I sit across the table from this beautiful man who used to be my boy. He is a marvel.

It’s not that I’m surprised at how he turned out. It’s just that I hold all the versions of him in my heart, and sometimes I have to squint my eyes a little and twist around in my brain to reconcile the him of today with the him of my memories.

Some versions are linear. The little boy who used to sit at his art table for hours, crayon in hand, grew up to go to art school. The sensitive child who got emotional over stories still feels things deeply and tears up easily. The boy who liked to rearrange his furniture and created a hidden reading nook in his room grew up to be an interior designer. The teen who painted his room after we specifically told him not to (and with the wrong kind of paint that required an entire repaint of the room) is still stubborn.

But some versions don’t line up quite as precisely.

I sit on a bench with the other moms watching our young toddlers romp in the soft play area at the mall. The collective energy of the kids is frenetic. Trying to keep your eyes on one child is like trying to focus on a single bird in a frenzied flock. It’s easy to spot my daughter. She has stolen the focus of most of the parents with her wild abandon and fearlessness.

At the center of the soft playground is a hill about four feet high. Josie repeatedly climbs up to the top of it and literally flings herself off the side to the floor. She is gleeful, giggling and the center of attention. Keaton is nowhere to be seen.

I walk around to the back side of the hill where his sister is the main attraction and find him standing behind it intently focused on his own feet. The playground’s design features a plastic stream encircling the hill and center area. Brightly colored fish slightly protrude out of the stream. While Josie repeatedly throws herself through the air, Keaton gingerly touches the fish with his feet. He is cautious, reserved, not interested in taking risks.

I have to remind myself that the shy, fearful little boy is somewhere inside this confident, self-possessed man who can naturally command a room and navigate any social situation. A man who is comfortable conversing with powerful, well-known people at work and at play. And who went to college and created a vibrant life for himself more than 1500 miles away from home in a notoriously tough city where he knew no one.

This is the boy who stood and touched fish with his feet.

At the end of my first visit to see Keaton since he’s been away for school, I’m in my hotel room packing for my return trip home. His voice is shaky when he says he needs to tell me something. I am instantly relieved that he’s finally going to come out to me after carrying the burden of a secret that never needed to be a secret for so long.

Although he knows there is no risk of me or the rest of the family rejecting him for being gay, he still struggles to say the words. Once he finally does, it’s like the emotional dam has burst as he sobs in my arms.

Afterwords, in my ignorance, I think, “There. Now that’s done.” I naively categorize Keaton’s coming out as the before and the after. What I learn instead is that although he is secure in our full love and acceptance, it will be a several year process before he is able to fully embrace and accept himself. Like so many LGBTQ individuals, it will take time for Keaton to shed the invisible but heavy cloak of shame he’s worn for so long.

Eight years later, Keaton is fully, gloriously himself. He is comfortable and confident in his skin and proud to be exactly who he is. He is in a committed relationship with a wonderful guy and has brushed off the last bits of self doubt like crumbs from a table.

This is the same man who hid his true self from the ones who love him most.

Happy to be together recently after not seeing each other for five months, we briefly hold hands walking down the street. My hand fits compactly in his. His used to fit in mine.

How did we get here so fast?

Although present for the duration, we rarely see the metamorphosis of a life as it happens. We see the fully formed fruit but not the seeds from which it sprung. The fig but not the flower.

I carry all the versions of my daughter in my heart too.

The girl who flung herself off the playground and the high dive still has a sense of adventure but tempered with a thoughtful, considered approach.

The girl who felt like she didn’t fit in and built herself a safe shelter of achievement has now created a sanctuary of community and connection with others who share her drive and values.

The girl who developed an eating disorder out of people pleasing and perfectionism is now a strong and vibrant advocate for herself and others.

She’s a marvel too. And so are you.

And what about me? I hold the same kind of stories and layers of self that loop and swirl inside me like a labyrinth. The girl who hid in her closet to escape the explosiveness and tension of her childhood now knows how to confidently stand in her power and navigate uncomfortable situations.

The girl who avoided vulnerability like it was a curse and hid behind a facade of boisterous bravado is now comfortable with being quiet but not afraid to share her stories with anyone who will listen.

The girl who was born between faiths but presented as Christian to fit in with everyone around her now rejects organized religion and lives with a deep dogma-free spirituality that feeds her soul.

The girl who toned down her creative curiosity to stay safely in the mainstream now fully embraces an openness to the unknowns of the universe.

It’s not that we leave our former selves behind as we evolve. It’s more like we absorb them, still carrying them within us even as they’ve morphed into something else. We are nesting dolls with all of our former selves and our future ones too cocooned one inside the other, inside the other, inside the other.

Every wild fig contains a wasp. Fig wasps pollinate the flowers and are then absorbed by the fruit. The fruit’s enzymes break down the wasp inside the fig so that by maturity, there’s no trace of the insect inside.¹ But the wasp was there. Without its part in the story, there would be no fully formed fruit.

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Outside, it was beginning to drizzle. Yet another neighbor thoroughly wiped his shoes on a rag by the door and stepped into the room. Girshl stared in fascination. He had never seen so many people in their house. The neighbor went through the same motion as the others before him: awkwardly hugged dad, murmured something about “strong,” and “for the kids,” and “what can you do,” squeezed 12-year old Ada’s shoulder, then turned to Girshl and patted him on the cheek. Girshl beamed in anticipation, trying to guess what he’d get this time. A sugar cube? A ten-kopeeks coin? A pencil?

The neighbor’s hand lingered on Girshl’s face. That felt nice. “Girshele, tell me, what’s nineteen plus nineteen plus nineteen?” That was easy: three twenties, take away three. “One hundred eleven!” The words came out a little slurred, like they did when he was overexcited. Two women and a man talking in hushed voices by the kitchen stopped their conversation and were now looking at him. “Is that correct?” asked the neighbor of the man. The man frowned, his lips moving. “Correct!” The neighbor put a small coin in Girshl’s palm. “You are a smart boy, Girshele!” One of the women, Rivka, shook her head and said, “The Lord works in mysterious ways.” Ada gave Rivka a sharp glance, and Rivka looked away.

Girshl tugged his sister’s arm. “Ada, what’s a ‘retard’?”

“Who said that to you?”

“No one.”

Girshl heard the word from Rivka about a year ago, when Ada was pushing his cart past the fence of Rivka’s yard. Rivka stood there listlessly, dressed in the same black as today, her face red and swollen. She was surrounded by several women. When she saw Ada and Girshl, her head suddenly jerked with force. “How can this be fair? Someone like this gets to live and my Shoshannocka is gone?” As Rivka’s words carried down the street, Ada’s body tensed and she quickened her pace. That night, helping mom make the bed for him and his brothers, Ada whispered to Girshl, “You’ll be walking soon, promise. Boruch also took a while and look at him.” Girshl thought, this would be nice. Then he could go to the river with his brothers.

Ada held his shoulders. “Let’s go get you some food in the kitchen. Uncle Demian brought potatoes.”

To get to the kitchen, they had to walk past mom. She was lying in the center of the room, covered with a white blanket. Her face was visible, but her eyes were closed. Girshl tried not to look.

In the kitchen, more neighbors, talking.

“At least Motl came back. No one would’ve taken in the kids.”

“Shhh.”

The women smiled at Ada and Girshl.

Girshl started feeling drowsy, when the energy in the room suddenly changed. Everyone stood up. His uncle and two cousins went to where mom was lying, lifting her, carrying her out, others following. Girshl felt frightened. He looked around the room searching for Ada, but she was nowhere to be seen. Maneuvering his way through the procession of neighbors, Girshl ran outside and saw dad by a horse-drawn wagon, giving some instructions to the bearers.

Dad looked at Girshl.

“Go inside.”

“Why? Where are you going?”

“To the cemetery.”

Girshl knew the word, which, when mentioned, threw a long cool shadow over the conversation.

“I want to go with you!”

Dad thought for a few seconds.

“All right. But you can’t go like this, you need your cap. Go put it on.”

Girshl rushed back inside the house. It was summer, so his cap had to be in the trunk in which mom kept their autumn and winter clothes. The trunk was heavy, and it took Girshl a while to pull it from under the parents’ bed. Twice, he had to stop to let his arms rest. He scraped his elbow on the bed’s metal frame, but that was ok: his shirt sleeve wasn’t torn. Finally, he managed to get out the trunk and open the lid. Rummaging through the content, Girshl found the cap. Last year it used to be Joseph’s, and before then Boruch’s, but Girshl remembered mom saying that he’d be wearing it this fall. Squeezing the brim, he ran outside and stood there, looking in both directions. The street was empty.

*****

2026

Dad was an amazing storyteller. He talked about his childhood in a terse style that was striking in what it highlighted and what it kept out. Highlighted: details that stay with me decades later - the ten-kopeeks coin, the white blanket, the cap. Kept out: any editorializing or character judgement. He’d do Hemingway proud.

Lack of editorializing made me slow to grasp the context. Dad was born in 1931, the youngest of four children of a cobbler and a homemaker, in a very poor Jewish family in a small Ukrainian district town. It took me a while to connect his childhood developmental delays with the Holodomor.

Amazingly, dad never turned tragedies of his childhood, which were many, into dramas of adult score-setting. As an adult, he maintained that his dad (and, later, stepmom) raised their kids the best they could, or knew how, and remained a respectful, dutiful son. Dad’s math aptitude became his life’s fuel. The only of the siblings to graduate from school, he went on to become a math professor. Ultimately, his life unfolded in a David-Copperfield-style narrative arc: a devastating childhood followed by stability. At least, as much stability as the time and place permitted. A fulfilling career, a loving marriage.

Ada died of cancer several years before I was born. My older sister Inna once told me that she saw dad cry twice in his life. The second was when saying goodbye to Inna as she was leaving for the US. The first was at Ada’s funeral. Real-life Ada’s name was Asya - a difficult pronunciation in English. I am named after her.

*****

Published previously in my personal Substack blog, The Receding Tram

The Receding Tram

Brief literary fiction and essays exploring memory, time, and identity. Subtle shifts between real and surreal. Coincidences. Emotional charge with comic relief.

By Alla Keselman

~

My family and I were traveling over spring break this year, on vacation to the Great Smoky Mountains. A place we consider our home away from home. We love it and have been countless times.

It is not too far from our home in Kentucky. So that makes it more affordable for us as we have a family of 5 and a fur baby, we let tag along as well.

We were halfway there when it was time to stop for lunch. We stopped at a Cracker Barrel, which I am just going to say, is a must! Our 9-year-old will not let us go on a trip without either a lunch or dinner stop to eat at his favorite place. (is it the food or the toy area? the jury is still out)

Now on this particular trip my mom (who travels with us on our vacations and makes them twice as fun!) decided to make all the family members their own tiny batch (12, which is not tiny, but mom says it is) of chocolate chip cookies. I am divulging that information because it plays a significant part in the whole story.

As we were pulling into the parking lot of the Cracker Barrel, we passed a man who was dressed in tattered clothes and pushing an old stroller, but it was full of belongings such as a rolled up sleeping bag and some other personal items like a little cooler and a duffle bag, things like that. My heart was immediately moved, and I already decided that if he was indeed turning in towards the restaurant then I was going to go to this man and share my box of cookies with him. Well, sure enough as we parked and I looked towards the back of the restaurant, there he was walking slowly around the corner.

I got out of the car and went walking towards him (I did not tell my family my plan, I was hurrying to try to catch up with this fellow) with the remaining of my cookies in hand. I went up to him and said, “Hello there brother, my mom made us a bunch of cookies, and I wanted to share mine with you, is that ok?” He said “oh yes, thank you so much. God bless you.” I said, “and you too, enjoy them.”

I went back to catch up with my crew who had just walked inside and was telling them that I met that gentleman and how I could just tell he was a kind soul.

We sat and ate and then as we were leaving to pay, he was coming in the restaurant.

I was surprised but encouraged! I went over to him and told him that I was the lady who had given him cookies a little bit ago, and then I told him my name and shook his hand. He said yes, he remembered. He thanked me again and then said, “How can I pray for you?”. That led into a 15-minute discussion that melted my heart. His name is Thomas. He had a great job for a while but had to move in to take care of his mother for 4 years, until she died a couple of years back. He has been homeless since then. He actually lives in a hotel that takes every bit of his social security check. He has no amount of disdain or discouragement. He is appreciative of each day he has; he asks everyone he meets if they know Jesus and if they don’t, he tells them all about Him. He said that he loves to talk about the Lord and how he thinks that the time is coming soon that Jesus will come back. He quoted scripture better than most people I know. He mentioned that so many people live under the influence of the devil. They are living in either fear or complacency. He told me that he prays the blood of Jesus over people, and he knows that the Holy Spirit will intercede and work on behalf of those prayers. He was one of the most articulate people I have talked with in a long time.

I was so moved by his genuine love and concern for others even though he was in such a hard spot in life, with his living arrangement. He seemed to think that was so irrelevant. Spreading the love of Jesus and winning souls was far more noteworthy than where he was laying his head at night. He said that he wakes up every day to serve God.

I felt humbled and honestly, ashamed.

Thomas said that we (as Christians) need to be in the word. So many, if not most Christians are complacent. He reads it, he knows it. He quoted: 2 timothy 3, Hosea, Zephaniah and Proverbs. (those are just a few of the ones that I can recall)

I left there that day feeling many things. I felt enlightened, emboldened, cherished as a child of God, blessed and very much grateful. Thomas will never know how much he touched my life. I plan to continue to pray for him often. I pray that God will continue to use him and that he will use me, that I may be more like Thomas and be bold in my walk and faith in the Lord. Lord, pour out your mercy on to Thomas and give him strength, he is a blessing to others.

I realized that most of us live paycheck to paycheck. We could all be just a couple of paychecks away from being homeless. The lifestyles we lead do not correspond well with our income in most cases. I pray that we are more grateful for what we have and that God would use His children, that we may seek Him and that we would be the light He calls us to be and represent Him and give Him glory … like Thomas does every day.

It is 4:30 a.m. My phone is ringing.

I never sleep with my ringer on. It’s only on now because I’m scheduled to substitute teach at a school with an early start time.

At first I think my alarm is what’s waking me up. I don’t know why it’s going off; my body knows it’s too soon to be awake. I almost shut the phone down to make it stop, but then I realize the sound I’m hearing is not my alarm, but my ringtone: “Little Wonders” by Rob Thomas. The ringtone I’ve kept for over sixteen years.

Our lives are made in these small hours…

Rolling over to pick up my phone, I see the name of my hometown on the caller ID, and my heart stops. My eyes snap all the way open as I swipe my finger across the phone’s screen to answer the call.

“Hi, is this Erin O’Brien?” a cheerful voice in the phone asks me.

I answer yes. I’m still groggy, but I can feel the adrenaline rush building.

“Hold please!”

She is gone before I can say another word.

After what feels like an eternity, I hear a click and a male voice on the other end of the line. He tells me he is a doctor. He says and spells his name, which I immediately forget.

He wants to know if I’m aware my mom is in the emergency room.

I am not. I live in a different city, I explain.

“Well, Judy came in a few hours ago,” he tells me, “having a lot of trouble breathing…”

Oh. Okay, I think, exhaling as he continues to speak. She’s in the emergency room and they’re calling to give me an update on her condition –

“…that Judy has died…”

Has died.

