating in a tube like a bobber. I said ‘yes’ to eating the fried chicken my family would drive two hours to eat when I was a kid. The inside of the restaurant looked exactly the same as the last time I was there in maybe 2004 (?). The chicken was almost the same, but not quite. I said ‘yes’ to the memories of Dad which floated around everywhere because we were in the area of Arkansas where we had camped almost every year of my childhood. The Graham produce stand where I’d get my pumpkin every year is abandoned, but still standing. We passed it on the way to the chicken place.

I said ‘no’ to taking pictures.

I said ‘yes’ to eating a chili dog.

I said ‘no’ to immediately going back to work when we got home and instead, took a day to rest.

I’m working on making sure my oxygen mask is on securely before helping others. I might just discover that once my own mask is secure, I’ll look over at the person next to me and find that their own mask is already on their faces. Because as it turns out, not everyone needs help securing their oxygen mask.

CLOSED FOR REMODEL

Not really, but I feel like it.

As I am pondering some current feelings on remodels, I just realized that it is almost July. I generally lean towards feelings of deconstruction and rebuilding in the summer months. I don’t know what it is about the middle of summer and my need to tear down everything and start over. Right now, my feelings of ‘burn it all to the ground’ are exacerbated by my feelings on the current state of a country where I feel like me and my friends are no longer safe and/or welcome. Some have talked to me about seriously moving to Canada. Some of us are just too tired for the fight. I’m leaning towards being too tired. In middle school, I became an activist for the planet, denouncing pollution and handing out free seedlings. In high school, my activism turned to the AIDS crisis and sex education. In college and beyond, my activism turned to voter representation and getting people to the polls.

Today, my activism is in throwing money at Planned Parenthood and AbortionFunds.org.

One of the most valuable and most difficult lessons I learned when Chris got sick was that eventually, I must accept that there comes a time when there is nothing that I can do to fix things.

Do what you can, with what you got, where you are. -Squire Bill Widener

The consequences of accepting that there is nothing I can do to fix this current problem is to turn the fixing to the self. Saturday, I rewarded myself for no reason with a trip to the Container Store where I purchased things to reorganize the linen closet. The linen/medicine closet is now perfectly organized and I can tell you exactly how many COVID home testing kits we have. It’s six. We have six COVID at home tests. I also installed LED lights so we can now see all of the COVID home testing kits. When I felt like I’d done enough with that closet, I moved to the food closet (yes I know it’s normally called a pantry, but a brain fart years ago changed the naming the system). I threw out old snacks and cake mixes and reorganized all of the pasta. I’m not stopping there. I purchased a Bagster dumpster not too long ago that’s begging to be filled up with garage trash. I will most likely tear down this blog and rebuild it with new pictures and ways to purchase pictures and I might start walking around the house punching hand weights into the air (it’s exercise).

This is what I do.

When I can’t fix the big thing, I find other things to ‘fix’. Once, I almost rented a drain snake to cart down to my basement until someone convinced me that I could not physically lift a 200lb drain snake down the basement steps alone. That’s not true. I know how gravity works and still believe I could have gotten that 200lb drain snake down the basement stairs.

It’s the up that’s the problem.

WHERE WHAT WHEN

Last week, I completely spaced on my chiropractor appointment. I got a text from the receptionist asking if I was running late and I was all “running late? for what?” Then I apologized for my crazy brain and rescheduled. I know exactly what happened. I got to work and started dealing with emails and scheduling of microscopes and drinking coffee. The last thing I was thinking about was the way my left shoulder is sitting lower than my right shoulder. I was thinking about scheduling, batch processing slides, and how I am totally unprepared for Camp Wildling that is now nine days away. I am drowning in a sea of slides and will be imaging right up until the very last minute. If I had access to internet at camp, I would probably be remoting in to batch process all the images from those slides.

I do not have access to decent internet at camp.

I also do not have my work email on my phone.

