The Mayor of 31st Avenue

We painted this rock for Emmett during the pandemic,
featuring his beloved pup, Little Fellow.

Rick and I lived next door to Emmett P. Lynch for over 20 years. He died a few weeks ago.

Our kids, especially the two youngest, Elizabeth and Tallulah, spent a lot of time at his house. I used to worry that the kids might bother him. I imagined they would knock on his door and he would groan internally about the interruption. I told him that once and he guffawed, assuring me he was 100% comfortable turning them away or kicking them out if it wasn’t a good time. It was always a good time.

He kept his eye on them too: if we weren’t home, and Samuel or Vincenzo, our boys, needed something, they could always go to him. He enjoyed peeking over the fence and talking to them about the wooden teepees and forts they were constructing.

Emmett and Tallulah – always LuLu to him – had a special bond. He kept a small wooden safe in his house, and gave her the combination. He would put treasures in it, trinkets, sweet treats, rocks, letters, anything he thought she would like. The first thing she did on her visits was to check the “mailbox” for goodies. Then she’d stay, and visit, and talk, and help him with his grocery list, and learn all kinds of interesting things from him.

After most visits, she and Elizabeth would come home with drawings, books, jars of applesauce, a bottle of wine for mom. We would try to return the favor with pie, biscotti, a serving from the dinner we made that night. It never seemed to match his generosity of spirit.

I remember once when we “lost” our oldest daughter, Lola: she was there one minute and gone the next. Emmett’s truck must have been in the shop or something, because it wasn’t out front and we assumed he wasn’t home. We got other neighbors involved in roaming the neighborhood looking for her; I was getting ready for a full blown melt down when Lola emerged from Emmett’s with a mini-can of rootbeer and a smile on her face. All of 8 years old, she told us our family was too loud that day and she needed a break. She went to Emmett’s.

Safe to say, with five kids, we were often a little overwhelmed, between school, homework, soccer practices, events,... Emmett had a sixth sense for knowing just when to send that most appreciated text: “Is it a good night for a pizza?” Half an hour later, a steaming hot pizza would be at our door and our evening with a big, busy family would have gotten just a little easier.

Emmett and I had very different politics. He would amble over to our front yard when I was working in the garden and opine on something from the news – and 10 out of 10 times we would have a completely different take on whatever it was. I would rail against corporate greed and oppression; he would champion individual freedom and free markets. I’m sure he thought I was a naive, bleeding-heart leftie, but he never stopped engaging or inviting me to do the same. These days in our country and culture, this is one of the rarest finds: kindness and care between people who disagree. I never doubted his heart and his feelings for people. He is one of the most generous, big-hearted people I’ve ever met, and I saw examples of that all the time: the way he cared for his friends or looked for ways to make things “just a little easier” for others; the beverages he left out for mail and package carriers; how he looked out for our entire block.

Ever since Emmett died, I’ve been thinking about how we take for granted the small, daily interactions that actually matter more than anything else in the world. How could I have possibly thought that Emmett would be with us forever? But my behavior suggests that I actually did think that, and took for granted that my next visit with him was surely going to be in just a few days or next week or as soon as work settled down. I’ll try to remember that, in his honor, for the rest of my life.

I went to Target with him once, where he chatted up nearly every person we came across and I saw, in action, something he was fond of observing: “Dogs and children love me!” We all do too, Emmett. We will miss you and all you brought to this neighborhood and to our family. 

Go ahead of us, Mayor Lynch. You kept the keys to all of our houses on a row of hooks in the back of your house. I'm counting on you to have the keys to the Kingdom when I arrive.

ISDK (I Still Don't Know)

Repost from February, 2011 – I came across this post the other day looking for something else on my lil blog. I enjoyed reading about the kinds of things the kids asked back then, and I really loved being reminded about their sleeping chests rising and falling, and the murmurs and whimpers of slow waking.  Morning is still rich with promise and possibility, although the questions they ask now are harder. 

On Christmas Day, we went for a walk somewhere pretty, and they let me take this photo. When I look at it, I think I could answer their questions all day long for the rest of my life and call it a life well spent.

