December, Then and Now

 

 

The new and improved bionic me with a pixie hairdo.

 

15 years ago, on December 1st, it was a cold and blustery early morning when we were woken by the scream of smoke detectors. All of us - my spouse, me, our 2 children, the international teacher staying with us from China, and our dog all escaped the burning house. The dog without her leash, the rest of us barefoot and in pajamas. 

We were lucky. We were all unhurt. We were together. What we lost were things that could be replaced, or let go as unimportant. We were supported by friends, family, and community and were able to rebuild and return to our home ten months later. 

The beginning of  December has become a time of reflection for me ever since. A time to take stock of what is and isn't important. To embrace life, to appreciate blessings, to be grateful for the love that surrounds me. 

This year, the beginning of December brought another challenge. This time, on December 2nd. That morning - exactly 21 days ago -  I underwent extensive surgery to take the pressure off my spinal cord at two levels in my neck. Over the past year or so, I'd been slowly losing strength and sensation in my hands and arms as well as noticing balance problems in walking. Over the last few months before the operation, I'd been awakened nearly every night with severe cramps in the muscles of my lower legs, feet, and toes.

Because of my background as a physical therapist, I knew these were serious signs. And it still took me longer than it should have to get the work up and surgical consult I needed.  

While I consider myself a fairly active healthy person, I have had more surgeries than the average bear and I had pretty much decided I'd been cut open enough thank you very much. While I no longer had all my factory installed parts, I figured I'd be able to keep the rest. 

But when your surgeon sighs after looking at your imaging studies, gets inadvertently kicked when testing your reflexes, apologizes for needing to do a complex operation, and cautions you that 1/3 of patients get better and 2/3 just don't get worse, well, you realize you don't really have a choice. 

The Good 

I am in the very lucky 1/3. Pretty much immediately post surgery, I had improvement in strength and sensation and balance. Critically, I'm getting back the subtle proprioception - that sensation that tells you where your joints are in space without needing to look at them. This means that things like touch typing, knitting, crochet, and ceramics are all going to be easier and better. I can stand on one foot with my eyes closed and not lose my balance. And I haven't been woken up with leg/foot/toe cramps since the surgery. All of this tells me my spinal cord is a lot happier.

I am also extremely grateful for the support I've gotten from friends, family, and community. We've had a fridge full of meals and gifts of cookies, teas, and other goodies. And my BFF spent a week visiting from NYC keeping me distracted and ensuring I took care of myself. 

The Bad  

My impatience. I struggle with letting others help me. I get frustrated when I can't just bounce back and do everything I want to do. It's not like the surgeon didn't council me that this was going to be a healing process measured in months, not days. My inner cranky-pus says it's been almost 3 weeks. Why aren't I all better yet?? 

The Ugly 

Honestly? Other than the lumpy scar down the back of my neck, there really isn't any. And that will likely heal in time. I've even embraced my new pixie haircut - a necessity since they had to clip all the hair halfway up the back of my head for the surgery. 

Two Decembers, 15 years apart 

Two very different experiences, tied together by having to face my fears. I vividly remember how aggressively I coped in the aftermath of the fire. How I kept the terror hidden from everyone in my life because I was afraid if I let it out, I wouldn't be able to support my spouse and my kids. I never cried in front of them. But when I was alone in the car, parked somewhere, I would fall apart. People's kindness nearly undid me. And I buried myself in the work of cataloging what we'd lost and acted as the liaison to the general contractor for the firm rebuilding our home. It took a lot of therapy to come to terms with how vulnerable the fire and its aftermath made me. 

I wish I could say that 15 years later, I have learned to be open with my fear, but I'm not sure I've made all that much progress. I know my spouse saw how freaked out I was ahead of the surgery, but he let me keep the fiction that everything was going to be all right, damn it. A day before, I wrote him a letter on my computer. Cleaned up most of the cluttered icons on its desktop, and left it in the middle of the screen for him with his name on it. It was a worst case scenario letter. And the first thing I did when I could sit up comfortably enough post surgery to work on the laptop was to file it in my journal. Maybe some day, I will share it with him. But honestly, I don't think I ever even want to read it again. Writing it was hard enough.

Even if the only person I completely expressed my vulnerability with was me, that is growth and change, right? 

Now I've confessed it here. To everyone. And if I'm being fully transparent, it's in everything I've ever written. All my poems, all my blogposts, all my fiction. 

So who am I fooling, really, other than myself? 

Certainly not you, dear reader. As ever, I appreciate that you let me ramble, both here and in my stories. And I promise to continue to work on being open, vulnerable, earnest, and truthful. Even if it's hard. Even if my impulse is to wave it all away and tell you I'm fine. 

What I am is healing. 

What I am is a work in progress. 

What I am is grateful. 

And all of that is enough.  

 

 

---

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

 

Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction in multiple drm-free formats. Your privacy will always be respected.

10 years ago: a fire

 

 

 

A few days earlier, we had celebrated Thanksgiving with our cousin's family in NH. The fridge was still packed with leftovers. It was a Wednesday morning. 

We were woken up by the smoke alarms. Mostly asleep, I thought it was Neil's accursed pager, which I had been successfully ignoring for decades. The boys assumed it was their alarm clock. 

It was Neil who realized what was happening. He shouted for all of us to get out. The house was already filled with acrid smoke. 

We ran out the front door, barefoot, in our pajamas, taking nothing with us. An unearthly orange glow flashed over into conflagration in the basement. 

It was 5:30 am. December 1, 2010.

We were standing on the sidewalk, shivering in the cold, watching our house burn. 

*

In the days and weeks that followed, we were cared for and supported by friends, neighbors, community, and family. 

We were more than lucky: we all were unharmed. The dog got out with us. Anything we lost, could be replaced or we realized wasn't really needed. Our homeowners insurance was generous. The house would be rebuilt. 

