Fast Food Fiasco

 Lately, we’ve been doing an awful job of making meals for ourselves. This stems mostly from my surgery and the consequent club on the end of my left arm. As I mentioned last week, it’s amazing the things a right-handed person can’t do without their left hand. And it’s depressing.

 Michael and I usually share kitchen duties—one cooks, the other cleans on any given night—but he’s done more than his share since July when I broke my wrist. Without complaining, I must add. Thank you, Michael. 

 Many nights of late we have looked at each other blankly when the subject of dinner is broached. Or we fail to bring it up until it’s too late to reasonably cook a meal. At that point there are only two choices: pickup meal (AKA free-for-all) or fast food.

 Last night we chose fast food. We’ve cut back on eating out quite a bit because it’s become so danged expensive. We pay for fast food now what we paid not too long ago for a nice-ish meal in a nicer-than-takeout restaurant.

 We haven’t been to Taco Bell in a while, but there’s one close by, they’re historically reasonably priced, and they’ve been advertising the return of the caramel apple empanada lately. Caramel apple empanadas!!! I love them and that’s where we went.

 On the way, I pulled up my assortment of restaurant apps to see what specials and rewards I had available. Practically none, but if I checked in at the store kiosk instead of ordering from the counter, I could accumulate more points. So I did. And that’s where it all started to go to hell.

 It is a giant pain to use those kiosks and it took forever to find things on their confusing menu. (Tip: it doesn’t match the above counter menu!) We never did find the empanadas, which were on the big menu, so Michael went to the counter to ask. “We’re out,” came the curt reply. No further explanation was offered and we still don’t know if they were out yesterday or permanently. If you have insight into this, please share!

 The soft tacos that Michael always gets are no longer rolled up. Now they are folded like a crispy taco. You certainly can’t eat them that way since the tortilla flops around, so now I guess we’re all expected to finish the prep on our soft tacos at the table. Why?

 I had been craving a Mexican pizza as well as the empanada and they did have that, but it wasn’t tasty. Neither was my cheese roll, which wasn’t hot and had gotten scrunched up. We ate the food, but it was joyless and depressing. And it cost $23. Seriously, two or three years ago that was a less than $10 meal.

 McDonald’s is just as bad on all counts. I know the buns are smaller. And the fish sandwiches—which I inexplicably like—no longer come with a full slice of cheese. Now it’s a half slice unless you order and pay for “extra” cheese. C’mon people. You cut the slice of American cheese in half before you put it on my sandwich? What a waste of time and customer satisfaction.

 It chaps my butt every time I pay for that extra cheese that used to be included.  And if you haven’t noticed, the picture on the menu still shows the cheese hanging over the edge of the bun. Ha! False advertising there.

 The fast food restaurants want us to use their apps so they can track us and bombard us with advertising and, of course, sell our information to other companies. They want us to use the kiosks so they can cut back on staffing even more. Their supposed deals and rewards are come-ons to get us to use their apps and kiosks; they’re rarely worth the time and trouble. And the deals usually expire before you can even use them.

 I’ve had it with the whole business. It’s too much time and money and aggravation. I’m ready to uninstall all my fast food apps, order in the store, at the counter, and pay what I have to without worrying about deals. Like the good old days.

 Except Pizza Hut. I regularly earn a free pizza from them and I appreciate it very much. Thank you Pizza Hut!!

 What’s your fast food gripe? Here’s your chance to get it off your chest.

 Ciao

Broken Bones, Bent Pride

 I’ve had my fill of incapacity. After breaking my foot last November and then breaking my wrist in July, I’ve had plenty of time to marinate in personal inadequacy. The inability to bathe oneself, to dress oneself, to drive oneself—the loss of personal agency—is beyond frustrating.

 This isn’t my first go-round with loss of agency. When illness forced me out of the workforce in 1992, my frustration and anger showed themselves in many ways. I tried to do things that I wasn’t capable of doing any longer and that often caused messes and problems other people had to clean up.

 I remember the time I wanted my older daughter to go shopping with me and she wanted me to take my wheelchair. I hated that damn wheelchair; it made me feel like an invalid. Change the stress in that word and invalid becomes invalid. And I did feel invalid.

 People overlook you when you’re in a wheelchair because you’re below eye level. Children see you, but if they comment their parents shush them. The aisles of department stores are notoriously narrow; you can’t move your wheelchair easily around them or through them.

 Alix’s response to my reluctance was to say, “If you’re not going to use your wheelchair, I’m not going to take you. You always think you can do it on your own and you’re always too tired to keep shopping before we’re close to done.”

 Fair point, and I conceded graciously that day. Other days, perhaps I wasn’t so gracious. But I was a person who had taken care of herself, who took care of other people, who never needed all this help. I hated being incapable of caring for myself.

 Fast forward 30 years to my broken foot. I’m in a boot. I can’t walk. I can’t drive. Managing the scooter is so complicated that I have trouble getting around my own house. I can shower once my husband locates the shower chair that I used to need 20 years ago. But at least I was independent in the shower! That’s not a small thing.

With a broken wrist, the shower chair is no help. I do have a handy-dandy plastic mitten (no fingers) designed to go over a cast. It allows one a modicum of freedom in the shower. For the last five weeks, I’ve been able to bathe myself, thank goodness.

Last Thursday, I had surgery to correct some serious thumb problems that my wrist injury had uncovered. Those problems resulted from an 11-year-old surgery. Now, instead of a cast with a cheery pink camo design, I have a giant club on the end of my arm. It may qualify as a weapon because of the (feels like) 10 pounds of plaster around my hand inside the Ace bandage.

My shower mitten doesn’t go over it. Where does that leave me? A plastic grocery bag and duct tape—which I can’t put on by myself—if I have any hope of showering in the next few weeks. Everyone, especially me, is hoping that works out.

What else can’t I do? I can’t put on my own CPAP headgear or hook it up to the machine. I can’t add water to the reservoir in the machine. I can’t put on my own bra and it’s surprisingly difficult to find good help for that task. (Michael insists his training was strictly for removing them.)

Today I tried a sports bra with a zipper in the front. That should’ve been easy, right? When he finally got the zipper started, he zipped me right into it, literally. I’m going commando from now on. If you’re averse to pendulous old lady breasts, don’t look my way.

 Things I can do with difficulty include: Open any jar. Get pills sorted out. Read the newspaper. Use a keyboard efficiently. Push two buttons on a cell phone simultaneously. Hold a cell phone and press the shutter button. I could go on, but it’s a depressingly long list.