Here is the 2011 post:

Kids come with a lot of questions. Most of them, I cannot answer, or at least not without research. Here are all the things to which I said "I don't know" this weekend:

• How far does a bullet fly?
• Why are white people called Caucasian? Why does it sound so much like Asian?
• What does the 'A' stand for in double A batteries?
• Is Hosni Mubarak a good person?
• Would you wear a burka if it was part of your religion and you lived in a country where the president made it illegal to wear one?
• What is the difference between a vegan and a vegetarian? Yeah, I thought I knew that one until I utterly failed to explain it coherently and ended up with an IDK.
• When was the last time a volcano erupted?
• Is Justin Timberlake nervous right now?
• Why can African American people use the n-word but no one else can, and why would they want to?
• How are you going to fix your computer? (This after the power cord prong thingy snapped off inside my laptop, rendering it un-power-up-able.)
• Can I go to the skate park tomorrow?
• Why do women always say other women are beautiful but men don't talk about how other men look? Actually, I did come up with a pretty decent answer for this one...but went with the IDK at first.
• Can you make us some popcorn? I was so brain dead by the time this question came up that I literally answered: I don't know.

I pondered all of these questions, as well as the ones I was able to answer more fully, as the cold morning light shifted from grey to bright across my bedroom this morning. Pinned as I was between a four year old knee in my back and an eight year old arm across my chest, I considered how many questions these little warm breathing bodies have. They are quiet now, the only time they will be all day. This is my chance to recharge, to get ready for another day full of words and questions, endless chatter and conversation. And probably some yelling.

Morning is rich with promise and possibility. My overwhelming love for my children pours out of me as I watch their sleeping chests rise and fall, and listen to the small sucking noises and the murmurs and whimpers of slow waking. Can I freeze time for awhile just to watch them sleep, where they literally look like angels who miraculously grace my presence every day? I try. I want to stay in this warm and quiet little world, where love protects me like the heavy homemade quilt that covers us. I want to live here forever. But at my back I always hear, time's winged chariot drawing near, and I know that in a precious few moments, they will be awake and asking question after question, and they will at some point in the next few hours seem more like demons bent on breaking my spirit than the angels they are in the quiet early spaces of each day.

Will I live up to their expectations and their questions today?

IDK.

* * *

Never Enough Words

When I was little, in our house in San Francisco, my parents – the wonderful Larry and Rose – hung a banner on the wall. This was the 70’s: it was probably canvas, or burlap, or felt, or some other hippie fabric. It said: “Each one beautiful in God’s eyes.”

Because of that banner, I went out into the world believing that there is beauty to be found in every single person, no matter their circumstance or story. As an adult, I had an a-ha moment, when I realized that that banner was responsible for my world-view and for the kind of person I strive to be. Each one beautiful in God’s eyes. The implication being: behave accordingly. I am grateful to my parents for hanging that banner on the wall and launching me into the world steeped in that message of love and hope. 

So that’s the first thing I am thankful for, about being Larry’s daughter. There is a whole lot more. And since I wish he were here right now, I think I’ll just address this next part of what I want to say directly to him.

Dad, thank you for creativity. Thank you for giving me a lifelong appreciation for art and for people who make art. Your pottery, painting, music, storytelling, hospitality and more are present in every single one of your three kids and seven grandkids, and we will forever remember the ways you have inspired us to pursue our own creativity. We will forever remember your boundless enthusiasm for our artistic endeavors.

Thank you for your bleeding heart. For always noticing what other people were going through, for recognizing injustice and not accepting it, for making other people feel better in whatever way you could. I hope that I learn to put others first in the way that I’ve seen you do so many times. I know you felt the suffering of the world acutely, and I’m even grateful for that. You gave me a living example of a person who stands up for what he believes in and stands with the outcast, the ignored, the oppressed, the suffering.

