My comic, “Charlie Says,” has only been in existence for twenty-ish days. I have a little studio space set up in my attic which basically consists of a love seat that has been torn to hell by the cat, some pencils, a sketchbook and a bag of cheap markers from Walmart that are very quickly showing just how cheap they are. I saw the ultimate box of 124 Sharpies at Michael’s, but they were $145.00! While considerably less on Amazon, still pricey. I am retired now! Spending $100.00 on markers is a splurge.
Even though I usually make the comic in the same spot, I have to look for the glue and at least one marker every time. I was puzzled until I noticed the cat batting around my supplies. She also always tries to sit on my lap while I draw, even though any other time she completely ignores my existence.
It takes about two or three hours for each comic and I am just posting them on Facebook. I tried Threads, but it’s confusing and I don’t want to learn another platform. This really is a labor of love. There is no profit or accolades. I often draw the panel a few times and stay up late into the night. Sometimes I have a brief moment of WHY am I doing this. I have other things I could be doing–like painting the bathroom or cleaning the basement. Or maybe searching for a real job with health benefits. But I am having fun and I want to keep making the comic.
So when I came home from the grocery store and walked up my porch steps and saw the little Charlie figurine leaning up against the post, I stopped and stared. It both surprised and delighted me. I couldn’t believe her. She is so like my comic.
Whoever left the little figure remains a mystery, and I would like to offer public thanks. It is one of the most thoughtful gifts I have ever been given. It made me feel seen and validated the effort I am putting into Charlie Says. It made me think–maybe Charlie is having an impact. But mostly, it humbled me that someone went to such an effort for me.
Charlie has been on a road trip for the last week. I have not been. I am writing her adventures in my makeshift studio. It has made me think about alter egos a bit. Charles Schulz said that he was basically Charlie Brown, but also Lucy and Linus. Most writers probably put something of themselves in their work. I am no different. Charlie is an extension of who I am, but she is like eleven year old me, filled with wonder and possibility and just unbridled joy. She is becoming on the page. Yes, she is my creation, but she isn’t all me. My Daisy Duke days are long gone and we can all thank our stars for that.
So again, thank you to my gifting angel. I think of her as my little talisman, traveling along like a little flame in my pocket. She embodies the genuine warmth and love that I hope Charlie will embody as the pages grow.
Sometimes I think everything in my life has a backstory, like volumes of them. Maybe it comes from being adopted. Being adopted is like being born with a backstory that is both a mystery and a secret, but shades all the other stories for the rest of your life.
Maybe having layers of backstory is a Generation X phenomenon. We brag about no seat belts and partying all night and showing up at work in the morning, but we also were a culture of what happens at home didn’t really happen, so don’t ever mention it again, not even to yourself.
Or maybe all my backstory comes from growing up with a book in my face. I learned literally about the weaving of words to create imaginary worlds, while people spoke around me, believing a book made me invisible. I learned in the stories on the pages and the ones told around me that every thought, feeling, and action is usually multifaceted and connected to string of other thoughts, feelings, and actions and one must walk the strings between them like a spider weaving her web. Some strings are good, some are like deathly traps of the stickiest glue. I am like an agile spider, very good at walking on all the right strings.
Sometimes I see my exodus from the classroom like the scene in Charlotte’s Web, when all the baby spiders are balloning away. I am putting my string out in the world, and trusting the wind to carry me to a new place to start my new story. Except the issue is I am not a baby spider. I am a wise, elder spider and I have accumulated too many strings. They have become so jumbled, and it’s hard to know which ones will set me all the way free. Sometimes I think I have cut the right ones. But then the knot shows up and pulls me back towards the stickiness.
