For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by the rapture. As a child, I had relatives who attended a church that occasionally predicted raptures. My earliest rapture memories are a general concern that my aunts and cousins might disappear and no longer be at family holidays. (They always were and are still on Earth today, so far as I know.) For the last rapture planned during my childhood, I was as a teenager. We were at my grandparent’s house and my mom and grandma were having a wonderful time discussing a specific detail of this particular rapture. My relatives were allowed to pack a single suitcase. What would they pack, mom and grandma wondered. As they debated, I thought about bringing my beloved books and saltines with me. (I love crackers.) In the end, my grandma decided she’d bring a suitcase full of booze and cigarettes, figuring with that she could barter for everything she might need in Heaven. She was a pragmatic lady, and it’s not surprising she was never invited into the rapture crew. I still ponder the mechanics of being called to Heaven, but thinking you could bring a suitcase. Were there weight limits? Size restrictions? What was stopping you from bringing a huge trunk with a non-believer stowaway inside?
My second rapture interaction was during the publication of the Left Behind series of books. In the late 90s, I was traveling weekly for work. One trip I found myself returning home having finished the book I brought. Facing a long flight with nothing to read was unacceptable, so I headed to the airport bookstore. At the front there was a display filled with a colorful series of science fiction looking novels. I read the back of the first one and was enthralled with the plot – rapture! How exciting! And there was a whole series to read, so if it was good I could keep reading them for weeks. The first one was okay, but they steadily got worse. I think I made it through the sixth one (there are twelve) before I realized these weren’t just a novel series, but propaganda. I often think of sweet little me in my twenties sitting on my airplanes reading the Left Behind series. It’s amazing I didn’t get picked up by some cult leader and indoctrinated.
Now, with the advent of the internet and social media, I pay attention whenever a rapture event is predicted. It gives me a chance to reconsider what I’d pack in my suitcase, miss my grandma, and marvel at how we used to not have online reviews to know if a book had an ulterior motive. Each new rapture event is unique in its details. Tomorrow’s predicted rapture has me pondering questions I’ve never considered before. For a worldwide rapture, does the gathering of the believers roll across the Earth or does everyone go up at once? People are reporting that New Zealand hasn’t yet experienced rapture, but is it like Santa Claus? Or is there a queue where you get pulled from the most worthy to least, just in case heaven fills up? Also, do pets stay or go? Why will there be piles of clothes? Were my relatives anticipating going up with their heavenly suitcase butt naked? I bet they packed clothes. I would have if I knew that detail. Or maybe yarn and knitting needles in case clothes were prohibited, but raw materials weren’t. There’s a lot to consider.
I’m planning on tomorrow’s rapture being another bust for those hoping to be swooped up to Heaven, but for me, it’s already been a success. My periodic rapture curiosity was exercised and fulfilled. But just in case, I know my grandmother’s heathen granddaughter will still be here tomorrow. If you get called up, drop me a note if you need your stove turned off or your plants watered. I’m assuming you can text me on your way up and will remember to bring your iPhone. Don’t forget a charger, just in case Heaven has plugs!
Who took this vacation picture? Was someone else here? We’ll never know.
Last year I was on the cusp of my life changing. Sure, I was turning 50, but I was about to take a year off to live my dream and write my first novel. Kamala Harris had jumped into the presidential race and was going to be our first female president. That meant I was going to come back to work inspired about working for a female commander in chief and having ample career opportunities to pick from. The self-improvement goals were numerous. I was going to get fit again and eat better. I was going to spend my daughter’s junior year being present, not be such a bitch at home, spend more time with my folks, and be a better friend. It was going to be glorious.
A year later, I’m feeling kind of (using an out of date gen-z word here) meh. I’m proud of my book, but a smidge disappointed in my early reader’s feedback. Now that I’m done writing, what do I do next? Do I take the terrifying step to polish it and try to publish, write the next book, or just quit knowing that the publishing world is cruel? The country is a hot pile of steaming shit for so many reasons, but personally I have zero future job opportunities: there is no work in electric vehicle charging, climate change, or green careers because Harris didn’t get elected. My ex-colleagues are all fired, quit, soon to be fired, or scared. My network is decimated. During our family summer vacation I refused to let my family take any pictures of me because I look like a chubby bridge troll with a permanent scowl and wiry hairs growing out of my mole. Someday we’ll look back on our nine days together and wonder if I was there. (Honestly, did the semaglutide botox fervor have to hit now? Many of my friends look better than they did in their 20s, but I’m terrified of a med spa injecting stuff into my body and face. Sigh.)
Poor me.
Yes. I know things could be worse. I know people are starving in Gaza. Shit’s about to get real in the United States as support benefits are crumbled by the Big Beautiful Bill. I saw the impact this administration is having even on the privileged as we toured colleges this summer: less emphasis on services, less emphasis on equity, less emphasis on choices, less emphasis on diversity, and the University of Delaware didn’t even mention that President Joe Biden was an alum. Meanwhile, I feel guilty because we are a rich white family so my kid will be okay even if we have to pay more tuition. Heck, she may be better off, because international students aren’t interested in attending school in a country where they might be being swept off the streets by ICE agents. (We toured Tufts right after Rümeysa Öztürk was arrested by a plainclothes agent off the street in Boston. Unsurprisingly, it was the worst tour we’ve been on. They were probably distracted.)
I know I’m a whiney old lady. I have had a year off. I have enjoyed quality time with my family and friends. I have delighted being available for my kid before she goes off to college next year. Having my mom and husband read my book (and enjoy it) has been a highpoint of my life. Financially we are doing okay, even without my year of salary, because somehow the chaos since election day hasn’t impacted our investments – see rich white family note above.
