Mary T. Wagner

Running With Stilettos

Pulling the Ripcord to Early Retirement

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Mosaic

The countdown has begun. After two years of noodling the idea of “early retirement” around in theory; after an entire year of attempts by my very practical friend Judy to talk me out of it; after a stretch of several days around the Christmas holidays when I actually got to wake up when it was daylight instead of the bleak darkness of 5:15 a.m. and realize that it felt so normal and healthy…

In less than half a year I will step out of my role of nearly two decades as a state prosecuting attorney—my second career, the first was journalism—and into a another brand new slice of life. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous about it! Remember that scene from the 1991 movie “Point Break,” where Keanu Reeves, playing an FBI agent who has infiltrated a gang of bank robbers who are also surfing buddies, jumps out of an airplane without a parachute? (Spoiler alert: if you haven’t seen the movie,  he’s still alive at the end of it.) I love that movie, but that adrenaline-filled scene of ultimate uncertainty kept playing over and over in  my head for the first couple of weeks after I first told my boss that I planned to leave the job which, just a year before, I had described to him as “my part-time retirement job.” You know, that part-time job retirees are urged to look for by countless advice columnists because they say it’s good to have a routine that gets you out the door and meeting people on a regular basis.

Yes, just a year earlier I’d donned my usual rose-colored glasses, looked at the glass as half-full, and proclaimed far and wide that the half-time job that I had been in for seventeen years fit the bill perfectly, particularly since it came with health insurance. These days that’s the functional equivalent of having captured a unicorn in my back yard, and keeping him around with jam sandwiches and tea.

And then two things happened. I got another grandchild. And I got healthier.

The “new grandchild” thing was a no brainer. Of course I want to spend more time with my “and-Eleanor-makes-three” grandchildren who range from brand new to nearly five years old. The closest one lives forty miles away, while the other two are a clean hundred miles from my front door. Getting together takes planning, and foresight, and if it’s an overnight stay, a reservation at the kennel for the dog. Try as hard as I might, I’ve never managed to squeeze more than 24 hours out of a single day!

And Nora Make Three!

The “got healthier” was a more nuanced revelation. Over the past decade, my attempts to stay healthy by cramming some regular exercise into a busy, busy life have seemed to be a case of “one step up, two steps back.” In addition to several years of responding to serial family emergencies far from home, there were physical setbacks of my own, one after another. A couple of surgical procedures. A painful knee injury that cut back on even walking much for months. (And Lucky was not happy with that development!) Fibromyalgia. Severe GI trouble that lasted several years. Back trouble related to an old accident. Plantar fasciitis that flared up with a vengeance. Ever mindful of how much “image” can project strength or weakness, I refused to concede to the pain and mastered the art of subtly balancing my weight on one foot in spike heels when I was in court.

And then, little by little, over the past year things started working again like they were supposed to. I started to feel as though, after too long a time, I was finally beginning to function on all four cylinders. Or, at my age, perhaps the eight cylinders in the V-8 engine of my old Chevy! At any rate, in flash of insight, I felt as though I was approaching a tipping point, a window of opportunity that would not always be there, for cutting back on stress and focusing more on getting into better shape and working on keeping it.

And so I finally took the plunge and told my boss that I planned to retire later in the year. Once he got over his initial shock, we had a great conversation about life and health priorities and seizing the moment. I knew that the health focus would resonate with him. Before he (1) became a father and then (2) stepped into the top spot in the office, he had spent many a lunch hour lifting weights at the nearby YMCA with another attorney in the office. I once had the occasion to grab him by the upper arm for some unremembered reason, and noticed that his bicep felt a lot like a branch of an oak tree.  Yes, he got the “I want to spend more time working on keeping my health” thing immediately.  And if either of us needed any more of a nudge from the universe that this was absolutely the right choice for me, we got word the same day that another attorney who had stayed in the job longer and been quite sedentary as a result, was going in for open-heart surgery within days.

And so. I have lot of plans for what to do with my time once my time is more my own. There are walks in the woods with Lucky that beckon; strolls on the beach; photos to shoot; books to write; friends to visit; grandchildren to cuddle and read bedtime stories to; a gym membership to restart. And I’d like to learn to paint.

Daffodil by Moonlight

I will miss this job tremendously, for so many reasons. Changing career horses in mid-stream at the age of forty and going to law school (with four kids still at home) was a terrifying leap of faith at the time. It was also the first time I’d just plain announced “I need to do this for me” and followed through. The journey has been nothing short of thrilling in places.

In law school, I had to confront my fear of public speaking, learn to think analytically, compete with overachieving fellow students who were young enough to be my children. On the job I’ve learned to juggle tasks and priorities like I’ve never juggled before. I have literally handled speeding tickets and a state Supreme Court oral argument in the same week. On several occasions! Representing the interests of the people of Wisconsin in criminal court to hold people who break the law accountable has been an honor and a privilege. Here’s a link to an essay I wrote years ago, “Law & Disorder”, about just why I have loved this job.

Even the building itself has been a factor that lifted my spirits and challenged my imagination. Built during the Great Depression as a WPA project, the courthouse is an Art Deco gem, lined with polished pink Georgia marble and festooned with ornate wall fixtures. I have walked many miles during inclement weather on my lunch breaks in the locked top floor of the building, which once housed a jail and is now used for storage. And solving the mystery of what had become of a legendary mural that had disappeared from the Courthouse decades earlier became a grand adventure!