I have been drawing Charlie Says for a few weeks now. Some of oldest friends and family see her as my alter ego, and there is some truth to that, but right now, she seems like a character who has no backstory. Each panel reveals a bit about her. She wears boots. She likes football. She has a cat. She plays the lottery. She lives somewhere with a porch and a couch. But right now, Charlie doesn’t have friends, or any family. She doesn’t appear to have a job, and no one really even knows how old she is. Not even me. I draw her every morning and sometimes I am not even sure what is going to come from the pencil, except for the red boots and crazy hair.
Sometimes I draw what I am doing–like shopping, or sitting on the porch, or having a mammogram. But I am not drawing so much of what I am experiencing. I think Charlie Says is sort of my attempt at writing a story without a backstory, but it feels a bit random and lonely. I guess that’s how I feel sometimes. Random. Lonely.
I go to my part time museum job and dress in costume. I don’t have to wear the costume, but I like it. It feels like being playing a role in stage. When I leave and take off the costume, I am myself again. I never had that separation when I was teaching. I don’t even feel like I have completely left the classroom now. Teaching shows up in my dreams almost every night.
Wearing a costume at the museum has allowed me to remember that it is a job, a path I am choosing to take, but it doesn’t have to be my life unless I want it to be.
Even though this museum job feels like a part in a play, it also feels like an audition for the rest of my life. For the first time in my life though, I am auditioning for myself, constantly asking, who am I now, and who do I want to be. What part of my backstory gets to be told and what is being set free?
So when I draw Charlie every morning, she has the swagger of my twenty-three year old self–the girl before the kids, the career, the loss, the grief, the battles. But she has the eye of a woman who can be real because she has lived through some shit.
If Charlie continues to emerge from the pencil, I image her story will also emerge. It’s hard to be any kind of person, even one drawn on page, without a backstory.
But maybe I don’t have to know hers yet.
Maybe that is the point.
For most of my life, I have been walking through a library of stories I didn’t write, trying to understand how each one connected to the next. Now, every morning, I put a blank piece of paper in front of me and draw a woman in red boots.
She doesn’t know where she’s going.
Neither do I. For once, that feels less like being lost and more like being free.
One time my daughter told me I was good at starting projects, but not so great at finishing them. She was like ten or eleven when she said that and I thought a lot about if it was true.
I do have a lot of ideas. A crazy amount of ideas. Some of them have legs that get them up and running, but sometimes the ideas just stay drafts in my brain.
This blog is an example of one of my ideas. I wanted to write a blog to process some of my grief in losing my parents and my cancer journey.
Over the years, I have written about other things–art, teaching, my experience with my son’s mental health journey, and my travels–both literal and metaphorical. I haven’t been consistent with posting, and I probably have as many drafts as posts. But I would say the blog is an idea that had follow through, but has also became bigger than I imagined.
A long time ago, a friend and I were having a drink and she asked me if I could start over again and redo my career what would I do. Without hesitation, I said I would be a cartoonist and have a comic strip. It is true, I have wanted my own comic strip since I was a child. I just didn’t have the confidence or the road map to make that dream come alive.
I have written and illustrated comic stories before. Just for fun to share with my friends and family or my students, but it’s an idea that really just stayed in the recesses of my mind.
In 2020, when I started making my observations about the pandemic from the viewpoint of my cat on social media, it felt a bit like a comic strip. Then Charlie ran for President and I was having the time of my life with the content. Everyone knew and loved Charlie.
I started “Charlie Says” with the idea of a strip, but I couldn’t keep up. My life got incredibly complex and Charlie was diagnosed with lymphoma. I just couldn’t anymore. So even though the page exists, I haven’t touched it in years.
It’s coming up on ten months, since Pam–my sister, my best friend, my confidante, my memory bank, left this earth. It’s been nine months since I left teaching. I am finding my way, but at the same time I have felt very adrift trying to figure out who I am now. Losing Pam has been a challenge that I have not wanted to face. I keep thinking I don’t know how to do my life without her.