Has died.

I hear myself stammering “What? What?” in exactly the same way I did when I learned of my sister’s death almost twenty years ago, also via phone call.

And now suddenly I am outside my body, studying myself, observing curiously. I note that even as the logical voice in my head begins to tell me that this is real, the feeling part of me hasn’t caught up yet and is still repeating “What?” over and over again.

I remember the other call, the one from 2007, the one where I dropped the blue landline phone’s receiver onto the floor as I slid down, my back against the wall, and screamed.

I was the one who had dialed the phone that time, asking to speak to my sister. I remember how the words my brother-in-law spoke on that call – “Didn’t your mom tell you? Laurel died this morning” – made it sound incongruously as if the dying had been an action, something she did, although it turned out she died in her sleep. Her last action had been going upstairs to take a nap, not knowing she wouldn’t wake up.

This time, I notice the opposite effect: how the doctor’s phrasing removes my mom from the action, even though he is telling me now that she died struggling, struggling to breathe, in a place whose raison d’être is keeping people alive.

Only hours later will I begin to process the fact that she was alive, and lucid, for nearly two hours in that emergency room while no one called me.

They had my number. My ringer was on. I would have answered.

I find myself sitting on an uncomfortable chair in my kitchen, one of the chairs left there by my home’s previous owner along with the ugly table I keep meaning to remove but haven’t yet, because it’s always covered with stuff and I have nothing with which to replace it.

I am gripping the phone like it’s a rope I’m hanging from by one hand. My other arm is wrapped around my chest. I can feel myself rocking back and forth against the chair.

My ex-husband, who still lives in my home’s spare bedroom, is awake in the kitchen. He sleeps very little and has been awake for several hours. Now he is standing in front of me, standing over me, and I can hear him asking me what’s happening as I stammer my responses to the doctor.

I don’t pause to answer my ex-husband’s questions. Although he continues to ask, I can see in my peripheral vision that he already knows.

The doctor is telling me that he asked my mom if she wanted to be resuscitated, and she said no. He asked her twice. When he reminded her that just a week ago she had told him otherwise, she said, I understand.

He is telling me he thinks she knew she was dying. He wants me to know that bringing her back would have been a violent process. It seems very important to him to make this clear to me.

I thank him. It feels like I should thank him.

He tells me how long he has been caring for my mom, tells me about her medical history, tells me she knew him, he wasn’t a stranger to her. He tells me he held her hand and talked to her until she died. He tells me how very sorry he is and asks me if I’m okay.

I can feel his sincerity, but I have no idea how to respond. I’m just waiting for him to finish so I can hang up the phone. I’m thinking, we can talk more about all of that later. I can’t stand one more second of being on the phone right now.

When he pauses, I ask him: What do I need to do?

Nothing, he says. There is nothing you need to do now. The coroner will contact you.

I don’t hear whatever he says after that.

After I hang up I realize we will not talk more about it later. We will not talk again, at all, because there is no reason to. I didn’t need to try to remember his name.

I believe that later I will recall every detail of what happens next, but I won’t. I will remember moments between blurry montages, as if someone were randomly fast-forwarding and pausing my brain.

I cancel my substitute teaching jobs for the rest of the week. My older son stumbles to the bathroom, barely conscious. He doesn’t seem to notice that I’m uncharacteristically awake and sitting in the kitchen. I think about stopping him as he walks back to bed, but I decide not to say anything to him just yet.

Eventually, I cry. It’s the strained kind of crying that feels like work. It hurts to force it out, but I feel compelled to. I imagine it’s similar in some way to the experience of pushing out a baby. I don’t know for sure, though. That’s something I never got to do.

At some point my ex-husband puts coffee in front of me. It’s starting to get cold by the time I take a sip.

I keep returning to the doctor’s words: Judy has died. I replay them again and again in my mind, trying to capture and hold the half-heartbeat between the words “Judy” and “has died”.

Eventually I realize that what I’m looking for is the moment just before she died to me, the instant before Schrödinger’s box opened and the outcome was set, as if I could force a different ending if only I could insert my will into that moment.

My mom was in the emergency room for almost two hours, awake and talking to the doctor, while I was asleep with my phone next to me, ringer on, volume all the way up.

Why did they not call me. Why did she not ask them to call me?

It’s around 9 a.m. when I call the coroner. He must have noticed my name on caller ID because he asks me if I’m calling about Judy O’Brien.

When I tell him that I am, he asks how I knew, and I tell him the hospital contacted me several hours ago.

He says they told him they didn’t have my contact information. He was in the process of trying to find someone who could give him a number for me when he got my call.

I tell him there has been some confusion with the hospital regarding my mom’s allowed contacts. She had given them my brother-in-law’s name and number during a previous admission. He still lives in her house, whereas I travel frequently.

Someone at the hospital had misinterpreted my mom’s choosing my brother-in-law as the primary contact to mean that I was not to be given any information.

I thought we had resolved the issue months ago. My mom told me she had asked the hospital to communicate with me about her care. Apparently, no one updated the notes in their system.

I can almost feel the coroner shaking his head. He tells me, “They should have called you when she came in. You could have had a chance to say goodbye.”

I am so grateful for his supportive indignance, but it breaks me. Finally my tears flow freely, effortlessly. I couldn’t stop them if I tried.

The stranger on the other end of the line is so kind it kills me. I tell him I have never done this before. I don’t know what to do next.

He gives me his personal cell phone number. He tells me that I am in control of what happens next, that I don’t need to rush. I should choose a funeral home, but he can wait up to a week for me to get back to him. My mom is – was – 82 years old with a well-documented medical history. There won’t be an autopsy.

I’m grateful for that. I’ve seen the aftermath of an autopsy and I never want to see it again.

He gives me his personal cell phone number and tells me how sorry he is, and I realize how uncomfortable it makes me to be on the receiving end of sympathy. I am usually the one others turn to for support.

I text my husband in Cuba to tell him what has happened. The cell phone signal comes and goes there, so I have no idea when he’ll see my message. I know Jesus will be devastated. He was determined to meet my mom in person, but the closest they ever came was a phone conversation on speaker, with me translating.

Jesus knows about my complicated relationship with my mom. He always wanted to help. He could have, if he’d had the chance. He is the first person who has ever made me feel loved, fully and unconditionally, exactly as I am. I know he would have loved my mom the same way.

I had planned to install WhatsApp on my mom’s phone and set up an account for her before my next trip. I so wanted her and Jesus to be able to talk face to face. I don’t know why I didn’t think to do it sooner.

Jesus video calls me as soon as he sees my message. He is sobbing. It’s agonizing, not being able to reach through the screen to touch him.

It doesn’t matter that he hardly knew my mom, that he didn’t get to meet her in person. He loved her completely because she was connected to me.

But I also know that he isn’t just crying for my mother. He’s crying for his own, who died just over a year ago, and also for his aunt Mariana who lived next door to him most of his life and died in January, and for the fact that he and I can’t be in the same place together to lean on each other in our grief.

Eventually my two kids who are at home wake up, and I tell them. They are sad and concerned about me. They sit in the living room on the couch on either side of me and we watch something we all enjoy, although later I won’t remember what it was.

I text my younger son, keeping my tone deliberately casual so he doesn’t have to imagine every terrible possibility before he has a chance to call me. He’s walking to class when he responds. I am heartbroken that I can’t tell him in person.

A momentary wave of relief washes over me when he asks if we can come and get him. It’s almost finals week, but it’s a Wednesday, and he doesn’t have class on Thursdays.

Although I was careful not to pressure him one way or another, I want him at home.

I know my children’s feelings will not be as layered or complex as mine. They are removed by an additional generation, and the death of an elderly grandparent is within the natural order of life.

My children only knew one version of my mom. I, on the other hand, am grieving many versions of her – some that existed, and others that never will.

My older son and I travel to Valparaiso in silence. It’s one of my favorite drives, an extension of a trip we’ve been making for years – every fall since he, now 24, was a toddler – to visit an apple orchard in Hobart. I have twenty years of pictures of my kids standing in front of the apple-adorned plywood height-measuring sign that’s nailed to a tree in the petting zoo. I stopped with the pictures a few years ago when it was clear my daughter, my youngest child, was done growing.

As we drive past the exit for the orchard, I find myself wishing I had continued taking the pictures anyway.

Somewhere between Gary and Valparaiso we turn the radio on. It’s set to The Bridge on Sirius XM. Seventies and eighties light rock. The music of my childhood.

I make it through ELO’s “Telephone Line” and Carole King’s “So Far Away”, but when I see John Denver’s name pop up on the screen as the opening notes of “Rocky Mountain High” begin to play, I can no longer maintain my composure.

I can’t even fly over the Rockies without crying. I have only seen the mountains from the ground once since my family’s last visit twenty-nine years ago, six months after my Aunt Rita’s funeral, which took place on my 27^th birthday.

My most consistently happy childhood memories reside in those mountains.

Other than that one last trip after my aunt’s death, we never returned, never went skiing again. I will never forget the look on my mom’s face as we boarded the train back to Illinois after her sister’s funeral, how I reached out to try to comfort her, how she pushed me away and said she just wanted to be left alone.

My son offers to change the station, but I tell him no. I want to let the song play.

We arrive at the college, park the car, and wait for my younger son to return from class. I step out to hug him when he appears. He holds on for a long time before he lets go.

As we drive home, he occasionally reaches for me, silently placing a hand on my arm from the back seat when he hears my breathing change. I stare out the window at the marshy swales that border the southern curve of Lake Michigan, and my mind drifts back to another memory.

It was early June, one of those glorious pre-Fourth of July evenings when I could relax because there was still so much summer standing between me and the start of the next school year.

My dad was out of town. He was a salesman with a multi-state territory, and his business travels were frequent enough that I had given up trying to keep track of where he was going or when he would be back.

I was twelve years old, Laurel almost ten. My mom seldom cooked when it was just the three of us, relying on tv dinners or whatever could be thrown in a microwave, but this was one of the rare evenings she prepared a full meal in my dad’s absence. I don’t remember what we ate. I just remember the anomalous, warm feeling of the three of us sitting down to share dinner together.

When we finished, my mom asked us if we wanted to go with her to a farm where she had promised to take care of the animals for a friend who was out of town. We eagerly agreed to go, grabbing our firefly nets on the way out the door. An antique store on Main Street had a side gig selling fireflies, supposedly for medical research. They provided us with large, cone-shaped cotton nets and paid us a penny per firefly for whatever we could catch. By August I would have a fat stack of bills to spend at the county fair.

We rode past the outskirts of town as the evening light was starting to fade. Taking advantage of my spot in the truck’s front seat, I rolled the window down so I could feel the air pushing against my face as we accelerated on the flat country road. I stared into the passenger side rear view mirror, the wind whipping my hair back, the cornfields and trees and occasional houses an indistinct blur behind the fixed image of my own reflection.

After a short stretch of gravel road we turned onto a circular driveway, parking next to the open pasture between the house and the fenced enclosure where several horses were grazing. The fireflies were just beginning to appear. My sister and I jumped out of the truck with our nets and started chasing after them as my mom let herself into the house.

We ran back and forth through the open field, jumping and twirling our nets in wide circles to keep the already-caught fireflies from escaping while we chased new ones. I had never caught so many at once. I did the math and figured that in half an hour I’d have at least a hundred of them, a whole dollar, maybe more.

It was the kind of perfect summer night that feels like it might never end. The sky looked like the inside of a blown glass paperweight, unmarred by a single cloud. The air was pleasantly warm and absolutely still. The only sounds came from our own voices, the thrumming of cicadas and crickets, a faint train whistle in the distance. As the sun dipped below the horizon, leaving behind bands of orange fading into cobalt, I looked over and saw my mom leaning against the truck, watching us.

I was used to seeing my mom working on projects, solving crossword puzzles, playing solitaire, eating while reading a magazine with the tv on in the background. I almost never saw her just be still. But in that moment, she was simply standing with her arms folded across her chest, looking out over the pasture and smiling.

I looked away quickly, not wanting to catch her eye and break the spell.

Laurel was still dashing in circles on the other side of the field. As I turned to run toward her something made me hesitate, my breath catching in my throat. I froze the moment in my mind, capturing every detail of it in the time it took to blink. I had the eerie sense that I was watching my future self watch myself in the past.

And then I was running again, running toward my sister, running toward my mom, and even though I was running I was absolutely certain that I was leaving some part of me behind in that field, forever twirling and chasing fireflies in the summer sunset.

This post was originally published on Erin O’Brien’s Substack, My Jellyfish Life. If you enjoyed reading it, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber!

Check out My Jellyfish Life

Not the kind you put together physically on a table. Mine is from an app I downloaded on my tablet about ten years ago. This app provides one puzzle a day and allows you to choose the number of pieces you want to work with, ranging from 35 to well over 1000, and gives you an estimate of how long it will take to finish it. I always go with 280 pieces, which takes me about an hour to complete.

The pictures vary a great deal from day to day - from seasonal and holidays scenes to cute animals and exotic wildlife, from pieces of abstract art to breathtaking landscapes from all over the world. The app doesn’t provide a picture beforehand, so whatever puzzle you’re putting together is a mystery until you’ve finished.

So, regardless of my plans for the day, it always starts with me sitting in my recliner, sipping a cup of coffee, and working my daily puzzle. I’m an early riser, so it’s often still dark outside and the house quiet. I don’t yet have to be anywhere nor have I gotten caught up in email or social media. It’s like this first hour is somehow insulated from anything else going on in any other areas of my life.

I’ve come to treasure this time and guard it as my first sacred commitment of the day. I use the word sacred because this hour seems to provide something essential for the rest of my day, something I get nowhere else. And on the rare occasion when I’ve had to skip this time, I feel off. This hour grounds me, and that feels sacred.

I didn’t set out to create such a morning ritual, but with it providing such undeniable, if accidental, benefits, I’ve given it some thought. Because the psychologist in me wants to understand what this ritual is doing for me and why. The writer in me wants to put it into words. The teacher in me wants to explain it in a way that makes sense. (Even though I promise I won’t test you over any of it.)

Anyway - here’s what I’ve come up with:

Each day I begin with a jumble of 280 disjointed pieces with only variations of color to hint at the whole picture and shapes to suggest their placement. Yet within minutes the jumble takes on meaning as patterns unfold and pieces I thought couldn’t possibly fit together do. And when that last piece is placed, I have visible proof that I can navigate through chaos in order to reach my goal.

It’s not unlike beginning a day - a day that feels like a jumble of disjointed plans that don’t look like they’ll fit together either or bring me closer to any of my life goals. Yet somehow, piece by piece, patterns form and meaning emerges. And at the end of the day, I see that what I’ve accomplished has indeed brought me closer to my goal of impacting others through what I teach and write.

Cognitive psychologists tell us that our mental framework exerts a powerful influence on our emotions and behavior. I wonder if putting together 280 pieces of chaos sets my mental framework to one of confidence that I’m up to the challenge of whatever the day holds.

I hope you, too, go into today with confidence in your ability to navigate whatever chaos you encounter in order to reach the goals you’ve set.