 I’m getting pretty good at using my elbow, but I’m really thankful that I usually have two hands. The doctor promised (insofar as she would actually commit) that I’ll be functional when we go to Vienna in October as long as Michael schleps the bags. I’m okay with that. For now, I’m soldiering on.

 Wish me luck on my recovery. And tell us what bodily inconvenience has most plagued you in recent years. Or, if you’re one of the lucky ones, all those years ago…

 Ciao

The Weight of Everything Everywhere All at Once

 My life has been hectic and things are weighing on my mind. I feel like a juggler who isn’t sure where all the balls are; I’m afraid one of them is going to hit me in the head any minute.

 My current activities, issues, and problems fall into categories you may find familiar. There’s my health, my husband’s health, my adult children’s well-being, my grandkids in general, my friends, my obligations, my travel plans, my bills, the state of the country, the state of the world, the collapse of civilization …

 OMG, no wonder I feel weighed down.  

 Life these days is too much. I feel like I’m living in the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once. I’ve considered that it might be a consequence of aging. Could I be less resilient nowadays? Maybe, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. I think I need to focus on one problem at a time.

 I’m having surgery on my hand Thursday. It is the result of breaking my wrist in July but will also fix a longstanding problem caused by an old surgery on my thumb. I’m not exactly dreading the surgery—I do want the pain relief— but I am dreading the inconvenience of the recovery. I’ve already spent four weeks in a cast and it’s tiresome.

 Having the surgery required a visit with my PCP to get a pre-surgery clearance. In other words, an EKG to be sure my heart is up to it. Check that box; I’m good. Today I had to get blood work done, which required a visit to the hospital’s lab. Check that box and let’s assume I’m good.

 Four other doctors who’ve required blood work from me in the last three months said it was fine. That lab work is recorded in the amazing variety of MyChart programs that everyone’s pushing these days. Why couldn’t they just look at the labs I had done three weeks ago?!

 The last pre-surgery requirement: antibiotic soap. The technician handed me a bag with a bottle of special soap. She told me to take a shower using the soap before I went to bed the night before my surgery. Then she told me to take a second shower in the morning before I came to the hospital. Then she told me to be at the hospital at 5:30 am.

 I just looked at her. In my world, if I take a shower before I go to bed and then early enough in the morning to be at the hospital at 5:30 a.m., that’s one shower, not two. And the kicker is that I can’t even wash the place where they are going to do the surgery because it is in a cast that I can’t get wet. My head hurt when I left.

 Coincidentally, my husband had to have a diagnostic procedure today in the same surgery center I’ll be visiting Thursday, so that’s where I went next. Surprisingly, I got to his room (curtained area) before he did, so I had a good view of all the procedures. It was educational.

 I found out there’s a spray they can numb your hand with before they jam that giant needle assembly into it. Why did no one ever offer this to me at past surgeries? And, later, I found out there’s a spray that unsticks the glue so they can remove it painlessly. Admittedly, my hands aren’t hairy, so I’ll let that oversight go; Michael appreciated it though.

By overhearing the patient behind the curtain next to me, I found out that you can get a Diet Coke to drink after surgery instead of water. Who knew? I wonder if they carry caffeine-free Diet Pepsi. That’s what I like to knock back. Probably not.

 I’ll post a brief after-surgery update on Facebook. We’ll see Monday if repairing my hand lightens my load.

 What’s weighing you down these days?

76 Trombones

 Today is my birthday. A high school friend welcomed me to the Trombone Club. A minute later, I laughed out loud as the theme to The Music Man started playing in my head. Yes, we are all mostly 76 now and, to make it even better, while we were there, our high school staged The Music Man. What a vivid memory from almost 60 years ago!

 The tradition in our family has always been that the celebrated person gets to pick their dinner and their cake. We have had some really astonishing requests, especially when our kids were small. Once Nick specified that everyone would get two cans of soda with dinner. We all did.

 Another special dinner, courtesy of Tori, featured cheese pizza and mac ‘n cheese, which wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been my now son-in-law’s first meal at our house. Alix had pumped him up on what a good cook I was. Ha! He got over it, though.

 Cakes have been fun. Angel food remains a popular choice, as was Butterfinger cake. I haven’t been asked to make that in years, mostly because Nick grew up and moved away. The last time I made it for him, as an adult himself, his disappointment was palpable. It had tasted so much better when he was a child!

 My favorite is lemon poppy seed cake. It was my mother’s favorite as well and she taught me how to make a box mix lemon cake taste like it came from a bakery. That’s what I’m making for myself today. The poppy seeds are currently soaking in milk in my kitchen.

 I didn’t ask Michael to make my birthday cake. He would have if I’d asked. Or he’d at least have bought one for me. But I like baking a lot and I want what I want, so I prefer to do it myself.

 Another favorite cake of mine is angel food, partially hollowed out and filled with chocolate whipped cream. Put the top back on, frost it with more chocolate whipped cream, and serve it with fresh strawberries. Delicious!! I thank my mother for that cake, too.

 Picking my birthday meal has always been harder for me. What do I want? I don’t know, there are too many choices and the really special meals—lobster tails, for example—are outside Michael’s wheelhouse. Likewise, Lobster Newburg, something my dad used to make that I loved to eat. Not only can’t he cook it, he doesn’t want to eat it. Maybe those two things are related…

 Michael is a pretty good cook, but when we fed kids, I usually asked him for tried and true, but not exciting, meals. Less stress on everyone. Nowadays, I’m all about restaurant dinners. Fortunately, we have Houston Restaurant Weeks every August and many fine restaurants offer prix fixe meals for the reasonable prices of $39 or $55 per person. (Lunch and brunch cost $25 per person.)

 For tonight, I've picked Saltgrass Steak House; I’m in the mood for a nice steak and fixins. Yes, Michael could sizzle me up a fine steak, but why make him do that and the dishes? He’s been awfully good to me, taking care of so many things around the house since I broke my wrist that I’m giving him a birthday break, too.

 There isn’t much more on my mind today. I’m happy to be 76. I’m having fun reading all the birthday wishes on my Facebook page. I got an adorable video from AJ—I’d share it here if I knew how, but it’s on FB. My Brooklyn grandkids are video calling later.

 What more could I want except the answer to this pressing question: if it were your birthday, what cake would you love to have?

