Strong, Opinionated, and Loud

 In this month of Women's History, today is International Women's Day.  In our current political climate (oppressive with a touch of impending doom on the horizon), I doubt it will get enough coverage.  I have always been interested in women and their history and the things that they have done and overcome and continue to do.  I miss teaching my Women, Words, and Wisdom class and watching young girls learn and inspire me to learn more every single day.  As a teacher, of course I am indoctrinating all of my students, and brought a week of Women's History Month to my 7th graders.  I had them journal for three minutes writing down the names of every famous woman they could think of.  At the end of three minutes, they had to cross out any actresses, then musicians, then TikTok personalities.  They had very small lists left.  My favorite moment came when one girl asked "Why don't we learn more about women?".  Indeed and agreed.

I think it comes from being curious. I think it comes from being ten and being told girls can't play the drums in the Fife & Drum Corps; only boys.  I think it comes from being eleven and being the first girl to play the drums in that said Corps.  I think it comes from being an athlete and treated like what I was doing was tolerated but not encouraged.  I think it is from having a boss in my early twenties that spent more time looking down my shirt than listening to what I was saying.  I could go on and on about my own perceived injustices or the mistreatment of women but today is a celebration.  Today is a day to stop and encourage and applaud.

I am grateful to the women of history who suffered so I can vote.  And own property. (not on this teacher salary but had I made better career choices, sure).  Women who demanded their fair share.  Women who voted for laws, changed laws, made laws to reflect that women were an important part of this world.  

I am grateful for the first women to do anything.  For Sally Ride and Jeanette Rankin.  For Elizabeth Jennings and Elizabeth Warren.  For RBG, HRC, and AOC.  For Katherine Johnson and Alice Paul.  For Susan B. Anthony and Michelle Obama.  For all the women who climbed and climbed until they shattered glass ceilings for the women after them.  For the women in the #MeToo movement who stood up and spoke up and said this is not boys being boys, this is rape.  Who gave other women courage to do the same.  

I am grateful for my mother and my aunts who are some of the strongest, loudest, opinionated, and caring people I know. They showed me how to stand up for myself, how to use my words in ways that matter, and how to love people around me.  I learned the importance of family; the ties we strain against when we are young and long for as we get older.  

I am grateful for my sisters, my first friends and enemies.  For carving a path of success so wide that I could pick which way I wanted to go.  For telling on me and shielding me.  We shared a room and hated each other.  We all moved out and realized how much we loved one another.  They modeled working and having babies and doing all the things well.  They too are strong, loud, opinionated, and caring.  They taught me colorful words and are in the center of memories filled with love and laughter.

I am grateful to the friends who stay with me as we age.  For the transition from moms with littles to moms with empty nests.  Who held my hand and my heart as I transitioned to other stages alone.  Who love my kids because they knew them tiny and revel in them grown as I do theirs.  Who are strong, and loud, and opinionated, and beautiful.  Who are funny, and political, and knowledgeable, and inspiring.

I am grateful for my daughter. She gives me the passion to keep fighting the things I am so tired of fighting against.  She gives me hope and purpose and clarity.  For her strength, her sense of what is right and wrong, for her laughter.  My God, for her laughter.  I am grateful for the young women I have taught and coached.  Who compete in ways that leave me breathless.  Who wonder and question and listen and learn and constantly move to me to know more, to do better, to be better.  To hope.

I am grateful to the women I have taught with and now teach with.  Who model, who listen, who deeply care about children who are not their own.  Women who expect more, demand more, and even when disappointed, do more.  Women who teach not only their subject matter but more importantly, how to be a good person. Women I have laughed with and cried with, (oh! that sad year), commiserated with and celebrated with.  Women I drew strength from when I had none of my own.  Strong women.  Loud women. Opinionate Women.  The best women.

I do see the theme of strong and loud and opinionated women running through this thank you and it makes me smile.  I hope you can take some time today and be grateful for the women in your life and let them know. Pick up a book about women and read it and pass it on to the next woman in your life.  Annotate in the margins!  Share your thoughts and your passions and your voice.  Celebrate the women before you and the women with you now.  Change this current forecast to one that is cloudy, but a chance of sun on the horizon.

