Mary T. Wagner

Running With Stilettos

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!

Audition!!

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I was on a 300 mile round trip to my hometown of Chicago, and for a day in the middle of February, and the dead of winter, it promised to be unusual all ’round.

For one thing, the weather was balmy. Not relatively balmy for a section of the country often referred to as “the frozen tundra,” but absolutely balmy. I was wearing a sleeveless summer dress and a pair of sandals. By mid-afternoon at 69 degrees, even the sweater I’d brought was extraneous. Though in the “be prepared” vein of a Wisconsinite, I was certainly prepared for anything. I had two coats in the car as well, winter gloves, and a pair of furry earmuffs.

I grew up in Chicago, but my family moved north to Wisconsin when I was a teenager. For the rest of my life—except for a year working in downtown Chicago before I started college—I’ve stayed and made my life in Wisconsin. But there have been no end to the round trips I’ve made back to Chicago over the years.

I’ve driven the route with a minivan full of kids to visit family and tour splendid museums. I’ve driven it like a bat out of hell with at tool kit, cordless drill, and funeral-ready black suit in the car to respond to family emergencies. I’ve made the trip every summer since 2008 with a car full of books and promotional materials to hang out at the Printers Row Lit Fest, which I have often described as the most fun I could have as an author without being arrested. I was just there a few weeks ago with a bus full of other writers for a tour of historic literary places like The Cliff Dwellers Club and the Billy Goat Tavern (think “cheeseborgers” and John Belushi and Saturday Night Live) And I’ve driven down there on occasion to perform “live lit” at venues like Essay Fiesta and That’s All She Wrote.

This time I was on the road to do something I hadn’t done in Chicago before, which was to audition for an essay-reading series called “Listen To Your Mother.” As a mother of four, when I heard the title, I just could not resist! I’d submitted an essay called “Tiger Beat” that I’d written some years before, on the theme of motherhood and the primal “mother tiger” gene that kicks in when a child is sick, and the event’s organizers liked it enough to at least warrant an invite to read it out loud during two days of try-outs.

Tryouts!

I couldn’t help but smile at the realization at how very far I’d traveled in a couple of decades when it came to talking in front of a group. For my entire life, I’d suffered from a tremendous fear of public speaking. Panic attack level. Hyperventilation level. Struggling to breathe level. This wasn’t a problem in my first profession—newspaper journalism where my thoughts were expressed in newsprint—but it certainly was in my second—law. A friend of mind can tell the story, in drawn-out and incredibly witty fashion, of how she thought she might have to perform CPR on me during one of our “appellate arguments” in law school in front of a panel of judges. Still not quite so funny from my perspective! But I worked hard at beating back the fear, at least in a courtroom setting.

Reading in front of a group of assorted strangers was something else, and when I first read at Essay Fiesta at The Book Cellar bookstore, it was definitely stepping out of my comfort zone. I’d brought a posse of girlfriends to lend moral support. I actually dressed in an outfit I could wear in a courtroom. I calmed myself by thinking “imagine the audience is the state supreme court!” And despite the initial throat tightening and quaver in my voice, it eventually went just fine. And now here I was several years later, and I didn’t feel nervous at all.

The spires of Chicago’s skyline rose from the prairie like the Emerald City in Oz as I hurtled along in the express lane, keeping an eye on the traffic on the rest of the interstate beside me.  As a Chicago native, I have certain default navigational settings that will override any temptation to let Google choose a path for me. Such as, understand that the center of the universe radiates outward from the intersection of State and Madison Streets in the heart of the Loop. And if you discern a sea of red brake lights start to clog at the bottleneck leading into the city center, leave the freeway north on Ohio Street and zigzag your way along city streets the rest of the way to your destination.

I zigged and zagged, over the Chicago River and under the tracks of the elevated trains,

Under the El

and eventually found my way a few minutes early to the Overflow Coffee Bar where the auditions were being held in a back room. I ordered a coffee that involved chocolate and whipped cream, and filled out the rest of the necessary paperwork for the audition.

The Overflow Coffee Bar

The organizers—a pair of young women named Melisa and Tracey who were…wait for it…young enough to be my daughters!!—had this system down to a science. They’d booked three readers per half hour slot spread over the course of two days, so every audition was pegged for ten minutes. Five of those minutes were devoted for the actual reading itself. I introduced myself, explained that I’d had laryngitis the day before, and croaked and squeaked my way through the “Tiger Beat” piece. They graciously offered me chocolate on my way out, and soon after I was heading north again.