The Courthouse Lobby

A Courthouse Sketch

The Old Jail

The job has also been a significant anchor for me as well. No matter what storms swirled around me in all that time–a faltering marriage; children with medical needs; the trauma of putting my  horses to sleep one year apart after thirty three years together; countless emergencies involving elderly parents and relatives; the divorce; dating and heartaches; the death of my father and my godmother–I knew that come Monday afternoon, I would be hitting my marks in the intake branch of the criminal courts. And at least in that space, the rules and the roles of the participants were plain and simple, and I had total certainty about what I was doing and why. For at least a few hours. And then again the following week.

But now it is time for me to take another new direction. I still haven’t decided on what I’m going to do immediately after I leave the office for the last time, to formally mark the occasion. I may convene some friends and go to a Denny’s Restaurant to spend that first Monday morning happily anticipating the arrival of an omelet instead of sifting through my closet for the right combination of spike heels, jewelry and a blazer to convey that “iron fist in a velvet glove” vibe I strive for, or scrambling to get up to speed on any variety of bail motions and sentencing arguments and suppression hearings. Or, I may take a long-overdue trip to Slovenia to visit my brother and his family, and see a part of Europe I’ve only read about until now. Those are the two main contenders, but I’m sure others will present themselves!

All I know is, the future is wide open. And the adventure continues.

Empty Nest

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My official notice that my nest was finally going to be really and truly empty for the first time in 36 years came, without warning, in the mail. After a thoroughly lovely, sunny morning spent at an art museum with a friend, I had returned home and then checked the mailbox by the front door. I leafed casually through the assortment of bills and catalogs and other junk, and then there it was.

A perky, colorful notice from the postal service verifying that my younger daughter was officially changing her mailing address to a city across the country.

This wasn’t actually “news” in the strictest sense. She’d been gone for several months, and this new location was something she’d been working at putting roots down in for a long time. It was a very good thing for my daughter, in fact, by any measure. She had had something of a love-hate relationship with that particular city for a number of years and had come and gone from there on more than one occasion, but this time the place just felt “right” for all the right reasons.

But all of that cool mature rationality didn’t stop me from standing at the kitchen sink and bursting into tears. Go figure.

Since my first child was born (the “training baby” that paved the way for the next three) I’ve tended a nest in one form or another. For most of that time it was a nest in the country that grew to have five bedrooms and was surrounded by acres of fields and woods, hawks and foxes and deer and birds of all feathers. And while my fledglings were young, there was plenty of hiking and cookie-baking and story-reading and minivan-driving that utterly and joyfully consumed my life and identity. I didn’t skip a beat at keeping that nest in place even after I went to law school and then the marriage collapsed after twenty five years. With teenagers still in high school, I kept trimming the Christmas tree and cooking dinner and baking cookies and keeping the spare bedrooms primed and ready for the older ones to use when they came home from college.

Then, at last, I sold that large place and moved to much smaller digs a couple of years ago. Now if I want to visit the forest primeval, I actually have to get in my car and drive there, though the drive is quite short. And yet…it still has a spare bedroom and that is very important to me.

For the past several years, my younger daughter has still called my location “home” as she has come and gone at various times to other parts of the country for professional or personal reasons. She is an artist who practices in a physically demanding art form, and she has a severe chronic illness, and she is the bravest person I know. And somehow the fact that I could still keep a safe landing pad for her kept me on an even keel despite the wrenching emotional upheaval of moving from the only stable home I’d known in my own life.

I’m pretty sure one could draw a direct line from my own life experience to the importance I place on having that “nest.”

The simplest way to describe my family’s functioning would be to say that my mother was in charge. Nothing of importance happened without her approval, and often times at her initiative. I remember that no matter where she was, she always wanted to be elsewhere. She is now 94 and widowed and has been crippled for decades. She lives in a very nice apartment with a good view of a river and a majestic historic building that she loves to see as the sun sets, and friends and excellent amenities for wheelchair accessibility, and she is still striving for one more move.

This did not generally lend itself to a feeling of tremendous permanence as I was growing up. But a particularly disastrous initiative had us leave my native Chicago when I was sixteen in order to move to an abandoned farm in northern Wisconsin with no plumbing except a kitchen sink. The nearest town had 143 people and that was two miles away.

In order to continue my education at a Catholic high school, I was sent off to a small city forty miles away and I boarded there, at least for the first few months, with a family recommended by the high school principal. It didn’t go well. I came back to the farm every weekend, and there was literally no room there for me. There were only two bedrooms in the unfinished farmhouse. My parents slept in one; my younger brother slept in the other one, which had just enough room for a twin bed nestled against one wall and a dresser tight up against the other. I remember having to sleep in a hammock in the living room when I came home for the weekends. And things only went downhill from there.

In short, any illusion of having firm ground beneath my feet vanished when I was sixteen, replaced by a yawning, inarticulate terror of abandonment and isolation that has haunted me through the rest of my life. It drove making some of my biggest life decisions, and blinded or paralyzed me from making others. My parents and brother moved back to Chicago four years after leaving it for the farm and picked up at the same address they had left off. It was too late for me not to have been utterly broken.

Fast forward to college, marriage and motherhood. As one, then two, then three, and finally four children arrived, I found an incredible source of fulfillment and happiness in making a stable home for them. With every bedtime story, every Halloween costume sewn, every batch of cookies baked, every Christmas stocking hung by the fireplace, I could feel something heal inside myself.

As they grew older, of course, their needs changed. Instead of fresh diapers, a corsage for the prom. Instead of lunch in a brown paper bag, money for gas. Instead of help preparing for a science quiz, reassurance that a major life decision was a good one. And so it went, through the college years and beyond.

Bringing me, inevitably, to the arrival of the change-of-address noticed that sent me, at least for the rest of that day, into a bruised and weepy tailspin. If there had been a pint of Hagen Daz ice cream in the freezer, I would have eaten it right out of the carton.