Winter Weight

 One year, when the kids were tiny, we went to Buffalo for Christmas.  There was a bunch of snow and cousins to play with and fun to be had and I believe the kids and I stayed a solid two weeks up there.  It was also bitterly, bitterly cold and every single time we went outside those two weeks, my sweet Texas-born baby William would burst into tears.  Like instantly.  Step outside, face crinkled up, real tears and sobbing within seconds.  I am reminded of this right now as the full weight of winter settles upon me and I, too, want to burst into tears every time I step outside.

Yesterday, it was -26 with the wind chill.  Oh, that's the wind chill, you say.  Okay, true, but until you have had a midwestern winter wind come barreling over the plains and punch you straight on, you may not talk to me of wind chill.  I find that even I am at a loss as to how to best describe that first assault of -26 wind on exposed and unexposed body parts.  Bitter, biting, bracing, polar, vortex, criminal.  Adequate descriptors, I guess. Cutting, slicing, and murderous might be better.  You can wear as many layers as you want; that wind finds a way in.  And settles right into your bones and gives you a weird, instant headache.  I have found it has made me religious once again as all of my curse words are preceded by "Holy".  This morning, snow was added to the wind and when those tiny pellets of murderous, menacing, maniacal moisture hit my face along with that wind, I did not burst into tears, but I did burst out with "What even is this?"

You may be wondering why I am even outside to begin with because surely school is closed when it is that cold.  Some schools did close yesterday, but not mine.  It is the Midwest and people soldier on here.  That put me in a mood beyond grouchy. Despondent, despairing, depressed.  I had forgotten how winter eats away at you and your best intentions to enjoy winter.  Grey skies, subhuman temperatures, salt everywhere.  Omg.  The salt from the roads tracked in every where you go.  Puddles of snow-ice-salt slush at your feet.  Good intentions to eat better blasted away by bone-chilling cold that demands hot things smothered in cheese and meat and carbs.  And not moving from the couch once you get there because you need that heated blanket as you eat your heated carbs.

I am really trying to not let winter beat me, but holy crap, winter is a really worthy contender!  We do try to bundle up and get out when the sun is shining.  We went sledding recently and that was as exhilarating and death-defying as I remembered!  WHOOSSSSSHHHH! You are careening down a frozen hill on a piece of plastic with no real way to stop or steer along with people who stop for no reason mid-hill.  And the long hike back up where your heart is pounding from nearly dying and the steep incline march and your nose is kind of runny and your cheeks hurt from smiling and freezing.  That was a good day.  My person and I also bundled up the other day to hike when it was 9 degrees.  We were like Arctic explorers!  The only people in the park trudging our way to the frozen lake.  I did stand on the frozen lake for a minute which was kind of neat. I was too worried about it cracking because of all the cheese meat carbs; I knew if any part of me went through the ice, I would have to just lie down and die right there.

as brave as I could get.

I do know that one day, it won't be freezing.  Or below freezing.  One day, the sun will come out and actually warm the earth and my bitter soul.  I will have survived a Chicagoland winter and add it like a major award to my accomplishments and achievements.  Until then, I will just try.  I will try to eat a vegetable with my meat carbs.  I will try to find beauty in the stillness of a frozen pond.  I will revel in placing a Buffalo Bills picture in my daily agenda and telling young boys that they are wrong when they claim allegiance to any team other than the Bills.  Other days, I will just give into that bitter biting world outside and be bitter and biting back.  (apologies in advance to those around me).  Yesterday broke me, but today I am trying and tomorrow is Thursday and Thursday is hot yoga and hot yoga is an hour of being warm from head to toe.  And if that doesn't sound amazing to you right now, you have not been punched in the face with a Midwestern winter wind enough.

Over-Done, Garish, Italianate Splendor and Joy

 A perk of this move to IL is that I can be in Lancaster, NY after just an eight hour(ish) drive.  That might seem long a long day of driving, but it used to take twenty-four hours of driving to get there from Austin, so this eight hours seems like a dream! Five states, eight hours, and approximately $500000000 in tolls.  On my list of things to do?  Get an EZ Pass.