I am nine days away from truly being unreachable; at least by those who do not have my phone number. I am equal parts relieved and terrified by this. I’ve gotten myself used to taking care of things around here and being the one that many of our microscopy users seek out. I feel protective of my grad students and postdocs. I feel teritorial of at least three microscopes in out Core. I know their quirks and tricks and how to deal with them when they misbehave. I worry about what sort of tornado damage I’m going to come back to after being away. Lately at night, I’ve been dreaming of doing the kind of lab work that I haven’t done in ten years and imaging samples that don’t exist. I know what those dreams are saying to me. Those are warnings telling me to step back and take a break.

I don’t want to.

I want to.

I need to.

I’m going to.

In nine, or eight and half days now, I will step away from all of this. I may have all of the things with me that I need for camp and I might not. But I will leave behind the things that will serve me no purpose at camp. I promise, cross my heart. For right now though, I’m just going to stay on top of this slide sea that’s forming around me and continue dreaming about failed DNA preps.

SKATE CITY

Erica, Tania and I have been planning a skate date for ages. There’s a rink in the northland that has a an adult only skate night on Wednesdays, but every time we have set a date, life would intervene. This time, it was Tania who had to work late. So Erica and I decided to go, just the two of us. Erica and her family live just a few blocks west of me, on Terry’s street. I see her and her family playing in the yard and riding bikes all the time now. Josephine makes a point to growl at Erica’s husband when he jogs by us as we walk to the park in the mornings. We’re neighbors but didn’t know it until last year.

I drove over to Erica’s house last Wednesday for our skate date and walked into her kitchen. One child was in the middle of a melt down while the other one solemnly made themselves a snack. Erica’s husband said “I got this.” and Erica and I ran out the back door. It had been a rough day. For everyone. She said that they had not talked about the latest mass shooting with the kids yet, but the kids knew. The oldest is a third grader and Erica figured the kids talked about it at school. The youngest, who is six, was probably just absorbing the vibes around him. I almost asked her “At this point, what do you even say anymore?” but I didn’t.

As we were getting out of the car, Erica confessed to taking skate lessons as a kid and that she owned her own skates. They were white with pink pom-poms and when she said that I gasped. “So did I!” I exclaimed. We walked into Skate City and I looked at her and said “It smells so familiar in here.” Erica nodded and said “A mix of church and movie theater.” It smelled like our childhood. From the earliest time I can remember and well into middle school, the roller rink was a cornerstone in my life. If church was twice on Sundays and once on Wednesdays, then the roller rink was every Tuesday and sometimes Sundays. My skating was nothing fancy, just simple loops around the rink. Occasionally there would be a game of limbo. Occasionally we would all do the Hokey Pokey and turn ourselves around. The first time I ever held a boy’s hand was during a couples skate. I remember how we both wiped our sweaty palms against our respective pant leg afterward.

I do not remember the boy.

My first loop out on the rink wasn’t great. I was disappointed and thought to myself ‘skating should be easier than this’. Was it possible that I’d forgotten how to skate? It took two turns to realize that my wheels were too tight. I’ve never used a skate key in my life, but I instinctively knew how to loosen the nuts on my wheels. Then the skating was effortless. Erica and I swayed easily back and forth, skating loop after loop, admiring the more advanced skaters. Erica introduced me to a couple of her friends that are regulars at Skate City. I wanted to be best friends with both of them immediately. We stood as a pod in a one corner, sipping on fountain drinks and water bottles, laughing and telling stories. Then we skated more loops and for a few hours we were children again.

For a few hours the noise of the world outside was drowned out by loud hip-hop music and the sound of wheels rolling on hardwood.

Tania, we missed you.

THE NOTE I NEVER SENT

June temperatures can be odd here. For the most part, it’s a very tolerable warm and muggy, but in the afternoon, the heat can settle in and feel suffocating. That is how it was at camp last June. The heat would really roll in around 2:00 and everyone would scatter to the pool, the river or a shady hammock. The last full day of camp, I found myself in the yoga shala, our central gathering place for camp activities, right at the hottest part of the afternoon. The yoga shala sits at the highest point at camp and the only place where I could get any reception. I paced the shala as I attempted to upload photos so I could run a slideshow for the evening. Then I started setting up the projector. As I dragged the projector out and started running cords, I was hit with a big dose of doubts. I was afraid that I was not technologically advanced enough to set up this projector.