I have dried my tears since then, put my chin up, and claimed the entire bathroom counter for myself since I no longer have to share. And with the approaching Christmas holiday doings, I haven’t had much time or inclination to brood.

But there is a new year about to start in just another couple of weeks. The turn of the calendar from one year to the next is always a time for reflection on the past and optimism for the future. Sometimes I make resolutions, and sometimes I don’t.

This time around I hope I’ll make some adjustments in my thinking. I’m already known for relentless optimism as a coping mechanism, but let’s take the glass-half-full analogy a step farther and say that when all is said and done, my nest isn’t quite empty yet. None of my kids may be getting their mail sent to my house anymore, but I’m still here, along with the four-footed pets. And so I might as well start picturing and investing in my current surroundings as a warm, comforting nest for myself.

Because you know, after all these years, I have damn well earned it.

Christmas Axes, redux

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Snowy Christmas

I’m going to go back to the beginning here, and share the very first  essay I ever blogged at the tail end of 2006, just as it turned over to 2007. The end of the year seemed like the perfect time to launch something new, and that “something” was my first blog, “Running with Stilettos,” which friends had pushed and pushed me to do as a way to get back to creative writing after I’d switched careers turned into a lawyer. A prosecuting attorney, no less! Not a job exactly brimming with humor and creativity, though you’d be surprised.

I think there are several good lessons to be drawn from it, including (1) listen to your friends as they encourage you to do new stuff (except breaking and entering, that’s always a bad idea!); (2) you’re never too old to try something new; (3) who knows where that “something new” will take you; and (4) your kids will never stop surprising you.

In this case, I’d been casting around for an idea of what to write about to launch this new thing with. Essays had never been my forte. But then my kids came home for Christmas, one of those divorced-family holidays, and I handed them the rolling pin to make cookies and then couldn’t stop laughing afterward! Santa had a bloody axe…and it went on from there…

I got a lot of mileage from this first, inaugural essay. Not only did it give me a starting point for the blog, it was later reprinted as an offbeat Christmas story in the Milwaukee paper, it’s made it into a couple of my books, and it’s even out there on YouTube because I did a long-distance performance for a reading series in Illinois a couple of years ago.

So without further fanfare, here it is!! Merry Christmas to all, and may the New Year bring us good health and good luck.

The Tale of the Christmas Axes

Martha Stewart, stop reading right now.  I can’t be held responsible for the stroke sure to follow if you find out about Christmas at my house or my friend Barb’s house this year.  It’s all about what happens when you finally turn over the reins of control.  In the end, you laugh a lot harder. 

Barb and I could be templates for that tired stereotype, “women who do too much.”  Not because we’re perfect, but because we’re both coming from behind.  Barb’s still got some recuperation issues from back and neck surgery that slow her down from time to time.  And after a riding accident eleven years ago, I still run out of steam—and the ability to just keep standing—on a long day earlier than I used to.  Which doesn’t keep either of us from pulling out all the stops at the holidays.  I hadn’t been over to Barb’s for a few weeks before Christmas, but I know her usual standard—warm and inviting and really pretty. 

This year, I had three of my four kids coming home from college or beyond right before Christmas, and I wanted the short time they could all spend together to be as cozy as a Norman Rockwell picture turned into a Hallmark television movie.   There was a wreath on the door, and a nine foot Christmas tree with dozens of glass-blown and hand-embroidered ornaments, strung with strings of red wooden “cranberries,” festooned with ceramic birds and various cute critters.  Homemade pumpkin pie, homemade banana muffins, homemade Christmas cookies in four varieties.  Needlepoint stockings hung by the chimney with care.  So what if I couldn’t find the crèche for the second year running, I found the stuffed moose that sings “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” and put fresh batteries in it before they got home.  Somebody sat on it as if on cue.  Sixty pounds of fresh firewood in the wrought iron stand next to the fireplace, along with a basket of “fatwood” to start the fire in a hurry.  Coffee in the pot, and whipped cream to go on the hot chocolate. 

But the high point for fun has always been rolling out and decorating the butter cookies.  And this year was no exception.  They set to the task almost as soon as Michael, the freshman, walked in the door and dumped his gear.  By this time it was late afternoon, and I was done in after days of shopping and wrapping and baking.  And two days spent on a last-minute felony drug trial.  I poured myself a glass of wine, pulled down the bowl of cookie cutters from the top shelf, and handed off the rolling pin to the younger generation.  “Knock yourselves out,” I said, and sat down on the sofa to read the paper as the flames danced in the hearth. 

The kitchen was like a beehive, and I enjoyed the energy from a distance.  As soon as the last batch of cookies was finished and cooling, we had dinner and ripped into the present exchange.   Then the kids left to go open presents at their dad’s house, and I finally started to take inventory of what they’d left behind.    

It looked like a holiday bomb had gone off.  Every open surface was covered with flour, or gingerbread crumbs, or frosting.  Red sugar crystals.  Green sugar crystals.  Candy hearts, candy sprinkles, candy flowers.  Discarded coffee cups and wine glasses were everywhere.  Cookies were everywhere, too, and as I started to pick them up to store them, I laughed out loud.  My late mother in law had given me the cookie cutters two decades ago, and every year I’d pulled out the most obvious holiday ones:  there was Santa, and an angel, a reindeer, a fir tree, a bell, a star, a heart, a flower.  And every year, for some reason, the censor in me had missed pulling out the cutter clearly shaped like an axe.  Why Santa might need an axe on his journeys, I can only guess.  But the kids found the axe-shaped cookie cutter in the bottom of the bowl I’d handed them, and had taken it to town. 