 Ciao

Wild Thing Redux

Last Friday, I had the very great pleasure of standing next to my art quilt, Wild Thing - 1968, with Sandi Stromberg, my literary collaborator, and beaming with pride in our accomplishments. Today I am beaming with the pleasure of sharing Sandi’s marvelous poetic paean to that wild and unexpected year. Let’s turn this week’s blog spotlight on Sandi. Those of you who were there for 1968, get ready for a rollercoaster ride through the past. Those of you too young to have experienced it, read and be awed by what us Boomers—I mean Wild Things— lived through. Maybe you’ll understand us better.

 

Wild Things in a Mythic Time

Eighteen and twenty-one in 1968, we break through

Midwestern tame into the Age of Aquarius.

It’s the Year of the Earth Monkey. The annus mirabilis,

says Time. A miracle year that turns the world upside

down. We become flower children and free love is free,

or so we think. We roll with the Beatles’ I want

 

to hold your hand, rock with the Rolling Stones’

Satisfaction. We sing out “Wild Thing, I think

I love you.” And Born to Be Wild gets our motors

 

running on the dance floor: the monkey, the pony,

the mashed potato. We let down our hair, straighten

it with lemonade cans, wear platform shoes

 

and bell bottoms, ditch garter belts and shaving legs.

Television alternates between outrageous and

wholesome. Laugh-In paints Goldie Hawn’s body

 

gold and lets Tiny Tim tiptoe through the tulips.

We begin to say, “You bet your sweet bippy”, call

positive things “rad,” downturns “bummers.”

 

Family Affair, Andy Griffith, and Beverly Hillbillies

stage the American Dream, happiness despite

hardship if a family pulls together. Off screen

 

recklessness and change rules. Jimi Hendrix,

Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison push the edges of life,

sing like there’s no tomorrow, until there isn’t.

 

Lava lamps drip dim light in shadowy rooms.

Blacklight posters rage with neon colors and psychedelic

landscapes. We fall under the heavy-metal spell of

 

Black Sabbath. Its dark, foreboding beat. Tolling bells

and thunderstorms, body bags arriving nightly

from Vietnam. As innocence dies, we burn bras

 

and draft cards. Some join SDS, the Weathermen.

Head shops peddle bongs, pipes, and rolling papers.

Puff the Magic Dragon hints at weed’s promise.

 

Assassinations shock: Martin Luther King, Jr.

and Robert Kennedy. Washington, D.C.

set on fire. Revolution in Chicago at the Democratic

 

Convention. Marvin Gaye is crowned prince

of Motown. Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding,

and a whole choir bolt out of Detroit to claim

 

venues in a wider world. We protest oppression

demanding “Power to the People,” wear peace signs

on T-shirts, wage fights for the new Civil Rights.

 

Pants join women’s wardrobes. Four-letter words,

their vocabulary. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique

births NOW, the National Organization for Women

 

with its Bill of Rights. WEAL demands action for equity.

WLM demands liberation. They call 1968 “a year

off the rails, mythic.” They call it “a perverse

 

genius of a year.” We call it a revolution against

the establishment. A push for equality for women

and blacks, in music, at drinking fountains, on the roads,

 

in shops and schools and cinemas and voting booths.

We aren’t sure what they look like,

but we long for intangibles like hope, peace, love—

 

a girl putting a daisy

in the muzzle of a gun.

           —Sandi Stromberg 

 Sandi vividly captured the pivotal year 1968 in all its complexities. Her words pair beautifully with my visual expression of the energy and anticipation engendered by events back then. If I may say so myself, we had a true collaboration that yielded something spectacular. Thank you, Sandi, for partnering with me!

What year was mythic for you? We’d love to hear about it.

Ciao

Wild Thing 1968

 Building an art quilt is complex. You have to conceptualize it, turn that concept into a workable pattern, select the perfect fabric, and construct your pattern into what is called the quilt top. A quilt requires three layers: the top, the batting, and the backing. In April, I decided to join a friend, Sandi Stromberg, in a collaboration show with the theme of “Wild.”

Sandi is a fine poet with a couple of excellent books and many, many publishing credits to her name. Between the two of us, we decided on the year 1968 for our interpretation of Wild. She was 21, I was 18. The world was changing in unimaginable ways. I threw myself into the revolution, so to speak. (Sandi has her own story and I can’t tell it for her.)

 Sandi wrote a beautiful poem that I will provide a link to when it is officially published. I created a portrait quilt of myself at 18 striding confidently into that new and amazing world. I used an actual photograph someone took of me back in the day (when there were no selfies) for my quilt.

 Portrait quilting is new to me and, luckily, my quilt guild happened to be offering a one-day class on it in early May. That helped me immensely. I created a self-portrait, designed a background with the kind of rising expectations I had in those days, and sewed endlessly. At least it felt that way…

 The digital image for the exhibition catalogue was due June 24, so I felt a lot of pressure. My blog post on June 15, Thread Lines, Deadlines, and Everything Else, was an exploration of those exhausting days.

 Since the 24^th, I have been laying low. Aside from my quilting bee pals, family, and a few close friends, no one has seen the finished quilt. “Wild Thing – 1968” (Self-Portrait) is now officially hung at the gallery and I am free to release her.

 The opening reception is on Friday, August 7 from 6-8 p.m. at the Sabine Street Studios, 1907 Sabine Street, Houston, TX 77007. If you live in Houston or hereabouts, you are cordially invited to attend. The writings that accompany each piece of art will be read at 6:30 p.m.

 Now I am proud and happy to finally present my “Wild Thing – 1968” art quilt to you!

 What are you busting your buttons about these days?

Ciao

P.S. Two details I am especially happy about is that the purse in the quilt is made from a piece of lovely, soft doeskin my dad gave to me many years ago. And the jeans are real denim!!

It's Complicated

 Life is complicated. Everyday processes are changed by circumstances to become onerous challenges. Deadlines are shifted by emergencies that turn plans on their ears. Expectations are thwarted, requiring spur-of-the-moment choices that may or may not work out.

 It seems that all of these things have happened to me in the last week.

 I mentioned in my last post that I had broken my left wrist in a fall on Sunday. On Tuesday, I got a lovely pink camo cast and a surgical referral. On Wednesday, my youngest, Victoria, called to say that she was being admitted to the hospital because her blood pressure had skyrocketed, and they wanted to deliver the baby for everyone’s safety.

 That meant our grandson AJ would need supervision and housing. The family lives in San Angelo, Texas, about a six-hour drive from home. So on Thursday we got in the car and took off for San Angelo on a rescue mission. We arrived at 4:30 p.m. to discover that Victoria had just been wheeled into surgery.

 Her partner was waiting for us to take charge of AJ so he could be at the delivery with her. After checking into our hotel, we took AJ back to the hospital to see his mom. We couldn’t see the new baby—officially Tori Ava’eh—that night, but promises were made for the morning.