Our tragedy, this crisis, was individual. Our community was intact and able to help us. The stress I experienced was intense, but it wasn't magnified by external circumstances. We spent nearly a year displaced and it became my job to be the emotional center for my family, the liaison to the insurance adjuster, and the general contractor for the rebuild. 

Of all three, the first was the most difficult. Our sons were in high school. The youngest a freshman, the oldest a senior. After a day together working on a temporary housing situation, my physician spouse returned to work. My work as a writer gave me flexibility that no one else had. And I made it my responsibility to create a normal for my family that they pretended actually existed.

I remember holding everything together. Looking in from the outside, no one would have known how fragile I was. How whenever I was alone in the car, I would sob so hard for a few minutes, that I couldn't hold the key steady enough to start the engine. 

How I would fall apart when I smelled wood smoke from our neighbors' fireplaces. How a distant siren would trigger a panic attack. How being in the burned house as we attempted to inventory our losses was a waking nightmare. 

*

Anxiety and I are fast friends. Or, rather, it's an enemy I am familiar with. It was my constant companion every day in the year that followed and it still stuck around even after we had returned home to a rebuilt house and our reinstated 'normal' lives. 

*

And in the years that followed, we experienced other traumas including the suicide attempt of a loved one, my mother's worsening dementia, my father's kidney disease and both of my parents' deaths. 

*

This year, 2020, is the year of Covid-19. The stress I have experienced has been somewhat familiar, despite the changing circumstances. If our house fire prepared me for anything, it was that we always live in uncertainty. We're just masters at lying to ourselves about it. Which doesn't mean I have any sort of acceptance. Just that I recognize the reality. We have been lucky: only 1 of our immediate family members has been ill from covid and it was, in retrospect, a mild case. In our distant/extended family, there are cases of long covid and deaths. 

We are all as safe as it is possible to be. I have been able to retreat to our farm. Our sons have been able to work fully remote (younger) and partially remote (older) and are both in stable living situations.  Neil is a front-line physician and is at most risk. I worry, not for his physical safety - he is scrupulous about PPE and his hospital hasn't had the same shortages as others - but his emotional safety. 

The past year has aged him. While he's been able to join me at the farm on his off-call weekends, it seems to take longer for him to relax and less and less time for his stress to ramp up once he is back at the hospital. In many ways, he and his colleagues are fighting a war, but it's mostly an invisible one that too many 'civilians' refuse to acknowledge. 

*

I'm not going to go on a harangue about covid deniers here - anything I can say has already been said by voices with a far more powerful reach than mine. What I want to focus on is how tragedies - personal and shared - shape and change us. 

I am not the same person I was before December 1, 2010. I will never be that person again. I came too close to losing the people I care most about in the universe and for good and for ill, that fear drove me in the years that followed. It is too easy to take our blessings for granted. We think our loved ones know how we feel and so telling them and showing them isn't necessary. That is bullshit. I know how quickly tragedy can strike and change everything. So I don't hold back my love. I am not afraid to be 'mushy'. Not to family or friends. 

Things are far less important. Yes, I love handmade items and art and soft clothing, but I have learned to enjoy them, not cling to them. There is a difference between surrounding yourself in beauty and being trapped by material possessions. 

I have learned to be grateful for the smallest of things: they way my dogs pile in bed on a cold morning to share their warmth. The marvel of the full moon on snow. The absolute miracle of a hard bud transforming into a peach. The brush of Neil's hand across mine. A terrible pun sent in a text message from the boys. Baking a loaf of sourdough and leaving it on a neighbor's doorstep. An email from a friend out of the blue. 

*

This year, the fear and the uncertainty is shared all across the world. Unlike our personal trauma 10 years ago, there is no community unscathed, available to lend its support. We are all reeling. 

*

If I could go back 10 years and offer comfort to myself, I would say this: You are struggling. Your feelings are real. Just because you and your loved ones are safe doesn't mean you didn't experience loss or that your trauma isn't valid. Suffering isn't a competition. Even though it feels like this will never end, it will. But you will be changed. There is a grace both in being able to offer support and accept it. You are loved. 

*

To those of you who are coping now, in the midst of this crisis, remember: You are struggling. Your feelings are real. Just because you and your loved ones are safe doesn't mean you aren't dealing with  loss or that your trauma isn't valid. Suffering isn't a competition. Even though it feels like this will never end, it will. But you will be changed. There is a grace both in being able to offer support and accept it. You are loved.

---

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Email        
First Name
Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction. Please click the box, then "subscribe" to allow us to send it to you via email.

May 27, 2015: In Memoriam, 5 years on

dad, circa 1942

me and dad, circa 2015

Five years ago today, my dad died, at home, surrounded by his children and grandchildren. He was 92 and had lived a long and full life. And it had been his decision to stop dialysis after 7 years and mounting health crises.

He knew it would only be a matter of days after his final dialysis session, so he waited until the family could gather, so he could say goodbye. He died, as he lived, on his own terms.

My father wasn't always a patient man (he was a NY business man, after all!), but in his last years, found a kind of acceptance and gratitude and quiet wisdom that enriched everyone around him. And while he grieved for my mother after her death in 2012, he also made deep friendships with his neighbors in the senior living facility where they had moved to in 2010.

5 years on, and there isn't a day where I don't miss him.

He married my mother, after a long courtship in the 1950s. They were both considered old - they were in their 30s. They had their first child - my sister - a year later. Then my mother had a series of miscarriages and wasn't able to have another child. After years of being told they were too old to be adoptive parents, they were finally able to adopt me as a 5 day old infant in 1963.

My dad - in his early 40's - flew by himself from NY to San Francisco to bring me home, while my mother stayed home with my older sister.

This was the "Mad Men" era. Fathers, as a rule, didn't do much childcare, certainly not fly cross country on their own with a tiny infant!