Tomorrow I will suck it up and be grateful again, but today is my birthday. Today I get to be frustrated at myself for my lack of willpower and becoming a dumpy old lady. Today I get to be aggravated because in less than a year I’ve gone from being a very successful career woman, who did things like meet Secretaries of Energy and Transportation and accepted invitations to the White House, to a worthless 51 year old woman. Today I get to be frustrated because there is so much work to do with my book, and my dozen this year (so far) for short stories, writing conferences, and jobs don’t give me any hope that I can write more than drivel, so what’s the point anyway?
Tomorrow I will celebrate my birthday with friends. Next week I will celebrate with my family. Today I miss the hope of turning 50.
This is really hard for me, so I’m just going to blurt it out. I am proud of myself. Whoa, honey. No one likes a braggart. Probably everyone is going to stop reading this post now, right?
When I walked away from my career last September I had one goal: to finish my novel and make it good enough for my mom to read. Why my mom, you ask? Because she’s a devourer of all types of books and no matter what genre I wrote, she would appreciate it. Because she’s an English teacher and could tell me if my book actually met standard and historical book criteria. I love books because my mom loves books and she encouraged me to read whatever I wanted my entire life. (She actually had to stand up to the elementary school librarian on my behalf for reading a “age inappropriate” books. Poor librarian.) I wanted to write this book, because it was a story I wanted to read and I wanted to share it with my mom.
On Friday June 13th I wrote “The End.” (Which is a totally fine date to finish your novel. No bad omens associated with Friday the thirteenth at all.) Then I read and edited and spell checked and edited some more until June 23rd when I printed out all 285 pages and presented it to mom. Part one of my goal accomplished.
(Mom took this picture of me and my book. We are at her kitchen table. I normally hate how I look in pictures, but not this time. Look at how happy I am.)
I’ve read many writing books. I think Stephen King is the one who said that writing is magic. In my head was a world, characters and actions. Part one of the magic is the transference from my head onto the paper. To the best of my abilities, I accomplished that. I’ve read my complete book twice since writing “The End” and I believe the story is there. Could it be better? Yeah. (The comma situation is certainly dicey.) Could the story be better? Maybe, but not from what my own eyes can see or my own brain can comprehend. Now I need to find out if I accomplished the second part of the magic: can someone else’s eyes and brain read the story and interpret it? I don’t know, but I’m about to find out. Feedback from my mom, my writing group, and my husband is coming. I’m trying to be brave.
I have little glimmers that give me hope. As they have finished, my writing group has sent texts saying “It’s wonderful” and “It’s a big wonderful book.” (At 107,000 words, it’s a bit of a behemoth.) Mom finished on July 7th and sent me a picture of the last page of my book. On it she wrote, “So good” underlined three times and “I got teary eyed.” I got teary eyed when she sent me the picture.
Mom’s “The End”
I’ve had a month to celebrate. A month to marvel at my accomplishment. I left 20 years of stability, a nice paycheck, and great benefits for a dream. That dream is now a physical hunk of word-filled paper big enough to cause death to a bug or pain to a foot if dropped.
No matter what the next few weeks of critique and discussion brings, I want to acknowledge that I achieved my dream and that’s pretty gosh darn amazing. (I can say that here, because everyone stopped reading after the first braggy paragraph, right?)
An afternoon game at Coors Field in Denver, Colorado
I saw two white men kneeling on a brown man, forcing his face into the blacktop of the highway yesterday afternoon. Tonight, in the wee hours of July 4th, my country’s birthday, I cannot sleep because I cannot understand how we got here.
Five of us, two teenagers and three adults, were driving home from a baseball game on Interstate 25. Traffic slowed, and my daughter asked why there was a car facing the wrong way on the road. Sure enough, there was an empty SUV pointed north in the southbound lane. Strange, but we, and all the other cars, swerved around it and drove on. What were we going to do, stop turn the SUV around? Before the next exit, there were two munched cars on the side of the road. The people in that accident were out and about, so I assumed it was a normal highway fender bender. Maybe related to the backwards SUV? We kept driving.
Then I saw the third accident. A person with copper skin, an orange shirt, and kinky black hair was getting resuscitated by the side of the road. He was on the ground and a white man had his hands over his heart. I saw the white man doing chest compressions and I did that thing where I didn’t want to look for fear of the gore, but I looked anyway. And then I really saw. The man was not doing chest compressions. The man, a white man, was kneeling on the brown man. The white man had the arms of the brown man pulled behind his back. The white man wasn’t saving the brown man’s life, but pressing his body into the asphalt. The brown man’s face was smashed into the black asphalt on a 91 degree day. Next to the white man knelt another white man. Then we were past them. I’m humiliated to say we didn’t do anything. We just drove on and got ice cream, like we were planning. While a man was being pressed into the scalding highway we got ice cream.
We aren’t monsters. We talked about the scene. Four of us had the same life saving first impression, followed by an oh-shit moment. My daughter’s friend never doubted that she was seeing a white man kneeling on a brown man. We all agreed that the men weren’t police. They weren’t in uniforms. They were men, like my husband, forcing another man into the street. My daughter’s friend, the one with the clearest vision of the situation, commented that the white men had the brown man’s head awfully close to the oncoming traffic, like they didn’t care if he got run over. She wasn’t wrong. My friend wondered what she could do in retirement to make things better. On our way home, we drove past the scene, but traffic had cleared and the tableau was gone.
How did my country end up here? In my almost 51 years, I never dreamed I would witness such a thing. This was a story my dad would tell me from his childhood in Texas. After the fact, I wonder if I’d been alone, would I have stopped? If I’d been driving, would I have stopped? I’m CPR trained. If they were doing compressions I could have helped. If I had mistakenly stopped to help and realized what was going on, could I have made them see the man as a human being who should be treated with dignity? Should I have called someone? Later in the day, I logged onto the godforsaken Twitter app to check the Denver Police feed, but there was nothing. I checked the Facebook Colorado State Patrol feed and there was nothing. Nothing about a backwards car, an accident, or a public assault on a brown man anywhere.