Thank you for making me, and virtually everyone you encountered, feel special. This week, I’ve heard many stories of how you made people feel seen and heard. The pot of coffee you brewed for a heart to heart with this person; the amazon package that appeared on the porch of another; the way you never forgot this person’s birthday; the way you recognized a student who felt overlooked. Your special gift was making all of us feel like the most important person in the room, and I for one will wear that gift like a warm blanket for the rest of my life.

Thank you for being so damn funny. It has been a gift and a joy to grow up in a house that rocked with laughter. You will be proud to know – or likely you already do – that Katy and Tony and I have handled the past week, our first without you, with copious amounts of joking, teasing, and laughing. I only wish you were here to enjoy some of the truly excellent sarcasm flying around 43 France Street. You would approve. 

I could go on all day about things I’m thankful for, but there is Guinness waiting for us at the big party we are having in your honor, so I will wrap this up.

There will never be enough words in the English language to capture your life or your spirit. I will never be done saying thank you. I don’t have any idea how to say goodbye, so instead of doing that, I will learn how to carry you with me from this day forward, to hear your voice when I need it and feel your presence with me. You were and are beautiful in God’s eyes, and in mine.

Open A Drawer

Today's 15 minute writing exercise, from The Observation Deck: A Tool Kit for Writers, by Naomi Epel

______________________

I thrust my hand into the deep well of life -- in this case, the drawer of my office filing cabinet -- and came out with a parking ticket. That I have not paid.

Ah, the metaphor right there. The things not attended to. The niggling pieces of life that cause shame and denial. Shame, you say? Denial? It's a parking ticket. Pay it and move on.

Why does a slip of paper like a parking ticket, or the memory of getting it (read: not paying attention enough to realize I couldn't park in the miracle spot I thought I found), evoke such negativity and self reproach?

Option 1: It really is representative of the ways I don't pay attention, the ways I let life's small responsibilities and annoying demands pile up in ways that come back to bite me.

Option 2: It actually represents the ways in which "the man" is working every day, in every way, to keep. us. down. Control. Rules. Restrictions that thwart us at every turn. The capitalistic enterprise, squeezing pennies and dollars out of us every chance it gets.

Either way, this particular slip of paper makes me mad. Mad at myself, mad at the SFMTA, mad at inflation. Plenty of anger to go around, thank you very much.

What to do in the face of that anger? How to navigate the downward pull of self and municipal loathing?

RESIST. Everything is resistance. Instead of giving in to the loathing, ground myself in the sure knowledge that I am more than the profit I generate for the state, that I am more than a cog in the economic machine, that the parking ticket does not define me. Seems silly, no? Seems silly, yes. But it's the little things, man, that pile up and bite us, the little things that layer one on top the other. 

So what is the work? The work is to be the artisan, laying other, better things one on top the other. Do not let the parking tickets, and the missed train, and the leaking tire, and the Christmas tree decaying in the corner of the yard be the things that build up on your precious frame. Decide what belongs there. Make creative choices. Choose colors, forms, mediums that you love. You don't have to say why you love them. You don't have to justify a single choice, because it's your precious frame and your wild, precious canvas, and you can layer on these things: paella. fire in the hearth. goal in the back of the net. fiddle callouses. children. carmelized onions. music. crunchy gravel. all the things that reveal the great beauty all around you, in you, breathing between you and the ones you love.

Do not let T*ump or the utterly, shockingly, mind-numbingly disappointing political landscape occupy a single centimeter of your canvas. Layer beauty upon beauty and watch the slings and arrows -- and parking tickets -- bounce and slide right off.

* * * 

My Mother Gave Me Permission

This memory exists in sharp detail: Nine-year-old me, lying on my bed in a sweltering attic bedroom with sun-yellow walls and a nubby, multicolored rug. I'm listening to the radio: country music of course. I don't recall the name of the song that was playing, just that it was incredibly sad. A story of lost love, heartbreak, and loneliness. 

I felt all of it. I felt the devastation and the overwhelming grief. The pain of loving and losing. The longing in the singer's voice. At 9 years old, years away from truly understanding a broken heart, that song made me deeply, massively sad.