A few weeks ago when Dolly Parton died, I like many people in the world, reflected on all the memories Dolly left me with. One of them was watching Rhinestone with Pam at the cinema when we were teenagers. We went twice because we laughed so much. I bought the soundtrack to that movie on cassette tape and Pam and I listened to it on her boom box. She painted her nails and I sketched a cityscape and we sang along with Dolly. Nothing really monumental happened. It was just one of hundreds of moments when we were side by side, doing our thing, enjoying music, the sunshine, life, and each other.
As I watched all the reels and clips and tributes to Dolly Parton, I realized that she left such a huge mark, that she will always live on. I realized that’s what Pam was like too, only her circle was much, much smaller. But she changed my life, made it better, and left me with over fifty years of memories. I will always love her. She would not want me to be so sad. She would have told me to enjoy this time. To sit on the porch. To travel. To paint. To make that damn comic strip.
It’s time. I need to trust that little flame inside me and see if I can grow it. I have been circling the idea of a comic or a cartoon since I was eight years old.
When I did the few drawings of Stormi earlier in the summer, I could feel Pam actually laughing. But it also didn’t feel completely right. Those were my son’s jokes and he didn’t like being in a comic. It needs to be my own.
I was playing with Adobe illustrator and I started creating characters and I had an IDEA. “Charlie Says” is already up. It still can be my comic. I have some followers. I can rebrand the page and make it whatever I want it to be. Maybe drawing everyday is too ambitious. Maybe just starting and having fun is the goal. Maybe the idea won’t have legs, but maybe it will.
I opened up Charlie Says today and I posted a reel of pictures to say goodbye to my cat. I never would have thought such a raggedy stray would have such an impact on my life. I am grateful for the time I had with him. The comic won’t be bringing him back. But I am thinking of using the same dry, slightly sardonic humor, that made him a hit. But I think my character will be human this time. A woman–sensitive, funny wise and irreverent. She will have friends and family, hobbies and habits, demons and dreams. Maybe she will reach around the world or maybe be lost in the dark dregs of the interweb. I just want to try.
I am going to call her Charlie and I am pretty sure she will have a lot to say.
My son and I spent the last day in the city of Boston doing very un-city like things. We took a ferry to an almost deserted island and hung out at the beach. I felt like it was a life I would like if it came with a place to sleep and my cat, Lucy.
Spectacle Island is part of the National Park system and is a drumlin–a glacial hill chain in the Boston Harbor. Originally the drumlin was shaped like two hills adjoined by a thin strip of land resembling a pair of spectacles.
At first the islands were inhabited by Native Americans, but over time the island became industrialized with a rendering plant and then the Boston dump. For sixty years the city trash was barged to the island, and abandoned. Refuse seeped into the Boston Harbor and methane fires burned near the water.
When Boston built an underground highway, the dug up soil was taken to cap the landfill and reclaim the island. Vegetation was planted. Trails were built and people once again could enjoy a nice get away from the city.
Shayne and had the beach to ourselves. He braved the cold water while I marveled at all the sea glass. I picked through the rocks and shells gathering a large pile of it to photograph.
Sea glass is magical to me. It is rounded and smoothed in the waves and finding a single piece feels like treasure.
On the way back to the city, Shayne told me he had a good time and gave me one those rare smiles that reminds me of the boy who could turn a stick into a sword and stalk off to slay a dragon.
Sometimes I wonder if taking my son on trips is a good idea. The planes. The crowds. The days the voices decide to join our adventures. It isn’t easy and takes away some of my spontaneity and freedom, but at the same time, I know deep down I giving him memories that are joyful.
I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I know his battle the voices isn’t imaginary. I don’t know how to fix it for him, but maybe one of those moments of joy will be a like a piece of sea glass for him. Something he can hold on to, marvel at, and weather him through the storms.
When I decided to take my son to Boston, I scheduled in a Red Sox game at historic Fenway park. Shayne loves baseball, but I have always wanted to see the green monster for myself. It seemed important to see the oldest stadium in America before someone decides bigger is better and goes for shiny and new.