Familiar, everyday life, with its sameness, predictability and naturalness, comforts us. In fact, most of what is with us everyday is largely unnoticed and not perceived - the actual understanding of something our eyes provide is often missing. These commonplace things are the staples of life, stored in the cupboards of our minds like flour and noodles, only to be truly perceived when we focus our attention on them for the reason we got them in the first place.

A chipped coffee mug, frayed rug, pencil holder and flower pot are emblems of this selective focus that characterizes our consciousness…the ability to see and then perceive, to see and then visualize, to see and then impose meaning. This is certainly true of us, but has broadened in scope in recent years with the awareness that other animals do much the same thing. Either by instinct or uniquely human willfulness, the result is the same…everyday bits and pieces become invisible.

We see the prosaic items as having some utility, but not urgency. Beneath this functional utility lies a profound philosophical stance when these objects carry with them the memory, identity or meaning that we attribute to them. In that sense, a pottery shard is not just a piece of broken bowl, but the symbolic identifier of a grandfather’s pottery shed or a golden gift from a loved one destroyed in an earthquake.

These objects shape who we think we are. For anyone obsessed with having too many of these everyday objects they might do well to examine the thicker story each has rather than the thin outline of the space they take up in our brains. They are extensions of lived experience.

Consider the humble, cracked and glued, worn and discolored tray holding the day’s watch, phone and jewelry. On the face of it, it is nothing more than a flat piece of porcelain that cannot function the way it was originally intended. But, for many of us, this kind of tray is irreplaceable for the emotional pressure it has on our psyche as to what it was originally and what it has become. Maybe a souvenir, a gift from a dead friend, some yard sale item on that clear spring day, or simply that it has been there so long we no longer really see it.

In many respects, items like this bedside tray are irreplaceable. When we look for our phone, that is often where it will be, or when it is time to gussy up for that dinner party it is where the earrings usually sit. This item, and the items a piece generally holds, are unremarkable items that form our identity, a point of reflection for the artistic, emotional, and even physical nature of our reality. This is true even for the most humdrum things, the pencil-holding tiny pottery vase, the slippers tucked under the bed, the tray for our change, or the nightlight carefully pointing the way to the bathroom are all a part of our daily lives and not anyone else’s…in every sense, they are us.

I once wanted to give a gift to a friend to honor her on her birthday. The work she had done to personalize a vacation cabin in the woods was impressive. I photographed the ordinary details of her life there - the edges of found picture frames, the collection of agates, the red rooster sculpture in the corner, the Chinese porcelain towel rack, and dozens more that defined her space. I put these together in a small book. At first I was taken back by the casual way she accepted the gift with as much, “This is nice,” to a sing-song, “Thank you.” It took me years to realize why the gift was regarded this way instead of as the tribute to her personal view of her life there: These were items she took for granted and was puzzled that anyone would take the time to notice them because she didn’t, or at least she never acknowledged that to me. I suppose the book will have more value if the cabin burns down.

This absorption of moments like this with her keepsakes was predictable now that I realize the place that these everyday items have for any of us. We project our internal emotional states onto the physical environment around us and the hand-tooled hope chest, native wood headboard, or sterling silver tea set originally owned by Grandma seems of no intrinsic value other than that which a home decorator places on it. They are priceless if destroyed by fire or flood, but taken for granted if the friendly, warm spring wind gently blows through the window.

Everyday articles prove we’ve lived. These keepsakes, whether treasured or not, serve as tangible evidence that our brains have a memory of each in an otherwise neutered environment. It is only when they are lost that we grieve the experience of not having that which we took for granted for 50 years. In that sense, when gone, so too is a part of us that vanishes with it.

Of course, the smartphone has altered this somewhat. How wonderful it must be for the victim of a house fire to show another the home they once had, and even the fireplace that was too close to the Christmas tree causing the blaze, is not enough to give context to a life well-lived in the photo album shown on their phone. It has been estimated that of the 7 billion humans on the planet, 3 billion own a smartphone. Of them, 2-3 billion photographs are taken every day of everything from the delicious steak meal, to the petunia by the door, to their precious honeymoon. Smartphone photos seem to have a utility that camera phones do not.

Our phones are something that Chester Gould, the creator of the Dick Tracy cartoon character in 1931 (and here is where my readers, from Millennials to Generation Alpha, hit the delete button!), could not have foreseen. Tracy talked to his watch like a telephone and even took in videos through his “2-Way Wrist Radio.” I do that at least once a week on a smart watch. Sure, our phones and our smart watches are useful, but what is less appreciated is that they perpetuate the everyday items around us. They give everlasting life to that which may have been intended as temporary, prominence to that which was supposed by superfluous.

Ultimately, we now live in a world that cannot overlook the common but often champions it. We are not really isolated in our consciousness, but now propped up by countless everyday items that define us. Our coffee mugs comfort us, treasured keepsakes ground us, phones broaden our horizons. By recognizing these items, bringing our awareness to them such that we perceive them rather than just see them so we don’t trip over them, we affirm our humanity right down to the toothpick holders that Grandma used 100 years ago. They give our lives meaning and continuity and enable us to know ourselves better by being able to see inside what we choose to hold in our hands.

###

I tried to unearth the restaurant’s origin story. I discovered that a man named Rob Kowalewski came up with the concept in the 1980’s, but oddly found no rationale for this peculiar mashup.

You might imagine kielbasa burritos, tacos topped with sauerkraut, or cheese covered pierogi nachos, but you would be wrong. The menu was just the standard Mexican fare you’d expect to find in a restaurant run by an American white dude. There wasn’t one single Polish dish, at least not that I can remember.

But, what I do remember, probably from the combined trauma of fire and embarrassment, were the “Flaming Fajitas”.

As a food runner my job was to, well yes, run food. We brought the heavy cheese and sauce laden platters out to the tables and the waitstaff tipped us out at the end of the night. (Once I lost control of my heavy tray and all of the plates slid off and crashed into the chair legs of the table it was going to, splattering all over the unfortunate souls sitting in said chairs. But that’s another story.)

I wasn’t old enough to serve alcohol so I couldn’t wait tables, where the real money was, until I was 18.

Although…and I’m only just realizing this, the accelerant we used for the Flaming Fajitas was a shot of tequila. Huh.

Anyway, the fajitas were served on a burning hot cast iron skillet, with a cover over the handle akin to an oven mitt, and set atop a rounded wooden plate. Before serving the fajitas, we were required to say to the customers at the table, “I’m going to light this fajita on fire, and when I do everyone say Olé!”

Can you feel my teenage mortification still traveling through space and time?

Honestly, it wasn’t too bad if it was a big group of people, especially if they’d already been lubed up by a round or two of margaritas. But, if it was just two people, say a couple on their first date? Sheer agony for everyone involved.

But, it had to be done. I never knew if the head food runner, Todd, was cheerfully lurking, silly buttons pinned to his apron embroidered with the José Babushka’s logo: a tiny man with blond hair and a blond walrus mustache, holding out his sombrero in greeting, and sitting atop a donkey.

So, after giving the instructions for forced gaiety, I would douse the sizzling meat with tequila, and light a match to it, stepping back as it erupted in flames. (Unfortunately, I learned that lesson the hard way. Singed bangs are not a cute look.)

“Olé!” I would shout.

If I was lucky, the customers would join in, but often they did not. As they laughed uncomfortably, I would place the fajita in front of the unwitting cause of our collective embarrassment, and say, “This plate is very hot.” Just in case the fact that it was aflame mere seconds before didn’t give that away.

And what did the customer do 95% of the time? That’s right, they touched the plate.

“Ow!”

No shit, I felt like saying. Why couldn’t they have shouted Olé with that amount of volume and passion?

José Babushka’s wasn’t just a restaurant. The other, cooler half was a bar. Since I couldn’t serve or drink alcohol, I didn’t mix with the bar staff much. But, one day, just as my 18th birthday was approaching, I met one of the cocktail waitresses and was fascinated to see that she had her nose pierced. This was way before it was a “thing”, at least in Northern Michigan. In fact, this was the first person I had ever seen with a piercing anywhere but their ears.

I thought it looked so pretty and cool! I asked where she had gotten it done, and she said a doctor had done it, which didn’t surprise me at the time because what did I know?

Now I know that this was unusual. Although not common, some tattoo parlors did body piercings back then, and there were a few specialized piercing studios, but I’m certain none where I lived. Many people pierced their own noses, or friends pierced each other’s noses, which just sounds horrifying.

I admit, I had pierced my own ears several times before the age of 12. I used two ice cubes to freeze my earlobe, doused a needle in alcohol, held a bar of soap behind my ear, and jabbed the needle through.

I remember a lot of blood, followed several days later by itchy crusty painful infections. Undeterred, I’d let the holes heal up, then try again. Finally, someone took me to Claire’s to get my ears pierced properly, with a gun.

But noses seem so much more tender. And unsanitary.

I’m lucky the cocktail waitress hadn’t taken an ice cube and needle to her own nose. I probably would have blindly followed suit.

As soon as I turned 18, I made the appointment. I’m not sure exactly what type of doctor he was, but the office was homey and his wife was there to assist. She had a nose ring as well, and she told me that she had gotten her belly button pierced for her fiftieth birthday. Wow!

She had me mark the spot on my nose using a fine tipped marker, then held my hand as the doctor punctured my nose with a sterilized needle. The pain was sharp and made my eyes water. I squeezed the wife’s hand hard. They were both very kind.

The nose ring he inserted was actually just an earring with a regular back, the end of the post pointing perilously toward my tender septum. Blowing my nose became complicated and risky. Once my boyfriend playfully grabbed my nose and inadvertently stabbed me. The earring itself didn’t lay flat against my nose, it protruded quite a bit, and would sometimes snag painfully as I dried my face with a towel.

Below is the best picture I could find of that first nose piercing. Put your glasses on and zoom in. It’s there.

My mother strongly disapproved of my nose piercing. I think she might have “disowned” me for a few days.

At my work-study job in the Adult Continuing Education office of the community college I attended, the old ladies signing up for classes would stand across the desk from me whispering in a disapproving hush about my nose ring. Some would ask me outright how I blew my nose, which I thought was just rude, despite the fact that it was a valid question that I hadn’t found the answer to yet.

How do you blow yours? I would think, but never say. Despite a controlled rebellious streak, in many ways I was quiet and well-behaved.

My manager at José Babushaka’s also strongly disapproved and told me I couldn’t wear it at work. I pointed out that one of the cocktail waitresses wore hers, and he said “That’s different,” because she worked in the bar.

I was outraged! I wouldn’t abide the hypocrisy! I quit my job at José Babushka’s right as I was about to get promoted.

Luckily, I soon found another job, as a waitress, at The Embers on Grand Traverse Bay, an upscale restaurant which catered to the conservative elderly crowd.

The uniform—brown polyester skirt, button-down pink blouse with a rounded color and a brown bowtie—looked ridiculous on my tall, big busted frame. It was meant for petite women with small breasts who looked like dolls. I looked like a giant wearing a child’s clothes.

We had to wear our hair up, but no loose ponytails! Everything had to be tucked in and secured. No dangly earrings were allowed, just posts. And, of course, no nose rings.

I could respect this because it was an across-the-board policy. So, in the bathroom before each shift, I reached into my nose with a pair of tweezers, pulled the back off, and tucked my nose ring into my change purse.

Yes, you read that right. I put it in my change purse, where it mingled with germ infested coins.

We all know the inevitable end to this story—inflammation and pus. Sadly, I had to leave my nose ring out so the piercing could heal, and by the time that happened, the hole had closed up.

But, I’m nothing if not determined. A few years later, after I had moved to Connecticut, I went with a group of friends to another Claire’s and somehow they agreed to pierce my nose. I got the impression that it wasn’t really a thing they normally did. They used the same gun they use to pierce ears.

The technician, a man as I recall, shoved the gun up my nose and pulled the trigger. The bang echoed through my skull. Overcome with pain, eyes watering, and disoriented, they sent me hurtling out the door. They must have had me pay ahead of time.

Oddly, I don’t remember what happened to that piercing, although given my utter lack of common sense about nose piercing hygiene, most likely, it too, became infected.

Many years later, after I had my daughter, I got my nose pierced for the third and final time. By then it was much more common, almost mainstream. I went to a piercing studio, where I learned that you aren’t supposed to put anything in your piercing that you wouldn’t put in your eyes. They gave me a bottle of sterile saline solution to cleanse my new piercing.

This was a revelation! I’m of an age where we smeared burning Noxzema onto our faces, used Nair to cause the hair on our legs to fall out, slathered ourselves in baby oil to broil in the sun, and doused piercings with alcohol.

The nose ring, a tiny diamond, has a short post with a rounded disc at the end. It’s so tiny in fact, that sometimes people I have known for years will suddenly notice it and say, “You have your nose pierced??”

Unlike my first two, this nose ring isn’t dangerous at all—not one single injury.

However, I am going in for a hip replacement surgery in two weeks, and the nurse warned me that if I don’t take it out and they have to “cauterize a bleeder”, although unlikely, I might get burned at the site of the piercing.

Except I have no idea how to get it out. She said I’ll have to sign a waiver.

I’ll definitely die with it. One day I’ll be an old lady with a tiny little diamond chip in her nose, telling her grandkids how cool and badass their grandma once was.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please click the heart, restack, or share about your piercings in the comments.

This story was first published on my personal Substack, Soul Excavation with Joy. To receive new posts and support my work please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. You can also buy me a coffee.

© Kristi Joy Rimbach 2026 | All rights reserved

“You do? I love Japan! Why do you wanna go to Japan?”

“I wanna ride the in-kam-sen”

“The shinkansen?” I asked. I figured he was repeating something he saw on YouTube. “You mean the bullet train?”

“Yeah, the shim-kanren. I wanna see that one.”

At age 3, my oldest was already obsessed with trains. He collected every train toy, and screamed in joy every time he saw a train pass by on the street. If we didn’t take the train to go somewhere, he would always be disappointed.

“I don’t wanna ALWAYS drive the car daddy! I wanna ride the MRT!”

This was a common refrain that, more often than not, resulted in an extended whining and tantrum session. I sometimes wondered when this phase would end.

Thus began his second obsession: Visiting Japan.

Of course, I wasn’t about to hop on a plane with a 3-year-old and a baby bag full of wet wipes and milk bottles. But, 7 years later, that’s exactly what we did. Well, minus the milk bottles.

Neil had turned 10, and I wanted to take him somewhere memorable over his school holiday, instead of watching him sit at my computer playing Roblox all day. I cycled through a few options in my head, and remembered our conversations from years ago about Japan. That was where we were gonna go.

Travel plans had been on my beanies.family to-build list for a while, and I thought it would be a good way to get Neil engaged in the planning (as if he needed any motivation).

Like most 10-year-old boys, I stuck the app in front of his face and he understood it instantly. Within 5 minutes, travel ideas started popping into the aptly named “Daddy Neily Japan Trip” travel plan.

“Visit the famous red Fushimi Inari Taisha gates”, see the “sakura”, “visit Kiyomizu-dera”, one of the most famous temples in Kyoto, and more. One plan stood out: “teamLab Biovortex Kyoto”, whatever that was, followed by “!!!11!!1111!!!!”. Neil was googling. I figured I’d better start the planning.