I dissolved into tears, weeping little girl tears over grown-up heartbreak, tears of recognition that the world--and specific people within it-could stomp on my heart. I remember drenching my pillow and feeling bewildered. Where was this strong reaction coming from? I knew I was too little to really get it, but my heart went on that journey anyway. And once I started, I couldn't stop: the wailing went on far longer than the song.

My mother must have heard me. Suddenly, there she was, sitting on the bed beside me, concern on her face. 

"What's wrong, Mon?" 

I told her I had just listened to a really, really sad song and it made me cry. As a mother now myself, I imagine she might have been relieved. No broken bones, no blood, no trauma, just good old-fashioned sadness. She asked what the song was about.

I felt silly, but blurted: "Someone broke up with the girl, the singer, and she was really sad about it, and the song was the story, and it was SO SAD!" Fresh tears erupted, rendering me a puddle once more.

She hugged me, rubbed my back, and let me be sad. She told me she understood, that songs can really make us feel things. I felt silly telling her why I was crying, but she didn't treat me like I or my feelings were silly. From a mother's point of view, she did a mundane mom thing: made a kid feel better about something kind of small. But this small thing has stayed with me my entire life.

I have often wondered why. It was a tiny moment in a busy, loud, sarcastic household. It was a blip, a sliver, a shred. There was no postscript or profound conclusion. It remains just a snapshot of a moment in time.

But the little girl who felt so much in response to a song? That's who I have always been. I've always been a crier. Tears come easily and I treasure them, knowing and trusting their cleansing power. My heart is stirred by the tiniest slivers of things: curtains lifted by a breeze, revealing a wall of family portraits; trash collected at the side of a freeway on-ramp, items once used, or loved, or needed by someone; a broken down barn on the side of a road. Always, I yearn to know the stories hidden in these blips and slivers, and frequently, I'm stirred to strong emotions by them. That's who I am, and that's who I was as a little girl.

My mom let me be that girl that day. As I grew up, I took pride in being "a feeler." It became, and still is, a big part of my identity. Being a feeler has helped me forge strong connections with my wonderful network of dear and plentiful friends. It has helped me be a mom when I see strong emotions in my kids. It has always been a portal to understanding other people. 

So maybe I remember that tiny moment because it was a memory of me being just 100% me, all in my feels and wailing away, and because my mom's response was to let me be 100% that person. Maybe I remember it because her hand on my back, and her soothing words, told me I could let myself feel everything, that I could just be myself. Maybe each time I remember that day, and see that 70's snapshot in my mind, she is still telling me to be exactly who I am.

Life is lived in the slivers and shreds that stay with us.

Happy Mother's Day, mom.

Antidotes

Take comfort.

Those things that make you breathe again are happening, even as your pulse quickens and your chest tightens. Even as gelatinous anxiety looms and threatens. The smallest, most important things are taking place right now.

Somewhere, a scruffy-headed kid squinches her face to the sun as she stretches for a blackberry.

Somewhere, a high creek rushes past, sweeping nettles downstream.

Somewhere, a single-engine airplane rumbles through a warm and cloudless sky, coating the land with suspended time.

Waves paint white foam on massive rocks. Onions sizzle and carmelize over a fire. A cellist draws his bow, steady and sweet, across a C string. 

These things exist. You can breathe again. 

Why Books Matter

On Mother's Day several years ago, Rick gave me a Nook e-reader. Before that, I was a “real book” snob. “But the feel of turning the pages!” I said. “The smell of the paper and the binding!” I said. I eschewed e-readers like any self-respecting purist should.

But that summer, my new Nook in its lovely green case delivered voracious reading to me at a furious and satisfying pace. From its glowing screen, I read All the Light We Cannot See, the House on Mango Street, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Just Mercy, several New Yorker articles, and other things I can’t remember. As long as I charged that magic device every night, I had the world at my fingertips. I discovered the joy of carrying an entire library around in one slim volume. When my kids were small, one of our favorite bedtime stories was a book called (aptly) “Always Room for One More.” The title echoed in my brain: there is always room for one more way to read!