I hope that never happens, because Fenway stadium was built for everyone to see the game. I was so excited to be there, but the tension of the day was sitting in my neck and shoulders. And super hard to shake away.
Shayne was at war with his voices all day. I have said a million times that I can’t hear them, but I know them and they were out for blood.
They arrived on the subway. The conductor announced that the train was staying in place and we could get off and get the next train. So we did and when we settled in the next car, I looked over at Shayne and he had his head in his hands. He does that when he is trying to control the noise. Trying to control himself. Then the train stopped again and said it was now an express train and unless we were headed to a particular spot, get off. We got off and I could tell the voices had things to say about two train departures.
We were in the heart of Northeastern campus and there was a cafe. Sometimes food helps, so I suggested we eat breakfast. That was a good move.
Shayne told me that the Isabella Stuart Gardener museum was only three quarters of a mile away, so we decided to walk.
Seeing the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum was my morning plan. A friend had recommended it and I read about it and thought it sounded interesting. Gardner was an art collector in the 1800’s and amassed a giant fortune in art around the world. She curated a museum in her house and stipulated in her will that the museum not be changed and requested it to continue to be open for the public to experience. It’s also the site of the biggest unsolved art heist in the world.
I was expecting an old brownstone or Victorian mansion with funky couches and colorful paintings, but the Gardner building was immense, bigger than schools I have worked in. A modern lobby, cafeteria, gift shop, and reading lounge were added to the original house, so the space occupies a city block. Shayne went into the lounge and laid down. I didn’t really know what to do. I paid for his ticket, so he could be in the lounge, but it wasn’t really meant for napping, but I also know sleep is really the only natural way to combat the voices. So I left him and went to look at the museum.
The museum is something that cannot be described. The art is categorized by how Gardner organized it. No labels or time periods. It is themed–but themes of Isabella’s chosing. I just can’t imagine the wealth and traveling it must have taken to amass the collection. Pieces from Asia and Africa had to be shipped and were made of stone and heavy woods. It felt other worldly, like being in an ancient crypt. I really tried to just be in the experience, even though I know Shayne was in the lounge. Maybe sleeping. Maybe watching Mission Impossible. Maybe losing his shit.
I checked on him once. He was dead asleep, sprawled on the couch. It reminded me of a homeless person asleep in the middle of the sidewalk with meager possessions gathered close like armor. I often think Shayne would be on the street if he didn’t have me.
I finished looking at the exhibit, checked out the gift shop and even made a print in the maker’s space, before going back to the lounge. Shayne was gone of course.
He was okay though and had taken a look at the exhibit a bit and said we should just walk to Fenway because he knew the way. So we did and he chatted with his voices all the way. Not aloud, but he gestured with his hands, and sometimes made expressions and had bursts of laughter. Once upon a time he was a gifted physical actor–it’s like that, only now he acts for an internal audience.
I am used to it and I don’t care. I am aware how it looks in public. He controls it pretty well, but sometimes people will take a second look. They will catch my eye and look away and all my mama bear instincts will rise inside my chest.
I told him we could leave if he needed to and he said he would be okay. It was kind of rough watching him try to hold it together. I had my own inner battle of wanting to make it easier for him and my own desire to enjoy the game.
Meanwhile the Sox were losing their battle on the field. I was impressed at the happiness of the crowd. Most people hung to the end and sang Sweet Caroline and had a rousing good time. We hung in there too. Shayne held it together and I got to see a game at Fenway.
On the way back to the hotel, Shayne asked me if people noticed the voices. I shrugged and said, “Probably not. Most people are focused on themselves. Especially at ball games.”
We walked most of the way back to the hotel. The night air felt good and we were in no hurry. I thought about my day of art and baseball and watching my son struggle with mental illness.
Sometimes I wish I could be like Isabella Gardner–not so much the rich legacy part, but the do-what-she wants part. But she also lost her son and her husband. I don’t know what her life was like. Maybe all the stuff she collected was to fill an emptiness. Maybe that’s how she kept going.