My sense is that he was not daunted by it, not even for a minute. He was utterly devoted to my mother, my sister, and me. And when his 3 grandchildren came along, he adored them and his role as grandfather.

He died before I found my birth family a few years ago, and I think he would have been thrilled for me to have made those new connections. He was a man who understood love to be expansive.

His pragmatic wisdom continues to be my guide and over the past 5 years since his death, I often dream of him and am always comforted by it.

He was many things in his life - short order cook, stickball player, sonar operator in WWII, a business owner, a gardener, grill-master of summer barbecues,  a crossword puzzle aficionado, a baseball fan, a teller of tall tales - and my beloved dad.

Staying grounded

Planting a promise

This weekend, my husband joined me at StarField Farm for a desperately needed respite. He has been working non-stop for the past 3 weeks, both tending to patient needs at the hospital and readying his department to respond to the covid-19 pandemic.

The information coming at all of us is overwhelming, changing moment by moment, requiring us to adapt even as we are reeling from what we already have learned.

It has been even more so for the medical staff, who are literally on the front lines of an invisible war.

When he arrived Friday night, his face was haggard and pale. His eyes were dull. I have never seen him so exhausted. When we hugged, I could feel him clinging to me and we spent a long several moments just feeling our hearts synchronize. It was all I could do not to cry. 

For the past two days, we have kept the news off, choosing to listen to music instead of NPR. While neither of us could entirely keep away from social media or our phones, we tried to do what we always do at the farm: measure time by the ticking of the wood stove and the passage of the sun across the sky.

Today, we cleared one of the garden beds from the remains of last year's vegetables and covered the soil with a dark weed block material. The idea is to heat the earth and keep the weeds from sprouting before we've had the chance to plant the garden.

After that, Neil planted some flowers near the house.

It was a beautiful day - cold, but clear and bright. The work was simple and physically engaging. For the most part, we were side by side, but silent. Content. Comfortable.

After dinner, he packed his bag and drove back to Boston. Back to the responsibilities of a physician and department chair. Back to the concerns of life and health and worrying if his staff has sufficient protective gear to do their work as safely as possible.

I will remain in isolation at the farm.

There is more than enough work for me here preparing for the growing season ahead. It is a distraction, but more than that, it is an act of faith.

---

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Email        
First Name
Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction. Please click the box, then "subscribe" to allow us to send it to you via email.

Dangerous calculation

One year ago

I have been essentially in isolation for 10 days, not because I have any symptoms, but because my physician husband realized he would be much more likely to be exposed to covid-19 than the average person. And he didn't want to worry about me.

We are fortunate to have a second home in a rural community in central Massachusetts. StarField Farm is the place we plan to retire in a few years. For now, it is a weekend escape, a place we occassionaly rent out for writing retreats among my creative community. 

Now it is my home. A place to limit my exposure to the world and make sure I don't inadvertently carry the virus to anyone else. Given that even under normal circumstances, I live a fairly solitary life and that I haven't been in close contact with anyone but my own dogs for nearly 2 weeks, it is highly unlikely I have been exposed, much less infected.

My husband, on the other hand, has been working 14+ hour days during these last several weeks trying to get his department ready for what will be a terrible onslaught of the sick and the dying.

We have been in close contact by phone, text, and videochat. Day by day, I have seen him age, have watched the responsibility stoop his shoulders and dull the shine in his eyes.

This is the first weekend he's been off call since we made the decision to send me to the farm.

Last night, he arrived here for the weekend.

It was a choice we made, fully understanding the probabilities. It is possible that he has been exposed and will expose me. I accept that risk, knowing that while it exists, it is smaller than the risk to him not to have this brief respite. And given what we know and fear is coming, it may be the last time we take this risk.

He is fighting a war against an invisible enemy. Tomorrow, I will send him back to the front lines. Today, I will do what I can to put the joy back in his eyes and erase the lines from his face.

And then I will start the count again, keeping in isolation and doing what I can to stay healthy.

---

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Email        
First Name
Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction. Please click the box, then "subscribe" to allow us to send it to you via email.

"There are weeks where decades happen."

Spring flowers, reaching for the sun

I have been checking in with my family members, sometimes several times a day. We are all scattered and while I know having everyone here with me is neither practical nor even a good idea, I am seized by magical thinking: if my family were together, everything would be okay.

I told my eldest son that it felt like forever since Monday and he quoted this back to me:

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Yes. Absolutely.

I have a public health background; my spouse is a physician at a Boston teaching hospital. We have been a week or so ahead of most of the general public in our degree of concern about COVID-19 and its looming impact.

On the one hand, it's nice not to feel like Cassandra anymore. On the other hand, my anxiety is now shared and amplified by everyone around me.

I had to remind myself that it was Saturday this morning. I have been at StarField Farm - our home in Central Massachusetts - since Thursday. My spouse is in Boston and spending nearly all his waking hours at his hospital, gearing up, preparing, waiting. It was a difficult choice, but he persuaded me to pack up the dogs and leave, knowing his chances of exposure to the virus is high.

We have weathered crises in the past including illness, injuries, deaths of loved ones, a terrible house fire, personal and family emergencies. In every case, we were able to be surrounded by and supported by a community.

Now that community is also alone and struggling with what the next day, week, month will bring.

We are all alone, together.

It has only been 2 full days since I came here to practice social distancing. What a terribly clinical phrase. Two days. I miss the feel of my spouse's arms around me. The warmth of him against my body when we sleep. The choreography of both of us cooking dinner together. Even the silence of the two of us reading in the living room. I am, by nature, an introvert and used to spending large amounts of time alone and this is difficult.

I had to make an activity list for myself today. In all-capital letters across the top, I wrote "SATURDAY". It included bringing up wood from the basement for the stove, doing some clay work, cooking soup, doing laundry, and writing.