 Michael and I were allowed into the NICU after quite a bit of paperwork and thorough handwashing instructions. Baby Tori’s nurse brought us to a tiny incubator draped with a sweet little quilt. When she turned back the quilt, we saw a miniature infant nested in blankets, monitors, and tubes. Her feet weren’t an inch long, but she had all her toes.

 Born at 33 weeks, Tori weighed all of 3 pounds 6 ounces. I stared at her perfectly formed, beautiful little body, smaller than a baby doll, with wonder. I’m not ashamed to have cried. Because of her mother’s preeclampsia, this wee thing is facing the world woefully unprepared.

 And speaking of unprepared, we are not in our wheelhouse with a hefty, rambunctious four-year-old boy. AJ is in the 99^th percentile on all of his measurements, a child so solid and tall that even Michael struggles to lift him. I don’t even try. Add to that his extremely rigid and limited diet—yes; he’s one of those Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake kids.

 When we left San Angelo, his mother told me he would eat chicken fries, French fries, Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal (no milk), cheddar/sour cream potato chips, plain ramen, and peanut butter crackers. Since we arrived home Friday, that list has diminished to chicken fries, peanut butter crackers, and ramen. Oh, and any sweet drink that isn’t milk or water. I feel massive guilt every time I feed him!

 I think we’ll have AJ for another two weeks. He’s rough-and-tumble, loud, and ill-mannered—everything you’d expect from a child who just turned four two weeks ago. Michael and I are as flexible and permissive as you’d expect from two elderly people on the other side of 75. It’s been a little rough on everyone, with lots of kisses, hugs, and I-love-yous dotted across the landscape.

 The final complication in this terribly confusing and difficult week announced itself today, when I met with the hand surgeon. She convinced me, based not only on my current fracture but also on a surgery from years ago on the same hand that has gone south, that I need an extensive rebuild of my thumb and wrist. I can’t even talk about it at the moment because I’m still processing the bad news.

 There are upsides to all this. Tori Ava’eh is doing well for a 33-week preemie. Victoria is recovering from her surgery and is out of danger from preeclampsia. We are taking AJ home before the surgery. And I have an excellent chance of healing before it is time for us to leave for Vienna.

 I prefer weeks when this blog considers interesting topics and explores striking ideas. But some weeks, a hefty dose of reality is all I’ve got to offer.

 What has reality heaped on you this week? Do you see any upsides? I hope so.

 Ciao

 

Cracking Up Again

 I managed a full year of writing and posting my blog essays, but I only made it seven months between fractured bones. Yes, I fell again, this time breaking my wrist. Silver lining, it’s my left wrist and I’m right-handed. You’ll forgive me, I hope, for today’s abbreviated post. My keyboard skills are pretty good two-handed, but losing the use of five of my ten digits is dire.

All I did was walk down my driveway, pick up the Sunday paper, and walk back to the house. A neighbor was out doing yard work. I gave him a brief good morning, and then splat, and hello sidewalk. Oddly, I went down onto my right side but broke my left wrist. I don’t even know how that happens. The right wrist is sprained, but mostly functional.

 Functional is a spectrum concept. I’ve had 18 hours to figure out how to do some things and to give up doing others. Jeans, for example, are officially out for the duration. I’ve been in elastic-waist yoga pants ever since I had to ask Michael to zip me up after a potty stop. It goes without saying that I can’t tie my own shoes. And I definitely cannot ask Michael for help with that.

 My dad became quite frail in his elder years, partly because my mother did everything for him, including tying his shoes. Many years ago, I drew a line in the sand about shoelace independence. Imagine how much fun Michael could have at my expense if I asked him for a shoe tie!! As they say, discretion is the better part of valor. I’m just not going to go there at all.

 I had surgery on my left hand a decade or so ago to fix a problem with the bottom joint of my thumb, which had drifted out of its assigned parking space. That was one of the most painful surgical recoveries I’ve had. Preliminary X-rays suggest that no surgery will be required this time, but boy, does it hurt. When I get the permanent cast on, things should settle down to a dull roar. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.

 As with my broken foot last fall, I am so grateful to have a fully committed and able-bodied partner to depend on. Michael is really in my corner and I couldn’t appreciate him more than I do. Still won't ask for help tying my shoes, though …

 Who can you count on when bad things happen? And who can count on you?

 Ciao

 P.S. I will be experimenting with voice typing between now and next week. All my doctors seem to be doing it. I’ll let you know how well it works for writing blog posts.

My (Amazing) Annual Report

When I published my first blog post on August 31, 2004, I didn’t know that I would still be writing and publishing essays 22 years later. In that time, I have published 251 essays, about 11 per year. Not consistently or regularly, I admit. In 2010, I only posted 5 times and all the essays were authored by my extremely talented cats. Most years I posted occasionally until my world crashed. After my granddaughters died in January 2022, I didn’t post again for 3½ years.

 My post on July 13, 2025 announced the completion of my memoir, The Requirements of Love: Forging a Family Against the Odds. Not that I thought the world was breathlessly waiting for that news, but because I needed to acknowledge it for myself and start on the next part of that journey, publication. 

That July, I decided that I would post again. I committed to myself to write an essay every week. I didn’t know what I would be writing about or who I would be writing for. Probably myself, I thought, but what the hey? Without my book to write and rewrite and revise and re-revise, what would I do with myself? So I embarked and here I am, a year later, with 52 essays under my belt. (I feel a little bit like Chaucer's pilgrims, entertaining each other in The Canterbury Tales.)

 I’m proud of myself. Once or twice, the posts missed the Monday target because of circumstances, but I always got an essay published before the week ran out. By now, writing the essays is an imperative. I start envisioning topics almost as soon as the current essay is finished, although I never “finally decide” until the moment I open Word on Monday afternoon.

 (Aside: do you remember The Lovin’ Spoonful’s 1966 hit “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?”? Writing “finally decide” started the melody playing pleasantly in my head.)

 It’s true that I have had this particular essay firmly in mind for weeks, anticipating reaching my goal of 52 continuous posts. It’s a relief to have accomplished it and also a challenge to keep it up. Having some interested readers pleases me, and I don’t take that for granted. Thank you.

 The sky has grown dark; the thunder and lightning outside is getting ominous. I believe it’s time to shut down my electronics. Thank you for sticking around as I give myself a pat on the back. 

What are you proud of this week?