I know there’s a phone number I’m supposed to call if I see ICE agents in our metro area, but I didn’t think of that until tonight. Do they want to hear about something that happened hours ago? I am ashamed of myself. I am a white lady and I need to do better. The country that exists in my head, where people stop by the side of the road to help people is gone. I’m ashamed of my reaction and my behavior. I have the same sick feeling I had when I learned that other families taught their kids how to be safe with the police, while I grew up in a bubble thinking all police would help me.
On our way into the baseball game, we followed a man whose shirt read “Gunpa, like a Grandpa but with more guns and more fun.” At the baseball game the Colorado Rockies were playing the Houston Astros, and I was aggravated by all the obnoxious Texas fans. I stood quietly during the national anthem, while the woman next to me held her hand over her heart and belted out the song. At the 7th inning stretch I remarked that I was grateful we no longer sang “God Bless America” after “Take Me out to the Ballgame.” Those little differences seem like they could exist in the same country. The kind of annoying disparities that make up a population of human beings. Meanwhile, the chasm between the country I thought I lived in, where men stop to do CPR on another man, and the country I actually live in, where men publicly assault other men on the highway, don’t feel like they should exist on the same planet. I need to learn to live in the reality that actually exists, as awful as it is.
January 2021 things were still strange in my world. I was working at home. My daughter’s school delayed their winter start, trying to figure out executing in-person and remote school, so we were both home. She was in sixth grade.
I’m a bit of a political junkie and January 6th, 2021 provided an excellent opportunity to witness something I’d never seen before. The counting of the electoral college votes. I had a light day of meetings and lots of busy work, so I decided to sit with my computer and kiddo to watch the process as an impromptu civics lesson.
MSNBC coverage of the simple process that was supposed to happen to certify the 2020 election
I knew shenanigans were planned for the floor. Republicans were going to protest the count and try to avoid certifying the results. A potentially additional lesson on how the foundation of our government, the peaceful transition of power, would be tested.
I can’t believe how badly we bombed our national test. I remember flashes from watching the news broadcast with my daughter. I remember the interns, young women in suits, protecting the electoral college votes and whisking them away from the mob storming the capital. In my memory the votes were in wooden chests that invoked the history and importance of their contents. My memory is not wrong. I remember watching a gurney rolled out of the capital building and my daughter asking me, “Did someone die?” With the sheet pulled up over the body, I could only respond, “I think so.” My memory is not wrong. Windows were broken in our capitol and men wearing dead animals on their heads walked the floor of the House and Senate. As a lover of dystopian novels, reality stretched the bounds of my imagination that day while I watched a mob vandalize and disrespect our capitol, our country, and our system of government. I watched start to finish. It was not a “day of love” and those people were not “patriots”.
Image of my television showing the January 6th riot. One man holds Trump flags while another holds a Confederate flag in the United States Capitol.
It was a civics lesson that would continue. I remember the day last year when my daughter came home from her AP US History class ebullient about the importance of the peaceful transfer of power. Her knowledge had finally caught up with her experiences and she went on and on about how January 6th was the antithesis of the principles that make our country special. In two years she’ll cast her first ballot, and she can’t wait. Already she’s a highly informed voter.
My first election in 1992 I was a single issue voter. Straight democrat to protect abortion rights. When I was in my late teens and twenties unwanted pregnancies weren’t about a late term abortions to save the life of the mother. They weren’t about fetal abnormalities or ectopic pregnancies. They were about boyfriends who already broke up with you, and you didn’t want their baby. They were about being on the precipice of starting your own life and knowing your newly hatched dreams wouldn’t be possible with a child. They were about your parents, who wouldn’t understand. They were about getting loans from your friends for the $300 procedure, because if you couldn’t afford an abortion how were you going to afford a kid? They were about not wanting to be a mother and not wanting to join your life to a partner. That precious potential of young women was the most important thing in my world, and I voted to protect myself and my friends.
Now that protection is gone. Thank goodness pharmaceutical abortions were developed since my first election in 1992. When Dobbs took away our constitutional right I immediately ordered abortion medication. Not because I was pregnant. Not because anyone I knew was pregnant. But because I have had friends show up on my doorstep, needing help, and I wanted to make sure that help was available in the future. While mine and other woman’s rights to bodily autonomy are protected in my state, and hopefully will soon be in our constitution, I don’t trust that my country will continue to protect my right to choice.
My memory is not wrong. In high school I was told that abortion rights were protected by Roe and would never go away. Now I am told that January 6th wasn’t a riot incited by a Trump supporting mob. Trump’s Supreme Court nominees have revoked my rights as a human being. Trump’s followers desecrated our capitol and the ideals of our country.
I want to be able to remember how in 2024, we rejected violence and authoritarian control. I want to remember sitting next to my daughter and watching as we elect our first woman president. I want to remember what it’s like to have a leader who has lived in a female body with female vulnerabilities for 60 years and how that changed our country for the better. I want us to remember how to celebrate our differences and learn from each other again. I’m ready to remember the first moments of a Harris presidency.
I sense a change coming. At almost fifty years, for the first time, my life is about to get smaller. I’m not sure how I feel about it. Part of me is exhausted managing 17 people at work, boostering sports at the high school, parenting one child, managing one household, meeting with my writing group, trying to keep my body from falling apart, keeping a semblance of friendships, and contributing to two extended families. My life is always full.
The opportunities to do more are endless. I could be a DECA judge at the high school or volunteer for the PTA; apply to an executive MBA or CTO program; run the women’s network at work. They need me, while my heart longs to see my parents more or have a leisurely meal with friends.