Funny right? I run complicated microscopy systems and suddenly I was afraid of a simple projector.

There was an older gentleman at camp, a dear old friend of Kelly’s we called Granny. We hadn’t had any interactions all through camp. He seemed to be on the periphery, but in that moment while I was struggling to figure out the projector, he swooped in. He didn’t take over or anything like that. He just became my assistant, supporting me in whatever I needed. Then, when we had gotten everything set up and working, the power for the entire camp went out. We looked at each other and then walked down to the pool. I sat with my legs dangling in the pool and someone handed me a cold beer. There was a small group floating around on various floaties. Granny came and sat next to me and we proceeded to talk and talk and talk. We talked about education and liberal arts. We talked about government and science. It was the kind of conversation that I hadn’t had with anyone in a really long time. It was good and meaningful and important. Those handful of hours were like a drop of water, tiny but filled with a whole world.

The last morning of camp, I wrote a note on the back of a photo and went to put it in his mailbag only to discover that he’d left early that morning while everyone was still sleeping. I thought maybe I’d mail the photo to him, but I never got around to it. Last week, Kelly posted that Granny had passed away. Fast acting cancer. Fuck cancer. So now I have this note that I never sent, a note now for the dead. I’ll just add it to my list of growing questions that I have for Chris, Dad and J. It will probably rest on the altar at camp this year until I set it into one of the firepits. Leave it forever at camp.

This is such a shitty reminder to never hesitate.

Send the note.

Worth saying again: Fuck cancer.

LISTEN ALL Y'ALL, IT'S A SABOTAGE

I’ve sort of been ignoring my Self Care Circle activities. I’ve stopped adjusting my calendar or even looking at it. Working on goals has come to a complete stop. In fact, I don’t even remember what goals I set. That’s not true. I know precisely what goals I set for myself this year; I just have a case of the Don’tWannas at the moment. This was apparent when we met Sunday for our monthly group meeting because I had none of my self care circle kit of tools near me. No notebook, no sticky notes, no nothing. Except a pom-pom. We post things to celebrate at the beginning of each session and then we celebrate each other by shaking a pom-pom in front of our screens. I was prepared to celebrate others.

This month’s session was about sabotage in all forms. Sabotage from external sources. Sabotage from internal sources. Sabotage we might inflict on others. Some sabotage is good. It can keep us from doing something stupid, but sabotage can be bad, particularly when it keeps you from following through with actions and tasks that aid in the transformation of the person you want to be. Look, I know all about self sabotage. Self sabotage is probably one of my greatest skill sets. The language I use when speaking to myself is 100% negative and awful. I even hastily grabbed a notepad during the session just to write down that I am my own worst enemy. I take full responsibility for 80% of my fails. Those internal sources of sabotage are not what I have been ruminating on for the last few days.

It’s those external forces.

We talked about how we may have people in our lives who do not want you to change and transform into something different and new. They do not want to see you succeed. They will not say it out right; it will be sneaky. They’ll use language that will make you question yourself and make you worry if you’re doing the right thing. Instead of saying ‘you look great!’, they’ll say ask in an accusatory way ‘have you lost weight?’. Appearances are an easy one for those saboteurs, making a dig about how a piece of clothing fits or a haircut choice. Saboteurs go straight in for the negative thing and then quickly follow it up with something nice. Either they realize they sound thoughtless or they don’t actually want you to think they’re mean. They are the people in my life who I never mention the words ‘writing a book’ or ‘selling prints’. They are the people I keep secrets from.

I don’t want to name the saboteurs in my life. Not because it would be rude to publicly oust them. Not because I don’t want to hurt the feelings of others. It is because I don’t want to admit that I’ve allowed certain people to remain present in my life. I don’t want to admit that I still spend time with my saboteurs, that I choose to be in earshot of their negativity. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I have ‘friends’ that are not fully supportive. I am embarrassed to admit that there are times that I allow their judgements to keep from writing the thing or printing the photo. I am embarrassed to admit that I have serious boundary issues.

