Every day artists touch our lives, in the music we listen to on the radio, in the books and articles we read, the photographs and art we view. So much of it we take for granted, our lives enriched daily as a matter of course. And then of course there are the moments we've been touched... a song that brings us back to a moment in our lives where we felt less alone, like the words to the song hit the exact beats in our hearts right when we needed them most - a book that transforms us - a painting that leaves us breathless.
 
So many artists have touched my life, in music, in words, in all kinds of art. When they're still here they're mostly under-appreciated and when they're gone they leave a void.
 
So to all the artists out there, thanks, man. Keep making the songs, the books, the poems, the essays, the pottery, the paintings, the photos, the sketches, the all of it. Thanks for making my life so much better in so many ways.

Dredging up. Is that what we do as memoirists? A fellow writer shared her challenges with her mother, trying to understand, feeling her mother’s unwillingness to examine their relationship. I wanted to tell her, as well as remind myself, not everyone thinks like us. Not everyone has the need we have. We’re compelled to articulate, to process into words that which lives in our deep brain, that which for most people is just the water they swim in.  
We harken back and scoop up big old slimy handfuls of muck from the bottom of the pond, ripe and stinking, and ask, “what is this?” People close to us look at us and recoil. “EW! Put that down. Why on earth would you plunge into that? The pond was just fine before you muddled it up. Now I can’t see clearly.”  
“Yes, I’m sorry,” we memoirists say, “but what is this? Help me understand, it’s been below our feet, and a part of us all this time and I want to understand and bring it to the surface.” It makes those we love uncomfortable. 
Anne Lamott said, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” I get that, but it almost feels too harsh for what I’m trying to get at. Lamott is referring to the product, the piece written, finally outside ourselves and subject to the opinions of others.  
It’s this process I’m curious about. The compulsion to dredge, and the realization not everyone has it. I’ve learned to carry on, interact without being disingenuous, politely smile, engage in small talk. Still, there are so many questions I have, questions I admit only serve my purposes. Big questions. Questions that fill the room, fill my mouth and make it difficult for me to speak.  
I like to dive down and see what’s beneath. I want to know your story, what makes you tick. I want to hear about your thoughts, beliefs, how you feel. And that line of questioning makes a lot of people uncomfortable, like standing in water when a virtual stranger submerges to swim about, brushing against ankles, bubbling up beside them unannounced. 
So then, back to Lamott. Discerning what I own, versus what I’m just nosy about. Where is the line, what am I allowed to dredge up, ask about, write about, share on a blog? When is privacy breached? Murky waters, indeed. ​

This is my routine each morning. I rise, pad out to the hallway, click the thermostat up a degree or two, and head to the kitchen for a cup of coffee.

On my way, I stop at the front door, turn off the porch light, and look out the front window for zombies.

Zombies, you ask? Yes, I check for zombies. And so far, there have been none. It starts off each day with good news. And if one morning I peek through the window and see the undead shambling down the street? Then the world is a shit show, and all the worries and tasks that may have plagued me that day will seem relatively minor. That’s what I call good news.