This was a tricky one to plan. We had a limited amount of time, lots of things to do, and it was what’s known in Japan as “mankai” - peak cherry blossom season. At most, mankai lasts a few days, and it’s impossible to pinpoint exactly when it will come, as it depends heavily on the fickle whims of mother nature.

If you ever visit Japan during mankai, be warned - you might be trampled to death by tourists, especially in Kyoto. I thought I might die of old age before I was able to find flights and hotels that wouldn’t require taking out a second mortgage to afford.

After weeks of searching, I booked our flights, each leg one-way on a different airline. We got a lucky break with a traditional Japanese ryokan in the center of Kyoto’s historic Gion district that had a cancellation just one week before our trip.

Neil counted down the days, reminding me each night of the number of sleeps until our trip. Our plane departed at 12:40am on a Friday night (technically, a Saturday morning).

The night of the trip, I put Neil to sleep at his usual bedtime, and went to knock on his door when it was time to leave for the airport. Before my hand hit the wood, the door swung open and a little (but rapidly growing) beanie leapt into my arms, almost knocking me over. I guess he was ready to go.

We arrived in Tokyo the next morning, rode our first “Japan train” from the airport, and met one of my good friends for the traditional Japanese hanami picnic at a local park. Trees were bursting at the seams with cherry blossoms, and families packed the narrow park roads.

The next morning, as every Japan travel guide on the internet recommends, we took our right-side seats on the famous Nozomi Shinkansen, heading south to Kyoto, specifically so we could get the best view of Japan’s crown jewel volcano from our bullet train window.

As we exited the mountain tunnel towards the famous Mt. Fuji vantage point, all we could see were clouds. Neil took a video of a gray mass, with a vague silhouette of a majestic mountain in the background. He mentioned, calmy, that he hoped the view would be better on the way back.

Each day of our trip was choreographed, down to the exact train or bus we would ride. We hit our first snag on our last day in Kyoto. I just didn’t think that a modern art museum would require advance booking. I mean, an art museum being completely sold-out?

It turns out, I didn’t quite understand how popular “teamLab” attractions are in Japan.

I pleaded with the staff in broken Japanese. Our train was leaving at 2:30pm, and the first available ticket was for 5pm. I asked if there was anything we could do, but this being Japan, “Sumimasen, muri desu ne, kippu ga nai to.”

Sorry, you can’t go in without a ticket.

I looked at Neil’s face. In his mind, this was the highlight of the trip. Instead, it became a learning experience - for me.

The sadness in my son’s face grew deeper with each negative gesture from the museum employees, even though he couldn’t understand their words. Tears welled up in his eyes, but he didn’t cry.

My frustration grew with each passing moment. It was at that point I felt my son’s eyes train on me, except he wasn’t looking at me with sadness, but with concern. His hand reached for mine, not to pull me towards the museum, but to pull me away.

It occurred to me that I may be taking this disappointment harder than he was.

Neil saw what was happening, and accepted it like a grown-up. His focus shifted to easing my frustration. I don’t think I could have been more proud of him.

The next 20 minutes, aside from feeling like my stomach was tied in knots for not realizing that, in Japan, anything popular sells out, was filled with a very parental-sounding lecture about flexibility and adapting to changing situations. In travel, things rarely go 100% to plan. I may have been talking to myself as much as I was talking to him.

We’re lucky to be here, I said, and we’ll find something else fun to do. Kyoto is a huge city. Let’s get a nice lunch and find something to do that’s even more awesome and cool.

A 20-minute walk later, we landed at a huge children’s indoor playground, with games and puzzles you could only find in Japan. Neil raced a dinosaur on a 25-meter-wide video screen, and we played real-life Tetris. We laughed as we stood on separate perches and knocked each other down with foam jousting sticks, American Gladiator-style. I won (not that we were keeping score).

It wasn’t the teamLab Biovortex whatever, but I’m pretty sure he had a good time. And this still being daddy-feeling-guilty time, we followed that up with a Happy Meal at McDonald’s.

And just like that, we were on the bullet train back to Tokyo, Neil’s face pressed firmly against the glass, struggling for the second time to see a majestic, snow-capped Mt. Fuji out of the left-side window of our northbound train, again obscured by misty rain and gray clouds.

He didn’t complain.

—

Despite the throngs of tourists, some less-than-ideal weather, and one big, dumb honking mistake by yours truly, memories were made on that trip.

There’s no app that can make your kid smile like that.

Which reminds me, sometimes you need to put the app away, and just be there with your son. I need to hear this more than anybody.

Stay cool, my beans.

greg

Hi friends! I originally posted this story on my substack at every bean counts, where I talk about technology, AI, beanies.family, and my own crazy family life in general.

BEFORE YOU READ:

In 2017, my family found my father’s mother after decades of unanswered questions surrounding her disappearance from his life.

Her name was Valentina Getsch.

The search led us to relatives we never knew existed, old photographs, buried family stories, and emotional reunions we never thought possible.

At the time, we believed the story had finally reached its conclusion.

But nine years later, a single document changed everything again.

What follows is not just an update to that story.

It is the beginning of a new search.

On August 26, 2017, we thought the search for Valentina Getsch had come to an end.

After years of wondering what became of my father’s mother, we finally found her through a simple Facebook message that contained just word fours: Valentina is my grandmother.

That one message connected us to Valentina’s granddaughter, Maria. And eventually to her son, Jim.

For the first time in decades, pieces of Valentina’s life began finding their way back to us. My father reunited with both of them. We listened to stories. Studied old photographs. Tried to imagine the woman he had only known for the first five years of his life.

It felt like the ending to a story we had chased for years.

But then came Friday, May 15, 2026.

I had just poured myself a cup of coffee and settled into my recliner for a quiet morning. I remember lifting the warm mug toward my lips when my phone buzzed with a text from my sister Gail.

At first, I almost ignored it.

Then I opened the message.

And suddenly, it felt as though the past had stepped back into the room.

She had sent a group text to me, my brothers, and my husband, Tia. The same people who had witnessed my father hugging Maria for the first time. The same people who watched him grow close to his half-brother, Jim.

The text was only four words long.

Years earlier, a simple Facebook message containing four words changed our lives forever. Now, once again, four words were about to change everything.

My sisters’s text read: We found Valentina’s parents.

It felt as if we had stepped back into time. Back into the room where first we told my dad we had found his mother. Where he held the tablet with her picture on it close to his chest. Where he closed his eyes and began remembering the sound of her voice, the touch of her skin and the smell of her lilac perfume.

I remember staring at the text, feeling the same rush of hope we experienced back in 2017. It was an incredible breakthrough.

Then the replies from my brothers and my husband, Tia, began filling the group chat with “This is incredible.” “How did you find them.” “I’m stunned.”

To be honest, none of us could quite believe it. But we all understood the feeling immediately. It was as though the search had suddenly begun all over again.

My sister also attached an old marriage license to the text.

At first glance, it looked like another ordinary document. But the moment I opened it, I realized something had changed.

The record listed not only Valentina’s nickname - Vaila, along with her father’s name, which we already knew as Aleksei (also Alex) but also her mother’s name.

For years, her mother had existed only in fragments. In uncertain memories passed between Maria and Jim. Maybe her name was Mary. Or Maria. Or Marina. No one was completely sure.

And there was never much explanation as to why Valentina rarely spoke about her parents. That part of her story may always remain silent.

But suddenly, after all these years, we had names.

Real names.

And then came another shock.

The spelling of Valentina’s surname. Her real surname. All the stories we were told, her surname was Getsch. Even on the ship’s manifest, the in-take clerk wrote her father’s surname as Getsch.

But now the marriage license showed a different spelling.

I remember staring at the page, feeling something I hadn’t felt in years.

It was as if history was whispering to us once again.

The marriage license was discovered by Gail’s daughter, who recently became interested in our family ancestry — especially my father’s side of the family.

And somehow, finding that single document nine years later reopened all the emotions we experienced during the original search for Valentina.

Hope.

Curiosity.

Longing.

That strange ache that comes from trying to understand someone whose life slowly disappeared into time.

We had always hoped that one day we would stumble across something that opened doors once believed permanently closed.

And now, somehow, that happened.

With the same determination we carried in 2017, we now carry again in 2026.

Because we want to know more. Not just who Valentina became.

But who she was before any of us knew her.

Before Ellis Island. Before America. Before heartbreak. Before her story fractured into scattered memories and unanswered questions.

Before that, she was simply a young woman.

Blue-eyed. Blonde-haired. Barely more than a girl.

She was eighteen when she met my grandfather Waldemar.

Nineteen when she gave birth to my father.

And twenty when she crossed the ocean carrying her American son in her arms.

She came from communist Russia during one of the harshest periods of Stalin’s rule. Long winters stretched across villages and cities already burdened by fear and scarcity. Coal smoke drifted through frozen streets.

Bread lines formed before sunrise. Families learned to speak carefully behind closed doors, knowing too much honesty could be dangerous.

And somehow, inside that world, was Valentina.

Young. Hopeful. Still imagining another life.

Coming to America with her child must have felt both thrilling and terrifying. An ocean separating her from everything she had ever known.

But she came anyway.

She arrived carrying hope for a different future.

She could not have known then that her life in America would eventually break apart in ways she never could have imagined. Her child taken from her. Her dreams dismantled almost as quickly as they began.

And yet somehow, she survived.

She rebuilt what she could. She remarried — ironically, to another Finnish man.

And it was that marriage license my niece found all these years later.

To most people, it would look like a simple record stored away in an archive.

But to us, it feels like a clue left behind by someone who never fully disappeared.

I have often believed that the universe reveals its secrets only when the time is right.

And maybe that is what happened on May 15.

Because after all these years, we are beginning to realize we may still know only a fraction of who Valentina truly was.

And now here we are beginning all over again … The Search for Valentina Getsch.

P.S. You can read the story that began this journey, including how we told our father we found his mother, the day he met his brother Jim, and the one final gift Valentina left him that proved even after all the years of not knowing, that she never forgot her son and that she loved him right up until the day she died.

You can find the memoir I wrote to honor my dad’s story and carry his legacy forward right here: The Search for Valentina Getsch here:

P.P.S. I have a feeling this is only the beginning of a new chapter in Valentina’s story. As we uncover new documents, names, photographs, and perhaps even relatives, I’ll continue sharing what we find with you — including the moments when the trail goes quiet again.

Three husbands, three children, three roles… lots of 3’s.

Now before you let your whimsical imagination of knights or feudal lords capture your heart, let me dispel that notion post haste!

It’s just my dreamers heart giving a creative narrative of my life and my 3 roles, that help me to carve out my place in this world. But in that vein of medieval tales and Camelot, I will say I have had the fortune or lack thereof in seeking my knight in shining armor. The first two were riding their horses backwards. I finally got my prince on round three! But like any good “Dynasty” tale, there was heart break, deceit, and fights for domination that would take a whole chapter to flesh out. So we will skip on ahead!

The short story version is I was a mama at 17. I quit school during Christmas break of my senior year, and I earned my GED in April before my baby was even born. She was born May 30th.

My husband, who I married over that same Christmas break, had joined the military when we found out I was pregnant.

Oh, did I mention my father was a preacher, yeah, the story gets crazy. That is a whole other chapter in my life. There is so much to unpack here! I will move a little quick so I can relay some other crazy life events that are sewn into the fabric in the quilt of my life.

My husband and I had been a couple for a year in high school before I got pregnant. We had been together only two times… when I found out the literal life altering news.
We moved to Georgia where we lived until he had to go to Korea for his overseas Army deployment. We had been married for 5 years, he left… found a Korean lady, got her pregnant and we got divorced. End of story

So, I was back home and living down the street from my parents. I had an apartment and was working full time. I had a 6-year-old little girl to raise. I began to go to some dances at the military base not far from where I lived, and needless to say, I met husband number two, and as fate would have it, his name was the same as my first husband. Tim number two as my family would later affectionately label him so as to differentiate him from Tim number one! Oh, the name thing, yeah... that should have been a big red flag!

So, I am now on my second marriage at the ripe old age of 23. He was from Texas, we met in Kentucky, which is where I was living. We got married a month after my divorce was signed. We moved to Texas with my 6-year-old daughter, life was just OK. He was more distant and very lacking in the world of affection, then I had realized. Yes, it was a rebound situation no doubt. I am not ashamed to admit that now. I was very much concerned for my security, my ability to raise my daughter alone on a very meager pay situation that would not sustain itself for long. So yes, I absolutely jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

We somehow made it work for a while. We had a baby boy when I was 26. He was the light of my world. His daddy was not an affectionate man as I mentioned and I often wondered if me and my husband conceived this child because our clothes were in the same laundry basket, that is how much affection was in our household. So that did not last. I left when my boy was 4. It was so difficult. I cared for his dad, but it was just not what I needed in regard to communication and affection and well, interaction in most everyway. I left and it would crush my heart when we met to drop off or pick-up kids. It was overwhelmingly a difficult situation to navigate, emotionally and mentally.

I ended up starting to take some college classes during the last few years of our 6 years of marriage. I continued to do so after I left and ended up dating one of my college professors. He was a lawyer and well, we got engaged a year and half later. But that ended two months later. He was bi-polar and it was a hot mess. He didn’t like kids, we had two different religions, it was not a good match from the jump. BUT he was cultured, graduated top of his class at Vanderbilt. He was so smart and honestly, the first person to really listen to me and have conversations and cared about what I thought. He played amazing piano and would play for me, while I sang. I was lovestruck and he could charm anyone he wanted to. I can easily see now how I was so young and immature. I was thinking about myself. It is hard for me to say I regret everything because I learned so much from those times of heartache and hurt. I recall some very hurtful things that were said or done that I would never even imagine tolerating today. I would never have dated someone who did not like children. What possessed me? I am astounded to even admit that I made those huge decisions that degraded me and my character. I am ashamed. But at the time, I was blissfully unaware of how much I was hurting myself in the long run and how bad I would regret letting my good judgement slip right through the floorboards.

That relationship was doomed from day one. I even missed a Christmas with my children, which again, I am shocked I allowed to happen. Moving on, one year later I met a man who would ultimately shatter my world. In many ways. He stole my heart and then almost strangled me.

His name was Ken and we were together and even engaged ( you seeing a pattern here?) for about 6 months before he snapped ( for a second time) and was going to beat me, most likely to death. I know that because he had said a week or so prior to this incident that I will briefly recall, how he had thought of ending it and taking me and my son with him. NOW why I ever remained in that house is an absolute mystery to me, I have no idea what I was thinking. I honestly don’t. It is like looking back now, I cannot imagine that it was my life. I think of it as some distant and far away version of what my life was. But it was real and it had consequences.

Ken and I had a few words of disagreement, he did not like what I had to say so he grabbed me and threw me on the bed and punched me in my chest and my arms. I got away and ran to another room, shut the door and was crying, trying to call my friend. I left her a message and laid my phone down. He stormed in and grabbed my phone that was laying on the bed and threw it at me. Like baseball fast pitch. It hit my mouth. Later my lip was cut, bruised and swollen and only by God’s mercy did I not lose a tooth. When I got up and ran out of the house to the neighbor, he jumped in his car and drove a few miles from our house and committed suicide. I heard it all on the police radio, as the neighbor called the police and she was there asking me questions as the call came over the radio. I was inconsolable.