There were lots and lots of Christmas axes in this cookie collection.  Bloody axes, in fact, as they’d decorated the edges of the blades with red sugar crystals.   Keeping the theme going, they’d brought the angels into the act as well, with bloody little angel hands to go with the little bloody axes.  I was surprised they left Santa with his head on his shoulders.  The extra dreadlocks they added to Rudolph’s antlers and colored red, making him the “Sideshow Bob” of the reindeer team, seemed almost like an afterthought.  I packed cookies and laughed.  Then I packed some more cookies, and laughed some more.

The next day I called Barb to tell her about the new Christmas tradition.  She had one of her own to match.  Seems she ran out of holiday steam a bit early too, and turned the task of decorating the gingerbread men at her house over to a twelve year old niece.  Henceforth, gingerbread men at her house will now have three eyes instead of the standard two.  It’s always nice to have tradition to look forward to.  Next year, if the kids want to do bloody axes and murderous angels again, I’ll make sure they’ve got red frosting. 

 

 

 

 

 

The Mouse and Me

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The Mouse and The Chicken

I’ve been discovering a great many things in the past couple of years as I’ve been getting more and more acquainted with my “inner child.”

For one thing, I believe I’m going to take up drawing again with pencils and pastel chalks for the first time in decades. For another, that inner child seems to have taken the form of a wise-ass mouse.

Ah, the things we don’t see coming when we just drop the reins or the steering wheel and just let life happen!

This unexpected journey to the past began a few years ago, when I set out to write my first children’s chapter book, “Finnigan the Circus Cat.” Up until then, I had done a lot of writing in my life for a lot of different audiences—newspapers, magazine, courts of law ranging from trial courts all the way to SCOTUS, and of course, essays about life for my Running with Stilettos blog and others. The one thing they had in common was that they were all written for grownups.

But the combination of a rescue kitten named Finnigan in the family and a daughter who is a contemporary circus aerialist combined to spark the germ of an idea for the Finnigan book. There were plenty of interruptions after I first put pen to paper, close to two years of them in fact! Most of the interruptions related to putting my empty nest up for sale and then moving, lock, stock and barrel, for the first time in three decades.

When I sat down to write the tale, however, it nearly wrote itself. The book—the series in fact—revolves around the arrival of a foundling kitten at a small-town circus museum, and is told through the voice of one of the two “circus mice” cousins who befriend the kitten and take him under their wing. At the time I didn’t stop to think why it felt so natural. Did I mention that the mouse doing the narrating is something of a wiseacre?

The hard part of the book was something I hadn’t planned on at all, and that was drawing the pictures that start each of the chapters. A lot of crazy last-minute stuff went into that decision, including the strong encouragement of a good friend who’s quite free with the “I know you can do this!” attitude. But after the first 24 hours of pushing back and saying “no, I can’t,” I remembered that I’d drawn horses obsessively—and very well—when I was growing up, and figured that I could likely make it work for drawing a kitten, two mice, and a friendly Golden Retriever. At least just for the first book. Or so I told myself.

Cat Burglar

Between when the first book was finished and the second book started, yet another trip down memory lane opened some more windows into the dusty recesses of my past. And that happened when a group of folks I had gone through grade school with in Chicago lo these many years ago connected on Facebook, and suddenly an informal class reunion was in the works. We finally gathered at an upscale bowling alley (kind of like the Taj Mahal of the lanes) on the outskirts of Chicago, and spent the next few hours sharing hugs and life stories and drinks and good wishes. Many of us hadn’t seen each other in 45 years. And even if we hadn’t been particularly close friends back in the day, by this age we were so darned happy to still be upright and walking under our own steam that hugs and smiles flowed non-stop.

There was something so wonderfully liberating and simply joyous to reunite with those people who we knew as children. Before the posturing and jostling and stratification of high school roles. Before the race through college and internships and work study programs toward a job or a career. Before the responsibilities of families, or the heartbreaks of divorce or other breakups, or worries about health or livelihoods or mortgage payments, and bills from the veterinarian and the auto repair shop. And so as a result I began to remember more of my childhood, and more of what I had done and what I had enjoyed back when the universe was still relatively new and the horizon relatively uncomplicated.

And then I wrote the second Finnigan book, and drew even more pictures this time, and went all out on some of them, really “upping my game” in terms of complexity and detail that I poured into the sketches.

Gliding Swans

And when I finally finished the second book, I realized that the distinctive voice telling these stories wasn’t simply a fictional character I’d invented out of thin air, a persona I’d deliberately created as a means to an end. The reality was so much more fun than that!

No, Maximillian the circus mouse, the guy with an answer for everything, the guy with the lightning-quick sense of humor and a sarcastic streak a mile wide, was pretty much me as a ten year old. It just took me a while to remember her.

Elephant

No wonder the words came out so easily! After a lifetime spent as a “responsible adult,” trying to live up to the virtues (or demands!) of “maturity” and “decorum” and “patience” and “reliability,” it is a thoroughly freeing experience to just crack the door open in my mind, and let that mouse sneak out and say whatever pops into his unfiltered head!

It won’t be long before I start writing the third book in the series. This one will take place in a traveling tent circus, and so I’ll have all the fun of imagining the circus through the eyes of a wiseacre mouse…or a ten year old girl.

And in the meantime, I’ve begun noodling around the idea of taking drawing classes…and then possibly painting classes. After years of branding myself as a photographer in my local arts community, I’d like to finally push the envelope and take a few artistic risks that I was too afraid to take when I was a kid because I never wanted to make any mistakes.