While I write to do lists nearly every morning, this one felt different. It felt like a life line and a way to focus away from the endless churn of Twitter, FB, and the news.

I didn't get to everything on that list, but I did some handbuilding with clay, the laundry is in the drier, and the soup is simmering on the stove.

I have no special wisdom or insight to share about how to handle the uncertainty or keep one from being exposed to an invisible threat. I only know that my own coping strategy during stressful times is to write.  

My heart aches for all the medical people and first responders who are already exhausted from planning and preparing, for families with young children who will have to provide assurances and comfort in a chaotic time, for folks--far too many folks--who were already a paycheck away from crisis.

My dear ones, stay safe.

---

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Email        
First Name
Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction. Please click the box, then "subscribe" to allow us to send it to you via email.

A Lesson in Listening

StarField Farm
photo by Chris Howard

3 years ago, we purchased a home in Central Massachusetts. Since we don't live there full time, I knew I wanted to establish myself as part of the community and am on the board of a local organization, used local tradespeople for our construction, and joined a local social group.

It's a small, rural town, not far from the Quabbin reservoir and still has its primary focus as an agricultural community.

Being a 'come-here' rather than a 'born-here', I work hard to be sensitive to local concerns and adapt myself to the community, rather than the reverse. It has surprised me how easy it has been to feel comfortable and at home in a rural setting, given that I spent a lot of my formative years as a NYC girl.

All of this is a preamble for a meeting I was called to attend at the town planning board.

*

We are planning to install a ground-mounted solar array of 24 panels which will pretty much take care of all of our electrical needs there. In order to get the required town permissions, I had to speak to the planning board who had to grant several waivers from the way the solar regulations had been written. (They were created for large commercial solar farms, not meant to apply for household use.)

As part of that process, a public notice was sent inviting any interested parties to also attend and speak about the project.

One of our neighbors came to the meeting. When I say neighbor, I mean someone who lives within a half mile, but who does not abut our land, nor can either of us see each other's houses. StarField Farm is located almost 2000 feet from the main road and tucked in around 54 acres of land.

After I said my brief statement (it's a residential solar installation, it cannot be seen from the road or anyone's home, it would pose no environmental harm), my neighbor was invited to speak.

He was an older man. White. Definitely a long term smoker. His face was deeply lined and it was clear he'd lived a hard life.

He started by complaining that he was tired of seeing solar panels when he couldn't get his electricity from them. It wasn't fair. There were too many of them everywhere. And if he couldn't have them, they shouldn't be installed all over.

Somewhere in his long statement, he mentioned that he was widowed. He sounded lonely. And he was adament that he didn't want to see any solar panels as he was driving around his neighborhood. It was bad enough that one of his close neighbors put in a residential array where he could see it as he drove by. He had wanted to object to that installation, too, but got to the planning meeting where it was discussed too late.

Through all of this, he wouldn't make eye contact with me.

I tried to explain that because I didn't live here full time, we needed to keep the back up electric baseboard heaters at 50 degrees to keep the pipes freezing and in the winter that led to electric bills over $400/month.

He grudgingly admitted that that was a problem and that someone he knew had pipes burst in a cold snap when they didn't keep the heat on. But he was still objecting to the project. He said he'd driven around to our house and knew that he would see the panels from the road.

The house he thought was ours belongs to our nearest neighbors. Our driveway is accessed over 1000 feet down a shared access road and then the house is set back even further. It's actually not possible to see our home from the road and most folks don't even realize there is a home back there.

As he was talking, I realized that his objection had no standing with the planning board. Outside of a glare complaint or an environmental impact claim, there was nothing in the town laws against a homeowner putting up solar panels. I could have blown him off. The board would grant the waivers we needed: this was pretty much a pro-forma meeting.

But I also realized that this man needed to be heard, not argued with.

So I pulled out a site plan that showed where our home was in relation to the neighbor's home he had mistaken for ours. I understood his frustration and I assured him that the only way he'd see our panels was if he visited them and that he was certainly welcome to come by any time. (People who know me know that I am earnest. This was a genuine invitation, not anything sarcastic or mocking.)

He looked at me, finally, and when the planning board president asked him if his objection still stood, he said no.

The waivers were unanimously granted.

I thanked the man for coming to the meeting.

*

Behind anger is almost always fear. Fear of the other. Fear of losing out. Fear of change. I likely represented all of these and more for this man. I could list a dozen ways in which we are different. But I understood the critical way we were the same:

I have been in that place of vulnerability. I understand trying to hold onto something -- anything you think you can control. Even if it's not true or even helpful.

---

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Email        
First Name
Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction. Please click the box, then "subscribe" to allow us to send it to you via email.

Morning Walk, Rock Hall

Morning Walk, Rock Hall

The purple martins mock us

as we stroll past their crowded house.

For once, the dogs ignore them,

intent on sharper smells closer to the ground --

frogs and bunnies, decapitated fish

abandoned by picky osprey. It's easy

to forget how alive the world is. This morning 

I read that Iceland has written a love letter 

to a lost glacier. Closer to home, 

spring torrents have made mud where fields

once ripened with corn. For just an hour,

I would be as tunnel-nosed as my pups, 

seeking out the scent-trails in front of me, 

the hope of a filled bowl yet to be. Ambition 

has ruined us. The dogs are content 

to chase a handful of waddling ducks. A thousand 

squawking fowl couldn't satisfy their desire to hunt, 

could only confuse and terrify these two rescued, 

damaged creatures. Desire of a certain kind

can break you. Make you hoard misery

until the chambers of your heart 

silt in. Until your blood trickles

where it once flowed unconstrained. I want

the joy of a chase where the bird scolds me

for even trying, where I watch it soar, where I

laugh at how ponderous legs have disappointed me 

again. The dogs herd me back to the house, mouths 

soft,ears flapping, limbs gliding over the ground

with an ease I may never match. They forgive

my clumsy tugs on their leads, patient

and kind with all my human failings.  