 Ciao

Pace + Bene, Frankie

  On Friday afternoon, we had the sad task of sending our last cat, Frankie S, on to cat heaven. He joined our family in June of 2009, so we had a full 17 years with him. Frankie was one of our three backyard kittens. Smudge, Frankie’s half-brother, was the first.

 I whispered Smudge in on a cold December night when his mom, a beautiful long-haired gray feral, abandoned him. He was sick as well as cold and after I coaxed him in for food and tucked him against my tummy under my t-shirt, we became fast friends.

 In her next litter, mom produced three kittens, Frankie and two sisters. We gave both of the girls away to a friend with small children and they have resided happily in that family ever since. Frankie stayed with us. I loved his blue eyes and lovely coat. He was marked like a Maine Coon, with the M above his eyes and with long tufts of fur growing between his toe pads. His name, Frankie S, is in honor of Ol’ Blue Eyes himself. Those of you as old as I am will know who I mean.

 The next year I whispered in a final backyard kitten, Baby Boy, so named because we weren’t going to keep him… You can guess how well that worked out! Baby’s mom was also a daughter of the gray cat, so Baby was their nephew. We ended the string of backyard kittens by doing an aggressive Trap-Neuter-Release campaign in which we caught, fixed, and turned loose five adult cats that frequented our yard and its ready source of water and safety.

 Smudge passed away a few years ago. Baby followed last year. When Frankie was diagnosed with cancer in the spring, we knew we’d have to let him go before long. It was hard balancing our desire to have him with us and his need to be pain-free. That came last week.

 Over our 50 years together, Michael and I have never not had pets—dogs, cats, singly and both at once, and a fish or two occasionally. So I have attended many heartbreaking deaths over the years, but perhaps none as sad as Frankie’s.

 It isn’t just that Frankie was a sweet cat with a coat of fluff that begged to be stroked, although he was. And it wasn’t just that Frankie emerged from a shell of timidity and quiet after his co-cats passed away to become a vibrant personality, although he did. No, Frankie’s loss goes much deeper because he will be our last cat.

 In our late 70s, we don’t have it in us to take on the responsibilities of pet ownership any longer. I hate that this is true, but I acknowledge its reality.

The week before the scheduled date at the vet’s office, my friend Amanda Sisk, an artist and sculptor of enormous talent, posted a photograph of a bozzetto—a small clay study of a larger sculpture—she had made of Ellie, a cat of her acquaintance. My heart lit up: Ellie would be the perfect memorial to Frankie. I placed my order immediately.

The day before our appointment, Ellie arrived in a small box nestled in brown paper shreds. When I opened it and cradled her in my hands, she was warm from her hours in our mailbox. I felt such comfort holding her. 

 Frankie resides in my heart, embodied in Ellie, forever snoozing in the warm sun, a purr ready for any stroking hand. Saying goodbye is hard.

 What have you had to surrender? What losses, big or small, make your eyes well up? As my friend Amanda always signs her notes,

 pace + bene

 

Mess Blindness

The whirlwind has settled into a breeze. I submitted the digital image of my art quilt last week with a day to spare. I got everything squared away for the writing conference and attended it this past weekend, made the drive there and back without incident, and learned a lot in the workshops and sessions. I should be able to take a deep breath and relax as life gets back to normal routines, right?

 Wrong, apparently. I woke up this morning after a good night’s sleep in my comfy bed with my husband and cat. As I walked to the kitchen for my cup of coffee, I looked around at my living room and dining room. It stopped me for a minute.

 Where did this mess come from?

 What mess, you ask? Oh, the iron and ironing board pushed up against the hutch, for one thing. The sewing machine on a chair, for another.  Two large tote bags with the detritus of my quilting project spilling out of them on the floor by the table, for a third.  Also, a variety of rulers—from a 6-inch mini to a 15-inch square and a 36-inch yardstick—stuck into the sewing machine carrying case. Hmm, maybe that’s why the machine is on a chair?

 And there’s more, mostly stuff I neglected while finishing the quilt and getting ready to leave for Austin. Teetering towers of papers threaten to collapse on every table in sight. Thread fragments and bits of fabric litter the floor. When was the last time I vacuumed? I have no idea, but my cat has batted things around, artfully distributing the mess as widely as possible.

 Michael hasn’t attempted any remediation that I can see, and I don’t blame him. The potential for doing inadvertent damage to something important to me is a powerful deterrent to action. Better to ignore the mess than incur my wrath. (Although I don’t think I really do wrathful...much.)

 However it happened, I can’t ignore it. There are no elves coming in the night to tidy up for me. I don’t have a magic wand or even a cleaning lady. Michael has no idea what to do with this stuff and it would take too long to explain it to him on an item-by-item basis. I have to face it: my next big project is to clean up from my last two big projects.

 Sigh.

 This is life, right? Wear clothes, wash clothes. Eat meals, buy groceries. Oh yeah, buy groceries, unload the car and put them away. Bake a cake, wash the dishes. At least on that one, you get to lick the bowl first and eat dessert after!

 Everything we do requires us to clean up in one way or another.  

 Maybe it’s a sign of adulthood when you stop being surprised by this fact and just do the work. In that case, I relapsed to childhood momentarily. It could be that focusing so intently on getting ready for the conference gave me a kind of mess blindness: I was too busy to see the trail of domestic destruction left in my path.

 But I see it now, despite my fervent desire to be oblivious, and I know what this week has in store for me. Ready, set, go!

 What has ambushed you this week? What is it that you can’t put off or avoid any longer? We all have something!

 Ciao

Baby on Board - For the Moment

 The good news is that I finished my art quilt before lunch today. I surmounted all the obstacles, missteps, and mistakes that I whined about last week. The pressure is off: as soon as I get the photograph’s color correctly set, I can send it off and meet the exhibition’s June 24^th deadline.

 There’s other good news about June 24^; it’s my grandson AJ’s 4^th birthday. When he turned three, they lived with us and we had the joy of watching his delight at being the center of attention for singing, candles, and cake. I’ll miss that opportunity, but am thankful for video calling.

 There’s bad news in our lives, too, I’m sad to say, but it needs a little set-up. In my blog post last August 25—Relishing My Grandma-Hood—I wrote about my grandkids and the collection of toys and books I’d like more opportunities to share with them. In particular, I mentioned the My Twinn doll that belonged to Tori, my youngest daughter.

 I always expected to give that doll to her daughters, but they died tragically in a house fire several years ago. In fact, I said in my post, “I’d be mighty surprised to get another granddaughter at this late stage in the game.”