I have so many people and things to thank for this new approach to art and life. Finnigan, of course. My daughter. My friend who pushed and said “yes you can!” when I thought “no I can’t!”

But I’d also like to give a shout-out to Maximillian the “circus mouse.” He may be tiny, and a smartass from the get-go, and thoroughly imaginary, existing only on the printed page. But writing his character has given me the chance to finally remember—and reconnect with—the young girl I once was, and to give us both another chance to grow, and shine.

Cat…and Mouse

Goodreads Giveaway!

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The new Finnigan book!

I’ve had the pedal to the metal for weeks finishing up now, but my second children’s chapter book, Finnigan and the Lost Circus Wagon, should be published and available on Amazon on November 1!!

Enter my Goodreads Giveaway by November 15 for a chance to win one of five autographed paperback copies.

This is the SECOND book in the Finnigan series for young readers ages 7-10. In the first book, Finnigan the Circus Cat, the wee little Finnigan arrives at the Farnsworth Circus Museum as a rescue kitten, found by little Lucy Farnsworth and smuggled into the barn to stay “under the radar” because her dad is allergic to cats. Befriended by two “circus mice” cousins Max and Leroy and the family dog Boomer, Finnigan embraces his new home and discovers that the family you make can be just as important as the one you came from.

Now in this volume, Finnigan and pals are puzzled when a broken-down old circus wagon mysteriously shows up at the family circus museum. At first, nobody knows that the wagon really comes with a valuable secret. Nobody in Beechville that is. But when two shady characters come to town with plans to fleece the family and steal the treasure the wagon holds, it’s up to Finnigan and his friends to find it first and then send the crooks packing!

Chock full of illustrations that I drew all by myself!! and circus history from the Golden Age of circus parades, Finnigan and the Lost Circus Wagon will charm cat lovers, circus fans, and young readers and the grownups who love to read with them.

So enter the Goodreads Giveaway today to win your very own copy!!

Priceless memories, fifty cents

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“Patrician” glass tumbler

I’ve started to cautiously embrace going to the occasional “estate sale” on a weekend for amusement and curiosity. Before I sold my empty nest and moved to where I work (cutting 300 commuting miles a week from my time behind the wheel) I used to ride shotgun once in a while with my friend Mary who sells buys and sells antiques. I was along mostly for the female bonding on a Friday morning, but every so often I’d pull a couple of dollars out of my wallet and buy something that struck my fancy. Like an old book, or a porcelain vase.

Since the move, I haven’t been on one of these excursions with her for more than two years. I just can’t bring myself to roll out of bed at five in the morning to feed the pets and and then drive fifty miles on one of my days off. I miss those excursions! But I also miss the sense of discovery and mystery they represent, and so lately I’ve started to visit estate sales on my own. Not looking for anything monumental, but I’m a sucker for a pretty ceramic bird.

A couple of weeks ago, though, I couldn’t have possibly foreseen the time-warp journey I took back to my own childhood in a stranger’s kitchen. There, on a formica kitchen counter, amid neatly organized stacks of cups and saucers and candy dishes and bowls, were a pair of vintage glass tumblers with a pattern I recognized instantly. For the record, the tumblers were made some time in the late 1950s or early 1960s by the Jeannette Glass Company which operated in Jeannette, Pennsylvania between 1887 and 1983. They sport a blue and white Roman frieze motif involving horses and chariots and attendants and the exotic aura of antiquity.

But for me, on so many levels, they were the absolute embodiment of my Aunt Mary.

Aunt Mary

My late godmother, Mary Therese Griffin, was the epitome of fearlessness. The middle daughter of three born to my Irish-born grandparents in Chicago, she never married at a time when most women’s lives were constrained by that modest convention, but instead devoted her life to teaching and learning and traveling the world. Modern European history was her specialty for most of her teaching career, and I certainly wish she was here today to give me her take on national and international politics! When she died, people who she had taught a half century earlier in grade school showed up at her wake to tell me how she had affected their lives and their career choices and their willingness to cross oceans in search of adventure.  Here’s a link to the obituary I wrote about her and her ripple effect on others.

For me, of course, the effects were far deeper. As I held one of the tumblers in my hand, I suddenly recalled how my aunt had the glass ice bucket with the same pattern of Roman chariots on her bedroom dresser. That’s where she tossed her spare pennies, and as a little girl, I played with those pennies as children do, stacking them over and over in little piles of copper. I remembered also how I used to play dress-up with the sweaters in her dresser drawers, and tried on her makeup as well. Unconstrained by the responsibilities of a spouse or children, she enjoyed shopping at stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Bonwit Teller and Lord & Taylor, and her travels took her to Egypt, China, Russia, and all over Europe. The Parthenon. The Pyramids at Giza. The Great Wall of China. She’d been there, done that.

We did a great many things together, not the least of which was horseback riding, a shared passion. Museum-going was another, and we thought nothing of making weekend jaunts to New York and Washington D.C. and Pittsburgh to take in significant art exhibitions. When she “retired” from teaching, she swung right into a second career as a docent at various historic and artistic venues in Chicago, continuing to teach and to learn and to share her enthusiasm

And so I bought both of the tumblers, of course, for fifty cents apiece. And every day now, as I look at them, I remember my aunt, who never turned down a chance to travel, or to learn, or to enjoy a new adventure. I credit her with, among many inspiring things, the fact that I’ve always got a valid passport at hand, ready to cross the Atlantic at a moment’s notice should the opportunity arise. And when I look at that Roman frieze with its horses and chariots poised and ready to move forward, I think “how perfect” a memento…and a reminder to take the trip, eat the dessert, make the memory.