--LJ Cohen, July 22, 2019

---

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Email        
First Name
Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction. Please click the box, then "subscribe" to allow us to send it to you via email.

The complexities of fathers day

I've been thinking a lot about fathers lately. Not just about the wonderful man who raised me and who I said goodbye to for the final time four years ago, but also about the word father and its multiple meanings.

While the noun versions of both father and mother denote the people who raise a child, the verb forms hold quite different connotations:  To mother is to nurture. To father is to contribute genetic material to a child.

That dichotomy says a lot about our society and the roles - often highly gendered and artificial ones - we allow/encourage/support for mothers and fathers. There has been much written about that double standard and I won't rehash it here, other than to recount a personal story: 

My husband and I are parents of two sons; now grown adults. But when they were small, I often played the role of solo parent while my husband had to travel for work several times a year. It was not seen as anything unusual, and I wasn't offered any special support during those times from friends and family.

When the children were young - perhaps 3 and 5 - I had to travel for a week to a conference on the west coast. While my husband was fully prepared for his stint as a solo parent, judging by the reactions of friends and family, you would think that either he was utterly incompetent (he's not), or that somehow the job of parenting itself had suddenly changed to require a village (spoiler alert - it has always been so) in the absence of a mother.

Again, I think this is inherent in the language we use. Mothering: provides all needs. Fathering: provides chromosomes. I prefer to simply say we both parented our children. 

***

My father didn't father me, but he most certainly parented me.
The man who fathered me didn't parent me.

***

I've been thinking a lot about this in relation to being an adoptee. Finding my genetic family over the past year and a half has been both a life-changing discovery and also one that hasn't really altered my core identity. Perhaps this is because I was in my 50s and fully settled in my life with a family of my own at the time.

I have more to relate in the ongoing story of my adoption search, but last summer, I found my birth father and spoke with him on the phone for the first time. I am grateful for his life. I am grateful that I was able to find him and complete a piece of his history. (Short version - my birth mother was his girlfriend. Her mother didn't approve of him and sent Robin out of town when she became pregnant with me. He never knew.)

There's no way to know who I might have been if the people who created me had also been the people who raised me. How much of me is genetic/nature, how much is environment/nurture? Even learning about much of my genetic family over the past year and a half, I can't answer that question.

Perhaps it doesn't matter. I am the sum of my influences and experiences, as all of us are.

***

While I would like the chance to meet my birth father, I'm not looking for a new parent. There's no way to encapsulate a lifetime of history and caring and transfer it to a new relationship. We are just an interesting coda in each other's lives. He went on to parent three other daughters. I was parented by a wonderful father. Even if it were possible, I wouldn't change my past.

***

And to the father of our children, my co-parent and partner in all things: my love, always.

--

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Email        
First Name
Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction. Please click the box, then "subscribe" to allow us to send it to you via email.

No courage without vulnerability

I watched The Call to Courage (the Brene Brown Netflix special) last night and it hit me hard. Her overriding message: There is no courage without vulnerability. That failure is part of being brave. That we cannot be our full selves if we spend our energy staying armored against our fears.

I know that my best work and my best self emerges from allowing myself to be vulnerable. But it comes with so much fear tangled up with shame. It doesn't feel brave at all; it feels like I'm drowning in a whirlpool of muck.

And so I hold back. Struggling at the edge of a shit-vortex while assuring everyone around me that *everything's fine.*

And I have so many reasons why everything should be fine: Financial security. A loving and supportive marriage. A happy home. Puppies. A creative pursuit. A healthy relationship with my adult children. Good health. True friends.

So many things to be so incredibly grateful for.

And still.
And still.
And still.

I hold back.

I am afraid.

And when I try to talk about it, all I hear is myself being a whiny toddler. It's as if because I have so much support in my life, I have no right to struggle. I'm entitled, so I'm not entitled, if that makes any sense.

Maybe it's just the time of year. Anyone who's known me for long enough knows I go through a depressive spike in early spring. Why? Have no idea. It makes no sense. The light is back, the weather is warmer, the colors are returning. But every year in April and May, my anxiety ramps up.

In the past few years, it's been exacerbated by several difficult anniversaries. 6 years ago tomorrow, I nearly lost a loved one to depression and 4 years ago next month, is my father's yertzeit.

I share these things because it helps me to figure out my emotions when I write about them and because if I'm not honest about my struggles, I won't find my way through to courage.

Trust me, I'd rather hide behind my well-practiced surface persona then be vulnerable. But I'm also emotionally weary of beating myself up for not being that person.

I'm starting to understand the cost of being neuro-atypical in a world that isn't designed for me. Most of the time, I can manage all the spinning plates. I have systems in place to pay all the bills on time, make sure laundry gets done, feed the dogs, feed me and my spouse, set and follow writing deadlines, and more. But just because I can function, doesn't mean I'm not also prone to anxiety and depression, or don't get overwhelmed by sensory stimulation, or don't get panic attacks from the daily news, or am able to 'roll with it' when my routine is upended.

Most people would never see me as neuro-atypical, but the reality is I'm on the autism spectrum. And regardless of how well I can mask and function, the way my brain is made and how it works doesn't go away. I have to account for it every day. How many environments have I had to navigate today? Do I have the internal resources to make a phone call? Can I cope with a potential conflict? It's a calculus I do constantly.

Last Wednesday, I had to go to 3 unfamiliar grocery stores to buy food for Passover. It was exhausting. Not physically, precisely, but the sensory barrage and the anxiety of finding my way in a new physical space was utterly draining.

Sounds silly to be so flummoxed by grocery shopping. I've done so many difficult and challenging things in my life and done them well. Apparently, grocery shopping is not one of them.