My person and I made a late-minute decision to go to Buffalo for the holidays as our children would be celebrating with their other parents and it is just us here and that seemed sad and there were old people at home who needed to be seen.  Many reasons, all of them good, and off we went.  

Old people who needed to be seen.

My person has never been to Buffalo before so I did the very responsible thing and ordered pizza before we even exited the highway.  Everyone has their favorite local pizza and mine is Grasso's cheese and pepperoni with blue cheese to dip it into.  There is something about the crust, that thick cheese, the way the pepperoni curls up into cups and gives you a grease shooter - YUM!  You just cannot find pizza like this anywhere else.

Pizza in hand, we went to check into our hotel.  Of course family offered us a room, but it can be a lot to meet someone's family on a short trip during the holidays, and I did another responsible thing and got us a hotel.  Not any hotel, but a hotel full of Italianate splendor!  Giant chandeliers greeted us in the lobby and there was an entire hallway of fake facades made to look like a street in Italy.  I sent a video of it to my friend and she correctly remarked that it looked like the Titanic.  You could buy a single red rose for $5 and many of the rooms offered a giant tub right next to the bed.  My person and I loved how crappy and over-the-top this place was.  I would not rate it five stars because during our three nights there, housekeeping never came in.  We had no shampoo and when I asked at the desk, I was given three bottles of body wash.  This left my hair looking like a river otter who escaped an oil spill but by God, we had splendor!

my heart will go on......

We went out for a few drinks that night and my person met my sister, her husband, her sons, and two cousins in rapid succession. The next day he met my parents and an aunt and uncle and then even more people at my sister's house for Christmas Eve.  The next day he met my sister-in-law and my niece. BAM BAM BAM!  New people, my people, and he was what he always is: wonderful,  charming, engaging, and funny.  Swoon. 

This trip was fast and furious and we did the holidays and are already home and had a nap.  I am so happy that we took this trip.  That we had time to sit with my parents and talk.  That an aunt made a special trip to see me.  That my person saw where I grew up and who I grew up with and that he liked all of it.  I find that despite missing my kids this Christmas, I had joy.  What a joy to sit across the table from my nephews who have grown into men and listen to them talk about jobs and women and life in their twenties!  What a joy to spend Christmas Eve at my sister Melissa's and it be so lovely, so inclusive, so filled with people, that I felt I had stepped back in time to the Christmases of my youth! (she makes a killer sauce too. I believe my father commented it was so good it would make an old Italian woman weep.) What a joy to see the joy on my parent's face as I stepped into their house!  What a joy to still be able to step into their house.  And what a joy to do all this with my person!

I hope that you also had joy this holiday season. Joy on Christmas is not always a given, so if you didn't have joy, I hope that you find a picture you took with a stranger in the background that cracks you up and you nod and say "I love Buffalo." Or Austin. Or Raleigh. Or wherever you are currently sitting.  If you don't have a picture that makes you laugh, I hope you had some over-done, garish, Italianate splendor.  And if you didn't have over-done, garish, Italianate splendor, I know place; just bring your own shampoo.

this guy!!

The First O-E-L

 The first Christmas that I lived away from home, my mom sent me a bunch of things to help me celebrate away from them and in my new place.  There was an advent calendar full of tiny things to open each day, a VHS tape of her and my sisters baking cookies and showing me the tree, and some holiday decor of four trees that spelled out NOEL and ended in hearts.  I will admit now that I opened all of the advent calendar things the day I got it and watching them bake without me made me cry.  But, that decorative NOEL, I have put out every year at Christmastime for thirty years.  This year when I took it out, it no longer spelled NOEL.  Somewhere between this Christmas and last Christmas, between Texas and Illinois, I lost the N. I put it up anyway and my person and I laughed about celebrating our first O-E-L here in Illinois.  Then we laughed because if you say "O-E-L" fast, it sounds like "oh, well."  Forget Christmas!  We are celebrating OEL! Lost the N? Oh well.  Freezing cold but no snow?  Oh well.