That’s how baseball works too. The guys go out on the field and play, even when there is no prayer of winning. The fans show up and cheer because there is always the hope of one great play.
And in my own way, that’s how I handle Shayne’s voices. I keep showing up, keep pushing through, keep seeing the things worth seeing.
Maybe that’s my legacy–not that I fixed anything, but I kept walking with hope in my pocket.
I learned yesterday that Boston has the fourth oldest subway system in the world, so that’s crazy to think about. I feel adept at figuring out underground transit systems and have navigated many in big cities across the country. Usually, I get a multi-day pass because it’s typically the cheapest and then if i have money left, I give my transit card to a homeless person. However, I am keeping my Boston transit card because it’s called a “Charlie card.” I love that. It reminds me of my cat, Charlie.
The Boston trains are easy and Shayne and I figured them out right away; it was above ground we had trouble.
First off, Shayne has the kidneys of an old man from the heavy pharmaceutical drugs he uses to control the voices. At home, I don’t notice, but when we travel, it is a factor we have to consider. There are no bathrooms on trains, and public bathrooms can be hard to access in big cities. We decided to take a hop on and off again trolley. Usually they give a nice overview of the area and it was raining most of the day, so it seemed like a good way to cover all the area we wanted to see.
Except we almost missed the first connection because Shayne got lost trying to find a bathroom.
Old Boston has streets that were made following cow paths. Shayne called to tell me he was lost. I gave him my cross streets, but it wasn’t super helpful because cow paths don’t run on grids. I wasn’t even worried, which kind of surprised me. I was resigned to wait where I was, figuring eventually he would find me. He did, running and wheezing like a mad man, just in time for the trolley. He sat next to me panting and trying to catch his breath. I thought about asking him where in the hell he went, but instead just said, “Well, I guess you got your work out in.”
We hopped off the trolley and had lunch at Cheers, which brought back all the feels about growing up with that show. The food was ehhhh. But the ambiance–amazing.
Instead of hopping back on the trolley, we walked through Boston Commons and the public gardens. And then had no idea how to get back on the trolley, so we went into a library in Chinatown to charge our phones. I found a book to read and Shayne watched Mission Impossible on his phone. I thought the phone would charge better if he didn’t use it, but a familiar track of music or a script he knows by heart helps him with the voices. I showed the librarian my trolley map and she told me how to get to the next stop. She wasn’t exactly right, but we recognized enough to find the stop. Then we got off the tolley again in the North end and had the best cannoli we ever had in our lives.
The restaurant guy spoke Italian and never stopped talking to the girl behind the bar the entire time. She never responded at all. I wondered if she was even listening to him.
Shayne and I read the menu together and it sounded crazy delicious, but the prices were also crazy expensive .
I asked the bartender if we could take the train to the beach. I already knew the answer but I wanted to see if he had a different suggestion. The girl said, “Wonderland,” in a very heavy Italian accident, she maybe she was listening after all.
I knew Wonderland was a subway stop, not an amusemnt park, although that would have been fun.
Wonderland is the last stop on the blue line and a place of waterfeont condos and bars and grills. It wasn’t rainy by the shore, but overcast and cool. It seems like I always find myself on deserted beaches with gray skies and a few seagulls. The tide was coming in and the sand was littered with seashells. Shayne ran around gathering up big shells and putting them in my backpack. He is such a little boy at the beach.
When we got back to the hotel, I was going to read a book I got about famous women in Massachusetts history–there are so many–but I fell asleep.
When I woke up, it was the middle of the night. Shayne was gone. No note . Nothing. I worried for a half a minute, but he gets restless and I figured he would find his way back. When I woke up to write my blog, he was asleep in his bed. Mission Impossible was playing silently on his screen.
Traveling with Shayne requires patience, flexibility and the ability to just let the day unfold as it does. It definitely feels more like traveling on a cow path than a grid.