So fast forward, all of that happened when my son was 7. He is 31 now. So yes, there has been a lot of things that have happened in my life that I regret. Things that I say again, shock me that I allowed to happen or tried to prevent… or better yet, some of them were welcomed. I live with those choices, just as I have been living with the consequences of having a baby at 17. It totally derailed my life and ever since, I have been working on getting it back on the right track. I feel like I have done a pretty good job, but there are days that I question so many things.

One thing that I have been beyond blessed with is this whole TRIUNE niche that I have. I would love to explain this! I am Mama, Gigi and playmate. All three wrapped up in one.

I had always wanted to have three children, but it was just not in the cards. But let me tell you about how big my God is. He worked it out through the trials and circumstances of the life of my son and his girlfriend, for me to raise the most adorable little boy ever.

When my little grandbaby Chase was born, I was there. He was the only one that I was in the delivery room for. That must have sealed our connection right there. Me and my husband had him almost every weekend from the time he was about 2 months old, when his mom went back to work. She worked weekends and we loved having him. We saw him even more than that most of the time. When he was 4 and we were wondering what he was going to do for kindergarten, I decided I wanted to pay for him to go to a small private school down the street from us. His mom said she could not run him to school and his sister so he could just live with us. Well, that worked for me. And we have never thought twice about it. This was my 3^rd child. He was more like my baby anyway. He got my complete attention and affection. He was the 5^th child at his mom’s house and well, he was just really wanted at our house.

He is 9 years old now and for the first two years, sometimes he would ask about his mom and a few times he would cry. It absolutely tore me in two. I would tell him that she was working and that it was ok because, I loved to hold him and take care of him and then he would stop crying and calm down, and we would play. It devastated me though. His mom and dad saw him maybe once every 3 months. He was not important, they never called and asked how he was or if he needed anything. So, I took it upon myself to be his mom, his Gigi and his playmate. He had nothing else. He would absolutely be glued to my side. His understanding of being unwanted or neglected by his parents I think, was understood at some level in his heart. He had extreme separation anxiety up until just a few years ago. He would be in the same room with me or not want me to leave him. When he was 7 my husband and I went on a two night stay away and my mom watched him. He cried both nights. It was hard to hear about that. It is sad to know that he has an emotional scar that even I cannot make right.

So that has been my life for the last 5 years. I have been 3 in 1 for this little boy. It has made me appreciate my own amazing childhood where I was loved beyond comprehension which has helped me help him. I am grateful for this opportunity to be the Gigi who plays with her little guy for a few more years. He will be grown up before I turn around. I know that I will miss these busy days.

I won’t say it has all been roses and sugar cookies. HA! It has not. I have had days where I question my own sanity. I feel hemmed in. I am overwhelmed and not at all happy about my lack of personal time. I am not ashamed to admit that. Many days come and go where I find myself longing for a day here and there to do “my thing’. Whatever that may be. I used to scrapbook a lot, like a LOT. I have about 35 scrapbooks. I have not done it in .. you guessed it, 5 years.

Four years ago, I lost my sister, my only sibling. She was murdered. I have only slightly dealt with that grief and will continue to do so. She was and forever will be my best friend. God knew that I was going to be beside myself in the long and lonely days and years to come, He knew that Chase was going to be able to help me stay focused on living and continuing to see the positive in life. I have been able to do that and through love and God’s provision I am able to cope and keep her alive in my heart.

I used to hike a lot and ride my bike. Those things will come around here more often, as my little guy has gotten older and can bike and last on longer hikes… etc. But for years, I did not and it got to me. I have worked hard though on being self-less. I still struggle. As humans, I think we always will. But I feel good about where I am at. I am in a place that I know God has put me. He after all gave me a third child (for all intents and purposes) that calls me Mama.

How could life get any better? He fills my heart with love and laughter and at the end of the day, isn’t that what matters? I could not ask for anything greater. Loving my whole family is what keeps me pointed in the right direction. It keeps me hopeful and focused on living my life to serve my Lord and live in a way that pleases Him.

I am blessed that the hardships, bad decisions, wrong roads, huge mistakes, lack of good judgement and general wrong directions…. Lead me to where I ended up…. being three people to ONE amazing young soul.

What I cherish most is that we hold each other’s stories with so much tenderness. We are quiet, loving caretakers of memory. Because of that, we never need to explain or provide a backstory. We can just drop right in over a meal or cup of coffee, and get straight to the “good stuff”.

Ana Paola and I are both open to life as it mysteriously unfolds. There have been many twists and turns along the way, and we bring whatever is happening in our lives fully into our conversations. We have started some of the craziest projects, and somehow they always worked out. When we face a tricky decision, we reach into our box of memories like opening a game of Jumanji; pulling out clues, stories, and moments that guide us. Piece by piece we sort it, connect it; and out of the chaos, grounded decisions emerge. I find this to be so priceless. No judgment, no shame, just love.

Talking to Ana Paola today was really meaningful. As I shared updates on my move to Malta, it felt grounding to know that I have a friend across the Atlantic who is waiting for me there.

Asé

I SIT AT THE CENTER OF MY CONSTELLATION

I walk up to it and give it a push without enthusiasm, causing it to go around a couple of times. Rhonda and Charlene don’t even bother to hop on and ride.

“Hey, look at them.” Rhonda says, motioning with her head.

Charlene and I look across the playground and see two girls who look a little younger than us playing near the slide. They’re dressed in matching polka dotted short sets, one pink, the other yellow, and look sweet. We hate them immediately.

Rhonda wanders toward the swing set which is next to the slide for a closer look and Charlene and I follow.

“They have the latest Barbie and Skipper.” Rhonda reports.

Charlene and I sit on two empty swings and Rhonda stands nearby.

“Whoopee for them.” Charlene says, beginning to wind herself slowly in her swing.

“I know,” I say as a bright idea occurs to me. “Let’s make them think we’re from a foreign country. We can pretend to speak a foreign language.”

“How do we do that?” Rhonda asks.

“Easy, silly,” I explain, “Just pretend we’re speaking in tongues like at church.”

“Oh, yeah…” She says, “You start.”

“Sure,” I say, “But you come with me.” I’m delighted to be getting some use out of all that church-going, finally, and as we come up to where the two girls are playing, I say in what I hope is a quizzical voice, “Shali canda mata batu?”

The girls look up at us blankly. They both have blue eyes and “dirty dishwater” colored hair. They look so different from us, in their nice polka dots. We’re wearing, as usual, old grimy shorts and tops.

I continue, “Mafal see canda?” I’m hoping Rhonda will get into the swing of things and chime in.

“What?” Says the girl who looks like the oldest, holding her platinum-haired, bubble-cut Barbie to her polka-dotted chest.

I turn to Rhonda. “Sahlifa tani ha?”

To my great relief Rhonda doesn’t miss a beat but answers in an explanatory tone, “Nah, zinka moy hala.”

“Ohh, pah, pah.” I say.

“I can’t understand you.” The oldest girl says, and adds, unnecessarily, “We’re playing.” She turns away from us back to the younger girl, probably her sister.

That will not do at all, I think. The other little girl is still staring at Rhonda and I with her mouth open, which is more like it.

I point to her Skipper doll, which is the one with the long brown hair, the one I wanted for my birthday and say directly to her, “Anna bay hori?”

“Huh?” She says, looking confused.

Her sister looks back at me and says, “Leave her alone.” And then to the littler girl, “Don’t pay any attention to them, Margie, they’re just pretending they can speak another language, they’re just fakes.”

I look away from her then and shake my head, as if in disgust. In reality I’m disappointed. I start talking loudly to Rhonda. The nonsense words just seem to flow out of me and I use “expression” when I say them, just like mother always tells me to do when I read. That should be more convincing

“Haka rasha moi pata.” I say matter-of-factly to Rhonda, “So pulima taka shay.”

Rhonda answers, laughing, “Mori cana settu.” She looks as if she finds something about the two girls very funny.

“Let’s go somewhere else and play, Margie, where no one will bother us,” Says the oldest girl, finally, giving me a mean look. They gather up their stuff and walk away.

We casually walk back to Charlene who all this time has been winding and twirling on her swing.

“Did it work?” She asks,” Did they think you were from a foreign country?”

Rhonda says, laughing, “God, can you believe those two. They don’t know anything.”

“They’re babies.” I say with contempt.

“So they believed you?” Charlene repeated.

“Of course they believed us.” I lied.

“Let’s get out of here,” Rhonda says, not disputing me.

As we leave the playground area to see what’s going on in the rest of the park, I lag behind and look back one last time at the two girls who’ve moved to a spot under a tree. It’s hard to admit I envy them, but at that moment I do, thinking only of the Skipper doll I wish were mine and even their polka dotted outfits, as I tug at my too tight white blouse.

What I don’t realize is that I even envy them the person who picked out the polka dotted outfits, and who helped them dress that morning with such care. I don’t realize I envy them the very innocence that arouses my contempt. I turn away and slowly follow Rhonda and Charlene into the rest of the park.

We walk down one of the concrete paths in the park, choosing one of several. This one wanders over a grassy area planted with many trees. I’m still thinking of the Skipper doll, but Charlene’s mind, it becomes clear, is elsewhere.

“I’m hungry.” She says, not surprisingly, beginning to walk with large steps so she can step on all the cracks in the sidewalk.

It’s not surprising because all three of us are usually hungry all the time, but Charlene is usually the one who says it first.

“So.” Says Rhonda, “Who isn’t?”

“No one’s as hungry as me.” Charlene replies, continuing to take large, slow steps.

“I am.” I say, “I’m starving. I couldn’t eat that cereal Nanny made.”

The Cream of Wheat Nanny had cooked for us this morning had been, as usual, one giant lump.

“It was awful.” Rhonda said. “It’s too late to go to the store, though.”

She was referring to a shoplifting expedition to the local Shopping Bag market, which was the usual way we dealt with our ever-present hunger. Since we never had money to buy anything, we’d steal as much candy as we could fit into a brown paper produce bag, then eat it on the way home or to the park till we were sick.

“Yeah, you’re right, it’s too late.” I say, kneeling down to tie the lace of my tennis shoe. Staying on one knee for a second after finishing, I look up and find I’m on a level with someone’s abandoned picnic site under a tree about 20 feet away. There’s a picnic basket and a blanket spread on the ground, but no people lying on the blanket or eating the picnic…

“I wonder…” I say thoughtfully, getting up again.

“What?” Rhonda asks.

“Yeah, what?” Charlene echoes.

“Come on!” I say, grabbing Rhonda’s arm and leading her and Charlene to a picnic table nearby. “Sit.” I tell them.

“Do you see over there,” I say, “under that tree?” I point. “There’s a picnic basket ready for a picnic, but no one there.”

“So what.” Rhonda says, but slowly.

“So there’s food in that picnic basket!” I say.

“You mean we---” Rhonda begins.

“We can steal the picnic basket!” Charlene says in a rush.

“Not the basket, it’s too big.” I say. “But something to eat out of it.”

And that’s what we do. We watch from our vantage point at the picnic table for a while, then when nobody comes to claim the picnic site or the basket, Charlene volunteers to be the one who does the actual swiping. She’s a bit of a loose cannon and almost always volunteers to do the more risky things. Rhonda and I agree and tell Charlene to make sure she gets something good. All Rhonda and I have to do is be ready to run when Charlene comes back with it.

When the moment is right, Charlene walks indirectly up to the picnic site and suddenly darts forward, opens the basket and grabs something out of it that looks to me as if it’s wrapped in foil. Then she takes off running towards us. When she gets to us we all start running as if the devil is after us and we run until we’re at the edge of the park, out of view of the picnic site.

We stop, out of breath, and Charlene begins to tear open the foil-wrapped package. Inside is what looks like a whole roast chicken.

Not bothering to sit down, we fall upon it like wild animals, tearing it apart as we tear off the different pieces: wings, legs, thighs. We shove the food into our mouths as fast as we can, not speaking. Soon we’ve devoured it all. The only thing left are the bare bones we’ve scattered around us.

As I look around, belatedly, to see if anyone is watching us, I feel a little embarrassed at how we devoured the chicken. My mouth and fingers are greasy and I feel a little sick. I look at the others to see if they’re feeling the same.

“Won’t those people be surprised when they open their picnic basket?” Charlene says, giggling a little, then reaching down and wiping her fingers on the grass.

“Yeah—surprise, surprise!” Rhonda says with smile, then wipes her fingers, too.

I decide since Rhonda and Charlene don’t seem embarrassed, I won’t be either and say, “I wish I could see their faces when they see their chicken is gone!” This is not true. I have the urge to run as far as I can from this place.

“Better not.” Rhonda says reasonably. “I think we’d better get out of here, just in case someone saw us.”

Charlene and I quickly agree. We begin to walk away, glancing often behind us. Suddenly I say “Wait a minute,” and run back to where we’d devoured the chicken. It only takes a minute to gather the scattered bones together and then I run back to the girls. They look at me quizzically, but I don’t say anything. We leave the park then, leaving behind only the neatened pile of chicken bones that I have left on the grass.

++++++

I tell a lie. There was no neat little pile of bones on the grass. I made it up.

I made it up, or it just came to me or….

Shall I tell you why I think I made it up?

Because even now, I had to show you, and myself, that my stepsisters and I hadn’t been complete animals when we’d devoured that chicken, that we’d had some control. Neatening those bones was my attempt, as a writer, to get control now despite having had none then.

For I have no doubt that we were like animals at the time.

It seems I can still feel embarrassment and shame for the animality that was practically forced on us. We were sent out to roam the neighborhood every day for hours and we weren’t allowed to come home. We had no money. We had to fend for ourselves, and that’s exactly what we did. We shoplifted candy, raided neighbors fruit trees, and stole food. Well, the chicken was actually a one-off. We never did that or anything like it again.

++++++

When I’m feeling more charitable towards myself and the girls, I like to think of us as having been little hunter/gatherers, doing what came naturally.

Tears are often swallowed,

but those allowed form,

        (in the moment as if in a deep pool)

a whirlpool of imagined endless grief.

A solid mass of suffering

is only broken apart

when each one is raised up to the light

and held in soft hands to measure its weight.

There is no elevator,

only steps to trudge out of the weighty dark,

no measuring in teacups,

the sorrow of the first as heavy as the last,

for they are not kin

	but estranged cousins

	treading a familiar worn path.

To grieve the sinking hulk as a bulk

is not to grieve at all,

for each to each,

one to another,

signals the same patience asked

to stop and count.

So count.

Let each wash clean the memory,

the exactness of the loss,

the specific name of it,

the day it happened,

     (as the light danced across the room)

the focus of the pain,

the stab of the denial,

the crumbling of a world once thought

	to have no end

	amen.

Time crawls with each tic,

but only when it comes across,

	(as a warm blanket after the chill of deep remembrance)

to not push in to end whatever must be felt,

but only creep through an open door

until the space is clean

	with fragrance of flowers

	and hugging hoops of steel.

Iris,

     (wide open after darkness)

learns to see again in the bright blossoming

	of another day,

the way a linen curtain billows the smooth and soft wind

across a once darkened brow.