The First O-E-L in Illinois

It has me thinking that this missing N is a common thing at holidays though.  Not necessarily the N but the feeling that we are missing something.  The feeling of holidays past we can't quite seem to replicate or the physical presence of someone who is no longer there to celebrate.  It can be a smell that we miss or a feeling or a place.  Sometimes, it can be missed enough that the rest of the holiday seems pale or passes by as just a day.  Sometimes, we try to plan in advance for what we will miss by doing something completely different than usual.  Sometimes, that works.

For the longest time, I missed holidays absolutely packed with people in a too warm house and not enough bathrooms.  I missed impatiently waiting with my cousins for Snoopy and the Red Baron to play and signify that we could finally open gifts. When I had my own kids, we made new holidays and I didn't miss the holidays of my childhood as much.  There is nothing, nothing, like the magic of a Christmas spent with small people who believe in Santa.  The sparkle! The joy!  The enchantment!  And yes, it's true that when my son found out there was no Santa, he smiled, patted my arm, and thanked me for "faking his childhood."  Still worth it when I remember him in footy pajamas shaking with excitement and my daughter waking us up at 3am to say "SANTA WAS HERE!"

After I got divorced, I spent quite a few holidays missing my kids because they were at their dad's or missing the way holidays used to be as a whole family unit.  It took awhile to get over the missing "N" and focus on what was left with my "OEL".  I will miss my kids this Christmas. I will miss them so much that I had Amazon deliver their presents to me so that I could wrap them and write "Love, Santa" with my left hand and mail them on.  A silly way to spend an extra $25 but oh, well.  My daughter texted and asked for the recipes for cookies and knowing she will be making them there, that she wants to carry on with the smells and tastes of her childhood memories, that really makes me happy.  

I think that with holidays and memories stored mainly in the heart and not the brain, it is so easy to get caught up on what seems to be missing.  You might be searching for a loud house, the smell of Crunchy Fudge Sandwiches, snow, kids waiting for Santa, a certain movie to watch, a person to hold.  You might want those things so very much that you can't picture this holiday with out it.  Like my NOEL, minus the N, it looks sort of the same but not as good as it once did.  I hope that even though your N is missing, that you get the chance to step back and see that the OEL is still there.  It might be way too soon for you to really appreciate your OEL with no N and that is okay too. 

I am happy that I have something from my first Christmas away that has survived at least one million moves.  It reminds me of how much I was and am loved by the family I moved away from.  Putting it up reminds me of how many Christmases it stood by as my kids were born and grew up.  Putting it up and laughing about no N with my person makes this new place feel more like home.  

I know we have more moves ahead of us and despite moving 170,000 times in the last five years, I also do not always pack the best.  So many of the ornaments that have ears lost their ears in this recent move.  There is a very good chance that more letters could fall off of the OEL.  I also know, it could lose all it's letters and be down to the string and I would still put it out.  I would just think "oh,well" as I stood in front of a beautiful tree of ear-less ornaments and smile about all the Christmases past.

Baby, It's Cold Inside

 The other day, it was 14 degrees when I left my house.  This is very cold, but it was okay because I was bundled up. I had on a hat and the coat I bought at REI this summer.  (this coat is amazing and I feel warm every time I think about the fact that it retails for $250 and I got it for $20!)  My person and I went to a new park to walk around and we were pretty much the only ones there.  We saw a ton of migrating birds, pelicans included(!), and with our layers and wool socks, only our cheeks were cold.  Sure, 14 degrees is cold, but look at us!  We were in it!  Embracing it!  Loving it!

pink cheeks, big smiles, can't lose

I was feeling pretty confident that winter was going to be just lovely until later that day.  Later, when I couldn't get warm in the house.  Later, when the cold seeped up through those wool sock and my toes said "Brrr!"  Later, when even my nose and fingers were cold. In the house.  It was then that I remembered that winter means always being kind of cold, even in the house.

Wait, you are saying.  Aren't you from Buffalo?  The place that had two feet of snow this weekend alone?  I am, however, let us remember though it has been one million years since I actually lived there.  Dinosaurs had recently stopped roaming the earth, my high school had a terribly racist mascot, and the Bills just had fans, not a mafia behind them.  I've spent the last three decades sweating and this body doesn't seem to know what to do with all this cold except continually say helpful things like "Brrrr!" and "It's cold!"