I lied when I filled out my worksheet for Sabotage. I made up something else for those external saboteurs. Now I have to go back and erase them all and work harder to be honest. My year of difficult questions seems to have seasons. I’ve just entered the season of honesty and I’m not sure I care for it.

TIME TRAVELLING

A few weeks ago, I received a text from Steph about Cati’s graduation and how they would love for me to be there. My first instinct was to say no. I had plans the weekend of graduation. I didn’t feel up to driving all that way. Then I shook it off and gave myself a lecture about making an effort for those you care about. I easily rearranged my weekend plans, packed a bag and headed south. And though the drive was long and tedious, it was worth it. I was there to watch our not so little Catidid walk across the stage and take pictures of her with her family. The smile on this young woman’s face told me everything I needed to know about her future. She was so thrilled to be graduating and is so excited about college. She is focused and driven and inspiring.

Steph’s home was filled up with her in-laws and so I stayed at Steph’s parents’ house just down the road. Jenny and Mike have always referred to me as their second child and they were so happy to have me staying with them. When Steph and I were discussing my sleeping arrangements, we joked and said that maybe Steph should come stay at least one night. We’d have a sleepover like the old days when we’d pull all the couch cushions off of the couch and make a bed on the floor. In some ways, it really did feel like I had travelled back in time. I watched Cati and her best friend, Emma, hugging each other and I remembered Steph and I at that age. Cati and Emma have been inseparable since elementary school, maybe even longer. Their friendship story mirrors mine and Steph’s in so many ways, with the two of them headed off to different colleges in the Fall.

Late on my last evening, I was sitting up talking with Jenny. She said she had been trying to write something in her card for Cati, but was having a hard time coming up with the words. I laughed and told her that I had had the same problem. I had plans of writing a lengthy note of encouragement and wisdom but all I could come up with was a couple of sentences about how proud I am of her. I told Jenny that I didn’t have any words of wisdom to impart, that despite all I have done and been through, I still don’t really feel like an adult. Jenny surprised me saying that she felt the same way. “Sometimes I feel like I’m eighteen years old.” she said. This seemed oddly reassuring to me. It almost takes away my definition of adult.

I am a teenager who sometimes does adult things.

CORRESPONDENCE

I was rummaging around, looking for some picture of my mother to post for Mother’s Day, when I came across a box of what I thought would be photos. Instead, the box turned out to be mostly filled up with old birthday cards and notes. I went ahead and started sorting things into keep/toss piles because I do not need a Hallmark birthday card from birthdays of past. As I sorted, I came across a stack of letters from my high school friend, David. I’m pretty sure we’d known each other since birth. We had always gone to school together starting in preschool and then we both went off to colleges on different sides of the state. I guess we the idea of not being at the same school at the same time was so unnatural to us that we wrote letters back and forth for almost a year. Then we diverged onto opposite pathways and just sort of stopped writing. I would say that David took the more traditional path. College, wife, business finance job, suburbs, kids. It is not a surprise to anyone that I took a less traditional path. I put David’s typed letters into the keep pile even though we haven’t talked in probably twenty years.

There was a letter from Stephanie. We didn’t write to each other often; never had the need to. We stay in somewhat regular contact, but I placed this into the keep stack. Her daughter, Cati, who is graduating from high school on Friday, will someday enjoy seeing her mother’s handwriting and getting a glimpse of her mom before she was a mom. Then I came across a series of postcards. All of them were from Chris, sent from different locations from the trip he made to Texas and New Mexico with Amy, Christy and Scott. Postcards from a trip centered around the hunt for UFOs. The first one I came across was a long postcard (not the traditional rectangle) of Western Texas. The first sentence Chris wrote says “I took this picture and made this postcard for you.” I read that and immediately snorted out a laugh. He had written snippets of their travels on the back of each postcard telling me how I would be wowed by the McDonald’s Observatory in Texas and about seeing deer and a skunk in their campsite in New Mexico. There was one that simply said “I miss you.” Under the stack of postcards, was a letter in an envelope addressed to me. I did not recognize the address of the sender, but when I opened the letter and read a sentence I knew instantly who it was from.