Ripple Effect

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I first published this essay ten years ago on my very first website, and have included it in a couple of my books. A decade seemed to be about right for bringing it out again, because the basic notion–that kindness is never wasted and encouragement can change a life–never go out of style.

Black River Marsh at sunset

She looked familiar, but somehow shorter. For an embarrassing instant, I couldn’t remember her name. But she was grabbing me by both elbows and smiling and anybody could tell she was REALLY happy to see me!

I was standing in the middle of Miss Katie’s Diner, a retro-fifties restaurant near Marquette University with a whole lot of steel and chrome, waitresses in bobby sox, and cheeseburgers to die for. I’d just finished lunch during a break from an annual criminal law conference that a few of the guys from work and I go to every December to find out just how much we don’t know about our jobs. Our little foursome stood up and shrugged into our coats, heading for the door, looking a lot like a casual, weekend version of the intro to “Law & Order.” I turned and then a gal I just knew that I knew from somewhere was right in front of me, brimming with good news.

“It’s me, Cheryl,” she said, and it suddenly all came back. She looked shorter because this time I was in boots with three inch stacked heels instead of sneakers. “I just had to tell you, I’m graduating from Marquette this weekend with a double major, and it’s all because of you!”

Huh what?!! We swapped essentials in a hurry, because I had to get back to the conference and my boss was driving and while he’s a terrific guy, he’s never been known for his patience. But…she wasn’t kidding.

We’d been soccer moms many years before, with kids in preschool and grade school together, and then had run into each other by chance a few years earlier while I was running an errand at law school. She was working at the university. We hadn’t seen each other in years, and as we walked and talked one day on campus and caught up on what our kids were doing, she told me she was tied up in knots about whether she should start taking classes toward a college degree as long as she could get free tuition through her job at the university. She could think of a million reasons that it would be too hard, too inconvenient for everybody else in the family, too complicated. And, of course, she was “too old.” I—keeping in mind that one of the ways that I juggled law school with four kids at home was to remember that I could always buy clean socks and underwear at Wal-Mart—urged her to go for it. But the argument that clinched the deal, apparently, was something my long-departed grandmother had told my Aunt Patsy years ago when Aunt Patsy was agonizing over whether to study accounting and go for a C.P.A.

Grandma was a poorly educated but quick witted and tart-tongued Irish immigrant with a very practical bent. “You’re going to be fifty years old whether you have that accounting degree or not. So why don’t you turn fifty with it?” My aunt took that encouraging ass-kicking advice, got her C.P.A., and rapidly made life hell for tax cheats, working for the I.R.S. I will always remember the story. And so, apparently, will Cheryl.

We laughed and hugged each other at the diner, and then I left. My head was spinning for a long time, and it had nothing to do with trying to fold my five-foot-ten-in-heels frame into the back of the Jeep. It had everything to do with the power of a kind word and a little encouragement, and what had brought me this far.

I sometimes think that we’re all just in the middle of a giant three-dimensional pinball machine, thrown from one trajectory to another by things entirely unpredictable. But one thing that remains constant is the remarkable power of believing in someone, and telling them about it. You just never know where that’s going to end up.

For me, serendipity threw me off the full-time mommy track and on the path to law school at a tourist bar in Florida. I was on vacation with my two year old son and some relatives on Sanibel Island, and had arranged to have lunch with a guy I hadn’t seen in seventeen years but knew from when I was a college sophomore. We reconnected because of a reunion newsletter. He was working in Florida, and so one day he drove across the state via “Alligator Alley” and we caught up. Umpteen years earlier, he’d been a really bright, challenging, dissatisfied and angry young man, and dropped out (or been kicked out, I was never quite sure) of college. I had thought his potential was limitless, and before he left I bought him a poster to take with him. It said “If you set your sights among the heavens, even if you fail, you will fall among the stars.”

Seventeen years later, he had long since pulled his act together, gone back to school, become a highly accomplished federal attorney. We covered a lot of ground over chicken sandwiches and fries and diet Cokes. I jerked his chain and told him I thought he’d be a terrific writer. He jerked mine and told me he thought I’d be a really good lawyer. I was happily writing a novel, and didn’t think I had the brain power to possibly consider such a leap. He wasn’t buying it. He never had. “What, you think you’re too old to change?” he shot back.

I went back home, mulled the challenge, took the LSAT to see if my brain still worked, got accepted to law school and started making the place my own. In the early days, if I hit a questionable patch, I reminded myself that John believed I could do this, shut my eyes, and forged ahead and did it. Eventually I came to believe more in myself, and didn’t need his faith to fall back on. But I was glad to have had it when I started.

So I often tell my kids that kindness is never wasted. That if you have something good to say about someone, say it sooner rather than later because you just never know what shores that encouragement will carry them to.

Just ask John. Or Cheryl. Or Aunt Patsy. Or me.

Take the shot

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I’ve been reminded lately that photography and life operate best with the same instructions, which are simply…take the shot.

This came to mind just this morning as I was taking Lucky for a walk before leaving for work. It’s been two years since we moved from 14 acres of woods and fields surrounded by more woods and fields, to the city of Sheboygan on the shore of Lake Michigan, and Lucky and I are both still adjusting. I’ve never been a “dog walking” person, since for decades all I did was shoo whatever family dog we had outside to the yard and wait for him to get bored and ask to come back inside. Now, city living demands regular walks on a leash, along with good manners and not chasing rabbits. And the fact that Lucky is large and mostly black demands that I tailor our routes on hot sunny days to whatever set of streets offer the maximum shade cover for our exercise.