—Oaxaca 033026

They are still my favorite memories.

My son, Brandon, was just a baby. He didn’t sit up by himself or crawl yet, so I would lay down a fluffy blanket on the carpet with all his little toys and play with him. His giggles sounded like angels singing, and the laughter traveled all the way to his bright blue eyes that beamed with happiness and curiosity.

Four years later, I had the same awesome experiences with Shawn, my younger son. He had the greatest belly laugh, and I would look as silly as I had to just to hear it. We’d play up until naptime and, when he woke up, we’d play some more.

During one playtime with Shawn, my then-husband came into the room and watched us for a minute. “Does that really make you happy?” he asked as if he felt sorry for me. I looked up at him and told him yes, because it was the happiest time in my life. I’d found my life’s purpose, being a mommy, and it completely fulfilled me.

I read all the parenting books. My favorites were “The First Three Years Of Life” and “The Baby Whisperer.” I took the boys to Gymboree and held and rocked them for hours when they cried. I would have sacrificed anything for them, even before I knew how painful it would be for myself.

I had postpartum depression after Brandon was born, which kicked off a lifetime of episodes of shaky mental health. I had periods of stability, but I started having bad panic attacks and numbing depression. My husband was understanding until he wasn’t, and he eventually moved out of our house and in with his girlfriend who worked at his office.

Not only did I lose my husband, I lost his entire family that I had been a part of since I was seventeen. My mother-in-law was the only real mother I’d ever known, and she always cooked big Sunday dinners every week when the whole family came over. Of course, they still cared for and helped with the boys, but deep down I felt so alone. My own family was basically non-existent, so I couldn’t look there for support.

Raising the boys without my husband’s help was overwhelming at times, but they were the most loved and important people in my life, and I didn’t want to let them down. At the same time, I felt the sting of rejection from the breakup and hated myself for not being a good-enough wife. I had terrible insomnia, drank a little too much wine at night and wasn’t eating properly, both of which contributed to my growing instability.

Unfortunately, around this time, I started a relationship on a dating website just because the guy paid attention to me. My self-esteem was so low that I let Micah abuse me and insult me every day after the initial “love bombs” were dropped. He mostly ignored the boys, but when he started saying mean things about them, I packed them up and moved them to the other side of town.

Micah did not get the hint. He called every minute of the day and night, and eventually he found a way to break in to my house through the cheap lock on my sliding glass door so he could profess his love for me. I begged him to leave. I threatened to call the cops, but I was too weak and afraid to see him arrested. Micah went into the bathroom, and when he came out, he was face-to-face with the boys.

Thank goodness, he hurried out right after he was spotted, but I felt like I betrayed my kids. I told them they wouldn’t have to see Micah anymore, but there he was right in my hallway. I apologized and said it wouldn’t happen again, but I worried it was a promise I couldn’t keep if Micah kept stalking me.

No matter how badly I wanted to do right by my sons, I eventually had a big crash. My depression was so bad that I had to be briefly hospitalized. They readjusted my medication and sent me home two days later. About an hour after I walked through my front door, my ex-husband called asking to stop by. He had been watching the boys while I was in the hospital, but he didn’t mention bringing them home.

I wouldn’t remember what he said to me that day, but I remembered the custody papers. I couldn’t really read them because I had tears in my eyes, but I had always trusted him with paperwork and that sort of thing, so I signed them quietly and said nothing else until his car pulled away.

After that, I cried so loud that I worried the neighbors would hear me. The pain was so horrible, it felt like I was having major open heart surgery without anesthesia. The most loved, most cherished little people in my life were gone. My ex-husband now had full custody and would decide where or when I saw them. I didn’t even get a chance to talk to them and explain things.

I blasted myself for being so unstable. I desperately wished I had kept myself under control and hadn’t reached out for the help that led to my hospitalization. My insomnia intensified, and my depression was off the charts. The only thing that kept me alive was knowing it would hurt my boys even more if I didn’t. So I moved through the world alone, watching them grow into men from far away, my wound getting bigger with every life event I missed.

No matter what I managed to accomplish after that, the overwhelming shame never left me, and I was never able to forgive myself for letting them go.

There was a huge cost to spending my whole life hating myself. I didn’t believe I deserved good things and settled for way less. I felt like the life’s purpose I discovered as a mother was taken from me because I was a bad person.

I was anxious whenever I saw my boys because I never really got to know them as they were becoming teenagers and then men. I was afraid of hurting them by saying the wrong thing. I worried about them constantly to the point where it annoyed them. I couldn’t relax in the role of mother without feeling like I didn’t deserve it.

The boys are grown up now, 28 and 24. I’m grateful that they have allowed me to be part of their lives now. I apologized to them long ago for not being the mother they needed growing up. They were so quick to genuinely forgive me that, for a moment, I felt like a mother instead of a monster. When they did, it felt like the first little speck of light in the depths of my sadness, and it made me want to get better for them.

I learned to be consistent with them and do what I told them I would. I didn’t force them to bond with me, but they always knew I loved them more than anything and would have given them everything in the world if I was able. I kept my word, listened to them when they felt like talking and told them funny stories about when they were little. They always begged for more stories.

I finally realized one of the most important things I’ve ever learned about being a mother. Kids don’t just need to be happy, they need a happy mom, too. I vowed to do whatever I could to heal from the past and live a life where they didn’t worry about me all the time. They had seen me panicking and depressed and dissociated when they were little, but I felt that what they really needed to see from me as adults was calmness.

I also looked again at how I’d been framing the story of losing my children. For years, I believed I was a horrible person and too messed up to raise my own children, so I just let them go. I dealt with the “what kind of mother would do that” emails and phone calls from various people all while the boys were growing up. I never even stood up for myself because I hated myself much worse than anybody could hate me.

Even though I didn’t remember what my ex-husband said on the day I signed over custody, I recall exactly what I felt like inside. Time was moving normally, but for me it slowed way down, and several things occurred to me at once. Of course, I wanted my boys to stay with me forever, but what was really best for them?

My ex-husband had a huge family while I had extremely little support from mine. He lived in a beautiful development in Jupiter Farms, which was a bit country-like with horses everywhere trotting up and down the streets. The boys’ grandparents were a few blocks over, and they were still young and active and excited to help with the boys.

There was really no use in taking my ex to court. His family was loaded, and I couldn’t even afford a lawyer. Plus, I wouldn’t have dragged the kids into something like that. More importantly, I knew he truly was the stable parent, at least at that time.

I knew the boys would have many more opportunities to do things with my ex like traveling to Disney or even to Europe. I rarely had the money to take them out for ice cream even though it hurt me to say no. They would have birthday parties and play dates and afternoons in the pool without a mother who was too anxious to take them places.

As much as I wanted to keep them with me always, I let the boys go live with their dad because I knew they would have much more happy and fulfilling lives. I didn’t want to be the mother they felt like they had to take care of. I’d already lived that experience with my own mother, and it was no way for a kid to grow up.

I won’t pretend it didn’t hurt. It still hurts in ways I still don’t have words for. Somewhere along the way, however, I stopped calling it an abandonment story and started calling it what it really was, a mother’s love wanting the best for the children she loved the most. Real love has always had a long memory, and so does healing and returning to it.

That’s really all Brandon and Shawn were asking for anyway, for their mother to love them and love herself.

If you’re in the middle of the hardest chapter of your life right now, I just want you to know this isn’t the whole story. Not yours. Not mine. There are pages still being written that we can’t see yet.

Keep going in search of peace. You are a lot more than your worst moment. And so am I.

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I have a blurred edge memory of laying on my back in my crib banging the bar between my shoes against the rails. My stiff white baby shoes were connected to each other by a flat metal bar screwed into their soles. This torturous device was commonly used in the 60s to hold a child’s feet at a specific angle to, in my case anyway, correct feet that rolled inward.

This is the earliest memory I have involving shoes. You’d think it would have soured me on shoes in general, but you’d be wrong. Instead, I think it was the flicker of a spark that led to a lifelong, if not fascination, at least interest in what I put on my feet.

A woman’s relationship with shoes starts early. There’s only a small window of time where they exist as practical protective covering for the feet and nothing more. This is partly the fault of fairytales.

I don’t know what in the hell Cinderella was thinking. If my fairy godmother or anyone else tried to get me to wear shoes made of glass, I would have promptly used them as a weapon before taking my broom and shattering them into sharp little bits. At the very least, I would have kicked off both of them at the ball and left them for my ugly stepsisters to fight over, bunions be damned. And I certainly wouldn’t have married the jerk who wanted to put that impossibly uncomfortable sweatbox on my foot to figure out if I was his one true love. I would have pointed him straight to Only Feet¹ where he would probably find someone much more suitable for his foot fetishy needs.

The first shoes outside of fairytales I remember having feelings about were my black patent Mary Janes. They made me feel fancy. I remember how happy the click of my footsteps in those shoes made me. Very different from the soft thud of my toddler shoes. Very grown up. These were also my first shiny shoes. The way their slick surface bounced around the light made them feel special, almost like I carried a bit of starlight in my steps.

Although they weren’t shiny or clickety, I equally loved my black and white saddle oxfords. Their striking two-tone design added a splash of graphic boldness to my feet that made me feel powerful. My love of black and white persists to this day, and I can trace my contrasting color crush back to those saddle oxfords.

Next came my abiding devotion to clogs. The heavy, wooden, clop-cloppy kind. They were the pièce de résistance to my favorite ensemble of the mid-70s: bell bottoms and a turtleneck. I had this outfit in two color schemes. Red turtleneck, red and white plaid bell bottoms, red glossy clogs. Blue turtleneck, blue and white plaid bell bottoms, blue glossy clogs. The red was my favorite. The red clogs were more vibrant, the glossiness was glossier.

I still have a habit of duplicate dressing. When I find an outfit—or shoes—I love, I purchase more than one color. This predilection was born with my bell bottom/turtleneck/clog combo. Some habits are forever.

Next up in my shoe story came the shoes that would end up practically defining my life for more than four decades. When my mom took me to Mehl’s Shoeland to purchase my first ballet shoes, the saleslady asked me to point my foot while trying them on. Although I mentally told my foot to point, it did the opposite. The saleslady manually stretched my flexed foot into the proper shape. My life as a dancer was off to an inauspicious start.

I had only agreed to dance lessons because my best friend had convincedcajoled me into joining her. Who knew that reluctantly purchased first pair of ballet shoes would lead to a lifetime of ballet, pointe, tap, jazz, lyrical and character shoes, not to mention a 40-year career as a dance teacher and choreographer? Not me and definitely not the saleslady at Mehl’s Shoeland.

One of the hallmarks of my 70s shoe game were my beloved Famolares. These were the it shoe of the day, although like many 70s fashion moments, today they seem like someone was playing a joke on us all. Mr. Famolare, I see your evil genius and raise you by acrylic platform shoes with goldfish inside, which were also almost sorta a thing.

Famolares were clunky, heavy, mostly brown shoes set atop a thick, wavy rubber base. Comfortable, yes. Beautiful, no. But oh so popular back in the day. My mom used to shake her head and remark upon how “chicken-y” my skinny legs looked coming out of such chunky shoes. But my Famolare fascination could not be swayed.

I remember one particular outfit I regularly wore to McLean Middle School featuring a lopsided brown corduroy wrap-around skirt that I made my own little self in Home Ec class accessorized by my thick Famolares. It was a look. And Mom, you were right. (About a lot of things but mostly about my Famolares.)

The funkiness of Famolares and 70s fashion in general was followed by the buttoned-up preppiness of the early 80s. The Preppy Handbook² was our fashion bible of the day, and our shoe selections came straight from its pages.

I remember looking around at friends’ feet to determine if it was cooler to sport your penny loafers with an actual penny in the slot or not. (I think we opted for the penny. You never knew when you might need to flip a coin or purchase a piece of bubblegum.)

Sperry Topsiders, also known as boat shoes, were probably the most popular choice in my circle. They were a staple for all of us, although I remember even at the time questioning their “beauty.” (They had none.) But I was not one to go against the grain back then, so boat shoes it was even though I rode on mopeds and skateboards way more often than boats.

Growing up in Texas, cowboy boots have, and probably always will, be a thing. Oddly though, I have never owned them other than as part of our uniform for a high school spirit group. Cowgirl I am not. As I’ve often said, I’m surprised my Texan card has not been revoked since I don’t own cowboy boots, don’t like country music and don’t eat meat. (Not to mention my politics, but Texas wasn’t always like this, I swear!)

One other 80s shoe obsession: Candie’s, the original mainstream hooker heels. I was not allowed to wear these high-heeled wooden mules that came in rainbow-y ice cream colors, but I did wear my mom’s around the house while fake smoking one of her cigarettes and sporting Bo Derek braids.

By the late 80s, I was in my punk-light phase which featured stand-up bangs, torn clothing and various iterations of black ankle boots and Doc Martins. Except for the stand-up bangs, I’d gladly wear all of this again if it came back around. Nostalgia, you are a bad influence.

For me, the 90s were mostly about forgettable athletic shoes and office appropriate loafers for my fresh out of college ad agency copywriting job. Honestly though, isn’t most 90s fashion worth forgetting?

I do still own one special pair of shoes from this era. Somewhere in my attic are the white peau de soie rosette pumps I wore in my wedding. Some shoes will always be in style no matter how out of style they are.

The new millennium ushered in my mom era, so my shoes from the past 20-something years have reflected such. Lots of sneakers, casual everyday shoes and the occasional night out heel. And I do mean occasional.

I’m guessing stilettos were invented by a man. The girl in the story of The Red Shoes ends up footless and dead after enduring the curse of endless dancing in her chosen footwear. Sadly, this is highly relatable to anyone who’s worn heels to a wedding.

I will admit that heels are to your calves as Facetune is to your face, so sometimes heels it is.

More notably and much less sexy, my shoe collection now also includes some orthopedically enhanced options. A lifetime as a dance teacher does no favors for your feet. Plantar’s fasciitis, bone spurs and collapsing arches have shown up like Cinderella’s stepsisters trying to spoil all the fun.

I am the not-so-proud owner of inserts, custom orthotics, strappy foot brace thingies and some very specialized—and very not cute—shoes. Thankfully none of these are needed on a daily basis. They are mostly put to use during travel and high volume walking days. As age continues to creep in like a stealthy thief, though, I am certain I will rely on them more.

Shoes may not be extensions of our feet, but they are extensions of our stories. The ones we tell ourselves about who we are and the ones we want to portray to the world.

There’s the function factor of how they work for your life, then there’s how they function for your image. There’s how they physically feel and how they make you feel. There’s how well they fit your feet and how well they fit your style.

Your shoes can be the foundation for an outfit or the cherry on top. When they’re right they can help you feel 10 feet tall, even if they’re flats. When they’re wrong, they can make you feel ridiculously small.

Our shoes walk us through our lives. Every one of us has a shoe history and our own unique stories. After all, when it comes to our shoes, one size does not fit all.

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I’m at choir rehearsal, but not really.

I signed up for this treble choir because the director of another choir I belong to wanted an opportunity to sing and dragged me along for the ride. But I’m not really vibing with the music selection and I don’t know anyone here. I’ve also just bought my first house, so I’m in the middle of a stressful move … and it’s my birthday.