Years have gone by since that summer, and my relationship with my Nook has seen fewer peaks and more valleys. I can go months without even knowing where it is. I wish I could say this is because physical books and I got hot and heavy, but it’s more honest to say that my iPhone and I have been caught in a co-dependent spiral, spending far too much time together, both of us getting some kind of sick benefit from the countless wasted hours.

And so, in an effort to re-kindle (pun intended) my love of reading, I recently charged up the Nook and re-read Just Mercy. Even the second time around, it was definitely a can’t-put-it-down experience. I quickly tumbled into one of those delicious, all-consuming reads that take up residence in your mind and command all your attention. And along the way, I figured out the price we pay for reading on e-readers instead of with books in our hands.  

While I was devouring this book as if it were manna from heaven, like it was oxygen, water, life itself, no one in my family could tell what I was reading. No one could see it. I realized this when Bryan Stevenson’s name came up by chance with one of my daughters (probably prompted by NPR), and I jumped at the opportunity to talk about Just Mercy with her.  

She returned my enthusiasm with a blank stare, having no idea what I was talking about. I had to stop and explain that I was reading Mr. Stevenson’s book, and that it was amazing, and that she should read it. It was incredulous to me that she wasn’t familiar with the book that had been looming so large in my world. Here I was, reading a book that felt life-changing and urgent and essential, but because I was using an e-reader, my family was utterly clueless. Sure, they could tell that I was reading, but no one could tell what I was reading.  

If I were reading the physical edition of Just Mercy, they would know. The book would be living beside us, taking up space. It would sprawl on the couch next to a throw blanket, linger on my bedside table, sit patiently on the kitchen counter while I cooked. It would be visible. The title, the cover, the promo blurbs–all of those would seep into my children's brains. That’s what we lose when an entire library exists in one slim volume. If all the books stored in my nook were instead on my shelves, my kids would know more authors’ names and see more book titles around them. They would be surrounded by more possibilities for how to spend their time, each book peppering their consciousness with so many seeds.  

It’s not that my kids have not grown up around books; they have. My youngest takes pride in the fact that every year in school, when her English teachers assign new books, we rarely have to buy them. We usually already own them. But when it comes to Just Mercy, I was saddened that that book, in particular, was not on our shelves, helping me raise my children just by being there. It felt like a loss. 

The Red Pony. The Accidental Tourist. Amityville Horror. The Cracker Factory. Where the Red Fern Grows. James Joyce. William Butler Yeats. Erma Bombeck. Charles Dickens. Agatha Christie. Those are just some of the books and authors who raised me from their perches on bookshelves and coffee tables. Their presence signaled to me that the words they contained were valuable because my parents valued them. And now, they are part of the fabric of my childhood, part of my memories and my own family narrative.

So bring me real books please, and lots of them! Because as much as I love the convenience of my e-reader, taking up physical space matters. Real books actually live in our homes. They talk to us in conversations that begin before we ever crack their bindings and echo for decades. They help us raise our children and stay with us for our entire lives. Therein lies the difference: E-readers are fabulous for individual, solitary reading, while the books we hold in our hands shape the living, breathing communities we live in. 

I guess I’m still a “real book” snob after all. I do enjoy my Nook, but my physical books are family.

3 Cheers for New Neural Pathways!

Anxiety, thou art everywhere, all at once. 

Everywhere we turn, people are talking about anxiety, stress, and uncertainty.  Pick your topic:  The economy: Will it tank? The country: Will it collapse? The next election: Will we survive it? The pandemic: WTF?

Racism. Guns. Abortion. Masks. Vaccines. Police violence. 

Being alive right now, well, it's a doozy.

As the mother of a passel of Gen Z-ers, I see how much the cluster f--- that is our culture is weighing on young people. Many are cynical about the world and the future, and boy, do they have a right to be. I desperately wish I could convince my own offspring that there are reasons to be hopeful, but I also know I cannot relate to what they have experienced in the past 6 years. Us older adults have been through those same years, but from a vastly different vantage point. The formative years of young adults -- those years between 10 and 25 when we are weaving together so many notions about how the world operates -- have been steeped in a soup of chaos, vitriol, racism, opportunism, violence, and too many other confusing and scary things. I cannot imagine what it is like to grow into adulthood right now.