 Never say never. Last winter, Tori shared the happy news that she and her partner were expecting a baby in September. The “happy” news filled me with trepidation, though. Tori has a history of preeclampsia, a very serious, sometimes deadly, complication of pregnancy. In fact, all three of her children had been born by C-section because of the risks of delivery.

 And that presents another serious complication. Three C-sections are generally considered to be the limit because the damage the surgery does to the uterus each time is cumulative. The potential for rupture, hemorrhage, and placental abnormalities are serious. And that’s just part of the list of hazards.

 So, while everyone loves a new baby, Michael and I couldn’t help but worry about our baby.

 Texas is okay for maternal health statistics per se, but it has a Black maternal health crisis. Black women experience higher rates of maternal death and severe complications than any other group. (FYI, both of our daughters are Black.) Her high-risk pregnancy is, here in Texas, even higher risk.

 A little pocket of joy appeared this spring when we found out they were having a girl. I am so happy for her to have another daughter. And, surprise, there will be someone to receive that lovely doll in a few years.

 Now for the bad news. We expected that the docs would want to deliver early to avoid her going into labor. That’s standard operating procedure (no pun intended.) But the delivery date keeps creeping earlier and earlier. It was supposed to be a month before her due date. Now it may be as soon as July 1^st.

 A 30-week preemie is a very, very scary thing. If they can keep her pregnant to 34 weeks, it will be much better for everyone, but her life is at risk, so let’s not take chances, please. If it’s earlier than 34 weeks, she’ll have to go to Dallas to get the medical support they will both need. And the baby will likely spend months in the NICU. I’m overwhelmed with worry.

 I wish this were the only problem Tori and Ace (her partner) were facing. They moved to San Angelo last fall with a plan that fell apart within a few weeks and have been living in a hotel room with AJ ever since, saving every penny they can to try to get into an apartment. Getting stable housing is especially important with the new baby.

 They hope to get settled before Baby Girl comes home from the NICU. They’ve found an apartment, but they’re having trouble accumulating all the money they need for the deposit. Tori’s boss just started a Go Fund Me account for them. If you’re inclined and able to, please make a contribution: Fundraiser by Caitlyn Mills : Help Coworker’s Family Welcome Baby Home.

We’ll be in San Angelo to watch AJ and give Tori and Ace moral support as soon as we get the word. It would be easier if we knew what day, but we’re ready to take off on a moment’s notice. Say a prayer that it isn’t soon! Any time after August 7, Lord, would be fine. That would be a late preterm birth and a much stronger, healthier baby.

 What are you praying for these days? Maybe we can add all our concerns into one big prayer.

Thread Lines, Deadlines, and Everything Else

The word for today is overload. I am overloaded, so overloaded. Here’s what’s on my plate: finish my art quilt, then prepare and submit a digital image for the exhibition catalogue by June 24^th. Prepare for the Writers’ League of Texas Agents and Editors conference in Austin, June 26-28, including preparing for two in-person consultations to pitch my book. (Wish me luck!) Keep up with and attend our weekly German lessons in preparation for the trip to Austria in October, and keep up with all my other obligatory appointments and committee meetings. Attend at least one more performance for which I already have tickets (and really don’t want to miss).

 I thought I had this in hand, but best-laid plans and all that. And it doesn’t help that problems keep arising. Take the art quilt as an example. I’m making it for a collaboration show for one of my favorite organizations—Women in the Visual and Literary Arts. I decided to participate in the collaboration at the beginning of April when my friend Sandi started looking for a partner. Sandi is a phenomenal poet, and I jumped at the chance to work with her. We discussed our ideas and had lunch on April 9 to solidify our plans. That’s when my conception of the quilt came into focus.

 It took days to research best methods for accomplishing what I wanted to do. I watched video after video on portrait quilting, found the perfect image to work with, and started drawing. I ended up at FedEx having a huge blow-up made of my 8.5 x 11 drawing. About that time, my quilt guild featured a speaker who presented her portrait quilts and offered a one-day class. I jumped on that with both feet and took the class on May 6^th. By the end of the class, I had a decent start on the primary figure in my quilt and I knew what to do with the rest of the portrait.

 Because it was a different technique than the one I had been researching and preparing for, I had to scratch my original work and start over. Did I mention that I did this between the end of the presentation on a Tuesday evening at 9 pm and the start of class the next morning at 9:30 am? Long night…

 After I finished my main figure, I needed to make a background. That required contemplation, planning, and execution, none of which were simple or straightforward. But I managed and by the end of last week, I had the quilt of my dreams. I couldn’t have been happier—until I contemplated the actual quilting. I am usually a hand quilter. It’s time consuming, but I’m good at it and it’s what I am most familiar with. Occasionally, I quilt on a machine, but I don’t enjoy it much.

 Domestic sewing machines—the kind people sew on in their homes—have a short throat. The throat is the open area that fabric feeds through. Picture a larger item, like a quilt, rolled up on one side and fed through this small throat while the rest of the quilt is hanging over your shoulder. Trust me when I say I find it difficult to manage. Now add monofilament thread, which is basically fishing line. It’s invisible, making it tricky just to thread, let alone sew with, because normal machine settings don’t work with it, and lots can go wrong. But monofilament is beautifully invisible on the surface of an art quilt when you do it right.

 The goal is to machine quilt my fiber art with monofilament thread on my domestic machine while maintaining my sanity. I started the actual quilting Saturday, giving me eleven days to finish everything. By Sunday afternoon, I had sewn four diagonal rows of quilting, each about 60” long. By Sunday night, I had removed all 240” of stitching from the quilt. I needed to start over because things had gone terribly wrong. It’s Monday afternoon now. I spent the morning researching machine quilting with monofilament thread. As a result, I discovered all the errors I made in setting up my machine, including wrong needle, wrong tension, wrong stitch length, and wrong thread set-up. Sigh.

 Earlier today, I ordered the top recommended thread to be delivered overnight by Amazon and I have re-prepped my quilt sandwich already. (A quilt sandwich consists of the backing, the batting, and the quilt top. The quilt top is the pretty part that you see, everything else is structural.) I have adjusted all the adjustable parts per the specifications I gleaned from YouTube videos and Copilot. When the thread arrives, I will stitch some test pieces and hope it all works as planned. Say a prayer for my success. I will have eight remaining days to do the quilting, then square it up and face the edges so that it is a proper finished quilt.

Now about everything else on my plate: arrghh!!!

 What’s driving you crazy this week?

The Long Love

 I’ve talked a little bit here and there about our fall trip to Vienna, Austria, but as of last Tuesday, the trip is real: we bought our airline tickets! The airplane takes off in four months, but I’m already floating on air.