Recently my friend Janele and I decided to work through Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” together. If you’re familiar with this work, you will have heard of “morning pages,” essentially the task of writing three pages every morning as a way of “retrieving your creativity.”  
The first time I read the book and learned about “morning pages” was in 2011, but by then I’d been doing my own take on them for over a year. In 2009, a few other writers in my writing group and I had challenged ourselves to write 1000 words a day. We had gathered at a restaurant for a holiday celebration, around this same time of year. 
“What if we wrote a thousand words a day every day for the whole year?” Chris, the group mentor offered up as he passed the breadsticks to his left. The place was dim, everyone’s faces were bathed in a warm sepia tone. “After a year, that’d be 365 thousand words.” 
“That’s like three novels,” Brian said, “I’m in!” I agreed to the challenge too, and my way of getting the thousand in came by way of writing what equated to seven pages each day in my journal. I still have that daily habit, though usually my word count is significantly less than a thousand. For a while, I would post along with other writers with the same routine using #continuouspractice as a way of connecting and supporting each other. Over the years, these “morning pages” have become even more valuable to me. 
This practice, this is not about being a writer. It’s about being a human. A flawed, imperfect human, practicing, continually practicing. It’s about losing myself and finding myself by losing myself. It’s about taking regular time in my day for me, to slow the pinging thoughts and ideas in my head, sifting through the neurotic ones, letting most of them go, maybe making sense of one or two of them on the page. It’s about acknowledging exactly where I am at the moment, accepting that I have exactly what I need. It’s about expressing gratitude, expressing dissatisfaction, injustices, and joys. It’s about seeing words fill a page and welcoming them all without judgment or agenda. It’s about saying, here I am, another morning, with still so much the same, still so much to figure out, still so much that doesn’t make sense, still so much to do, to say, to be. It’s about having a place to feel overwhelmed, a place to feel stuck or angry or cheated or lonely. Knowing, like pages of the journal, the feelings will turn, another day will come and I face myself again. Whether or not I make it back to the page again tomorrow doesn’t matter, I face myself just the same, but taking my minutes every morning makes that make more sense, or at least feel more manageable.  
Being a human is hard. No one ever teaches you how to be a human (for that matter, I don’t think you can ever be taught to be a writer, to be anything). The difference between theory and practice is the work. Theory is knowing, this is a metaphor, this is a conventional dialogue attribution. Practice is, well, feeling those things. This metaphor feels right, this story structure feels more effective in capturing how the experience happened, the emotional register of the moment. I suppose that’s the short answer to “why do you do this?” Because human. ​

Step 1: Show Up When You Say You’re Going to Show Up
This weird introvert side of me, when mixed with the unconditionally loved part of me, makes it easy for me to cancel previously made plans. I had arranged to meet my friend Kimmie at the funeral of a mutual friend—more of a casual acquaintance in our artist community, actually. The morning of the funeral, I typed out a text to Kimmie: Annie’s trip to the vet yesterday wiped me out, and I’m nervous to leave her alone. This was a half-truth. I did feel spent after taking my aging cat to the vet and treating her with meds for a UTI, but I wasn’t that nervous about her condition. I was reacting to my need to recharge after having to leave the house, and banking on Kimmie still loving me even if I didn’t show up. This Step 1 required me to discard the text  and to show up graveside (albeit hastily thrown together as a rebellion of having to go at all).

Step 2: Step Back
When I do go out in public, I tend to be like a jumpy dog—I’m the big yellow lab who slobbers and crotch sniffs upon meeting. This is not proper funeral etiquette, so I metaphorically leashed and muzzled myself and watched as Kimmie navigated the attendees. She had a deeper stronger network with this crowd, and the fact that I’d not showered on that hot summer afternoon strengthened my ability and desire to not be noticed.

Step 3: Listen
When we walked to our cars after the mingling and condolences, Kimmie blurted out news of trouble with a family member of hers. It came out of the blue, so I stopped walking, then steered us under the shade of a large tree. She talked. Told me more. I had planned a hasty exit after feeling like my original obligation was met, but here was my friend, with so much to say. I felt the guilt swell in my chest and come through my eyes as I hugged her. I hadn’t been a good friend, remembering the times when I had taken advantage too often of her unconditional love and skipped out on Step 1.

Step 4: Hold On A Little Longer
Kimmie and I ran through our options to continue our time together, agreeing on her place, ordering Sampan and smoking hand rolled cigarettes on her back patio as we waited. We caught up unburdened and felt together the loss of our friend, the worry for our families, and the gratitude for our friendship—like finding a special pendant in the jewelry box we’d not brought out to wear in a while. When I got home a few hours later, she texted me: Thank you for holding on a little longer. A video was attached, recorded from her doorbell camera—she and I hugging goodbye, Kimmie making a move to release, then her giggle and a tighter embrace when I did not let her go.

​

When the hypnotic “Installing” circle completes, I press the green “open” button of the Petfinder app. I’d lost Annie, my feline companion of fifteen years, three months prior. When I sit to write in the stillness of the January days, especially on dark winter mornings, I feel how empty my lap, and heart, is. 