It was a letter from Chris, one he had sent me early in our relationship. He had been visiting someone in Texas. I can’t really remember the details of where he was when he wrote the letter, but I remember every detail of finding that letter in my dorm mailbox and reading it. I chuckle now, but when I first read this letter, I was shocked. It is positively pronographic. The thing that felt so shocking to me at the time about this letter was that this was the first time I had ever read anything pornographically directed to my person. I want you to keep in mind that I had never gone beyond kissing with anyone until Chris and when we met, Chris had already lived a life. He was five years older than me and had experience. Chris also had a wide open view of sex and sexuality. I came from an environment that lacked public displays of affection and where the topic of sex was never discussed unless it was in a negative way. I didn’t believe sex was bad. I just lacked the opportunity to have those experiences and I was naive. Chris was my guide and gave me a safe, non-judgmental environment to explore my own sexuality.

Not everyone gets so lucky.

I don’t think I can ever bring myself to read this letter again, but I tucked it back into the box with the postcards. One day, someone is going to be cleaning out my house after I die and they are going to come across a box filled with old letters. Maybe they won’t toss them immediately into the dumpster. Perplexed by these pieces of paper with handwriting on them, they’ll pause and read a few before tossing them aside. I am sure they will be confused by the woman these letters were written too, one set of letters of innocence often including scripture from a friend and another letter filled with graphic sex. I like the picture I am painting of myself here with my eclectic collection of things, a Vespa in the garage and roller skates in the closet. When they start clearing out after my death, I want them to find my collection of naked self portraits and the vibrator I keep behind a stuffed teddy bear on the shelf next to the bed and then shake their heads at the collection of religious/spiritual texts that they pull from the bookcase.

I want them to find all the colors to paint a portrait of a well rounded woman with a well lived life.

EVERYTHING

Last week, I planned to take Friday afternoon off so that I could go see a movie in a theater by myself. This might sound odd to some people, but for me it was the most decadent thing I have done in a really long time. Both Todd and Talaura had sent me messages telling me that I had to see Everything Everywhere, All At Once and I knew that the only way I was going to get to see this movie in the theater was to just go. I didn’t want to waste time trying to convince Michael to go the theater or hem and haw over what evening to book tickets. I just wanted a no-hassle go to the movies experience. The only way I could make all of this happen was to take some vacation time and the guilt of taking time off for myself was dispelled with multiple power outages at work that morning, making my job dang near impossible.

So I left work with a clear conscious and took myself to lunch at Mattie’s where I ate vegan mac-n-cheese covered with beans and BBQ tofu. Then I made my way to this weird little art theater that specializes in independent and obscure films. It was the closest theater with an afternoon matinee showing of the movie. I bought a Coke and a popcorn and made my way into a theater that reminded me very much of the old Collinsville theater. I chose a seat and then sat back to enjoy this movie along with the four other audience members. When it was all over, I walked out to my car, shaking with feelings and had to sit there for about ten minutes before I could even consider starting the car.

I have a list of films that have moved me in profound ways and changed the way I see my current world. This is what art does. It makes you think differently, see differently, feel differently. These are the films that inspire great discussions and even greater changes in behavior and how one chooses to live each day. Everything Everywhere is on that list. This movie made me feel all of the feelings all at once. I was furious and disappointed because Chris was not with me in the theater or afterward to talk about all of the things in the movie. My sides hurt from laughing through the absolutely ridiculousness of some of the scenes. I was filled up with joy from the overall message of the film. If someone where to ask me what this movie is about, I would have to just say “it is about everything, everywhere….all at once.”

There is something said multiple times in this movie and that is “nothing matters.” This phrase is a glass half full, half empty phrase in disguise. Several years ago, I found myself in a torrential downpour outside of Costco. I was hastily throwing our bulk items into the backseat of the car when I suddenly just yelled out “IT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER.” I didn’t say it out of anger. I yelled it because sometimes it just feels good to yell out. I wasn’t mad or frustrated even though I was soaked through with rain. That’s the why right there. I was already soaked. There was nothing I could do to change this. Moving faster was not going to damn up the river of water I was standing in or stop the weather. When I yelled out that it didn’t matter, I committed myself to just being completely in the current moment, wet clothes, soggy shoes and all. Nothing matters.