Not to Wisconsin just yet—on this warm and gorgeous day I first stopped at Millenium Park to do some “photobombing” with my children’s book Finnigan the Circus Cat. Folks everywhere who would normally be holed up in their homes and cursing the snow and ice everywhere were walking around in shirtsleeves and shorts and summer dresses, basking in the sunlight and flooding the park with smiles. I snapped a few photos—Finnigan with the giant bean! Finnigan with the skyline! Finnigan with one of the Art Institute’s legendary lions!

And then I went back to my default navigational settings, and wound my way back to the interstate via the Ontario Street ramp, which I’d been traveling since I was a little girl in the front seat of my godmother’s black Chevy Bel Aire.

After an entire day and three hundred miles, do I know if I’m going to be in the show? I have absolutely no idea. Auditions are still going on today as I type. I know I’m not everybody’s cup of tea. Nobody can be everybody’s cup of tea!

But at the end of the day, I was happy that I “went for it.” It was something new, and something different, hinging on words that were dear to my heart, and that’s what really mattered.

Angels in the Snow

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We are currently hunkered down in the Midwest with a blizzard upon us. I was talking with my oldest daughter just the day before about how we had survived an accident in just such a storm years before, and how we truly relied on the kindness of strangers. So while I wrote this a while ago, I’m sharing this with you now to show that angels come in many forms…

Wisconsin in winter

Wisconsin in winter

I can still remember the snow falling in buckets and clumps, drenching the landscape, cloaking the interstate and obscuring any sense of where one lane ended and another one began, muffling the brightness of the far-off street lights like a scrim on a theater stage.

We could see the street lights above empty, wind-swept streets as we passed by the highway exit that was our best hope of finding a motel and waiting out the storm. We drove past because we had been in the left lane of the highway when the exit finally came into view, and the road surface was too slippery to change lanes quickly enough.

Surely, we thought, we’d get off at the very next exit. We weren’t in the middle of the Gobi desert or Antarctica. This was the American midwest. There had to be a motel somewhere nearby, somewhere with central heating and clean sheets and a bathroom, where we would admit that a blizzard in northern Wisconsin had proven that there existed some times you should just stay home and wait it out. I cautiously and slowly edged the minivan into the right lane—or what seemed to be a lane—and kept watching the dark side of the highway for a snow-covered green blur that would be the next road sign.

My daughter pored over a map of Wisconsin by a tiny reading light above the dashboard. If that last exit was Menomonee, there had to be smaller towns up ahead.

We had started the journey hours earlier, a familiar three hundred mile trek from our home in southern Wisconsin to the Twin Cities where my daughter was a college student. Sometimes her dad drove and I stayed home with the rest of the kids, and sometimes I drove. The trip one-way took a good six hours in good weather.

The weather had indeed been good when we started, that much was true. There were a few snow flurries going on as we pulled out of the driveway, but four-wheel drive will make you cocky. The weather forecasters were predicting snow in our path, but who ever expected total accuracy from the weatherman? We blithely set out in daylight, with the goal of making it to the Twin Cities not far off our usual schedule.

As daylight faded, the snow picked up. For about an hour we vacillated over whether it was getting heavy enough to justify benching ourselves at a motel until morning, or whether it was starting to lighten up. Wishful thinking can be so disarming. And with every mile we drew closer to our destination, the more tantalizing the thought of completing the journey without interruption.

As we sailed past the exit and watched the street lights get swallowed by a blanket of white, we finally knew we’d overreached. Still, we were confident that a room for hire would be ours soon. I drove cautiously, slowly, along the set of tracks cut in the snow by the drivers ahead. There appeared to be only one lane left to use, and every car on the road that night seemed to be following an unspoken rule to stay in that single lane, guided by the faint pinprick of taillights in the distance assuring that there was still a road to find, like hikers traversing a narrow ledge.