“Cats,” the icon is a grey outline of a kitty in profile. I press it. The first picture to come up is a demur, perhaps skittish expression on a sable colored cat’s face, her blue eyes a bit crossed. A Siamese mix maybe, named Delores. Same spelling as my mother’s name, with an “e” instead of the more common spelling with an "o" as in “Dolores.” 

I wasn’t sure if I was ready for a kitty yet, maybe the emptiness was grief. A few times during teary moments of missing Annie I’d ask my husband, “do you think we could ever get another kitty?” His answers had always been yes, but I questioned their authenticity, since I knew I wasn’t playing fair. Asking this man for anything while crying results in a ‘yes.’ And with that great power comes great responsibility. 

My husband is not a cat person, but Annie and I were a package deal when he and I met, and he was always gracious and kind, if not occasionally annoyed with her. Wanting a cat would put me in conflict, to acknowledge my needs are as, if not more,  important as his. That’s tough as a life-long card-carrying pleaser.

And besides, was I really ready? We'd just moved into a newly painted and carpeted home, did I really want to bring in cat hair, litter, and the risk of relegating our furniture to shredded scratching posts? Searching on the app was a way to assess my desire, as well as a way to measure it up with my desire to not want to burden my husband.

Delores. It was a good sign, an “ohm,” my mother would say (a mispronunciation of "omen"), that there just may be another kitty in my future. “Do you think we could ever get another kitty?” I would ask a few more times, when the tears were absent. His answer was always yes, but I would sense a bit of reluctance. 

I was reluctant myself to go deeper into the conversation with him where I’d be forced to claim what I wanted and ask for it, and the potential negotiation to follow. I wasn’t worried about flat out refusal. But I wanted honesty. And I felt it risked what I desired. If he really didn’t want a cat more than I really did want a cat then we’d enter that marital territory of compromise. 

We practice this often, with simple things like, oh, here’s a new episode of The Bachelor to watch! My desire to watch is say a 9 (don't judge). His desire may be zero, but his desire NOT to watch it is say a 5. He wouldn’t be put out that much to sit through it, as a gift to me. So we watch. Invited out to dinner? Oh, I’d like to go, so I’m at like a 6 maybe, but he’s really wiped out and his desire NOT to go is a 9 so we stay home, my gift to him.

I think of Delores off and on, occasionally checking the app, thinking if she gets adopted she’s not my kitty, but I begin to believe that yes, I’m ready for another pet. 
At the beginning of March, a few days after the 13th anniversary of my mother’s death, I visit a pet store to pick up some water for my betta fish. I notice an adoption event just in front of the fish displays held by Ruff Patch Rescue, the local shelter that had posted Delores' picture.

There in a medium sized wire kennel set atop a table, away from the larger cages containing desperate looking dogs, is a familiar cat. Delores. 

I ask Stacie, the attending shelter volunteer if I could visit with Delores. Stacie wears a grey knit beanie crowning her lovely angular face and a large comfortable scoop-neck sweater over a t-shirt. She beams and tells me, as Delores’ foster mom, how sweet this kitty is, how surprised she is that she’s not been adopted yet. As Stacie carries Delores to the visiting room, I follow, feeling a message rising up from the base of my spine. This is my kitty. 

The room is adjacent to the grooming station, windows through which I see an embarrassed dog enduring sheering and clipping. Stacie and I sit on generic plastic chairs with metal legs, setting Delores and a small blanket on the chair between us. “I’ll just let you two get acquainted,” Stacie says after a few moments of petting and soothing Delores. She makes her way to the door as Delores darts under the chairs.  “Take your time, just bring her back to the front when you’re ready.”

I sit on the floor next to the chair where Delores hides. I burst into tears explaining to her how I’m still grieving my Annie, and my mother. I cry as Delores sniffs and startles around the chairs and cold linoleum floor.  I stay with her for fifteen minutes or so, taking care to only reach and pet when she seems comfortable, I discover she likes scratches on the spot on her back near her tail. I compose myself, gather Delores in my arms and return to the adoption table. Stacie tucks her into her kennel and asks me how it went. I begin to cry again, blurt out that I love her, and leave with my betta water, as sheered and shivering as the dog I saw through the window. 