Also, how did I forget how dry skin gets in the cold?  Oh my God, I am like an iguana, but a saggy iguana whose skin just sort of feels terrible, flakes off, and falls like ashes to the ground.  I brave full-on cold to lotion up after a shower to no avail.  This skin is parched, cracked, and parchment-like.  My nails are brittle.  My hair is limp and doesn't really curl anymore.  I could apply lip balm every three minutes and my lips still feel like they are cracking off.  I am a limp-haired, saggy-iguana-skinned, no-lipped human, and it is only the first of December!

actual photo of me taken this morning.

I texted my brother my cold cries and he told me to bake something, make some, soup, and turn the heat up.  I did one of the three things: I made soup.  When I drink coffee or tea or eat soup, I am not cold!  Those mugs and bowls of beautiful warmth make my fingers and insides warm again.  I didn't bake this time because I was afraid I would try to eat the cold away in cookies.  I also didn't turn up the heat because heat is probably expensive and our apartment is really lacking in heaters.  We have baseboard heaters, one in the living room and one in each bedroom.  This means that out of 24 total walls, only 3 have a heater on it.  I am not great with math but this seems woefully inadequate.

My layers are many, my socks are wool, my cups are filled with warm liquid, and I am still cold.  I mentioned in the lunch room it was sure cold and someone said not to worry, it would warm up come April.  So I stabbed him.  Well, only with my eyes, but still.  My brother also mentioned something about toughening up.  I ignored him because I thought he was rude, but now I get it!! My skin is sloughing off because underneath this Texas-baked exterior is someone who will love the cold!  Someone like my neighbor who went out to the trash the other day Cousin Eddie style: robe, no shirt, or pants, and wearing slippers.  I saw this from where I was curled on the couch, under a blanket, with a hot coffee in both hands, saying helpfully to my person that "BRRR. It's cold." Yes!  This is it!  When the last iguana layer peels off, I will be reborn into a shiny, smooth, hydrated, winter goddess!  

This is great!  This will help me see past the fact that the sun begins to set at 4:30pm. I am going to be a winter goddess!  I am going to love the cold and the wind and wind chills and snow boots!  I will delight in the gray skies and bare trees and dead grass.  I will radiate happiness to my fingers and toes and that happiness will feel like warmth.  This is perfect!!

I feel so much better.  I was worried that I was wimping out very early into winter but now I see the process.  Slough, shiver, repeat.  And, if I know anything from watching every season of Alone, it is that shivering burns calories, so I am going to go ahead and bake those cookies after all!

Autumnal Awakening

 If you have never read Kate Chopin, let me highlight a little about her and her book "The Awakening".  Chopin wrote feminist literature in a time where all that was required of women was to be feminine and play their part.  Chopin couldn't play her part as her husband died and left her penniless so she wrote and she wrote about what interested her and what interested her was women living a life bigger than they were currently allowed to. In "The Story of an Hour" the main character dies of a heart attack upon learning that the husband she thought was dead was really alive.  Boom, dead.  That is a fun story to read with 16 year old students.  In "The Awakening", her main character has an affair with a younger man (scandal!) and then commits suicide by walking into the lake with her heavy dress' pockets filled with heavy stones.  No weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth like Flaubert's whiny Madame Bovary.  Just a straight walk into a cold lake with heavy pockets and a heavier purpose.  In between the affair and the death part, the character experiences her awakening.  Her sense of purpose in the world and what it meant to be a woman in her time and place.  I find that as I live up north for the first time in decades, I too am having some kind of awakening here.

Younger man?  My person is a younger man! (highly recommend).  Suicide in the sea? No, thanks.  If I am not 98 and wizened and holding a sharper tongue that I do now, I don't want to know. Three hairs left on my head and four on my chin sounds about right.  (I imagine my person reading this right now and sighing.) No, my awakening is coming with the splendor of autumn all around me.  

The splendor!