And there are so many people. Work people, school people, sports people, family people, friend people, writing people, and neighbor people. People I want to see and people who want to see me. People I am obligated to see and people who think I’m obligated to see them. Annual people like doctors and dentists. Periodic people like sports, writing, and camping friends. I could have coffee and lunch every day and still feel like I’m missing out on relationship connections. With every new hire, new project, new school, new activity, or new interest my rolodex grows. (A dated metaphor, but some of you know what I’m talking about.)
The first end is less then three months away. My role as driver has a deadline. There is no indication that my daughter will do anything but pass her test, get her license, and never need me to take her anywhere ever again. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but this feels like the first official life contraction. Sure other parenting tasks end, but for the most part they are replaced. I don’t have to change diapers or mash up food anymore, but now I learn the nuances of lip gloss versus lip balm and make pancakes for sleepovers. But driving is a task that grows as kids get older. They have more activities that are farther away and take longer. More friends and more opportunities to leave the house. It’s not all a burden, because the parental time in the car is special. The car is a safe zone where you find out secrets, hopes, and dreams. I won’t have that view into my kid’s life anymore.
Driving also makes my life bigger. I made friends with parents hanging out on the sidelines when my daughter was little. I found new trails to walk as her sports took her all over the state. Now, I wave to my kid’s friends when I do the permit driver switch at school. I’m a basketball booster parent because the coach saw me after practice, and we got to talk for a minute. Suddenly those relationships, experiences and interactions will be gone – abdicated to my kiddo to maintain.
I love being a parent, and recognize this is the beginning of the great metamorphosis from hands on to hands off. From loving a child to loving an adult. Not far out are pre-college camps, which she’ll do solo. My best travel buddy’s first travels alone. Then college. That’s the big one. In two and a half years I’ll go from living as a household of three to a household of two. No games to attend. No parent teacher conferences. No back to school nights. Suddenly priorities in my life will go back to being determined by me – not a school schedule or a sports schedule.
What will I do with myself? I used to do this cool thing called working out, and it made my body and mind feel amazing. But I usually did that with friends, and how do I find friends who run if I’m not going to soccer practice and running stupid one-mile loops on the concrete path around the soccer fields? I like watching sporting events, but how does that feel when you aren’t surrounded by the parents and friends of the kids playing? What will provide the rhythm to my days and years? Where will I meet new people? And do I really have to just hang out with my husband every day, all day?
Honestly, I’m ready for a little space. Time to return to things I love. My writing has suffered. I miss my close relationships. I long for interactions that don’t have to fit into a smidge of time scraped out between activities. Maybe I’ll actually be able to respond to work emails again? (Probably not.) Maybe I’ll be able to nurture friendships who have gone stale, or build stronger friendships with people whose lives don’t quite match my rhythms now? I long for complex foods with spices and heat that fill the house with smells my daughter despises.
Where does it end? Friends are retiring and I see how hard it is to maintain relationships between working and retired people. Your lives become different, so I’ll keep losing friends as they leave the workforce, but will we reconnect when I retire? My parent’s friends keep dying and their world gets smaller with every loss. Is this part of the natural cycle of life? Your world expands to a peak of fullness beyond comfort and joy beyond maintainability and then contracts back down to a tiny family unit then a lonely end? What happens on the other side of parenting, of work, of health?
I’m hoping there is a time of contentment between now and death. A time to be thoughtful. A time to breathe and focus on the things and people I love, including myself. A time when I do what I do because it’s important and not urgent. A chance to want to do things and no longer have to do things. I hold this hope close to offset the fear as the losses loom. I am ready for some time alone, but I am not ready to be lonely.
It feels like a perfect night For breakfast at midnight To fall in love with strangers Ah-ah, ah-ah
22 by Taylor Swift
Full honesty here. I am not a legitimate Swifty. I haven’t been following Taylor Swift since her debut. In fact, I didn’t even notice when Folklore, Evermore or Taylor’s versions of Fearless and Red came out during the pandemic. But something was different when she released Midnights. What changed? I had a teenage daughter whose casual “listening to Taylor Swift in the car” became a shared obsession.
The Eras tour was announced and we attempted to buy tickets, but I didn’t know all the mysterious incantations — verified fan, Capital One card — needed to purchase entry to the concert. But I did know StubHub and Seat Geek, so once the scalpers bought up most of the tickets, I started a fun hobby of watching ticket prices to see if maybe, just maybe, we could go. I checked the price in other cities to see if it was cheaper to fly somewhere, get a hotel, and see Taylor in Pittsburgh or Minneapolis or Detroit. It was not. Every time I looked the prices went up past reasonable to extravagant to embarrassing.
My fatal flaw was mentioning my ticket searching hobby to my daughter. When her reaction wasn’t “MOM, you are SO lame,” but instead “I’d go to Taylor Swift with you” our fate was sealed and my hobby became a quest. I compared resale sites, contrasted seat locations and venues and finally picked out seats, only to have my credit card reject what was obviously a purchase outside of my normal tendencies. (Okay, I also shouldn’t have tried the transaction after midnight local time – every one of my actions screamed fraud to the banking AI algorithms.)
But after appeasing the credit card overlords, I dropped more money than I will ever admit on two tickets, a few weeks before my daughter’s fifteenth birthday. I reached out to our family and invited everyone to contribute, so the tickets could be from all of us. This was in no way an attempt to offset our extravagant purchase (because again, they cost a humiliating amount of money) but a way to let everyone be a part of what I hoped would be a keystone memory for my daughter.
Her birthday had the potential to be awful. First school then choir practice then basketball practice; she’d be gone from the house from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. The only break was a planned run to the DMV so she could get her driver’s permit. Luckily, she woke up to a family group text with a picture of the tickets. She’s not a screaming hysterical happy person, especially in the morning, but her birthday was saved and her dedication over the next two months to learn every lyric of every song in the set list showed just how much our gift meant.