The next few weeks Delores is always on my mind. I stalk my desire like a piece of yarn drawn slowly across the carpet, acknowledging she is indeed my kitty and come to terms with the reality of pet ownership, to be followed by another inevitable loss after years of companionship. I know I need to confront the conflict of this need of mine with the need of someone I love.

“There is this kitty I think is mine,” I say to my husband during Saturday’s breakfast. I tell him about the app, meeting Delores at the pet store. I impress upon him how I know with the current state of confinement to “flatten the curve” now isn’t the time, but if it’s OK with him, maybe I can talk with the shelter to put Delores on “hold” until the curve flattens. I brace myself for reluctance, prepared to hear his desire NOT to have a cat is greater than my desire to have one. 

“I’ll be candid,” he tells me, “if I lived alone, I would not want a cat. But I know how important it is to you, and if it makes you happy it’s OK with me." I feel my shoulders relax and my lungs expand with a deep breath. He has given me a gift.

I begin chattering about how I feel like an adoptive mother who has seen a picture of her child an ocean away and is just waiting for the logistics to play out to bring her home.

My husband stops me mid-sentence by placing his hand on mine. “Go get your kitty.”

Later that afternoon with as little human contact as possible I dart through a pet store for the basics, and then with no handshakes or hugs, and as close to six feet apart as possible, I meet up with Stacie where we both beam and I bring home my gift, my girl, my Delores.

I’ve read about this. I’ve read in writing craft books about asking yourself who is the voice in your head that tells you you are a bad, no talent, shameful writer. Could be a parent, could be a teacher. I’ve never been able to pin-point mine. Sometimes I’d claim it to be my first husband, but deep down I knew that wasn’t true. He was not insensitive or cruel, he was simply ambivalent. Most likely not secure enough to provide what I was asking for (on the rarest of occasions I would offer to let him read what I’d written), so he chose to render no opinion. No, the voice is not him.

I wondered if the voice originated from a scene I still see so clearly; an older sibling reading the start of a story I’d written in middle school. It was a story of a brother and sister trying to solve a crime, my first draft handwritten on loose leaf and gathered up in a black three ring binder. Memory has a way of providing the 360 degree view of such a moment; my sibling standing at the kitchen counter holding the binder, reading out loud, laughing and dramatically acting out the words I’d written. We were both young, and this person is so dear to me I’m certain this is not the voice.

Whenever the voice pops up, I try to tuck it away, do my best to brush it off. I try to tell myself it doesn’t matter what it thinks, but nonetheless that voice tangles itself into my brain and is alive and well up there. The voice I've identified as “THE VOICE” snuck up next to me recently as I wrote about the metaphysicality of existing in two places simultaneously. The voice belongs to a woman who passed away last year, before I came to this realization. I am a bit ashamed to admit that there was a degree of relief at the news, though I did not understand why until now. She is a woman with whom I took my second Creative Nonfiction class many years ago, let’s call her Patsy. It’s her voice. 

Patsy hadn’t been in the first of the two-class series, and was an unfamiliar face. The instructor, a lovely nurturing woman had given us a process of critical response early on that I still rely on in my own teaching. It asks the reader to provide an affirmation to the writer to say in essence, “I respect your efforts and find this particular aspect of it remarkable.” This is the 'ante' into the trust bank, to open the dialogue to then provide feedback in the form of curiosity. Not correction or suggestion, but in essence, “this is what I felt and thought as I read your work, and I’m wondering...”

Patsy simply disregarded this model. Blatantly. I remember her waving her hand as if shooing away an insect, starting her comments with—and this is not far from verbatum, I’m certain—“Affirmation, blah blah blah, affirmation,” and then she’d start with her critique. It felt icky from the get-go. 