Texas does spring really well but there's nothing to say about fall down there.  Hot until November, sweaty til December, two brown leaves fall down, and it's over.  The visual cornucopia of reds, and oranges, and yellows of autumn in IL just batters my eyes until I want to weep for the stunning beauty of it all.  It is afire!  It is resplendent!  It is glorious to behold and I am beholding it! I am driving to work and want to beep my horn for the joy of the tree-lined streets of yellows and orange and red. I do not because we only beep our horn up here for impatience or anger, not joy.  I want to stop and take a picture of every tree I am finding beautiful, but that is every tree!  The prairie grasses also change color!!!  Who knew?!?!? 

This little guy tried to turn every color!

It's not just the visual either.  It is the pleasure of kicking through leaves and hearing them skitter ahead of you on the sidewalk.  The crunch as you step through them.  The sweet smell of decaying leaves and grass and somehow a little apple released and swept into a nose used to dusty grass and ragweed.  The crisp taste of apple cider that matches the crisp feel in the air.  The air that feels clean and bright and crisp all at once.  Where a soft layer is all you need and all you want.  You want to feel that fresh fall air fall over you.  Autumn is assaulting all of my senses and I am awake!

I know.  I know all this autumnal beauty is the precursor to winter. I remember. I know that both the sky and earth will be grey and muted and dead. I know the sun will barely rise before it sets and I will hibernate in the house and eat all the carbs and feel pale, and lumpy, and misshapen.  I might wear the same hoodie for days and feel that scurvy and rickets are only a day away if the sun doesn't come out again soon. I know that the air will be biting and brutal.  I know the snow will  a pain to clean off of a car and scary to drive in. I know and yeah, I know.  None of that matters because after 30 dormant years of no fall at all, I am having an autumnal awakening of epic proportions.  I am so excited about this autumn that I would hang up one of those "Happy Fall Y'all" signs and mean it.  If my kids were here, I would drag them into the woods in matching flannels to have a picture taken.  But only after we picked apples and sang some kind of autumn song and sipped cider and carved a pumpkin and had a leaf fight and smiled. (I am picturing my kids reading this and thinking how glad to not be here right now.)

If you are in a place that does autumn like this, get out there and have your own awakening!  Smell it, see it, feel it, taste it! It is too good to not carve some time out to revel in it.  Let it wash over you until you are smiling at leaves and grinning into the wind.  If you live in a place that is still flesh-eating hot, I am sorry.  I am trying to send you some of my autumn through my words.  If it isn't working, come and visit me next autumn instead!  We will crunch through leaves and eat apples and wear flannel and behold all that is autumn and feel really, really happy inside.  Oh, we will also smile while singing at autumn song, so come prepared.

Side note: I have no idea what an autumn song is, so come really prepared.

Sigh.

It's All Good

I guess because I am in a new state and working towards making new friends, I am thinking a lot about the first friend I made the last time I moved to a new state.  I was much younger then and working my first full-time job at a Harvey Hotel in Dallas.  I am not sure if I had a title other than Office Helper and I gathered faxes, filed, made copies, sent things UPS for guests and answered phones.  I do know that I did not have a desk and spent most of my day standing in the small copy room in my JCPenney dress and hose and heels.  Most people who came in would give me a smile and make their copies and go but one person from Accounting always talked to me.  I remember Mark wearing a brown suit and peach shirt and tie a lot and I remember him always commenting that maybe one day I could also have a desk.  It was never mean-spirited, just a pleasant way to remind me that I didn’t have a desk and it soon moved us onto other things to talk about.  Three months later, I was promoted to Accounting (despite claiming in the interview that I was not good at math) and sat next to Mark for the next eighteen months and that was it; first new friend made.

We were young and dumb and poor and working hard to prove we were real adults.  We talked about everything and nothing and I proved I was indeed bad at math as Mark proved he was really good and started to climb the management ladder.  We soon grew from work friends to meeting out.  We drank and danced and Blue Oyster Cult raged in the background.  The thing I quickly realized with Mark is that if you were his friend, his circle of friends became yours as well.  He would talk to me about his other friends like I knew them and by the time I met them, it was like I had always known them.  He was welcoming, caring, and constantly upbeat.  He created this world of interesting, funny, caring people and if he knew you, you got added to this world.