The anticipation was amazing. We sang. We made friendship bracelets. I joined Facebook groups. I researched logistics. We bought our clear plastic bag for the stadium. We had something big to look forward too. Something big and ridiculous and fun, just her and me, and that wasn’t something we’d had since March of 2020 when COVID hit.
In the midst of the excitement I let worry creep in. What if we got sick? What if traffic was terrible and we couldn’t get to the stadium? Could we take water? Snacks? What shoes should we wear? Should we stand in line at the merch tent for 12 hours the day before the concert to make sure whe got the perfect memorabilia?
In the end, everything went wrong and everything worked out. My husband was going to drive and pick us up, but when we got near the venue there was a lovely middle school parking lot, so we paid the energetic attendant $25 and my husband took an Uber home. My daughter and I queued at our gate and raced into the stadium, but didn’t immediately get in the merch line, so I had to leave during the concert to get her the coveted quarter zip and Midnights CD (sadly my water bottle was sold out.) Our seats were behind the sound tower, so we couldn’t see anything that matchstick sized Taylor did at center stage, but the screen was huge and we saw the show of our lives. The girls next to us crammed 5 girls into 4 seats and they were lovely and sang their hearts out and traded friendship bracelets with us.
And everything was better than we’d dreamed. Our seats were club level, but we had no idea that meant air conditioning, easy access to food and bathrooms, and our own Taylor Swift Eras backdrop for an epic picture. The opening act, Gracie Abrams, is one of my daughter’s favorite and she played more songs than expected. We were in the last row of our section, so no one ruined the night by shouting the lyrics, singing off key, or spilling anything on us. I got to talk to strangers from Idaho, Utah, and New Mexico and trade bracelets with kids, teens, grown-ups, security guards, concession stand workers, and the guy who sold me merch.
There is so much wrong with this story. First, my ridiculously unfair privilege to spend the amount of money I spent to see a concert that I didn’t deserve to see. Facebook groups were filled with people pleading for tickets who have been fans since the beginning and couldn’t afford $700 for scalped obstructed view seats in the fifth level. Second, it’s disgusting how much StubHub, Seat Geek, and brokers made on Taylor Swift’s art and Ticketmaster’s complacent negligence. Finally, it made me sad that the concession workers – every single one I talked to was a Swifty – were in the venue but couldn’t watch the show, but only listen to the echoes of music through the concourse.
But for me there was so much that felt right after years of being afraid that nothing on this scale would ever feel right again. After my run to the merchandise line, during All Too Well (10 minute version), the logistics were finally complete, and I let myself escape into the joy of the night for a few eras. My daughter and I gasped at the heat of the flames that burned during Bad Blood. We cried together when Back to December was one of our surprise songs. I sang my heart out to the self-deprecating lyrics of Anti-Hero, a glorious anthem to the entire night, “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.” As we left the stadium, we experienced a last magical goodbye as a coveted piece of confetti blew off a woman’s cowboy hat onto the ground in front of us. I reached down and captured one last memento of a perfect night.
We were so fucking careful for six hundred and sixty-two days. We canceled camping trips and school trips for fear of being infected. For fear of infecting others. We quarantined fourteen days before Christmas Eve 2020, just so we could spend a few hours with family without masks. My daughter played soccer games (outdoors), basketball games (indoors), and volleyball matches (indoors) masked. She wore masks at the beginning of cross country meets. My husband and I? We watched games and races apart from other families with our lower faces hidden behind our own masks.
It wasn’t enough. Six hundred and fifty-eight days of being safe and somehow COVID found my daughter. When you are careful, you know exactly when infection occurs, even if you don’t know how. We’d been quarantining after an exposure to a family friend. For five days from 12/26 – 12/31 my daughter didn’t leave the house, but when our New Years Eve plans were canceled because our friend (the same one we were exposed to) was still testing positive, I made a terrible decision, “Let’s just go to the hockey game. No one will be there.” Our first mistake.
My daughter and I put on our masks in the car. They stayed on the entire walk to the game and the entire game. No one was there. We got seats one row up and 6 seats over from the nearest people. People who didn’t wear masks the entire game. The woman in the group coughed several times. I glared at her a lot as if my mommy eyes could stop any germs. At the far end of the row, another group of maskless fans sat farther away, but didn’t show any signs of unhealthiness. Everyone was at least 10 feet away, probably more. No one was behind us to breathe their COVID-y germs down on us. We had masks on: my husband and I KN95s, but my daughter had asked to only wear a surgical mask. Our second mistake.
At intermission, we walked down through the concourse. My daughter had to use the bathroom. Our third mistake. After a moments hesitation, I followed her, deciding I would go too. We both went, but in stalls a distance from each other. We washed hands near masked women, and then went to visit friends at the game who we hadn’t seen in at least six hundred and fifty-eight days. They wore masks. We wore masks. We hugged, but they had COVID recently, so it was a safe hug, but we were near other people. I didn’t note the mask wearing of those strangers because I was so happy to see our friends again. Our fourth mistake.
We spent the rest of the game at our seats. Near the coughing woman. Near the maskless fans. My daughter sat between my husband and I in her less-protective surgical mask. After the game, it was cold, so we wore our masks all the way to the car, keeping our faces warm and avoiding the germs of the unmasked fans walking near us.
My husband and I were boosted, but kids my daughter’s age were not yet approved. The CDC wouldn’t recommend her booster until two days after she tested positive for COVID; six days after she was infected. All the times I’d thought poorly of people who were infected right before they could get vaccinated came back to me in a karmic vengeance. Our fifth mistake? Hard to say, because we hadn’t heard that boosters were imminent, but we did know it had been over six months since her shots, and we knew Omicron was raging. So yes, let’s count that as mistake five.