"When I Choose To See The Good Side Of Things, I'm Not Being Naive. It Is Strategic And Necessary. It's How I Learned To Survive Through Everything." — Waymond.

I am not naive. I have made the choices I have made in how I see and experience this life as a survival tactic for the moments that threaten to break me into a million tiny pieces. Seeing the good side of things is why my life looks the way it does in this space and time. It is what shaped the choices I made after Chris died. Not because he would have wanted that, but because this is who I am.

This is who I have always been.

NOT A NATURAL CODER

I’m revisiting all of the python coding stuff I did two years ago in anticipation of some things happening at work. I spent most of a day trying to figure out why my files would not open in my jupyter notebook. Then I finally figured it out and it was a dumb dumb fix. I closed my eyes and whispered to myself something about how my brain was not made for this. So I gave myself a break and wasted some time scrolling through Facebook. Then I scrolled right on by a meme from an educational group that was all about lies we tell ourselves.

Lie #1: “I’m not smart enough to work in tech.”

“INTERNET GET OUT OF MY HEAD!” I screamed at my computer and walked away from my desk.

Every woman I know personally in my line of work have at some point talked to me about their imposter syndrome. It is one of the things that we bond over at tea time. We take turns reminding each other that we are in fact very capable and good at what we do. We are not telling each other lies. We are all very capable and very good at what we do. Yet, we need each other to remind us of this frequently.

This morning, I stood by and allowed the cafe manager to mansplain the coffee maker to me and then I walked away with a latte, a form of coffee that I don’t even like. But I took it and drank half of it because it was easier than asking the mansplainer to pour out that coffee he had just made in my cup. This incident made me pause and consider the numerous times I have sat quietly by while a person, usually male, tells me things I already know in a way that makes it sound like I am too stupid to know. I do it because it is easier and taking the easy route has become the habit because everything else has been a struggle. We are raised in an education system that never fails to warn us of the competitiveness of certain careers. In some cases, the competition to get into medical, law, business, fill-in-the-blank school is stressed to the point of discouragement. It is impossible, so don’t even try. Maybe set your sights a little lower and remember, girls aren’t good at math. Those of us who do make it, are constantly watching our backs and questioning our worthiness for being where we are today.

This is why it is easier to sit back and just let a mansplainer splain. It is because I spend enough time and energy proving to myself and to others that I am smart enough even to be in the room. This is why I am spending time working on coding. Coding is not my area of expertise. It is a skill forcefully developed during a pandemic lockdown and a skill that I rarely ever need to use. Yet here I am plucking away at this un-instinctual task that fills me with self doubt because I am not going to believe that lie #1. I am not an imposter. I am a scientist. I know how do things on a particular microscope system that NO ONE else in my department knows how to do. I am smart enough to be here.

The thing you are never taught during all of this education is to relax once you get to where you are meant to be. You made it. Now take a number of breaths baby, because you deserve to be here.

KIMCHI

It’s spicy, fermented, pickled(?) cabbage, eaten as a side dish or like a condiment. Chris loved it, but he typically loved spicy things. I didn’t know anything about kimchi, had never even heard of it, before Chris. I didn’t know a lot of stuff before Chris. I feel like I am a pretty adventurous eater. I’ve eaten gooey duck. I’ll try most of anything at least once. Except Kimchi. The first time Chris opened a jar of kimchi with me in the room, I thought for a moment that we had just been transported to the garbage dump. The smell. I couldn’t handle the smell, that rotten boiled garbage smell of old cabbage and I refused to try a bite of any of it. Chris and I would joke about smelly kimchi and his love of spicy smelly things. We had a story about the time I was woken up in the late hours of the night by the smell of kimchi. Chris had opened a jar of kimchi and he was on the other side of the house. We laughed about how kimchi was so smelly that it could wake a person on the other side of the house.