It is a privilege to have emerged from my teenage years with optimism; this is not a privilege many young adults share—or come by easily. 

I sometimes feel at a loss for how to help my kids navigate the anxiety that comes with waking up each day in this fraught and frightful world. I got a little help this week from, of all places, the Marketplace Morning Report on NPR. I say "of all places" because Marketplace (morning and afternoon) is a money, economy, NASDAQ, stocks, bonds, financial program, and I'm not a money, economy, NASDAQ, stock, bond, financial kinda girl. Most things econ-related are like mysterious black boxes to me. Even so, I've long appreciated Marketplace and its hosts for talking about the economy in ways that are interesting even for non-business-y people. This week, I appreciate it even more for a little segment on recession anxiety and for their guest Angela Sasseville, a Denver-based psychotherapist and executive coach. She captured the essence of what I see right now among young adults in this quote:

"Over the past 6 years the American public has experienced an unprecedented number of circumstances that have created uncertainty and caused them to feel anxious." 

THANK YOU! Yes, we sure as hell have and it's distressing in the extreme. She goes on: "Current data indicates that upward of 40% of American adults are currently feeling anxious or depressed, . . .a 29% increase from pre-pandemic levels." Yup. I feel that. I see it in the people around me. I bet for young adults, the numbers are even higher. 

Even better than just naming the elephant in the middle of the country, Ms. Sasseville offers us a way forward: "Fortunately, the strategies that are effective [in addressing anxiety] will work for the recession or any other issue that you're feeling anxious about. You can use the same neuroscience principle to install a new neural pathway that helps you experience a positive emotion instead."

We can create new neural pathways to fight anxiety! While not new information, it was the reminder I needed. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops, and also tell my kids and get them as excited as I am about this good news.  

I tried. I got blank stares, eye rolls, and garden variety annoyance. They are still close enough to their teenage years that I am perhaps not the best messenger for life-changing strategies. So I guess I'll just have to use this wise advice on myself instead.  If I can't save the next generation, at least I can save myself. Here's my grand plan to build those neural pathways:

• Play the fiddle more. (Remind me to tell you about the new band I'm in!)
• Exercise more. Use it or lose it is becoming uncomfortably relevant to me of late.
• Read and write more. Also known as, those things I say I'm all about but don't do nearly enough.
• Put. My. Phone. Down.  

I've never been more convinced that art -- making it, enjoying it, spending time with it -- is resistance. I know we are all finding ways to create the world we want, even if only in our little human-sized plots of space and time, and I'd love to hear yours. Sharing these small acts can only help us collectively stand against the machine that seems intent on grinding us all to a pulp. What are you doing to resist the prevailing culture of dread and fear? How are you creating optimism for yourself? What new neural pathways are you building day by day?

Right now, I am picturing a tiny, badass, all-female construction crew in my brain, energetically building new roads and connecting isolated sparks of creativity and consciousness. They seem like a trustworthy bunch: I'm sticking with them.

My kids may not be ready to listen to me, but the ones who still live here can't avoid listening to my fiddle. I do love a captive audience.

Link to Marketplace Morning Report segment

I AM FROM

My daughter Tallulah is our guest writer today! Please enjoy this poem she wrote last November, as well as the art she made to go with it.

I AM FROM

by Tallulah Alatorre

I am from long days in the yard lost in my imagination.

I am from a minivan stuffed full with 5 whirly children and two exhausted parents.

I am from the sound of NPR echoing in the halls on Sunday morning.

I am from apples and peanut butter served on a smooth wooden cutting board.

I am from trips to the beach with hot cocoa.

I am from hikes and creek explorations.

I am from long nights spent on a soccer field with the feel of an icy chill on my face.

I am from the evening sun hitting the yellowish walls of my home, illuminating the living room.

I am from the warm sweet smell of dinner preparing in the oven.