But I did it because it needed to be done and I managed the emotional cost of it. Is that a kind of courage? Maybe. It feels more like stubbornness, but maybe that's what it has to be.

I am not looking for sympathy or answers. I'm not looking for anything from outside of myself. Maybe I just needed a place to be honest and vulnerable and even a little bit brave.

---

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Email        
First Name
Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction. Please click the box, then "subscribe" to allow us to send it to you via email.

This Is Me: An Adoption Story, part 8

My adoption and search story has continued to unfold over the course of the past several months and I have a lot to catch up with. If you haven't been following along, I've now added 'next installment' links to the bottom of each post, so you can go back to part 1 and continue on.

Part 1: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/07/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-1.html
Part 2: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/07/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-2.html
Part 3: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/07/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-3.html
Part 4: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/07/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-4.html
Part 5: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/07/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-5.html
Part 6: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/08/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-6.html
Part 7: https://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/10/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-7.html


In the last installment, I had found a link to my paternal side through doing 23andme DNA testing. (I continue to have concerns about the privacy of such data and for the secrets it can uncover, as well as their ability to cause unintended pain. My choice to go ahead was, in part, informed by my sense of urgency about knowing my own medical history. I would recommend caution and careful consideration ahead of spitting in that test tube.)

And the person I found that I shared a genetic connection with turned out to be my birth father's half brother. The two half brothers shared a father (my paternal grandfather), who had gotten divorced and remarried, having children from both marriages.

This is from an email I got from my paternal-side cousin in June of 2018:

[My father] remembers his half-brothers and reminded me he meet them several years ago.  Several of them have died but S is alive and well.  Dad called the half-brother he has contact with and found out S's phone number. Dad just talked to him and told him he has another daughter. S  would like the name of your birth mother and where you where born. 

Maybe your search is over.

"S" was my birth father. And he was still alive.

I felt an increased urgency to make contact, after being robbed of that chance with my birth mother who passed away in 2010.

The chronology gets a little fuzzy for the next few weeks, mainly because my paternal family tree is so large and complex. Over the next few weeks, I ended up having multiple conversations via email and text with a ton of cousins, aunts, and uncles. All of them were thrilled to meet me and welcome me into the family at large.

I even got an invitation to the annual family reunion in Utah. I thanked them, and declined, both because it was coming up a few weeks from then and my schedule was already committed,  and because I knew I would be utterly overwhelmed.

Part of my paternal family 'vine'

It's easy to see how complicated this can get! I started keeping everything in two family trees - one for my paternal side, one for my maternal side. This is the paternal side one, showing how my grandfather had 2 families. The left hand side is the family from my grandfather's first marriage.

The right hand side is the family from my grandfather's second marriage, which is my birth father's direct line.

Look at all the cousins!!!!

Ultimately, I got in contact with one of my birth father's full brothers and his wife who passed along my birth father's phone number with the confirmation that he did indeed want to talk to me.

So with shaking hands, a ton of questions, and more than a little uncertainty, I called and spoke with my birth father for the first time.

It was so strange. This entire journey has been strange and wonderful and melancholy and complicated. Here were two strangers on the telephone who were also undeniably joined through history and genetics. A father and a daughter connecting after 54 years of silence and family secrets.

He never knew I existed.

The maternal grandmother who had kept me a deeply buried secret in her family, and who so utterly rejected me when I had reached out in my last attempt to find my history two decades earlier, had intensely disliked him. She had actively worked to break up the relationship between Robin and her boyfriend - "S" - my birth father. And she'd been so successful, that "S" didn't know Robin was pregnant with me when she vanished from his life, leaving him heartbroken.

Like my first conversation with my Uncle Paul, there was so much of my conversation with "S" that I don't remember. I know we both laughed a lot, marveling at this wild story. We shared details about our lives. I told him about my husband and sons. "S" had been married multiple times and had three daughters with one of his wives. Which meant I had half-sisters.

Tragically, one had died in her 40s of complications from cancer. The other two were living on the west coast.

I walked away from that long conversation with my birth father feeling content. I finally had all the pieces of the puzzle about my personal history. I had contact information for more family. After being the baby of my family for so long, I was actually a big sister!

"S" and I talked about meeting in person. He doesn't travel due to old injuries and he is quite frail. But he lives in South Carolina, which is not too far for a road trip. It hasn't happened yet, but I want to make sure I don't miss the opportunity as I had lost with my birth mother and another member of this wondrous diaspora of rediscovered family who died just a few months ago. But that is a post for another day.

To be continued.. .

---

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Email        
First Name
Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction. Please click the box, then "subscribe" to allow us to send it to you via email.

There is no "them"; there is only us

Our synagogue sent out an email last night inviting congregants to gather for a service in remembrance and in honor of those who were slain in Pittsburgh.

I am not a religiously observant Jew, despite attending Friday morning services nearly every week. I don't keep kosher. I don't quite believe in a biblical God. But I am Jewish and have been part of my local synagogue community for nearly 25 years.

When I do attend services, I meditate. I read the English translations of prayers and argue with that God I'm pretty sure doesn't exist. I breathe. I lift my voice in song with melodies that have carved their way through me to my core. Melodies that link me in an unbroken chain with my far away ancestors. In those moments, it doesn't matter what I believe: I am whole.

Today, I woke up early on a day I might have slept in.

I dressed and drove to the synagogue.

As I parked in the midst of other cars, I wondered if any of the other people here came with hatred and harm in their hearts.

I went in anyway.

Inside the small chapel, I gathered with other congregants. Some of whom I knew, others I did not. Their eyes all wore the same haunted look. Many were red rimmed. Others were openly weeping.