 It seems incredible that we will live in Vienna for four weeks; perhaps what I should really be amazed by is that Michael and I will celebrate 50 years of marriage this year. Most people will agree that marriage isn’t easy. Even when the love is true and deep, the realities of daily life can be erosive.

Bad things happen to people, and when you share a life with another person, there are more opportunities for bad things to happen. Add in a couple of children and the bad-things-happen index seems to rise exponentially. Some of the bad things are manageable—job loss, broken limbs, non-fatal car accidents—but we’ve had some bad luck that practically sucked the marrow out of our bones.

 I’d have to say my illness, which was finally diagnosed as lupus in 1989, was the gigantic bad thing for us. It forced me out of my career in telecommunications, which I happened to love, and which also provided our family’s insurance and lifestyle support. Michael had to take on complete responsibility for supporting us, which would have been enough of a burden in a society where you need two working people to get ahead. But because I was often incapacitated, he also had to run the household, manage the children, and take care of me.

 Wow. Sometimes it surprises me that he didn’t bolt. We both had had short, bad first marriages and neither of us wanted a repeat divorce. When we married, we made this vow: Homicide, suicide, or natural causes, the only way out is a pine box. Later we added: If you leave, you have to take the children.

 Do I think our vow is what made Michael hang in there when times were so difficult for us that we had to downsize our house and tighten our belts considerably? Probably not. I think he just loved me that much. (But when I browbeat him into adopting a toddler with me a few years later, the vow definitely was in play.)

 All the children survived and thrived, each in their own way. A decade or so ago, Michael had cancer—two different times, two different kinds—and I took care of him. It balances out if you hang in long enough. I’ve read recently about the phenomenon of gray divorce: old people leaving long marriages. I hear that Covid caused a lot of the trouble because couples, forced to spend so much time together, found out how unhappy they were.

 We are blessed in that regard. We enjoy many of the same things, like ballet and theater and art, and we find the same things funny. We like to spend time together, but we’re not joined at the hip. We support each other’s interests and hobbies. Maybe it’s not so surprising that our marriage is in its 50^th year.

 Early in our dating relationship, a strange thing happened. Michael was riding in the car with me, cracking jokes and fiddling with my radio station—major no-no, people—and I blurted out a sentence that I couldn’t explain then and I can’t explain now. I said, “I can’t believe I married such a turkey.”

 Boy, was that a conversation stopper. I had known him less than a month. I couldn’t believe I said it and, as he reported when we finally discussed it years later, he couldn’t either. Neither one of us acknowledged what I said. I gripped the steering wheel and drove. He made a comment along the lines of “How about them Cardinals?” (We lived in St. Louis back then.) The tension faded, but, thankfully, the relationship did not.

 Sometimes we say that we’ve been together over the centuries, sharing past lives. We are so simpatico that it feels like we’ve put in a lot of time learning how to balance in a marriage. Metaphysical, I know, but why not? I’m happy to think that we’ll find each other again in some distant time and place. Maybe we’ll get another 50 years out of it!

 Who’s in your life that you would like to be reincarnated with?

Treadmills and Stairsteps

 Today I reopened a closed chapter of my life. That may be over-dramatized. Let’s try again: Today I renewed my gym membership. Don’t laugh.

 I went to the gym faithfully for over a decade, mostly to water aerobics, then for a bit to Silver Sneakers. (For you young’uns, that’s the exercise program for old people that most Medicare Advantage plans include.)

 Then I stopped.

 Why did I stop? This is a fair question, one that the trainer who re-enrolled me at LA Fitness today asked. First, I quit going to water aerobics because it became too popular. What for years had been a stable group of 20 or so people, mostly old women, who showed up and shared the pool amicably three times a week, morphed into a rowdy crowd of sometimes 40 people drawn by a charismatic teacher.

 This teacher, who led two of the weekly classes, drew an enthusiastic group of younger people who elbowed their way into the swim lanes. As a taller person, I always tried to get into the deep end, where I had more buoyancy to support my joints. That required coming to class 20 or 30 minutes early, but I did it.

 As the class grew, competition for the deep end became intense. I had to arrive earlier and earlier. I stay up late and earlier isn’t a welcome concept in my life, but I toughed it out and kept attending until, one day, I reached my breaking point.

 I made it into the water 40 minutes before class and warmed up while I chatted with friends. At 9 a.m., the instructor started the class, as usual, with walking. I walked away from the deep end and, when I returned, I found a woman in my spot. “Oh, I’m sorry, this is my spot,” I said blithely. Swimmer etiquette should have brought an “Oh, I’m sorry, let me move” response. What I got instead was a verbal attack.

 I found out in short order that I was an “old biddy” who had no business taking up space in the water and I should get out and let people like her (younger? ruder?) enjoy the class. Those of you who know me better probably recognize that I don’t respond well to intimidation. I simply said, “I was here first. You move.”

 The volatile situation had the whole class’s attention until the woman standing next to me moved to another spot and let the intruder have her place. I kept my spot in the deep end that morning, but I never went back.

 Instead, I started going to Silver Sneakers. It met at 11 a.m. instead of 9 a.m., so win-win, right? That was fun and I enjoyed it for a year or so—until I took a fall during a line-dancing segment. I had a bruise on my hip and decided to skip the next class.

 Like many people, I developed balance issues as I aged, and line-dancing exercises made me feel clumsy anyway. Classmates reassured me, though, that this fall wasn’t my fault—that particular patch of flooring had caused several other falls. (Damn! Fix it, LA Fitness!) Even so, the thought of a broken hip, a drastic injury in the elderly, scared me. And maybe my embarrassment got the better of me, too. I stopped attending Silver Sneakers.

 Two years later, necessity has brought me back to the gym. In October, Michael and I will celebrate our 50^th wedding anniversary with the adventure of a lifetime: an entire month living in Vienna, Austria! I’ll tell you more about the details as we get closer to the trip, but the important part right now is that we have to “certify” that we can walk two miles on rough terrain (read: cobblestones) and climb at least two flights of stairs before we go to Vienna.

 I think we could fudge on the certifying part; there are no notaries involved, just our word that we meet the requirements. But we want to be as fit as possible so we can enjoy every moment and every opportunity we come across while we are adventuring. So it’s back to the gym, this time to the treadmills and stairs.

 Nostalgia gripped me for a moment when I walked by the pool and hot tub area. I had spent several days a week in that pool and hot tub for more than 11 years. Apparently, the charismatic teacher had moved on, and the boring old-people classes were back to normal. Maybe I’ll stick my toe in the water again. We’ll see.