For the first time in our five years together, John seems to have forgotten my birthday.

And I know that’s partly because I haven’t casually reminded him. If I’m completely honest with myself, it was a kind of experiment to see whether my beloved would remember or if the C-PTSD caused by years of military service (starting with the Vietnam War) would secret the date away from his memory.

It’s not a mean experiment, just a curious one. Because I’m not (very) attached to the outcome. I mean, of course I hope he’ll remember. But I’m also a realist.

When the rehearsal ends, I trudge to my car, ready to just go home, or at least to the box-riddled disaster that’s still home for the next week before the movers come. I always leave my phone in the car during rehearsals so I’m not distracted. As I climb into the car I pluck it from the center console storage and, like the trained monkey that I am, check my notifications.

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Seven missed calls, all from John. Only one voicemail message, “Hey, darlin’! Where you at? I’m trying to track you down for a birthday hug.”

Oh, John.

I look at my texts. And again, they’re all from him. All of my other birthday greetings have come in much earlier.

JOHN, 7:11 pm
Where ya at, sugar?

JOHN, 7:36 pm
Driving over to your house

JOHN, 8:07 pm
Gonna check your new house

JOHN, 8:32 pm
Back to your old place!

The rental house I’m leaving and the new one I’ve just closed on are about 25 minutes apart. I imagine John spending over an hour driving back and forth, frantically searching for me, and my heart clenches.

Maybe my experiment was mean after all.

I try to call him, but get no answer, which isn’t unusual. John’s an enigma, especially when it comes to phone communication. So I send a text:

KAREN, 8:52 pm
I was at choir rehearsal, love

As I drive home, regret washes over me. Why did I do this to the man I adore with every piece of my soul? Why did I stubbornly refuse to give him a reminder just to “test” his love for me?

I imagine him suddenly realizing the date. He rarely curses because he says the Army exposed him to enough of it across his 23 years of service. So, I picture him settling into his favorite recliner for the evening, casually checking his Facebook feed, seeing a flood of birthday wishes coming my way, and muttering a frantic “Oh, shoot!” while bursting out of his chair and into action.

A weight settles into my chest and my eyes mist. I know John, and so I know in my bones that he’s mindful and easygoing, unlikely to feel plagued with guilt for missing a special date in the same way I would be. He also knows I won’t be angry, nor will I judge him. We’ve always accepted one another just as we are. It’s why our relationship is magic. And yet I also know, in that moment of realization, that he felt remorse. Enough of it that he raced from my rental, to my new house, and back again frantically trying to find me.

That realization is a punch to the chest—part regret, part empathy response, all love.

I think again about my box-riddled rental house and how difficult it is to navigate right now. And I realize that John’s own mental house is also full of boxes, all the compartments where he stored fragments of memory.

A Black man from the Jim Crow-era south, the boxes containing John’s childhood story were filled with events a child shouldn’t have had to experience and a man shouldn’t have to remember. The Vietnam War brought new, fresh horrors to lock away from the daylight. And John had also taken part in the 1989 Panama invasion. When he told me he’d been part of the operation “blasting rock n’ roll music at Noriega,” I had the luxury of thinking of it as a soundtrack. To me, it was a fascinating piece of history; to him, it was a perimeter.

I remembered being with John, driving up I-5 to Seattle, when we encountered a behemoth, snub-nosed plane on approach to land at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Stunned by its massive wingspan, I asked what the hell that was, and he’d said, in his calm, authoritative tone, “C-130. Military transport for paratroopers and supplies. ‘Flying Hotel’.”

So when John told me that Panama had been beautiful, filled with “flowers and backyard chickens and mosquitoes the size of C-130s,” I had laughed. Neither of us (me from the surprisingly swampy Upper Midwest, him from the deep south) were unaccustomed to supersized mosquitoes, but this sounded next-level.

John gave a wry smile and said, “The place always felt dangerous. You couldn’t sleep. All you could do was watch your back.”

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I understood then that it was about more than backyard chickens and huge mosquitoes. In Panama, being in the wrong place at the wrong time could prove fatal. And I realized now that maybe to John, not finding me where he expected me to be—me being in the “wrong” place—might feel like more than a missed opportunity for a birthday hug. And the brief, staccato phone messages while I was in rehearsal were mission critical transmissions from a man who’d learned long ago that silence meant safety. John had been running a tactical maneuver back and forth across town.

For me.

And maybe that’s what caused tears to rim my eyes. I was in love with a man who, as a paratrooper, jumped out of the first plane he’d ever flown in. And while I smiled when my Johnny Jumper approached a fellow vet with wings on his leather jacket and said, “Excuse me, but you look like a man who used to jump out of perfectly good airplanes,” I hadn’t fully taken in the weight of everything that shaped the man I loved.

And I hadn’t fully taken in just how much that man loved me.

John had spent 23 years in an Army that demanded he never leave a person behind. Now, in his civilian life, that hard-wiring had turned toward me. He wasn’t just a partner who forgot a date; he was a soldier who had lost his mark and was refusing to stop until he found me.

That weekend, we went to our favorite Italian place for dinner. Later that year, we went on a “mission” (John’s term) to visit the Mount Saint Helen Visitor Center, where we could still see the aftermath of another catastrophe, this one not of the human-caused variety. And that mission would be the last one I took with John.

In the weeks leading up to a scheduled (and relatively minor) surgery, I sensed a growing desperation in John. Although we never spoke about it, I suddenly felt like he was marking tasks off on a checklist:

Visit elderly uncles in North Carolina. Check!

Call military friends he’d fallen out of touch with. Check!

Take Karen to Mount Saint Helens. Check!

The night before his surgery, John came to my house before setting off for the military base, where he would stay in a hotel near the Army hospital. (Say goodbye to Karen before setting out for the hospital. Check!) He called from the hotel to say goodnight and “tuck me in.” He would call, he said. Probably in the afternoon after the anesthesia had worn off.

“Night night, sugar,” he said, his voice full of good cheer that I’d long since learned was a mask for anxiety. “I love you!”

I couldn’t be there when he coded in the recovery room, so I wasn’t there when his beautiful soul departed his body. All I had now was yet another text, but not from John:

John went into cardiac arrest in recovery and sadly passed away.

I couldn’t help but think that John would have hated leaving his mission to connect after the anesthesia wore off incomplete. He would have hated that his “leave no one behind” training had been subverted—he’d left me behind, bereft and hollowed out.

A few days after his death, I found myself freshly out of the shower, numb and dripping onto the bathroom rug. I couldn’t see a path forward. I had wrapped my life around John’s, made him the center of every adventure. I buried my face in my hands and sobbed, crying, “I want to be where you are!”

And it was then that I felt something wrapping around me, a presence. Sacred warmth. Electricity. I can only describe it as an “energy hug.” And it was unmistakably John. I have long believed that the things we call “supernatural” are just “science we don’t understand yet,” but I also know the first law of thermodynamics: energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed from one form to another.

John had come back to complete his mission.

Welcome to Pathways of Connection: Fostering Curiosity and Community Through Journaling, Dream Guidance, and Storytelling. This essay is generously published through The Memoirist.

Read Here to learn more about me, my work, how we can connect, and why journaling is such an integral part of my life.

I felt the nostalgia and emotion of this song as it played on Sirius radio. How poetic that it would come on as I was at the tail end of a 12-hour trip to see my sister’s new home.

A trip that should have taken 10 hours, but literally no wind, no rain or winter storm like Diana Ross sings, would keep me away.

My husband and I experienced it all as I drove from New York to Virginia. Four hours of pouring rain, snow squalls, and blizzard. Accident. Traffic jams.

We listened to Clive Cussler’s book Pirate for four hours and then I had to shift the vibe.

I put on Sirius’ 70’s on 7 channel and belted out song after song while my husband either slept or watched videos on his phone.

Each song was a memory from my childhood. But the one that brought on the nostalgia and joy was Neil Diamond’s Forever in Blue Jeans.

My mother loves Neil Diamond while my father loved Barbra Streisand.

While their duet, You Don’t Bring Me Flowers, was the absolute opposite of my parents’ love story, to have their two favorite artists sing together was a fun bonus for them.

On long road trips, they’d play cassette after cassette of their beloved artists. I, along with my siblings, knew all the words and sang along with my dad’s alto voice.

My parents lived a simple and joyous life. We had everything we needed, but we didn’t fly to far destinations for vacations. We drove in a station wagon trimmed with fake wood and the back seat facing toward the rear. With four kids in the back and a Turtle luggage strapped on top, it would always be an adventure.

One such trip had my parents and their three girls headed to Michigan to see my brother graduate from boot camp. That Turtle was strapped on top and we kept busy with songs and playing I Spy out the window.

The tears couldn’t help but slide down my face whenever we sang this song. I remember watching Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford in this sad love story. As a teenager, what did I know about what “we left behind.” But the song hit a chord with me every time and you could feel the emotion in the car. My brother leaving home. My dad surviving another bout with cancer. This song reflected our life-changing moments, but my parents’ love remained strong even beyond my father’s death at the young age of 57.

On this trip to see my brother, I must have fallen asleep, because suddenly I heard yelling. My dad pulled off the side of this busy multi-lane highway.

As I opened my eyes, my parents and sisters launched out of the car! The Turtle with all our belongings had gathered wings and flew off the top of the station wagon.

My mother yelled, “Your jacket is down the road!”

That jolted me into action. My brown leather jacket was a prized possession of mine and a staple to my wardrobe. I joined our recovery mission. While cars honked and steered clear, we gathered our clothes and reattached that ironically fast Turtle onto the station wagon.

We arrived in time to celebrate with my brother and spent quality time together.

As I pulled up to my sister’s home 627 miles from mine, I honked the horn as she danced in her driveway. Yes, we both wore blue jeans and I’d forever be grateful for the joy of music our parents instilled in us.

Throughout my visit, those lyrics popped in my head as we sang karaoke, drove in the car to get coffee, and reconnected. This trip reminded me of my dad and our lyrically wild family adventures.

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I met Simon at the gym. He had a presence that was hard to ignore. Had I been single, I would’ve made it my mission to devour him. His body looked like it was carved from stone, and his legs, like tree trunks, seemed strong enough to haul a load fit for a gladiator. I’d never seen legs like that, and this gym was a haven for bodybuilders.

Someone introduced us, and we clicked instantly. I assumed Simon was gay, purely because of how perfect he was, but I’d be wrong about that. He was the kind of man, not unlike my husband, who could fit into any crowd and wasn’t fazed by the attention of both men and women. He hardly seemed to notice.

There was something quietly magnetic about him. He could easily command any room if he wanted, yet he was unaware of his charm. Somehow, at 28, he seemed boyishly awkward, eagerly curious, but also humbled by life. You’d think he was an old sage who had lived beyond all expectations.

The contradictions intrigued me.

Simon’s first love was cycling, and he dedicated every spare moment to it. His demanding, high-powered day job was stressful, but it gave him the financial freedom to chase his dream of winning the Tour de France.

That’s an investment far greater than money — it’s an investment of the soul.

It was a time of new transitions in my life. I’d shed my old, introverted persona, along with half my body weight, to become an entirely new version of myself. The version Simon met.

I spent most of my day at the gym, doing classes and lifting weights, until it was time to switch back into mother/wife mode at 3 pm — real life. I was a runner and swimmer, two things that weren’t part of my vocabulary for the first thirty-four years of my life. The transformation was astonishing, but no one at the gym knew any of that, as if I’d always been an athlete.

Competing in a triathlon was a dream of mine, but the cycling leg of the race terrified me. I was strong in every other area of fitness except cycling. Simon offered to help, but I’d need the right gear. I understood then about the high-powered job. Who knew I’d need to second-mortgage my house to become a serious cyclist? His bike cost more than my second-hand car.

“Marce, you have to commit if triathlon is your dream. It takes sacrifice and determination; nothing great comes easy, you know,” Simon warned.

Oh, I knew that, alright. Thanks, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

I’d just spent eighteen months of my life morphing into another human being, doing what most people find impossible. I knew determination.

“And no more partying on weekends,” Simon commanded. “If you’re serious about this, your weekends need to be dedicated to long early morning rides, and you need a clear head for that.”

Dude, you lost me at no more partying. Pass.

I guess my dream wasn’t as serious as his.

The rise of a legend

Witnessing Simon’s dedication to cycling was like being in the presence of someone destined for greatness. I didn’t have a crystal ball, nor was I a clairvoyant, just a strong feeling that if anyone could achieve a dream, he could.

When he wasn’t on his bike, he drove a bright green vintage Aston Martin that made me think of Kermit the Frog every time I saw him zipping around in it. It struck me as an unusual choice, given his size. I pictured him driving a Land Cruiser or something equally masculine. But Simon had an air of an aristocrat about him, which mystified me.

He didn’t say much about his family back in New Zealand, but I imagined he came from old-money wealth. Despite that, Simon was forging his own path as if free handouts were cheating. I admired that.

Sundays were Simon’s serious training day. He’d wake well before sunrise and cycle from Sydney to Wollongong and back, covering a 180-kilometre round trip (almost 112 miles) all before we staggered home from clubbing the night before.

A tribe of us from the gym were at a friend’s place one Sunday morning, the usual recovery party, which was just an excuse to keep going, when there was a knock at the door — always a worry when lines of cocaine filled the coffee table.

Simon stood there, dressed in full riding gear, helmet and sunglasses still on. He looked like an alien in his tight Lycra and sleek helmet. He just needed some jet-propelled boots, and he could’ve taken off.

“Well, I was going to invite you for breakfast, but I see you have other things on the menu.”

We laughed and waved him goodbye. He turned to us again before closing the door.

“Guys, seriously, go home. It’s a beautiful day, you’re wasting it. And by the way, you’re a bunch of degenerates.”

We laughed. He wasn’t wrong. And when the door closed behind him, I felt an overwhelming surge of admiration for him, while the others teasingly mocked him for being a party pooper.

Now there’s a man on a mission, I thought.

I’d never seen anyone chase a dream with that much perseverance. I felt a flicker of guilt or something. I should’ve taken him up on his offer; I’d be on the other side of the door with him, walking out into the sunshine, feeling the euphoria of a well-trained body. Instead, I’d be nursing a hangover from hell — again.

If only I’d listened to him and had half his stamina, I might be on my way to the Tour de France with him.

The fall of a legend

I didn’t recognise the number, but I answered anyway. “Hello, Marcia?” That sounded formal; no one ever called me that. All the hair on the back of my neck prickled. It was Simon’s brother; someone I’d never met or knew much about.

In that moment, I realised I hadn’t seen or heard from Simon in days. My heart leapt in my chest before he said another word. My bones seemed to lose their ability to hold me up. I quickly sat down.

“Simon’s been in a terrible accident. It was hit and miss for a while, but he’s finally awake and asked me to call you. Can you come visit him? I think he needs a friend.”

I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when I entered his hospital room. His brother hadn’t told me much, only that he’d been on his bike when it happened. I was grateful Simon’s eyes were closed as I quietly stepped inside. It gave me a moment to recover from the shock that would’ve been written all over my face.

When he heard me sit beside him, his eyes opened. And there it was, his broad smile, that’s how I knew it was him. It took all my strength not to gasp.

He was unrecognisable.