It was an act of resistance: raising our voices together in prayer in a sacred space knowing that just yesterday, someone had violated such a space. In that terrible moment, our community became inextricably tied to other communities of different faiths whose peace had been desecrated by hate. To classrooms of school children whose joy of learning had been shattered. To victims of violence in our streets when a normal trip to the market or a night out dancing became a death sentence.

This is not a Jewish Issue. Or a Black Issue. Or a Muslim Issue. Or an LGBTQ Issue.

This is an Human Issue.

______________________________

I am afraid. Not so much for myself, but for my loved ones. Particularly for my children and the world they have come of age in. 

The world I have helped shape. I cannot absolve myself of my part in a terrible complacency that has allowed hatred to flourish. We believed that things were getting better. That society had moved beyond narrow tribalism to embrace a multi-ethnic culture. Perhaps the truth is I allowed myself to believe that because I was prospering. 

Over the past several years, a small voice inside keeps asking the same question: At what cost?

______________________________

What can I do to help repair a wounded world? It feels so trivial to gather to say a prayer for the dead when the living are in so much pain.

Even in my current anguish, I argue with the translated blessings. Instead of reciting the Amidah, I meditate.

May all beings be held in lovingkindness.

May all beings be at peace.

May all beings be free from suffering.

To those reading this, thank you for being here with me.

May you be held in lovingkindness.

May you be at peace.

May you be free from suffering.

---

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Email        
First Name
Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction. Please click the box, then "subscribe" to allow us to send it to you via email.

This is Me: An Adoption Story, Part 7

Coincidences and Connections

If you haven't been following along and want to catch up, here are all the prior installments of this strange and mostly marvelous tale:

Part 1: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/07/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-1.html
Part 2: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/07/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-2.html
Part 3: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/07/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-3.html
Part 4: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/07/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-4.html
Part 5: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/07/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-5.html
Part 6: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/08/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-6.html

Part of the weirdness of this journey for me was watching all these odd coincidences unfold. Realizing that I had a circle of friends in common with my Uncle Paul was certainly one of them, but not the only one.

Another delightful discovery was that I had a cousin who lives a few towns over from me. He and I met for an extended breakfast last December and pretty much talked nonstop. G's father is my maternal grandmother's brother, so I *think* that makes us second cousins.

(Parenthetical aside: No matter how many times I look up the difference between a cousin and a cousin once removed, I can't keep the distinction in my  head. It makes sense when I look at the genealogy charts, but vanishes after a few minutes.)

I realized, when putting this blog post together, that it's been nearly a year since G. and I met and I definitely need to reach out to him and reconnect.

So to recap:

• In October of 2017, I found the adoption file that I had believed was lost in our 2010 house fire while looking for something in the attic.
• I fired up google and typed in my birth mother's name
• I found her; but she had died in 2010
• Through the family tree that was posted for her, I found her brother, my uncle
• He and I were connected by a circle of science fiction & fantasy creators
• Through Paul, I was embraced by my large extended maternal-side family (cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and my birth mother's 2nd husband) with one exception:
• My maternal half brother utterly rejected me

That brings me up to the Spring of 2018. To that point, I had not yet connected to any of my paternal family. 

During this process, I had signed up with both Ancestry and 23andme. Despite my initial misgivings about the confidentiality of my genetic information, I decided to go ahead with the genetic testing mainly because I hadn't known at the time if I would ever get my health history from any relatives. Given that I have children, and given how much we are discovering about the importance of genetics in health and disease, I chose to risk the privacy issues. 

One of the things that 23andme does is sends you periodic reports when it finds genetic matches and gives you their best estimate on how close a relationship you share. 

In late June of 2018, I got an update from them with a new genetic match. RB was listed as a likely 1st or possibly 2nd cousin. And his last name was the same as my birth father's. This was my first clue to discovering my paternal side family!

I sent an email through the website and got a response back a few days later. Here's where it gets tangled.

The person who answered my email was LA, the daughter of RB. She had been the one to manage the DNA test for her father. It turns out that her father, rather than being my 1st cousin, is actually my half-uncle on my paternal side.

RB's half brother is my birth father, but R did not grow up with his half-siblings. They shared a father but had different mothers, as my paternal grandfather divorced his first wife, who moved with her child (R) to Utah. My paternal grandfather then remarried and had multiple children with his second wife, one of whom is my birth father. 

Through this half-uncle, I was connected to a huge branch of the family, much of which live in Utah. I have corresponded with multiple levels of cousins only to discover that one of my (2nd cousins? Removed? Gah, this gets so complicated!) is a science fiction writer with whom . . . wait for it . . . we share an entire network of mutual friends. 

Yes, folks, there are bone fide science fiction geeks/writers on BOTH sides of my genetic code. 

And it was utterly delightful when I discovered that both Paul (my maternal uncle) and Karen (my 2nd cousin, something something removed on my paternal side) were both attending WorldCon in California this summer. The two of them found one another and took a photo together for me. 

Paul and Karen - the 2 sides of my heritage meet!

To be continued. . . 

P.S. Happy "Foundaversary" Paul! It was just a year ago that we spoke for the first time!

(Read on to part 8)

---

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Email        
First Name
Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction. Please click the box, then "subscribe" to allow us to send it to you via email.

Remembering three mothers

The Yiskor service on Yom Kippur is a powerful one. The whole day is powerful with its themes of repentance, atonement, and introspection and the memorial prayers for the dead seem to take on additional meaning.

Even more so now that both my parents have died.

This year, I spent quite a bit of time during the service thinking about the three mothers who have had a great influence on my life: the mother who raised me, the mother who raised my husband, and for the first time, the mother who gave birth to me.

I am grateful for the mother who adopted me - who believed I was a special order from G-d to her. She instilled in me a love of reading, of learning, of art, of the importance of family and hard work. If she held on to me a little tighter than I wanted, it was from an abundance of love and a fear of losing what she loved. She was a woman who had experienced deep losses from an early age and lived her life always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I understand that now. I wish she had been able to let go of her fears and truly live.