We went to another hockey game the next day. Same situation, but more fans. The guy next to me was drunk and kept leaning in to talk to me, touch me. We moved seats so I was out of reach. Could my daughter have been infected then? Sure. But neither me, my husband, our friends, or our friends’ unboosted kids got COVID.
On January 2nd my daughter’s phone pinged with a notification that she’d been near someone with COVID on December 31st. I didn’t get the notification, nor did my husband. The only time we were apart was in the bathroom. Could the state notification system have been smart enough to know that my husband and I had better masks than my daughter? Of course not. Right?
Monday, January 3rd, my daughter felt crappy when she woke up. A wicked headache and a bit congested. My husband had just recovered from a bad cold (not COVID, he tested three times). Maybe she caught it? Or perhaps irritation from all the residual particulates in the air from the fires that burned Superior and Louisville days before? She had no cough and no fever, but we tested her for COVID just in case. Negative, so she spent a few hours with my parents (mistake six), came home and went for an unmasked walk outside with a friend (mistake seven), and then went to her club basketball practice (mistake eight). At least she wore a mask at basketball, like always.
Tuesday she went back to school (mistake nine). Her head still hurt and she didn’t feel great. Of course she’d also slept less than 4 hours. I know because I slept with her. She was anxious about school and finally I gave up and joined her in bed so she could get some rest. All night we shared recycled breath. (mistake ten) “It feels like knives are stabbing my eyes,” she said as she got ready for school. I gave her a Tylenol, because I know how horrible a lack of sleep can make you feel: especially your eyes. Testing crossed my mind, but she was negative the day before and we only had five tests left (mistake eleven). I picked her up from school and she was feeling pretty good. She had an hour to eat a snack and change and then off to her school basketball practice (mistake twelve). After dinner she started feeling really cruddy, so we tested. Positive for COVID. My husband and I tested. Negative.
We felt terrible, and our penance was the COVID walk of shame. I told my parents their granddaughter had exposed them to COVID. She had exposed my immunocompromised father, the one consistent family fear of this pandemic. At least they were both vaccinated and boosted. My husband texted the parents of her (vaccinated, not boosted) walk friend. I emailed basketball coaches, and texted hockey friends. My final note was to school “friends”: the ones who hadn’t invited her to New Year’s, the ones who made fun of her for not going on their school trip, and ones who hadn’t bothered to invite her to any of their outings during the school break. (You know, those middle school “friends.”) I let all their moms know that my daughter was positive and had exposed their daughters to COVID throughout the school day. Everyone was either nice enough, or ignored my note. Was there a little snideness in their responses? A little smugness? Impossible to tell from email, but I know they found us overcautious, ridiculous, and exhausting for six hundred and sixty-two days. I’m sure at least one family felt a little secret joy that the uppity family was knocked off their pedestal. My daughter’s final penance? The recital all the “friends” were going to over the weekend was now out of the question. My kid couldn’t go because of isolation protocols. Another demerit. Another chance to get left out.
What was the tally of our even dozen mistakes?
My daughter, infected with COVID
Her walking friend, infected with COVID
As far as we know, that’s it. My parents were spared. My husband and I were spared. Both my mom and I felt bad enough to test three days after my daughter tested positive, but we were negative and both feel fine now. Did we have it, and our booster helped us fight off the infection? Who knows. No classmates or teammates were impacted. The family we infected has been careful, like us, during the pandemic, and they have been kind as our daughters go through COVID together. We’ve helped each other find tests and traded food ideas as our girls lost their sense of taste. The girls are happy to have an isolation buddy to do homework with via Facetime. As much as neither family ever wanted to end up in this situation we are making the best of things.
But my kid has a disease we know little about. She lost her sense of taste on day 6, so her symptoms aren’t decreasing. She’s still testing positive on day 7. No fever, and blood oxygen levels consistently above 96%. Protocol says she can go back to school tomorrow, but really? I’m going to send my daughter who doesn’t feel great and is testing positive to school? Sure she didn’t infect anyone last time, but do we push our luck? Push the luck of other families?
I’d love to say that I’m super zen about all this. That I can look back and say we were super risky, made twelve mistakes, and all that happened was our daughter and her friend got infected, but I’m not zen at all. I’m fucking angry. Look at my mistakes and tell me what parent, what person, which of you, hasn’t made the same mistakes. In fact, maybe you have made even bigger mistakes without masks or without testing. One of my mistakes was letting my kid go to the bathroom with only a surgical mask on. Should I have told her to hold it? Go when it wasn’t as busy? Force her to wear an N95 mask? What we did wasn’t a mistake. We followed proper protocol. She made another mistake when going on an unmasked walk outside with her friend the day she tested negative for COVID. Raise your hand if you’ve gone outside and talked to someone without a mask. I’m betting every one of you has your hand raised. And did you have a negative COVID test earlier that day? I’m guessing not. Now guess what? You gave your friend COVID. Fuck that. And sure, my kid was not boosted, but she couldn’t be. The damn CDC had to wait FOUR DAYS to approve the FDA’s recommendation and even those assholes waited until it had been over SEVEN months since the kids with the most responsible families got their kids vaccinated. This is all utterly unfair bullshit.
Now I get to worry about long COVID, and what long term impacts this virus will have on my daughter. Will she still be able to run? Play sports? What about even longer unknown impacts? I get to worry because there are no hospital beds and if she takes a turn for the worse there will be no oxygen for her, no ICU, and sure as hell no treatments. For making a dozen mistakes, I get to be that parent. The one who risked her kid’s life, her families’ lives, and her friends’ lives for a hockey game. Except, I didn’t do anything that any safe family hasn’t done this pandemic. And I’m angry as hell for all the people who haven’t been careful, who haven’t worn a mask, and who haven’t been vaccinated so this damned virus keeps mutating. Every selfish person who just can’t bother to put something over their nose and mouth and get a nothing-short-of-miraculous-vaccine is culpable for my kid’s illness. At least as much as I am for making what I admit is one bad decision: to go to a hockey game with Omicron raging.