I think it was while I was on a trip to Portland, after Chris, when I finally ate kimchi. I hadn’t ordered it, nor expected it to be in the noodle dish I had ordered. I ate a large bite of it and was surprised at how delicious it was. I didn’t smell it in the food and I thought maybe I had imagined the whole smell thing. After that first taste, I made it a point to order it whenever it was on a menu. At times, I crave it. Not enough to ever have a jar of it in my fridge, but enough to seek it out at a restaurant. Michael doesn’t care for it. He is the one that turns his nose up at the mentioning of kimchi. He is the me before Chris. It’s funny and weird and at times, confusing.

Twelve years ago, I read Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. It was her second novel, her first being The Time Traveller’s Wife. That first book was the one that made Niffenegger a star. I still have a copy on my bedside table and have read it a multiple times. Her second book did not get the great reviews the first book received, and I didn’t enjoy reading it as much as the first book. Her Fearful Symmetry was hauntingly heartbreaking and strange. The story is about twin sisters who inherit a flat in London from their aunt, their mother’s twin and a woman they have never met. They learn family secrets that change their lives, while the spirit of their aunt haunts the flat. Eventually the aunt’s spirit takes over one of the twins, pushing that girl’s spirit out to haunt the flat. It’s a weird story, but I think of it often even though I didn’t really care for it. At times I find myself slightly fixated on the idea of two spirits in one body.

There are so many things that were quintessential Chris that I just sort of absorbed. You guys remember how Chris could just be sitting, quietly observing and listening to us and then suddenly deliver the perfect, most hilarious one liner relating to whatever it was we were all talking about? Now I am the one quietly observing and listening. My one liners are sharp and hilarious but only half as much as the one’s Chris could deliver. I still manage to make those around me dissolve into laughter. I’ve also taken over Chris’s habit of procrastinating, wasting hours of my time playing word games instead working on the things I am always saying I need to work on. There are other things, feelings, reactions that feel more like Chris’s than my own, that makes me wonder for a moment if my body is inhabited with two spirits.

We went to the Asian Food Market on Saturday for rice noodles because I’m making Pad Kee Mao for dinner one night this week. Here’s the thing with the Asian Food Market. You go in for one thing, but you end up with twenty things in your cart. While Michael and the Cabbage were picking out misago and seaweed, I wandered over to the kimchi refrigerator. So, now a jar of kimchi lives in my fridge at home. A small jar. A small smelly jar of spicy, pickled napa cabbage. I’ve opened the jar once already so I could mix some in with my leftover fried rice. I did so quickly so as not to fill my tiny house with the smell of kimchi.

Then I laughed at myself, imagining Chris doing the same thing.

THE BOXES WE DON'T CHECK

I just finished filling out new patient forms for some acupuncture treatment that I am getting this week and there was a whole section on emotions. I had to check the boxes for all of the emotions I feel on a regular basis and I feel like I checked all of the emotion boxes. I checked and underlined the anger box. Then I went back and highlighted the word ‘anger’. It seems I’m filled with rage these days, but seriously, what woman isn’t? The new patient forms also wanted family medical history and for the ‘mental disorder’ box, I wrote in ‘maybe?’. The questionnaire wanted me to answer questions I was not prepared to answer or even wanted to answer. It wanted to know more information on the state of my mentratution than my gynecologist even cares to know. Which might be a sign that I need a new gynecologist.

It is March, nearing the end of it really, but still 2022 is young. So far this year, I have had to answer more difficult questions than I have ever had to answer. This includes my thesis defense in 2000. The questions I am answering now have nothing to do with emission and excitation wavelengths or bacterial growth conditions. Those kinds of questions are easy. It’s the questions about my personal and mental health that are the hard questions for me to answer. I’d like to blame some of that on ignorance. I just don’t know the answer. Last week, that fortune teller looked at my palms and asked me if there was a family history of depression. I just shrugged and said “Maybe? I know there’s a family history of diabetes?” Diabetes. Depression. They’re the same thing right?