I think back to when Shayne first got sick. He’d bolt away and I would be sure I’d never see him again. I would have been terrified to put him on a plane, or ride a subway with him. I would not say all my fear is gone, but I am not afraid of him disappearing and not being able to find his way back.
He is still a person and he still loves to laugh and explore and discover. Isn’t that what traveling is supposed to be about anyway?
The fact that we are together–exploring, learning, and making memories–and I am not worried about him every step of the way shows how far we have come.
Maybe the streets of Boston aren’t so different from the path we’ve been on. There isn’t always a grid. Sometimes you get lost. Sometimes you have to stop and ask for directions. Sometimes you end up somewhere you never intended to go.
I came to Boston almost 40 years ago for a summer job on the Cape. On that trip, I caught a bus right at the airport and stared out at the city through a grimy window. I’d been in big cities before, but not on the East coast which seemed so much older than out West. I remember the laundry hung on lines between the buildings. Back then we didn’t have cameras on our phones. Or I would have snapped a million shots. I have wanted to photograph laundry ever since.
Maybe that is part of why I have always wanted to come back. There are places we pass through in our lives that stay with us for reasons we don’t completely understand. Sometimes it is a person. Sometimes it is a smell or a song. Sometimes it is something as ordinary as laundry blowing between two buildings.
My trip has gotten off to a rough start. First off, there was long layover in Dallas and then the plane was delayed. When we did board, we sat a pretty long time on the plane waiting for clearance. I am traveling with my son. Mostly, we roadtrip together, because I have more control over things and can give him breaks when he needs them. If I get upset, he gets upset, and being upset doesn’t make the plane move any faster. There was a woman behind me who didn’t feel the same way. She kept dropping the F bomb. I kinda wanted to tell her to shut up, but I practiced my Zen skills.
We made it to the hotel pretty late and didn’t get to explore. I took a walk along the harbor at dawn in the rain. The air here is delicious. Cool and crisp. After the dry, hot air of summer in a high desert drought, it was blissful.
And then there is Shayne. He is still sleeping. Traveling with him is a good barometer for me to see how he is doing. So far he has been remarkably calm and symptom free. He thanked me for bringing him. He did watch Mission Impossible all day and he is wearing a Hello, Kitty t-shirt, but it could be a lot worse.
I suppose that is another reason this trip feels important to me. Forty years ago, I came through Boston alone, looking out a dirty bus window at a city that felt impossibly old and far away. I never took the photographs I wanted to take.
This time, I get to see it up close, not behind a dirty bus window.
And I get to see it with my son.
I am looking forward to finally getting to experience the city that I have always felt that I missed out on.
I have been ghosting my blog. In fact, I kind of feel like I have been ghosting my life.
Retirement was supposed to rid me of all my problems. Make me light and free. Instead, June hit me with a wave of sadness. I didn’t know what it was or how to shake it.
At first, I wondered if it was my new job. I still don’t like the drive, but the job itself is fine. I like being in the space, and it is fun to see the excitement of discovery on people’s faces. I really enjoy the older people. Seeing the amazement in their faces when they touch the sand in the sand table or watch their two-dimensional coloring page become animated is pretty cool.
I like that I don’t have to make big decisions or monitor anyone’s growth or behavior. I’m not even sure everyone I work with knows my name.
But the days I work exhaust me. Being “on.” Being nice. Being present. I have nothing left when I get home. And then I wonder if I will ever be able to function like a normal person again.
Some of my sadness is Pam.
Losing her has been harder than anything I have ever done. I am supposed to be floating in her backyard pool with my sunglasses on, solving all the problems of the world. I reach for the phone still to tell her something.
I feel the tears come every day, but they don’t quite make it out of my eyes. They just brim right at the surface.
Putting her ashes in the ground finally might have brought closure to some of the family, but not me. Pam is just gone. And for the first time ever, I am doing life without her. I still can’t believe we aren’t growing old together on some porch somewhere.