His face, that handsome, beautiful face, was covered in cuts and bruises. His eyes were black and sunken. Long stitches zigzagged across his bald head, making him look like Frankenstein’s brother. One leg was in a cast from ankle to thigh, and he wore a neck brace. He’d broken so many bones, including most ribs, he’d lost count of the rest.

I wasn’t sure why he was smiling — probably the morphine — but it was typical Simon. No doubt he’d find the positive, and he did.

“At least I’ll catch up on some work. I’ve asked for my laptop, but my brother refuses. See if you can wrangle it from him, can you, Marce?”

Is this guy for real!

He’d just escaped death, and he’s thinking about catching up on reports that were due yesterday. Clearly, he must be hallucinating.

Simon remembered everything. It was early morning. He always rode before work when the streets were empty, and he didn’t have to dodge traffic. He was racing down a one-way street, the wrong way. I know. I nearly slapped him when he said it. But it was a shortcut, and he was behind schedule. He needed to gain a few minutes, so he pedalled faster.

The long road sharply curved at its end, and as he glanced over his shoulder at the last second, he missed the semi-trailer rounding the bend, coming straight at him. The truck wasn’t moving fast, but he was. At 50 kilometres (31 miles per hour), he collided with it head-on and was thrown like a bird in flight. Everything went dark after that.

And here he was, a broken man but only in body, not spirit.

“I’m so sorry your dream is over, Simon. But I’m so glad you’re still here.”

And a tear slid down my face.

“Over? Don’t be ridiculous, Marce — just a small setback, is all. I’ll be back in no time. They say I’ll never ride again. I say, watch me.”

And there’s Simon, in all his glorious positivity. I would’ve laughed and high-fived him, but he didn’t have the strength. I didn’t believe him for a second. I doubted he’d walk again, and if he did, it would be with a cane. His life was forever changed.

My mistake was assuming what that would look like.

Simon’s brother and parents took him back to New Zealand to recover. It would be a long, tough journey. I wouldn’t see him for nearly a decade, and when I finally did, he told me about his beloved Tour de France race, which he completed years later than planned and much slower than he’d hoped. Of course, he did.

Not a winner, but a champion all the same.

Other dreams

Simon met the woman of his dreams in New Zealand. They married and had a baby girl. During his wife’s pregnancy, a random test revealed she had cancer. It was aggressive. Four days after their daughter was born, his wife died. Simon was shattered in ways that didn’t compare to the injuries from that accident.

And what he did next was truly remarkable. Simon had another dream. He wanted to sail around the world someday, so that’s what he did. He bought a boat and spent five years sailing the globe with his baby daughter, stopping at ports, stocking up, sometimes staying a week in beautiful seaside towns that were hard to leave, until it was time for her to start school.

It was during this time, when his daughter was nearly four years old, that he stopped in Sydney on his gradual journey back to New Zealand. He called me so I could meet her. I was divorced by then. My daughter Morgan was 17. She and Simon had always adored each other, so we both went to visit on a sunny Saturday when the Jacarandas were in full bloom, Sydney at its finest.

Morgan sat with the little girl, playing and reading to her while Simon and I chatted over tea in the kitchen of a friend’s apartment. He told me the story of the Tour de France, and I hung on his every word. He spoke of his incredible adventures at sea with his daughter.

I was in awe of his love for her and his devotion to filling her life with happy memories. I could see the pain in his eyes when he spoke of his wife, though he didn’t say much — still the pillar of privacy. I sensed it was too difficult, so I let him lead and simply listened.

We hugged goodbye, and when I kissed his cheek, I knew I’d never see him again.

I followed his socials for a while until he went quiet as life moved on. I remember his wedding photos, his second wife, and the love in his eyes when he looked at her, and in hers when she looked at him. My heart soared.

Then, later, a photo of his baby girl, a toddler, in his arms, with his wife standing beside him, his first daughter in front of her new mother, arms wrapped around her adopted daughter as she hugged her tight. They all beamed for the camera, that beautiful family that almost didn’t exist…

Thanks for reading, friends. Never underestimate the strength of the mind and the pull of your dreams. Miracles happen.

This story was first published on Medium.

© Marcia Abboud 2026 | All rights reserved

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Change is inevitable - all of us go through them at different times in our lives. Graduation from school, our first job, marriage, a planned pregnancy; these are expected changes. However, they still require some adjustments. Typically, they are changes and adjustments we look forward to.

An unplanned pregnancy, the birth of a child with a disability, or when your two-year-old gets on the bus and starts a center-based program - these changes have the potential of creating angst. Death, divorce, loss of a job are, also, changes that can cause grief.

Change is a natural part of life. When winter blows its way into our lives, we experience the gray dismal month of November. Changes that bite – those angst and grief type changes are often equated with dark times of the year.

In contrast, spring raises its sleepy head pushing crocus’ up through the snow. Those more personal type of springlike changes; graduation from school, our first job, marriage, a planned pregnancy remind us of spring. Of course, dark, and light times of our lives can happen in any month of the year.

Many changes are expected to happen; however, some can catch you unawares. They hit you in the solar plexus and knock you off your feet; the unplanned pregnancy, the much longed for pregnancy which ends in a miscarriage, the birth of a child with a disability, or the death of a loved one. Like the month of November these changes are not eagerly longed for or sought after.

As the parent of a child with a disability, I found myself constantly being challenged with more difficult transitions. One change all parents face is their child’s entry into school. The act of faith required in placing your child on a bus and waving to them is hard enough when your child is 5, but at 2 it may seem unimaginable.

When faced with putting my first-born child on a bus there was a significant contrast between my experience and the experience of two other mothers waiting with me. We were all standing there with our first-born children, watching for the bus to come down the road. Both of them were nervously wondering why the bus was so late. They faced this change with a mixture of fear and pride. Contrasted to their nervous pacing and questions, was my calm reassuring demeanor. One of them asked me why I remained so unconcerned.

I felt like an old pro with my first born. I had been through this before, thanks to my middle child. Putting my eldest on the bus was no big deal compared to putting a 2-year-old on a bus. My then 5-year-old could talk to me and tell me if something happened to her during her time away from me. Her younger sister would not be able to tell me the good or bad things which happened to her for another five or six years.

Not so with my middle daughter, who was the first to spread her wings and fly from the nest. Changes continued to happen throughout our journey with Sheila. Some were school based changes. Some were medical based changes. Some were family-based changes. But with each one there was the need to let go of what we knew and start afresh with the unknown.

Does this happen with each of our children…yes…but again, there are the expected changes, another new baby and now there were three. Adjustments as the older two’s positions shifted a bit. Eldest is still the eldest, but now there are two little sisters. The youngest is now a middle child.

Would we have enough time and energy to meet all their needs? As happy as the change was, there was still stress involved for all of us. We made the adjustments only to be faced with another medical diagnosis, or a change in program for Sheila. Sometimes we felt like ping-pong balls being swatted back and forth across the table.

The hardest transitions were always her new medical diagnoses. At seven she would be diagnosed with a bleeding/clotting disorder. Eventually six clotting factors would be identified as mildly to moderately deficient, and her platelets would consistently run mild to moderately lower than normal.

Her pediatric hematologist would see her every six months and would do bloodwork to keep tabs on her levels, the levels would shift up and down, even to a borderline normal. The numbers for those six clotting factors were every changing. Once transitioned to an adult hematology practice they accepted her as a patient and then never saw her until she was thirty-three. I was less than impressed with the hematologist that was arrogant and dismissive. But that’s a story for another time.

At eleven-years-old, Sheila would be diagnosed with a failing pituitary gland. What does that do? It is the master gland of the body; it sends out messages to the other glands in the body, for them to produce more or less of the hormones produced in these other glands. If it fails, the individual will need to go on replacement hormones. We were fortunate that all the medical staff, both pediatric and adult endocrinologists were excellent.

The big three: cardiac, blood, and endocrine issues were all life-threatening issues. Each time there was another diagnosis the new change in our lives was fraught with angst. How do we make this new adjustment. Why was this happening yet again to Sheila?

When we first were made aware of the damage to her heart – her complete atrioventricular canal defect, I thought, that takes years off her life expectancy. Then one antibiotic allergy after another, I wondered how she would survive if the one that was still working for her stopped working.

Changes, adjustments, new diagnosis…wash, rinse, repeat. Then the other two life-threatening diagnoses were made. I saw more years dropping off her life-expectancy. But things were going well, until they weren’t and in the last six months of her life, both Forrest and I saw unwelcome signs: she was sleeping more than normal throughout the day, but she was restless at night. Her stamina was decreasing. But these changes were subtle and crept up slowly until the day her heart said, enough.

Change is inevitable and so is death. As I am typing this, I realize that there have been gifts, even in her latest change from being here and now, to her ethereal self. Change is about learning and growing even when we are resisting it.

“Glenna doesn’t know who she is.”

Ex-husband’s best friend, Jason, June 2011

I never forgot those words, not even when they were true. My ex-husband, Micah, looked strangely confused when he told me what his friend said about me. I guess it did sound weird. I mean, what kind of woman doesn’t know who she really is by the age of 40, the age I was when he said those words? Micah may not have understood, but I got it completely. What Jason had said was startlingly accurate.

I honestly didn’t know who I was, and I couldn’t remember a time when I ever did. I was anything anybody wanted me to be, starting with my parents who were basically neglectful unless I was entertaining them or being their sounding board. I’d been married twice, and in both marriages I was whoever my husband wanted me to be. In the former case, I was the quiet and docile housewife while in the latter I was an out-of-control, mentally ill drug addict who was being severely abused in some form on a daily basis.

I eventually ran away and divorced Micah, which is probably the smartest thing I ever did. Although his abuse and manipulation were over, I still had no sense of who I was. Whether I was with family or friends, I mentally scanned them to figure out who they wanted me to be, and then I became that person for better or worse.

Starting at the tender age of five, I became an instant “performer.” My mother and I lived in California, where dreams were made, and she was determined to make me a star.

She took me out on all kinds of auditions for movies and TV. In the end, the most “famous” things I did were a bank commercial and a Sunmaid Raisin ad that was in national magazines. I didn’t think it was a big deal, but my mom bragged about it to every stranger she met on the street.

I was so young, but already I knew what was expected of me: big smile, look and act my cutest and no whining ever. My mother’s dream was the first mask I ever put on, and I’ve been putting them on ever since. She wanted a performer, so that’s who I became, not just for her but for everyone I encountered until I was in my fifties.

Years later, in high school, I remember this girl who didn’t like me was having a party, and I was definitely not invited. A mutual friend suggested that I try to talk it out with her and make up. I agreed even though I didn’t have the slightest idea why the girl was mad in the first place.

When I asked her what the problem was, her eyes rolled back so far in her head it must have hurt her, and she let out a disgusted sigh.

“You’re so fake and phony,” she announced. “Everybody thinks you’re sooooo nice, but it’s all a lie.”

I shook my head slowly in response, my brain trying to remember where she could have gotten this idea. I recall that it hurt my feelings, but I didn’t understand why. If I really thought I was acting fake, I would have apologized. Before I could ask the question, the girl was halfway across her lawn and going into her house, leaving me standing stunned on the sidewalk.

I don’t remember the “fake” issue coming up again until I was in my thirties. I’d been drinking wine with a friend of mine, and she ended up getting hammered and needing me to drive her home. She felt really sick, and as I drove I tried to offer her words of comfort.

“YOU ARE SO FAKE!”

She yelled this at me out of nowhere from the passenger’s seat, cackling in my face, and then added, “You’re like one of those Stepford Wives, completely phony!”

At the time, I chalked it up to her being drunk, and I dropped her off without another word. Still, what she said really bugged me, especially since we had been so close before. She’d never said anything to me like that before, and I started to sincerely wonder if there was some truth to it since it wasn’t the first time I’d heard it before.

Today, I realize that I absolutely was masking myself with both of these ladies, being overly polite and sugary whenever I saw them, as a way to protect myself. My extreme cordiality was like a barrier that ensured I wouldn’t slip and tell them something personal they could use against me. In their cases, I was definitely right to protect myself because they both ended up trying to hurt me badly later on. Somehow I knew they would.

In my world, nobody could be trusted. This was probably the result of growing up with parents who both manipulated me to get what they wanted, narcissism in its most primitive form. As I became an adult and battled social anxiety, not only did I use my politeness to deter threats, but I “performed” for everybody I knew and loved.

I could fill an awkward silence with word garble like nobody’s business. I turned every subject back to me and my victim stories, glossing over everybody else’s. I was the funniest person all my friends knew, but it was based on my desperation to be liked. I thought giving away these pieces of my soul would ensure that people would never leave me.

Once I was in therapy for complex PTSD, I finally realized that my sense of self never developed because I was constantly in performance mode with every single person in my life, sometimes because they demanded it and sometimes because of my brutal fear of abandonment. I pictured an onion where the “real” me was trapped under all the different layers from my past. I wondered how long I’d have to peel it before I would feel free and experience happiness and joy instead of constant anxiety and despair.

I had been living in total survival mode. A loud noise could trigger me so badly that I’d cry. Somebody changing their tone with me activated my fear of abandonment and caused me to shake uncontrollably. The shaking problem wasn’t new. I’d been doing it since I was a nervous child, but back then nobody talked about anxiety or PTSD, so I was just left to shake on my own.

I began working hard to calm my nervous system, trying to tolerate all my “big” feelings for as long as I could stand them. I used breathing and complete silence to bring my panic down to a dull roar. I still had bad days where I couldn’t do anything, but they were decreasing as well. I kept reminding myself I was safe in the present whenever I flipped back to the past.

This work didn’t make my complex PTSD symptoms disappear a little more every day. It was more like one step forward, two steps back and then little breakthroughs that changed the way I thought about my diagnosis and how I wanted to move forward. Then I realized something that was a game changer.

There was no “old” me buried in the layers of the onion because I was never given the chance to develop my own personality. I was whoever anybody wanted me to be, but it erased any dreams or preferences that I might have had. Instead, I suddenly had the opportunity to build a “real” life in present time any way I wanted. I could decide things for myself, set boundaries that lasted and stop carrying around so much unnecessary guilt and shame. I could be whoever I aspired to be.

Honestly, none of this work would have happened if I hadn’t first learned to love the little person inside me who was so hurt and abused. I know it might sound cheesy to say “love yourself,” but I believe this is truly the key to all recovery. I intensely hated myself since I was old enough to ride a bicycle. It didn’t change overnight, but every little kindness I have shown to that little person reassures her that I wouldn’t leave her or neglect her. She’s able to just relax and feel completely safe, knowing I would protect her with my life.

Everybody’s healing journey (or any journey, for that matter) looks different, and the things that have helped me may be different that what other people have done, and that’s okay. I believe we’re here on earth to have experiences that God can see through our eyes and also here to help and love each other. That’s my motivation in sharing what has helped me, and I hope people know that it’s possible for anybody.

My life is no longer controlled by depressive episodes, self-hatred and mini-suicidal gestures all the time. I’ve grieved the things I lost, especially when it was my fault. I’ve tried to make things better where I can. The new foundation underneath me is getting stronger while my triggers get weaker. None of this is to brag but just to say please don’t ever give up hope. Things really can and do change for the better.

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