One of these shady streets has taken us past a tall fence of weathered vertical wooden slats cleverly spaced and staggered for a good amount of air flow. The fence was covered with vines of delicate ivy, and I delighted in stopping and pulling out my iPhone on a regular basis to grab photo after photo as the tendrils reached and the leaves grew from tiny things barely the size of the nail on my pinkie finger to robust works of natural art, and the panorama changed from day to day.

A riot of ivy

Inch by inch…

No more. I realized today that the entire fence had been given over this year to a carpet-thick creep of vines with gigantic leaves that remind me of T-Rex footprints preserved in museum exhibits. The leaves all look the same. And their prodigious multitude ensures that not only is there no ivy to be seen, the entire fence has disappeared within its depths, like something in a Gothic horror story. I miss seeing the ivy. I miss the anticipation I felt walking by the fence after a few days absent, to see what delightful turns of growth had occurred when I wasn’t looking. And I’m damn glad I took the shots when I could.

The fleeting glory of ivy became apparent last fall when I thought I’d replicate a photo I’d taken a year before on the spur of the moment (and a U-turn later) of blood red vines spread like fingers across the painted brown brick of an abandoned pool hall. Nope, last fall Mother Nature was giving me no such second opportunity. I drove past the abandoned building over and over again as fall turned to winter, and found that the vines had simply withered and gone away. I was glad I took the shot.

Tenacity

And the same thing held true for a treasured tranquility zone in the town I left. With the 14 acres in my rear-view mirror but family matters still requiring my regular return, I had developed the habit—after  stressful visits—of stopping at a Culver’s custard shop, ordering a hot fudge sundae with pecans, and driving to a nearby park, where an isolated lagoon framed by tree-covered ridges formed in the Ice Age sat overseen by a giant weeping willow at water’s edge. Sometimes I’d sit in the delicate, weaving shade of the willow tree with my sundae, pondering the surface of the water. Other times I’d sit gazing at the entire tree from the shade of a skating shelter nearby. I took photos, of course, once I was done eating, and shared them on Facebook with friends and relatives. I was stunned when I showed up at the park a couple of months ago, radio playing, hot fudge sundae melting slightly, and pulled into my regular parking space only to find that the majestic willow tree had been cut to the ground. I have no idea why, and even if I did, it wouldn’t make me feel any less sad. I’m glad I took those shots when I did too.

Willow reflections

Spring!

What lies beneath

I hung one of them in an art show recently, and the comments people made warmed my heart. “So peaceful!” “Like Monet!” “What a sense of tranquility!” But I think what will really matter most to me is when I take the print home, and hang it either in my living room or perhaps at my office, to remind me of the peace I found at that spot. And how important it is to take the shot.

But it’s not just about photography. Life is much the same. Opportunities are fleeting, like milkweed fluff on the wind, and are nothing to take for granted.

So…if you want something badly, take the shot.

If you love someone fiercely, take the shot.

If you believe in something deeply, take the shot.

And if there is an opportunity to do a kindness, take the shot.

Because too often we only get that one chance to take it…

Seize the Day, Watch the Pelicans!

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Pelicans soar against cotton candy clouds

Most of the time, I measure “progress” in terms of what I’ve done, accomplished, put behind me in a day. “Forward” and “onward” seem to be the twin pillars of my existence, whether they apply to criminal cases I’ve worked on at my job, making progress on my next children’s book, getting enough exercise to justify that chocolate bar I had for lunch, or visiting the grandkids.

But there is a temporary lull all of a sudden. While I used to multi-task during lunch by running errands, grocery shopping, or walking to lose a few pounds, for the past few weeks I’ve had just one destination, and one goal. I sit on the same bench every time, in the same place, and just sigh. Because the white pelicans are back. And it is not an open-ended visit.

Like feathered rafts

Until a few years ago, I didn’t even know white pelicans existed. The only pelicans I had ever seen were brown, and in southern places like coastal Georgia. And so when I caught sight of some white pelicans soaring over a marsh in southern Wisconsin several years ago, the logical part of my brain overrode my first impression when I recognized their distinctly joyful flight. It took me weeks to find out that my heart had been right all along in that first flicker of recognition. Malcolm Gladwell wrote an entire book about that phenomenon and called it “Blink.” I wrote an essay and titled it “Pelican Lessons.”

But still, I had never seen them up close. In fact, I hadn’t seen them again, ever, anywhere. And then they showed up without warning in Sheboygan.

I’ve been working in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and loving the nearby Lake Michigan shoreline for seventeen years now. I finally moved here two years ago after selling my empty nest. I thought I knew everything that the shoreline had to offer—beautiful sunrises, a profusion of birds (loons, bald eagles, cormorants and mergansers) and other wildlife, epic big skies, crashing waves, incredible ice formations in winter.

But three summers ago, a flock of white pelicans—who normally use the Horicon Marsh far inland for their summer breeding grounds—landed at a promontory called “North Point” and caused quite a stir. The point, a shoal jutting into the lake from a curve in the shoreline, is a place where on any given day you can see a collection of ducks, geese, seagulls, terns, sanderlings and other birds vie for a calm spot off the waves that pound the shore. And next to them, white pelicans stand out like elephants at a puppy farm.

Hanging out with the natives

They are literally the biggest birds I’ve ever seen, with nine-foot wingspans and long yellow or pink bills with rubbery pouches. When they float, they look like inflatable feathered rafts. On the promontory, nestled cheek by jowl as they preen and stretch and groom themselves, they are absolutely comical to watch.

Clowning around

But oh, when they fly…be still my heart. They are sublime, poetry in motion, and more.

If geese fly across the horizon like lumbering cargo planes, and herons fly with the delicacy of prima ballerinas, and sandhill cranes appear—with their elongated necks and twig-like legs trailing behind them—like prehistoric cave drawings brought to life, then pelicans soar and maneuver like angels.