After the last class, a group of us decided to continue to meet as a writing group, and Patsy offered her condo’s clubhouse as a place for us to gather. Early on, I brought a piece about tears, how they’re (gratefully) the most likely of the limited number of fluids the body chooses to express the big emotions. Can you imagine if you salivated instead? Or sweat? Or some of the waist-down fluid options? Patsy, a medical professional, countered right off the bat. Body fluids aren’t LIMITED, there’s A LOT of them, and proceeded to rattle off the medical terms for all kinds that simply shut me down for the rest of my critique. Later she scoffed at my use of the phrase “liquid mercury.” ALL mercury is liquid, she quipped. I don’t remember any other feedback on the piece I wrote, from her or anyone else, and that essay got shelved for years. Because whever I thought about all I heard in my head was, ALL mercury is liquid, STUPID.

In truth Patsy was absolutely right, and I’d have so appreciated that correction if I had felt she, as my critique partner, had my best interests at heart. If she had built that trust with some acknowledgment that, yes, this piece is worthy, you have done effective work. Then pointing out that small error would have been welcomed, I’d have thanked her for saving me from looking stupid. Instead I just felt stupid, and as a new writer, this was too much for me to overcome. 

I stopped bringing pieces to the group. This really pissed Patsy off. This IS a WRITING group, she’d admonish. I’m disappointed, she may have said, or something as condescending at best, offensive at worst. Not at all helpful or interested in why I may not be bringing something. Not that I would have been able to provide a reason at that point. I was just feeling incompetent and stupid about the whole endeavor of being a writer, which in my mind I wasn’t, since I wasn’t writing.

She dropped the group after a few months of meetings, to focus on revising her own manuscript, and the group moved to my house for meetings. I began to write again, and often found that group such a treasure, so uplifting and encouraging. 

Then Patsy asked to come back.

And me, not fully understanding the toxicity, and not strong enough to protect our group and say no, allowed it. The group broke apart soon after.

Fast forward to a few days ago when I wrote the word “metaphysical,” I heard that voice. That’s not how metaphysics works, STUPID. And I finally recognized it as Patsy. So I have some things to say to her now, to the real Patsy, who in truth I didn’t know that well. My hope is doing so may provide some ballast to deal with this imaginary Patsy between my ears. Patsy, you had no right to eschew the process of building trust with me as a writer. You had no right to shame me when I wasn’t writing. Your comments were corrections, not feedback. I’m sorry you’re dead, and perhaps your loved ones are mourning you. I’m sorry for their loss.

But imaginary Patsy, there in my head? Fuck you, Patsy. I see you there, you small-minded bitch.

I see myself waving my hands at her like I watched the real Patsy do during class. I see myself taking her by the shoulders and turning her to face the other direction so I don’t hear her. If I want to write about metaphysics I will. And will probably appreciate her corrections down the road in a revision. But not in my early draft. Now is not the time to not look stupid. Now is not the time to even worry about looking stupid. 

I’m saying no to Patsy now. 

I’ve talked to other writers who have ‘patsies’ in their writing histories. Some of these painful moments happened during the time the group met at my home, which now, as a holder of safe spaces, I regret I could not see and mitigate. But I suppose it all comes with the territory. As writers it’s up to us to identify and understand who we hold in our heads as our ideal readers, our critical voices. It’s up to us to be the gatekeeper, letting in those who are most helpful, turning away those who are not. 

On weekends after my husband and I each take our early morning hours for our respective projects in our own creative rooms, we meet in the kitchen for some breakfast; weekdays when we both work from home we meet in the kitchen for lunch. We cook, eat, then sit together for an hour or so, on the comfy sofas inside in the winter, on the back patio furniture outside when the air is fresh and warm. A lot of times it takes a few minutes for things to get rolling, we sit in silence sometimes for many minutes, but patience usually pays off and our thoughts are shared.

The previous day, when we met in the kitchen for lunch, he came in imitating a character he just watched on the Simpsons while he had walked on the treadmill. I was busy with something else, preoccupied with wanting to ask him a question, and he didn’t get the laugh response he was looking for. His repeated efforts and explanation of what he watched, along with his feigned indignance at my non-response did end up making me laugh after all. Or maybe it was our mutual weirdo-ness that stunned me into laughter. I love that man more every day.