I am from walks to the corner store and soccer tennis at the park.

I am from hand-me-downs and everything used and loved before me.

I am from the crackling of the fireplace during winter time.

I am from doing my homework at a table splattered with paint and carved initials.

I am from lemonade stands and making cookies.

I am from warmth, love, and devotion. 

-----

Maybe we got some things right.  Thank you, Tallulah!

Tiny Rituals

Dateline, 2015. We rise early in the morning, my feisty 8-year-old and I, and head out to a soccer field.  As the youngest of five, she is all in for this gig, having tagged along to her older siblings' games and tournaments since she was born. Now it's her turn and she is beyond enthusiastic. Rabid might be a better word.

Early mornings are her favorite time to head out to a field, and games at least an hour away are the best. She loves to get up while it's still dark, pile her soccer backpack, pillows, and blankets into the car, and doze on our way to a game, holding a warm cup of hot chocolate and watching the sky lighten through half-closed eyes. We trundle down I-80. As we come around the wide curve in Albany, Golden Gate Fields appears, floating on the edge of the bay off to the right.  She perks up, stretches her body as high as she can, and starts to look for horses.

Golden Gate Fields is the local race track and in the early morning, trainers and jockeys are busy. From the freeway, we catch glimpses of horses practicing on the track, walking amidst the stables, or circling around a hot walker. We count as many as we can and as we pass the fields mere minutes later, we announce our findings: A 4 horse morning! A 2 horse morning!  A 9 horse morning!

Zero horse mornings are always a disappointment.  

On mornings we aren't together for her drive to a game, she excitedly reports the total to me later.  Her siblings – older, cooler – roll their eyes. I gush with enthusiasm and tell her how many I saw on my travels that day too.

-----

Dateline, 2019.  It's way too early in the morning. I'm trying to get my 12-year-old out the door. Turns out, she did not, as she assured me last night, have her entire soccer uniform and she still needs to find one blue sock. Frustrated, I growl something about how it's her responsibility to be ready for her game and it's not me who will be late to warm-up. She growls something that may or may not be actual language. She doesn't eat the food I made. I don't have any encouraging words to share. We each glare and fume and think uncharitable thoughts.

The car is thick with silence, and neither of us so much as glances at Golden Gate Fields as we drive by. This is most definitely a zero horse morning of our own making. Forty minutes later, she slams the door without a word and disappears into the misty morning. I sit in the car grateful to be by myself and generally annoyed that she's such a bi–– ...bitter little pre-teen.  What happened to my sweet girl? When did we become adversaries? Why did we stop counting horses?

-----

Dateline, 2022. My fifteen-year-old leaves in the morning with her older sister, who is now her main chauffeur. That precious car time we used to have so much of vanished one day without warning, and it turns out that I miss it. Mommy Brain has blissfully erased the frustrating mornings from my memory bank. I have time for other things now, but I know that her high school years will break the sound barrier as they whoosh past me. So as the car pulls away, I am both grateful for a quiet house and also a little melancholy about the nearly grown girls speeding down the street and away from me. Being a mom is confusing that way: always two competing emotions at once.

I settle into a comfortable chair with a hot cup of coffee and my laptop. I'll get some work done this morning and then take the dog for a walk, or play my fiddle, or binge-watch All Creatures Great and Small. I am positively giddy at the options. All my kids are old enough to do their own thing now and they need me less. Or at least differently.

Thirty minutes later, I am absorbed in a good book, when my phone pings with a quick text from my youngest. 

Time stands still and then rewinds, back to those lovely early mornings, back to the simple fun of counting horses and sharing the numbers with each other. Who knew it would stick?  Just for a moment, there are no competing emotions, just gratitude: for horses, for her, and for the tiny little rituals that bind us together. Smiling, I turn back to the good book. All is right in my world. 

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Note: Shoutout to Hideout and Suede, the handsome boys in the photo at the top; photo cred to my friend Janelle who is busy every day with these two.