The US Navy’s “Blue Angels,” in fact.

Formation flyers

Once aloft, webbed feet tucked tight to their short bodies, they fly with a precision that is breath-taking to watch. A group of three, or four, or five will wheel and swoop, glide and dive, change positions and rise against cotton-candy clouds with the sunlight gleaming blindingly off their white feathers edged in black. Inky wingtips spread delicately like a flourish, adding to the impression that all this is nearly effortless.

A straight line a dozen or more across will form, gliding only a foot above the water, wingtips to wingtips, a dramatic line of white chevrons edged in black, coming in like a line of bombers for a landing…or not. They seem like mythical creatures come to earth to amuse us and amaze us and remind us that while we may have invented mechanical flight, we still cannot mimic theirs entirely.

Fly by

And so I show up at North Point these days, as often as I can, to drink in the splendor of watching these amazing birds fly by and over me, gliding on air currents and then, with a few wing beats, soaring against the sun. My friend Linda McAlpine, who recently retired and moved to Sheboygan, has been similarly enchanted, and so we’re sharing her photos here with you.

Eventually, they will have moved on to their summer breeding grounds, and I will resume my exercise walks along the lakefront. But for now, I’ll just sit and stare, and consider myself lucky for the chance.

 

 

 

 

Imperfection Lessons

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I’m gearing up to talk to a different kind of audience these days, and I can hardly wait.

I’ve done quite a bit of public speaking since I graduated from law school in 1999. This would surprise the heck out of any of my classmates who were privy to the panic attacks I had there on occasion. But I’ve grown (and pushed myself) enough to be able to enjoy talking about the law in court; and about the fun I’ve had with writing and self-publishing to groups of writers; and about how “it’s never too late to make mid-course corrections” to folks wondering whether there’s another leap worth taking.

Those have all been to groups of grownups, however. What I’m feeling so excited about, and so hopeful as well, is to now start talking about Finnigan the Circus Cat with children. And in particular, to share not only tales of beloved pets, and flights of imagination, and the idea of how big stores can emerge from little things…but what I didn’t know when I was the tender age of these young readers.

Which is that it is entirely okay to make mistakes. They’re just a healthy part of life and learning.

The real Finnigan meets his Doppelganger!

It’s a lesson I’ve been learning and repeating to myself for years now, and I still feel like I’m playing “catch up.”

The easiest way to make the point is to share with children the story of how I ended up drawing the pictures of Finnigan and his friends inside the book. I hadn’t planned to do it, but I ran out of time to get someone else to do them for me.

And so I did what I never would have thought of when I was eight or nine…I marched into to the children’s section of the library, and pulled out a dozen “how to draw” books about cats and other animals, and got very busy with a pad of paper, a pencil, and a large eraser. I used that eraser a lot!

My first tries at following the simple instructions in the library books weren’t perfect. Nor were the second. Or the third. Somehow assembling several circles and a couple of triangles into the shape of a cat’s face is truly an art, not a science! Many of my attempts and sketches involved more erasing than actual drawing. But I eventually powered through and got the job done, and now I can stand back and say “yeah, they look good…even though they’re not perfect!”

Art lessons!

I wish I’d known that when I was young enough to be a Finnigan reader.

When I was a kid, I could draw…but all I ever drew was horses. Literally. A couple of decades ago, my parents dropped off a large cardboard box of artwork I’d done when I was in grade school. I opened it up out of curiosity one quiet evening, and pulled page after page after page of sketches I’d done of horses. There were pencil sketches, and charcoal sketches, and pastel chalk sketches—some quite pretty! But I realized as I made my way through the contents of the box and my entire childhood record that the idea of straying outside those familiar contours and trying to draw something new almost never occurred to me. And it’s not like we didn’t have a cat and a dog around for me to practice on!

As I grew older, I feel now, the notion of being perceived as foolish or imperfect or a novice at anything became, in its way, crippling. In college, where I was studying newspaper journalism (writing came easy, remember!), I signed up for a semester course in broadcast journalism. I dropped the class after about two days. The prospect of running around campus with recording equipment and engaging other students in mock interviews when I wasn’t already completely familiar with every aspect of the process absolutely terrified me. And so I just walked away, my comfort zone intact, my education lessened. I still look back at that, decades later, and think “how foolish was that?”

A lightbulb moment finally came just a few years later, courtesy of motherhood and Fred Rogers. I was still a relatively new mother, and one day as I stepped into the kitchen to make a sandwich, an episode of Mister Rogers Neighborhood started on the television in the living room, and there was absolutely no tearing my toddler daughter away from the screen. She was utterly enthralled.

And so we began a daily habit of watching Fred Rogers talk to Mr. McFeely and Daniel Striped Tiger and Robert Troll and others. Truth be told, the slow pace of the show first bored me to tears. But then one day I finally “got it.” I can’t remember if Fred Rogers had fumbled tying his shoe laces or missed a button on his cardigan sweater, but I realized that he had built the ordinary mistake into the narrative for an important reason.

“What?” I thought. “You don’t have to be perfect to be loved?” What a novel, wonderful lesson. And I’ve tried to keep it in the forefront of my thinking since then.

Finnigan Lessons!

So, in those upcoming school and library talks, I expect to have some pretty fun discussions about family pets and their adventures, and how the real Finnigan inspired the “circus cat” Finnigan of the story, and build in some simple drawing exercises as well.

I can guarantee we will all be making some mistakes as we try to fashion the contours of a cat out of circles and triangles—that’s why pencils have erasers. And that’s exactly what I want them to know!