I am grateful for my husband's mother. She died far too young - when she was 50 and Neil was in his second year of medical school. I was fortunate to have known her. She was a force to be reckoned with - passionate, energetic, fiercely devoted to her principles and her family - which is often a difficult balancing act. She raised her son to be a deeply caring and emotionally healthy man.

This year, I also said Yiskor for my birth mother. Her name was Robin. She was 17 when she discovered she was pregnant with me. Maybe if she had come of age a decade or so later, perhaps she would have been the mother who raised me, but in the 1960's single parenthood was a different proposition. For whatever her specific reason or reasons, she surrendered me for adoption as a 5 day old infant and set the course of my life on its trajectory.

It's almost been a year since I discovered her name on a website and uncovered the network of my extended birth family and have been able to learn a bit about her.

She died in 2010 at the age of 65.

I never had the chance to connect with her. To let her know I was fine. More than fine - that I had a rich and fulfilling life, complete with work that I enjoy and an amazing family.

I love and I am loved. This makes me fortunate beyond measure.

When you're an adoptee, the question of nature vs nurture is one that is never far from your thoughts. While much of who I am has been shaped by my upbringing and my experiences, it is also true that there is much of my birth mother in me: the love of science fiction, the pride in the work of my hands, the drive to create, and the passion for local, sustainable food are things I seem to share with her.

It felt right to remember these three remarkable women, all of whom have contributed to the woman I am. As part of my spiritual practice, and in the spirit of Yom Kippur, I will work to honor their memories in the new year.

May you be inscribed in the book of life.

---

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Email        
First Name
Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction. Please click the box, then "subscribe" to allow us to send it to you via email.

This is me: An Adoption Story, Part 6

For anyone just stumbling on this story, the earlier installments are here:

Part 1: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/07/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-1.html
Part 2: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/07/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-2.html
Part 3: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/07/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-3.html
Part 4: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/07/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-4.html
Part 5: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2018/07/this-is-me-adoption-story-part-5.html

I've taken a bit of a hiatus in the tale of my adoption search. Part of that is because life is busy and full. Part because this is an emotional journey and writing about it brings back the intensity of living through it. Part, because this next piece was difficult to write.

In a prior installment, I talked about discovering I had a half brother.

"[Paul] also told me that [Robin] had been married and had had a child - a son. My half-brother. J (and I'll be using initials for some of the people in this story, first names for others, all to protect people's privacy) had estranged himself from the family decades before. Paul had no idea why. Only that when Robin was dying, J never responded to their emails and didn't attend her funeral."

I hadn't been ready at the time to contact him: it was more than enough to process all these new family member. Contacting J would be taking yet another enormous emotional risk. One I wasn't sure I was ready for.

So in February, I got to see Paul again, this time at Boskone (another Boston area Science Fiction and Fantasy convention.) This time, my husband and older son got to meet him. And they got along like they had been long-lost friends.

Paul meeting his "new" grandnephew

In fact, when I had to run from brunch to make a panel, my son and husband stayed to chat with Paul and later Paul's wife commented something to the effect that my husband and Paul could have been related they had so much in common.

At this point, it had been four months since I had found Paul and my maternal side family. I had been embraced and welcomed by them all: my uncle Paul. His half-sister. Paul's daughter. Robin's second husband Ed, Paul's cousin G, (who lives about 15 minutes from me!), and G's father, Paul and Robin's Uncle. Pretty much all of the family.

Except for my half brother J.

That February, I asked Paul for J's contact information. He gave it to me, but cautioned me not to expect much. That there was a strong possibility J would never even answer my email. And that I shouldn't take it personally.

It was very sweet for him to be so concerned, and to want to protect me from being hurt.

I assured him that no matter what happened, it couldn't be personal, since J didn't know me. And that I felt strongly about giving him the option to connect or not.

So I sent J an email. I had few expectations, but I also didn't want to make the choice for him.

I was surprised to get a reply right away. And his reply was similar to his grandmother's response so many years ago: essentially, prove who you are.

So I did. I took pictures of my adoption documents and of the notes in our mother's handwriting that were included in the file and emailed them back to him, also clarifying that I wasn't looking for anything from him other than the opportunity to connect, or at the very least, trade health information. I also directed him to this blog for a chance to get to know me at a remove.

I waited.

And waited.

It was weeks.

By the time I got a response, I had been certain none would be forthcoming.

I imagine J crafted his email carefully, aiming for whatever he believed would be most hurtful to drive me away. I won't share the specifics of what he wrote. The what almost doesn't matter. It was clearly untrue and it was clearly meant to ensure I kept my distance from him.

While I don't like making assumptions, it's hard to read J's words and not see an intent to wound. This was the kind of response Paul had been worried about for my sake.

And had I received that response at a far earlier time in my life, I might have been truly hurt by it.

But I know what it is like to love and be loved. To trust and be trusted. J's response had nothing to do with me and everything to do with him and whatever hurt and anger he has nurtured all these years.

I am sorry for him.

He had every right to reject contact. Had he done so directly and honestly, I would have been disappointed, but that is the nature of choices.

But by responding with cruelty and disdain, he revealed himself more clearly than he will ever know.

And it saddens me that he chose to lash out. I worry that he doesn't have the kind of rich emotional life and support that I have. He may be a stranger, but his is also my brother. My *baby* brother. There is that part of me that wishes to take care of him and embrace him as I have been embraced.

I did send him a reply. I didn't respond to any of the hurtful words, only told him that I would honor his wish to break off contact. I offered some of my medical/health information and let him know that should he choose differently in the future, I would welcome hearing from him.

That was six months ago.

I don't imagine there will be any reply.

(Continue to part 7)

---

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Email        
First Name
Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction. Please click the box, then "subscribe" to allow us to send it to you via email.