I honestly do not know the answers to most of those family history questions. Medical history of any kind is never on topic and when it is, the information is hearsay because no one knows how to read a medical file or actually listen to what the doctor is saying. My family is sad, but I don’t remember us being sad unto 2005. So I don’t know if the sadness is genetic or circumstantial. Whatever the reason, the sadness exists and some of us are better at staying just above it than others. Depression is the box I never check on these forms. It’s not that I don’t believe that depression is a real clinical disorder. I could give a good long list of scientific journal articles about brain chemistry and rearranged axioms that prove depression is a real thing. I never check that box because I would rather ignore it. It’s kind of like the time I noticed a weird freckle on my arm and then proceeded to scratch the freckle off of my own body instead of going to a dermatologist.

Yes. I did that.

Here’s why I really don’t ever check the box. Sometimes, I am sad. I have some pretty good reasons for being sad and I believe we should be allowed to feel those feelings. Without guilt. But, sometimes I spend a little bit of time wallowing in that sadness, maybe too much time. I always muster up the strength to pull myself up and out of the muckiness of the sad. I have mustering plans for the sad. Exercises like walking outside, getting on my yoga mat and my gratitude practice are integral parts of that plan. The gratitude practice is probably the most important, because there’s nothing like being grateful for this privileged life I have to make me get off my ass and go live it. I figure that when I reach a moment when I can not pull myself out of the mucky muck, that is the day I check that box and get professional help.

Je suis forte.

I am also stubborn. The fortune teller looked me directly in the eyes and said this to my face. Maybe that’s what I need tattooed on my other wrist. I am not stubborn enough to recognize that there is some cowardice in not checking the box. That if I was truly brave, I would ask for help when I need it. So I went back and checked the box. Sometime earlier this year I made a decision to stop bad habits, become my own biggest fan and loudest cheerleader. Sometime early in the year I decided to take the version of me who believed she could do anything and move her from the back of the room to the front podium and put her in charge of the meetings. That version of me used to be in charge, but she got moved to the back of the room when there was an internal vote of no confidence. But I am putting that version of me back in charge because I can do anything.

That includes checking boxes I would normally ignore.

Lupercalia

Before it was changed to Valentine’s Day, it was the Feast of Lupercalia where the Romans sacrificed animals and beat woman who apparently lined up to be beaten in the name of increased infertility. Then like all the other Pagan holidays, the Catholic church got ahold of it and turned into a day to celebrate Saint Valentine, the patron saint of love and couples, bee keepers, and epilepsy. And like most Pagan holidays taken by the Catholic church, corporations have taken hold of it and made it into big business with chocolate covered everything and diamonds forever.

I remember a time when I was not so cynical about Valentine’s Day and took quite a bit of joy from decorating a shoebox into a Valentine mailbox. This was also the age of everyone getting a Valentine. Valentine’s Day changed when I left behind elementary school. Then it became a blatant reminder of my weirdness and inaptitude with courting and the opposite sex. I was the girl who received a box of chocolates every year from her dad, which is sweet and slightly pathetic. I can remember moments of sitting on my bed, a book open but set aside while I poked holes in all the different chocolates and then eating the ones that did not have pink oozing centers. Valentine’s Day stung more during my adolescence and not at all as an adult because by then my days were peppered with romantic gestures. One day devoted to romance was unnecessary.

In the now times, Valentine’s Day is a hindrance to romantic gesture, what with overcrowded and overpriced restaurants and the expectation of making an extra special effort. Michael had a head cold the week before last and now I have that head cold. We’ve been taking turns with caregiving, all while trying to maintain regular routines. Taking turns making dinner and cleaning up afterwards is our extra effort. My tone may sound jaded, but truthly I am indifferent. I do have an anthropological curiosity of how Valentine’s Day will continue to evolve. I feel like this younger generation is more accepting of gender fluidity and more socially and environmentally conscious. We are progressively redefining ‘romance’. This way of thinking will eventually force corporations to find a different way to sell you a holiday and I am curious about what that is going to look like.

Probably not a shoebox decorated with doilies and hearts.

No matter my feelings on the holiday, I do hope that the day has brought you the love you need in this moment and not a beating. Unless that’s your thing, you have a safe word, and you’ve expressly consented to it.