Then there are my kids.
Shayne struggles with his voices every moment. I see it. I know it. We can pretend the meds help. We can pretend the dog helps. We can pretend sports help.
Honestly? I’m not sure anything really helps.
He does the best he can every day. I walk through life hoping the bottom doesn’t fall out for him again, while at the same time waiting for it to do just that.
Darian is another story that I just can’t write about at all. But she floats in my thoughts. I see her in my dreams, on the other side of a glass wall. I miss her so much.
I think at least once a day about just getting in my car and driving to Albuquerque, just to catch a glimpse of her. Just to make sure she is okay.
I wander around this hundred-year-old house and see all the things that need to be fixed. The sprinkler system. The weeds. The paint that needs to be touched up. The projects I thought I would have time for when I retired.
Everything just seems so overwhelming.
Maybe that is what this sadness is.
Maybe retirement didn’t make me light and free because I was expecting it to take away things that aren’t really problems I can solve. You can retire from a job. You can’t retire from being a mother. You can’t retire from grief. You can’t retire from missing someone. You can’t retire from worrying about the people you love.
And apparently, you can’t retire from yourself.
So maybe I haven’t really been ghosting my life. Maybe I have just been trying to figure out how to live in this strange new version of it.
I’m still here.
I’m just not sure yet what I’m supposed to do with all this freedom.
People keep asking me if I have fun plans when school starts in a couple of days. I don’t know how to answer that. I haven’t given going back to school much thought. I know I spent around fifty years of my life getting ready for the school year to start, but it honestly feels pretty far from my mind.
I did teach a class called “Siege” at the museum to elementary age kids. It was a small group and we studied Leonardo DaVinci’s designs around bridges, catapults, and tanks and tried to design our own versions. It was fun and I enjoyed the experience. It did not make me want to go back in the classroom. If anything, it solidified my absolute conviction that I made the right decision. I realized that the creativity it takes to be innovative in the classroom depletes my creativity for my own projects.
Speaking of my own projects. I am still learning stained glass. I did an address panel and I learned a lot in the process. I drove the panel out to Nebraska to drop it off.
Usually the road is a place of freedom for me. I turn up the radio and just marvel at the beauty of the incredible landscape in this country. This time however, it was a different experience. I really struggled to stay awake. I had a flat tire, got off course, and couldn’t stay on a schedule. Instead of finding peace, my mind couldn’t turn off about what comes next for me.
The two promises I made to myself when I retired were to be healthier in my mind, body, and spirit. And to take my writing more seriously. I think I started off well on that course, but then hijacked myself by getting a job. The job itself is not hard and sometimes it is fun, but being “on” wears me out and I don’t love driving to Pueblo. I thought about quitting, but am holding off for a little longer. Maybe if I really keep the hours to part-time and double down on my goals, it will be okay.
I am still working on my memoir. It’s kind of tough because memoirs are focused on a particular aspect of life. I have had so many things happen that it has been a journey to sort out the story that I want to tell. I am getting there.
I have always wanted to write a comic strip. I guess I kind of tried a little with Charlie, my cat, but that was also when I found out he had cancer and I just couldn’t write about him anymore. I have been playing with the idea of “Storm.” A comic loosely based on my son and his dog. I think the concept of schizophrenia and a pit bull emotional support animal is intriguing. Both are misunderstood and vastly more complicated than usually portrayed. But now that I have started, I am not sure it’s fair for me to write about the voices. I have no idea what it is like to live with them in my head. I only know what it is like to watch them torture someone I love. It’s not really a subject to exploit. But I am still playing with the idea of a comic strip tbough. Maybe in drawing it, it will find its way to what it is supposed to be.
For so long August meant preparing to teach. Lesson plans. Class lists. New pencils. New students. Now August is asking a different question: What do I want to learn? What do I want to create?