The Truth is True, Even When It's Not

I have been cleaning up my laptop lately and finding really old files of all kinds of things. Today, I am posting one of the things I found. I have absolutely zero recollection of writing this piece, but apparently, I wrote it in 2018, during Lent.  2018 was a shit show: not only did it follow the single worst year of my life (2017), but our entire country was dripping with Trump droppings. Maybe that's why I don't remember writing it – I may have tried to erase that year entirely from my brain. 

Anyway, this is what I wrote back then.  It is imperfect and sloppy and not entirely sensical.  And it was good to find it today.

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The truth is true, even when it’s not.

I have been praying the rosary every weekday morning during this Lent.  The first time I did it, I was flooded with relief.  Spending time so differently—without noise and clamor and news and the distress that comes through my radio and my smartphone—felt like a gift to myself.

The quiet, the repetition, the reverence for things eternal: all of those seemed to bring me back to myself in a way that actually made me cry.  It felt right and just to be spending my time in that way.

I know why I thought of doing this in the first place: because of Ann.  She loved the rosary, loved Mary.  She had what is called a “devotion” to Mary – a special connection to the Blessed Mother that buoyed her and sustained her.  When she was sick, she and her family visited Lourdes, looking I’m sure partly for a cure and also for peace.  She didn’t find the cure.

I started doing the Rosary to feel closer to Ann.  Or maybe to be Ann.  When I am feeling the weakest and the least confident, I try to channel the people I love who have qualities or characteristics that I aspire to, like my dad’s ability to charm people and make them feel special.  When I’m feeling socially awkward or overly self-conscious, I think: “Channel Larry.”  And sometimes, I find a way to turn it around and focus my attention on other people.  It’s not a nice thing to do for others: it’s a survival mechanism for myself, a self-care strategy that has the added benefit of making other people feel good.

When I’m feeling disconnected and lonely, I think: “Channel Ann.”  And sometimes, I find a way to imitate the way she radiated love and goodness and made other people feel just plain blessed in her presence.

So I started doing the Rosary, so that I could maybe start to understand why Ann loved it so much.  To find in the repetition something of the deep peace she radiated.  

As the days have gone by, I have struggled a bit with the practice.  It feels odd to be repeating words like “save us from the fires of hell” and “pray for us sinners,” even though I have no problem with the idea of sin.  It feels both out of touch and relevant at the same time—a dissonance that is sometimes OK with me and sometimes, for lack of a better word, really weird.

It makes me wonder what Ann would say if I could ask her: “Why do you love the Rosary so much?”  But of course, I cannot ask her that, and realizing that I can’t ask her that, or any other question, ever again, brings on waves and waves of regret and sorrow.  That I didn’t ask her more questions when she was here, that I took for granted our friendship, that I behaved as if she would always be there for me.

She isn’t here anymore.

Yesterday, as I was saying the Rosary, I kept thinking about something the priest said at Ann’s Rosary, the night before her funeral Mass. He was describing her, and he talked about how our gathering to pray the Rosary was so fitting, because of Ann’s special devotion to Mary and her own love of the Rosary prayer. An unwelcome thought crossed my mind: “Was Ann perfect?  No one is perfect, but the way this guy is talking, it sure sounds like she was perfect.” I’m don't know why I had that thought. I think it all felt unreal to me: Ann dying. Us being gathered there, participating in a death ritual.  And it felt like we were celebrating a saint, a mystic...a unicorn. But the truth is, Ann was better than anyone I've ever met at actively, purposefully loving the people in her life.

And then I thought about eulogies in general, and how when we talk about the people we lose, we talk about their perfections. It is true that Ann was perfect. She was perfectly Ann. 

Did she have annoying qualities? Was she ever impatient with her kids, or too tired to do one more thing for them? Did she and Eric fight, or did she ever feel like a failure, or did she ever give in to weakness? I’m sure some or all of those things are true.  And still, she was perfect.  The truth is true, even when it’s not.

Not sure if I'll keep the rosary thing in my life, but I'm grateful for all the things doing it each day has made me think about, and especially grateful for the ways it is keeping Ann present and close.