                                                                           ***

We found each other ten years ago this day and he earned a significant level of trust from me right from the start. I was 43 years old, and had been recovering from a series of events—the death of my mother, losing my job, a surgical biopsy of my breast tissue (benign, thank goodness), my two children entering their teen years thus not needing me as much—that had forced me to turn deeply within. A few days after meeting him I had pulled a book off my bookshelf, Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, a book my older sister had given to me many years earlier. Back then, when I opened and read the first few pages I placed it back on the shelf, not understanding the appeal it held for her. This time when I opened it I could not underline fast enough, there was not enough ink in my pen for all the exclamation points and asterisks in the margins. Its stories were a way to understand myself, a way to sing my way back to myself. 

I wanted to share this discovery with him, pulling the book out as we sat in the front seat of his car, having met up in a secluded park to see one another. I read him page after page, including the following passage. “So often a woman feels…she lives in an empty place where there is maybe just one cactus with one brilliant red flower on it, and then in every direction, 500 miles of nothing. But for the woman who will go 501 miles, there is something more.” I wept as I read the words. Even now I find it hard to express the profound experience of reading that book.

But here’s the thing. He sat and listened, held me as I read and cried, and said to me afterward that even though he didn’t understand all that I had read to him, “I can see how important it is to you, how much it means to you.” And that statement set the stage for me to trust him, perceive him as an exquisite listener. It gave me permission to express what I needed without necessity of his approval or understanding. From that day forward I have always felt safe to talk to him about anything, no matter how ‘out there’ or weird. He listens, without judgment, without belittlement or teasing. He has never once laughed at me, or made me feel ashamed to be me. Neither of us are perfect, of course. Our years together include their share of misunderstandings and difficult, painful conversations, but always, we have been able to bring our selves to the table. 

Ten years to the day after meeting him, I woke before my alarm, my husband’s side of the bed empty. I opened our bedroom door to find a long stemmed rose at my feet with a poetic clue printed neatly on a pink index card directing me to the next location. A dozen total, the last directing me to his home office where I slammed into him with the big bang power of the day we found each other.

Confession. I cried like a baby as I gathered each rose. Happy tears. So. Much. Love. Finding that man changed my life a degree of magnitude I could not fathom. In those ten years I’ve felt our hearts, both of our hearts, open, broaden, mine to the point of ache so many times, in ways that still surprise me. 

We call the day “One True Love Day,” but we haven’t really celebrated it like an anniversary. Which is understandable. It’s hard to crow it out in public when that big bang day happened while we were both married to other people. When there are many who were so hurt in the wake of our discovering each other. And now we have a wedding anniversary during which we can declare our bond out to the world. One True Love day stands for something different, something private, once secret, which if I’m being honest is its one blemish.

One True Love day represents, well, LOVE. Love almost as if it is a separate entity we invited into our lives when we both felt alone and so empty of love. The three of us, my husband, me, and Love. Over the past ten years, we’ve been an amazing team. And Love has been the cornerstone of everything else. Any of the misunderstandings and painful conversations, and more significantly, all the forgiveness we asked for, all the shame we admitted to, Love was ALWAYS there. Urging us on, strong enough for us to fall back on when it felt like too much. True Love. True. 

Ten years later, One True Love Day represents not only acknowledging that lovely third wheel of Love at our table, but also permission. This Love allows permission not just to feel the love for each other, but to accept the love we feel from our family, who graciously, if not reluctantly, have come to accept us and love us each in their own way. Permission also to love ourselves, to acknowledge that seeking and finding each other was a grand gesture of self love, a moment when we asked for and allowed Love to enter in. The day marks ten years of loving ourselves enough to place our hearts in its cradle. 

                                                                           ***

After the Simpsons imitations subsided and we ate our lunch, my husband had a lot to say about his projects, his work. When he was done speaking he looked at me kind of surprised.

“Wow, I had a lot to process,” he said, “this really helps me, otherwise everything’s just a big jumble bouncing in my brain. You’re an excellent listener.” 

I smiled. “I learned from the best,” I said. 

“What?” 

“I learned from…” and we both burst out laughing.

“Now that I made you REALLY laugh,” he stood from the sofa and stretched, “we can continue our day.”

What’s not to love.