For six hundred and sixty-two days we were careful, responsible members of society and this just sucks. If I was a toddler I’d be pounding and kicking on the floor screaming a tantrum of “it’s not fair.” As a fourty-seven year old, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that you’ll find me there tomorrow.
Someday I will be a morning person. I will jump out of bed before the sun even rises, lace up my running shoes, greet the day with the chirpy birds, and let the pink glow of the sun warm my soul as it lights the sky. Upon arriving home, I will feed the chickens and barn cat — respectively thanking them for my eggs and for killing the rats. Then I will feed the house cats and take a moment to appreciate the happiness they bring to my life. Exercise, gratitude, and chores complete, I will shower, shave, and be ready to greet my waking family with well-groomed joy knowing my day has begun with no sleeping-in or running-late guilt.
Someday my body will be a temple. I will feed it nothing but wholesome food. All the fruits and veggies it can take. Eggs from my beloved chickens. Cheese from cows lovingly hand milked in pastures where they eat nothing but all organic free range vegetation. I will cook my own meals, and when I can’t, I will only eat at restaurants that also consider my body a temple worthy of local low-carbon-emission produce. Occasionally I will allow myself a treat of a single square of bitter dark chocolate, so I can savor both the sweet of the dessert and the bitterness off mistreating my temple. The only beverage I will ever drink is pure clean water from glass containers. I will exercise everyday, but vary my routine from running to yoga to Pilates to ensure my cardiovascular health, flexibility, and strength.
Someday I will be on time to everything. After my blissful morning and my temple-worthy breakfast I will drop my child off at school exactly seven minutes early. Time for her to play a bit, and visit with her friends. Then when the bell rings I will walk my perfectly dressed self — in a size six, a slim nonjudgmental size — to my car and drive to work, arriving exactly at 8:30. People will depend on me, knowing if they schedule an 8:30 meeting I will be there nonplussed and ready to face whatever challenge they need faced. After working an 8 hour day — not including the 0.5 hours spent enjoying the wholesome lunch I packed, then walking around the park to clear my mind — I will be waiting for my daughter at 3:00, just as the bell rings, to walk her home from school. Hand in hand, we’ll talk about her day and my day as we much on fresh vegetables from our garden. She will have friends, I will be successful at work, she will be successful at school, and we will be so proud of each other. Then I’ll drive her, and all her friends, in my electric vehicle — powered by solar panels installed on our home’s roof — to whatever practice she has that day: carpooling to ensure our position in the social hierarchy while minimizing our carbon footprint.
Someday I will make good use of all the time available to me. While my daughter practices I’ll be using that time to write my novel, do grad school homework, catch up with beloved friends and family, or knit scarves for the poor. However, I will willingly pause to talk with other sports parents where I will be modest about my child and supportive of their children and their worries about traffic. I won’t squander time dinking on my phone, talking to parents who make me want to stab my eyes out, or half-listen to eye-stabby parents while dinking on my phone. I will be present and understanding.
Someday my evenings will run like clockwork. After practice, I’ll enjoy a wholesome meal with my family. We will all eat exactly the same thing, correctly proportioned to our body mass index. Dishes will be cleared, washed, and the kitchen will be cleaned in harmony, then everyone will sit down to homework. (Well, everyone but my husband who will enjoy a well deserved hour of rest watching some sporting event, but he will not be too loud or too emotionally attached to the event.) Homework done, my daughter will bathe, and I will read aloud to her for 20 minutes. Then she will make her lunch, brush her teeth, brush her hair, put on pajamas, and deposit her dirty clothes into her hamper. She will go to sleep by herself in her own room in her own bed after reading to herself for exactly 10 minutes.
Someday my late nights will be all my own time. Having accomplished everything I needed to do while in the office, I will spend 45 minutes catching up with my husband. 2.5 times per week we will have age-appropriate sex. Sated or not, I will then spend a few hours editing my novel, writing a blog post, or drafting a new short story. Sometimes, I will work a bit on a knitted gift for a friend, or hand-write a few thank you notes. Occasionally I will document my day’s accomplishments in a perfect Instagram shot or Tweet. Before bed, I will do a quick clean up of the house – filling the dishwasher, folding laundry, picking up clutter, sweeping, and wiping down counters and other surfaces – before reading for 30 minutes and then drifting off for an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep.
My new favorite word is benign. Say it with me: benign. It’s a little choppy and doesn’t really flow off the tongue; there may be too many syllables for the length. It wasn’t a word I’d given much thought before last week. In fact, if you’d asked me before that, I would have said I liked the word malignant better. It has a force to it, a weight, and a power that is scary as heck when it might be related to your own body.
Last Friday I was presented with that glorious word, benign. All day I sat by the phone waiting for my biopsy results. Before the biopsy, the mammography center had warned that I might not hear the results until after Christmas, but the surgical center seemed certain that I’d hear on Friday. My husband and I had discussed the uncertainty and decided that if the sample was cancerous we didn’t want to hear until after Christmas. I rationalized that I could fake my way through the holiday not knowing, but would likely ruin everyone’s Christmas if I did know. However, when I discussed my plan with the biopsy nurse practitioner and doctor they looked at me like I was crazy. “I mean, I’ll have questions and I’ll need to know what the plan is if it isn’t benign.” I told them. They assured me that there would be a plan – nay a whole team ready – if the sample was not benign so I capitulated and agreed that they could call, which seemed to satisfy their need for procedure and protocol. (“Not benign” is such a stupid euphemism.)