I don’t have all the answers yet. I know I want to write. I know I want to create. I know I want to be healthier in my mind, body, and spirit. I know I don’t want to spend all my creativity on other people, before I get home.
Maybe the comic strip will become something meaningful. Maybe it won’t. Maybe the museum job will stay, or maybe it will become another stepping stone. For the first time in a very long time, I don’t have a syllabus telling me what comes next.
That uncertainty is unsettling. But it also feels like possibility. And after fifty plus years of living by the school calendar, I think it’s fair to tear the pages up and let the wind take them.
I was driving to work, and I saw this pile of rubble and a bulldozer actively pushing all the debris together. I couldn’t believe it. That building has been empty and for sale for awhile and has served a lot of purposes over the last fifty years, but it’s always been a reference point for me.
It was at the bottom of the street I grew up on, a furniture store with big show room windows. It is a place of endless memories. I was a tiny toddler when my parents picked out a couch and love seat. I remember walking from room to room, amazed at couch after couch. We were taken up to a storage attic to look at the bargain stuff because Mom asked to see something on sale. They picked out a a black leather set they found in the storage space, dusty, with a broken foot. Dad fixed the foot, good as new and Mom English Leathered the upholstery and I spent my entire youth watching TV and reading books and napping on that furniture.
The building also marked the southern boundary of my neighborhood. The smooth concrete and interesting pillars made excellent terrain for bike riding, roller skating and skateboarding. All the neighborhood kids gathered there to weave in and out of the columns or to race on the wide parking lot.
We have a family legacy story about the loading dock. My brother, in his cowboy and lasso days, tied a rope to a bolt on the loading dock and tried to lasso kids as they rode their bikes past. He missed everyone, until he didn’t, catching a girl in my first grade class around the neck. The rope held tight, reinforced by the bolt, and she was jerked off her bike, and nearly strangled. My brother automatically let go of the rope and we all rushed to her to make sure she was okay. She had a serious rope burn around her neck. We all knew it was bad. So we did what all Gen X kids did when we knew we were in serious trouble. We put the evidence (bikes and ropes) away and sat inside playing a board game on a summer day. No squabbling. Picture perfect faces of innocence. But of course the parents brought the girl over to show my parents the bruise the rope had left. It’s sort of hard to explain that kind of damage as an accident, but my brother cried and even today when he tells the story, the shock of actually catching her comes through. I don’t know what happened to that girl. She moved away, but we never forgot her.
So maybe that’s why, all these years later, I always automatically glance at the building in my travels through town. It’s a reference to my youth.
I have been thinking about moving. But I have felt a little paralyzed in that decision. There are lots of places I love. Philadelphia brings me a kind of energy and vitality that makes me feel alive and open to new possibilities. I love the magnolias and history in Virginia and feel so at home and peaceful there. I dream of waking eveey morning and walkimg on the beaches of Alaska or Oregon or New Jersey, throwing driftwood for a designer doodle. And I can even see waking up in my sister-in- law’s A-frame in the Philippines and gazing out at the sunrise on the Pacific. Yet, I am still here in this small town I equally love and loathe in the same measure. It holds all of my history.
Maybe that’s why the tearing down of the old furniture store struck me at my very core. Sometimes everything has to be stripped away before something new can be built. I feel like I have one foot planted in the life I’ve always known and the other hovering over a future I haven’t quite had the courage to step into. A tattered, frayed tether still holds me in place—not because this town is perfect, but because it contains the map of who I have been.
But as I watched the bulldozer push the last piles of brick and timber into a heap, I realized something. The building is gone, but the memories aren’t. My parents are still picking out that bargain couch. My brother is still standing there in his cowboy hat, horrified by the impossible throw he never meant to make. Somewhere, a little girl is still weaving her bike through those pillars. Those places don’t disappear when the walls come down. They travel with us.
Maybe that’s what I’ve been waiting to understand. Leaving doesn’t mean abandoning my history. It just means carrying it somewhere new.