 Meanwhile, I walked up the stairs to the treadmills and managed a mile on my first day back. I plan to keep doing that several times a week until I achieve my two-mile goal without breaking a sweat. Maybe then I’ll tackle the pool and even a little line dancing.

 How do you plan to get out of your comfort zone this summer? Any goals you want to meet? I’d love to hear about them.

 Ciao

You and Me Against the World, 1974

 

Memorial Day signifies different things to Americans. For some, it is a day to honor our service members, especially the fallen, for the sacrifices they’ve made on our behalf. For others, it’s a day off school, or perhaps the ultimate play date: the beginning of summer vacation. Families gather whether or not they have any connection to military service and celebrate being together. Picnics are traditional, as are patriotic colors. Flags abound.

 For me, Memorial Day has a distinctly different meaning. On Memorial Day in 1974, my daughter Alexandra arrived. While I was laboring in the hospital, my husband was working out of town. My family of origin was dispersed across the country and apparently all picnicking, because I couldn’t reach anyone by phone. It was just me and Alexandra at 1:04 in the afternoon—plus the necessary cadre of medical staff.

 I took her name from my dad’s middle name, Alexander. It had gravitas and it shortened nicely. Alexandra has variously gone by Alex, Alyxx (teen years mostly), and now Alix. It doesn’t matter to me what she calls herself. My pet name for her is Allie.

 Allie gave me the best gift I have ever received: she made me a mother. Not only that, but she gave me a family of my own. It’s not a secret that her father and I had a marriage on the rocks and that I had left him before her birth. From day one, it was the two of us.

 It may have been merely coincidence, but three weeks after Alix’s birth, Helen Reddy’s “You and Me Against the World” was released as a single. It became our anthem, although I did all the singing.

 Having a daughter made me so happy. And I had known she would be a daughter from the beginning. My mother, who had given birth to three boys before she finally had me, kept telling me that I needed to pick out a boy’s name “just in case.” Finally, I told her she could pick it out. With five sons, she’d had plenty of opportunities to consider boys’ names. She suggested Daniel and Evan; fine by me, I knew I wouldn’t need them and I didn’t.

 One of my brothers and his wife had a baby boy a few weeks later and were disappointed because I had used Dad’s name before they could. Seemed silly to me, the kids lived thousands of miles apart, but so be it, I got first dibs. (And he has done fine being Kristian.)

 Her actual birthday only falls on Memorial Day every 5-7 years; I'm taking her out to lunch to celebrate together on the real day. My message today is “Happy Birthday, Allie, and thank you for the gift of motherhood and family.”

 Now that I’ve shared what Memorial Day means to me, tell me what it mean to you.

Stitching 1968 Back to Life

 I’ve been immersed in a new project for a few weeks, exploring a quilting technique called portrait quilting. Totally engaged, I think about it constantly and work on it feverishly. That some of the work is purely mental doesn’t detract from my focus on the project. What is it about a new idea that won’t leave us alone once it arrives?

 It’s all about the joy, for me, of discovery and invention. In that regard, today’s post is a cousin of my April 6^th post, The Art of the Dilettante. There I said, “[Dilettante] applies to the lover of an art rather than its skilled practitioner. It usually implies elegant trifling in the arts and an absence of serious commitment.”

 But a lack of formal commitment doesn’t mean you can’t surprise yourself — even the first time you try something.

 My latest adventure in quilting started because Women in the Visual and Literary Arts (WiVLA) opened the registration for its forthcoming collaboration show. Every other year, visual artists and writers work together to create companion pieces around a theme set by WiVLA.

 Working with another person stimulates the brain and creative centers, leading you into new ideas and novel thinking. I’ve been in a dozen or so WiVLA collaborations over the years and have enjoyed the experience every time. Sometimes I join as a writer; other times as a visual artist. Either way is immensely rewarding.

 This year the theme is Wild. Wow, that opens up a lot of possibilities, doesn’t it? I thought about Wild after they announced it, but it didn’t resonate with me at first. Then a friend, a wonderful, award-winning poet, asked for a visual artist to partner with. Working with Sandi would be a singular opportunity; I decided to jump in.

Making that decision immediately engaged my brain and turned on feverish thoughts as soon my head hit the pillow that night. Instead of drifting off, I drifted down a river of ideas until one whacked me on the side of the head. Wham—a moment of brilliance hit me.

 When I shared it with Sandi, she saw it too: what could be wilder than the two of us—her 21, me 18—in 1968, engaged in a world vibrant with potential, opportunity, and contradiction? We had a vision and I had an inspiration.

During those tender years of college, someone took a long-shot photo of me walking with a friend. Striding is the better word. Oblivious to the photographer, I moved forward with confidence and chutzpah that I probably hadn’t earned. The world was mine for the taking and I intended to grab it.

 That young woman, that me I can barely remember nearly 60 years later, would be the centerpiece of my artwork for the show. But how could I turn a black and white photograph, a little fuzzy around the edges, into a quilt? I started researching portrait quilts.

 I’ve seen them at quilt shows. They always seemed out of my reach, too intricate and detailed for me to accomplish. Although intrigued, I never tried to make one. But now, a portrait required making, so I had to learn how. I dove into YouTube tutorials, only to find myself overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information.

 Serendipity struck. My quilt guild offered a portrait quilt class in two weeks! I signed up immediately, followed the instructions for preliminary preparations, and girded my loins for the experience.

 The teacher, Deb Atchison, did an exemplary job of teaching the craft, the value layers technique, using a method developed by Shannon Brinkley. I’ll spare you the details, but it is a way of seeing an image in distinct layers that can be translated into fabrics. Learning to see my younger self through those layers felt strangely intimate — as if I were rediscovering her piece by piece.

 I’ve spent many hours working on 1968 me and I am tremendously pleased with the result. Now I am back in the groove of midnight cogitating about the best background to surround her with. I want to show the vibrancy, the potentiality, the wildness of 1968.

 And what a contradiction 1968 was—from the summer of love to the civil rights movement, from women’s lib to anti-war protests, from riots at the Democratic National Convention to assassinations of the best of us. And I need to capture this, in fabric, on my sewing machine!

 How can this not be a joyful, invigorating experience? How could I miss the chance to engage my brain and my skills in this endeavor? I surrender to the joy of creativity and add a prayer that when I’m finished, something else will grab me in its teeth and shake me out of my daily humdrum.

 What’s tugging at your imagination these days — and how might you coax it into the world?