Mark is a giver.  Like the most generous person I know.  I really know this because at loose ends, he let me live with him in a one-bedroom apartment for eight months.  We had both moved onto different jobs and he traveled all week and home on the weekends.  I slept on the couch when he was home and when I did finally get my own apartment, I declared I would never sleep on a couch again.  Mark taught me not to be sad on a Friday night with nothing to do.  It was a night for a party of one.  We would go to Eatzi’s and buy a healthy dinner, a bottle of wine, and either ice cream or cookie dough and eat/drink it all while watching a movie and talking through most of it.  (The party of one came in when I realized I could do this on my own as well).  We lived together and still went out together and the only time I remember Mark being mad at me was when I couldn’t lift an entertainment center up three flights of stairs with him and we had to flip it end over end to get it up there.  

Mark is gracious.  He has sat in lawn chairs at a table to eat lasagna I made and didn’t tease me about it until years later. He brought me to Easter at his Nonna’s house with his entire family, who, like Mark, took me right in.  Except for Nonna.  She did not like the look of me and any time I asked anything, she would reply that “there was more sweet tea” in the kitchen.  I drank a lot of sweet tea that day.  Mark went trick-or-treating with me and my kids when Will was very tiny and cried the entire time we were out and it was not much fun at all.  He went and stayed and said it was “all good.”  Because he loved me, he loved my kids and they loved him and Uncle Mark has been their friend too.

Mark is funny.  We did couple-dinners once a month for years with other friends and our table would drink a lot of wine and laugh and laugh.  Laughter until you can’t breathe.  Laughter where tears pour out of your eyes and you look around with blurry vision and think ‘this is life.” Laughter where other tables close by either hate you tremendously or wish that they knew you and were laughing too.  Mark’s humor is a lot of self-deprecation, saying things you wouldn't think would come out of his mouth, making the best out of the worst, and just his delivery.  There is only one time I think his humor failed and maybe the only time I remember being mad at him.  We ate a lot of free cake at the hotel we worked at and after a year of it, I looked like I ate a lot of free cake.  I was describing the bathing suit I had just bought and said it showed my stomach.  Mark, a forkful of cake an inch from his mouth, wrinkled his nose, sneered, and said “Girl, I have seen your stomach.”  As I write that, I realize I might still be mad at him for that.

Feeling cute, might drink some beer, high-kick a bee....

For thirty years, Mark Miller has been my first friend and my always-friend in Texas.  He has been there in all of my good, bad, dramatic and I know he always will be.  He will call me and talk about this or that or anything and I will laugh and do the same.  Recently, he texted to ask if I had a few minutes to talk. I was instantly nervous.  I thought it must have something to do with his parents.  (Side note: no matter how many times I move, his mom sends me a Christmas card and handmade peanut butter eggs at Easter and I love that woman).  I guess I forget how old we are and that bad news can be about us now too.  I called and listened to Mark tell me he had cancer.  Probably renal cancer with a tumor and nodes and other gross cancer words.  And I froze thinking about how this wonderful, beautiful person could be filled with this.  Alternating between tears and laughing, he explained what had happened, what would happen, and when.  He is, of course, upbeat.  He will have his kidney removed on Monday and more treatments after that.  “It is what it is,” he says.  I want to instantly fix it for him.  I tell him maybe being down a kidney will equate to a good 5 pound weight loss.  I ask if he needs me to come down to Texas and he tells me he has all the good-intentioned, overbearing women he needs right now.  

So all I have is my words to tell Mark, and everyone, what a joy he is in my life.  What a difference his friendship made to an out-spoken, brash young girl from Buffalo.  I hope that everyone has a Mark in their life and if you don’t, I will share mine, because if anything, Mark has shown me there is always room for one more friend.  And if you do have a friend like Mark, you remember how special that is and how good this world has been to you.  I told Mark I would call him every few days and tell him weird things that happen teaching middle school during his recovery.  This week alone, a student told me he was allergic to my talking and I tucked my dress into my underwear and didn’t notice until I was out in the hallway.  I really hope that when I do tell him that story that he sneers and says “Girl, I have seen your legs.”  I won’t be mad this time; I will laugh and be thankful that he is there to listen and keep me humble.