My arms were deep in the sink, soaking my brother’s Christmas scarf for blocking when my daughter ran in, “Mom, your phone is ringing.” I dripped while sprinting into the study and grabbed my phone. Better to ruin my phone with soggy hands then miss this call. They were going to tell me if the turtle ripped from my body was a good turtle or an evil turtle.
There is no situation that is beyond the absurd in my life. While I was laying face down on a surgical table, my clamped and bleeding boob protruding through a hole, the doctor put up the image of the sample taken from my flesh. It looked exactly like a turtle with a bulbous middle, a head, and four smaller blob appendages. Of course, I shared my interpretation of this image with my medical team. Appeasing me, they pointed out the lighter squiggles on one turtle foot. That was the sample they wanted. The worrying parts of the turtle were now outside of me ready to be analyzed and tested.
The call had no preamble before the nurse practitioner – the one who convinced me that I wanted to talk to her no matter what she was going to tell me – said, “I have good news for you. Your sample is benign.”
That moment is clear in my head. As unclear as the medical guidance given to me by my doctor during the biopsy procedure. He was very kind, but the nurse assigned to me seemed hellbent to ensure any medical information provided was covered up by cheery banter. She entered with the doctor and was “there for me” in some role perfectly clear to her. At the moment the biopsy was about to happen the doctor said, “I’m going to take the sample now. You might feel…” but whatever I might have felt was drowned out by the nurse screaming in my face, “WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE CHRISTMAS COOKIE?” I still don’t know what I was supposed to feel, but Nurse Rose knows I like sugar cookies the best. Her question wasn’t a total non sequitur. She’d drowned out the anesthetic information by asking me my plans for the day, which involved making Christmas cookies.
Sure, maybe making Christmas cookies they day you get a biopsy might seem a little strange, but that’s what happens when you get an irregular mammogram less than two weeks before Christmas. My brother’s scarf was carried with me from waiting room to procedure room to waiting room the day of the biopsy, because I had knitting to finish before the holiday. My potential cancer worries were all wrapped up with holiday concerns – pun intended.
The decision to have the mammogram right before Christmas was an odd one for me. In a flash of uncharacteristic optimism I took the appointment offered because, after my first irregular mammogram in June, my doctor and I looked at the films together. She’d assured me that the worrying spots had been on my mammogram in 2015, disappeared in 2016 and were back in 2017. She said it was probably nothing, but cautioned me that I needed to go every 6 months, just in case.
At the time, the mammogram didn’t seem like it was “just in case,” but in hindsight the lady doing my mammogram got less and less chatty as she took more and more pictures. Since this was my first followup appointment, I just figured she didn’t find my demeanor charming. Or maybe she was also unsure how she was going to get everything done before Christmas. When she asked me to sit in the waiting room I didn’t wonder, but when she asked me to come back into the bowels of the mammography center I got concerned. She led me into a dimly lit room with faux leather chairs around a small conference table and I panicked. The room looked exactly like the special room my vet has for euthanasia appointments. When the radiologist arrived and didn’t bring me a warm blanket and a cocktail of life-ending drugs it was a relief, until he suggested a biopsy.
The warm blanket came right before they strapped my legs to the biopsy table and raised me into the air on the worst amusement park ride ever. Nurse Rose did not find my amusement park ride jokes funny as the table made herkey jerks and my boob was smashed and smushed and poked. I feel like being “there for me” should have involved laughing at my jokes.
The benign call ended awkwardly. When asked if I had any questions I mentioned that I thought the incision was bleeding more than it should. The nurse practitioner seemed taken aback, like the invitation for questions was rhetorical. I was supposed to just hang up in a blaze of relief and joy. When I told her that the bloody spot under my bandage was much bigger than a dime or nickel she said, “Well, if it’s still a problem on Tuesday give us a call” then said goodbye. My Christmas cancer worry was replaced by a smaller bleeding-out worry. Nothing I couldn’t fake my way through, but enough to make me drift off to sleep with images of bloody wounds dancing in my head. (Spoiler alert, I haven’t bled out yet.)
When people ask me what I got for Christmas this year I go blank. I got benign, but almost everyone doesn’t know I had a biopsy. A few friends and family members along with an astute coworker who caught me at a bad time know, but I didn’t tell anyone else. When was the right time? During the band concert? The school holiday party? During our work calendar exchange? At my friend’s dad’s funeral? Had the ending been different I would have had to tell, but now I’m just awkwardly hugging on one side and randomly asking people to carry heavy things for me.
Along with my constant appreciation of the absurd are my rose colored glasses. Even after my Magic 8 Ball told me I didn’t have cancer (this was before the actual diagnosis) I couldn’t help planning for the worst. The silver lining of the cancer scare was my evaluation of the things I was afraid of losing: my family, my friends, my book, my stories and – surprising to me – my Master’s degree. In the week between mammogram and biopsy I planned how to transition my work role to others, write my book at chemo so my mom could read it, and make countless videos and knit objects for my kid to remember me by. (Because a box of hand-knits is almost the same as having a mom, right?) I also hoped I would feel well enough during treatment to go to school. It’s interesting the things that rise to important when you are considering th….
“WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE CHRISTMAS COOKIE?!?!?!”
Now when things start to get serious around here, you’ll understand why I’m screaming cookie gibberish. My surgical pamphlet tells me that one in eight women develop breast cancer and four in five biopsies like mine end up benign. That means many women are having these procedures and it’s all okay, but for each four of me, one other woman is dealing with all the fears I had the past two weeks. If you find yourself in this same uncomfortable situation, my hope is that your turtles turn out benign and your warm blankets just make your uncomfortable amusement park ride a little bit more pleasant.
Afthead 