There are instants in your life when you don’t know if you will live or die, and we suddenly had ours. From out of the swirling, snowy blackness, a set of headlights perched higher than ours came up on our left. A semi-trailer whose driver had less patience than everyone else on the road inexorably crept up on us, bearing closer and closer. I could see the headlights casting their glow through the driving snow, and I focused totally on keeping the minivan straight and completely in its lane. The truck never touched us. But as it passed, the wind force it created caught the minivan like a giant hand and sent us sliding off at an angle, completely out of control. I remember that the sides of the truck were yellow and white as our headlights turned toward the giant machine while it passed methodically, implacably, like Leviathan cleaving the silent, wine-dark sea. As the truck drew away from us and disappeared into the dark, a drift of snow swirled off its roof and plunged us into total whiteout. We slewed and yawed blindly out of control. I turned the wheel desperately back and forth, trying to get some purchase beneath the wheels, but my efforts were useless.

After a couple of seconds that felt like a lifetime, we felt the front of the minivan hit something hard. A guardrail had kept us from sliding into a ditch or worse. “Honey, are you okay?” I asked. “Sure,” my daughter replied. “How about you?” I was fine too…but as I looked toward her, I could see the pinpoints of light signaling the approach of the next car in the single snow-covered lane. We realized instantly that our minivan, positioned crosswise across the lane of traffic, would be invisible in the storm to oncoming traffic until it would be too late to stop. I slammed the van into reverse and hoped that luck would go our way. If it didn’t, we’d be out of the van and over the guardrail before the next accident happened.

The wheels caught, and we pushed back into the lane of traffic. Slowly we drove on, and took the next exit. The road had barely been plowed. The map showed a small town a few miles north, and we aimed the damaged van that way with hope in our hearts. We were deep in the middle of nowhere. The few driveways that we passed were unplowed and uninviting. No sign announcing a town ahead was anywhere to be seen.

We finally drew near what seemed to be a farm, with a tall yard light silhouetted in the snow, and a large sign out front that gave it an air of respectability. The driveway looked as if it had been plowed at some point during the storm. We drove up to a small house. I left my daughter in the car, and knocked on the door.

A young woman answered, her eyes cautious and wary. We’d been in an accident on the interstate, I explained, and were trying to find a place to stay. The map said we’d find a town in this direction. Were we on the right track?

No, she answered. The town ahead no longer had any type of lodging. More important, she said, there was a dangerous and winding hill not far ahead of us on this road, and we should not try to navigate it in this storm. Well then, I replied. My daughter and I clearly needed a place to stay in this storm. We were easy keepers. Could we just pay her forty dollars to sleep on her kitchen floor?

She was sorry, she said, but she would have to refuse. She had young children in the house, and her husband was away from home, and she just did not feel comfortable with letting two strangers in the door while he was away. We would just have to get back on the interstate and keep driving.

I returned to the car, crushed and stunned. Ahead of us lay a road we had no business being on. Behind us lay the interstate where we had nearly died. The seaworthiness of the van was a wild card. My daughter busied herself with brushing and scraping the snow from the windows as I tried to inventory the damage to the front end and tell whether or not the van would be able to make it much farther. I called my husband to report on the night’s events and tell him that we were safe so far…but uncertain as to where we would end up.

A man with a beard and a dark snow-covered jumpsuit came up to my side of the van as I said goodbye on the phone and tried to figure out what to do next. I was startled, but rolled down the window and explained our situation. He thought for a minute, then had us follow him to the trailer located behind the home we had just been turned away from. His wife was out for a little while, and so he couldn’t commit just then to letting us stay the night…but at least we could get out of the cold.

We followed meekly…and when the pair of them were finally together, they must have decided we posed no hazard to them and folded us into their tiny, cramped home. As the snow continued to mount outside and we finally tucked into some warm food, we exchanged our stories. The young woman who had turned us away was in fact their daughter-in-law, they said. Until recently, the man with the beard and his wife had lived in a state farther east. But their only son was a farmer. And when it appeared that he needed help to keep the farm running, they had left their comfortable life behind and moved here to help him keep his business and his family on solid ground. It was not the life they had predicted, but it was the one they chose without hesitation.

My daughter and I slept in their bed that night, exhausted but warm and safe. By morning, the storm had ceased and the skies had cleared and the sunlight positively glistened on the newly fallen carpet of snow. We scraped the heavy coverlet of white off the van and said our goodbyes and heartfelt thanks. I slipped a fifty dollar bill on to a nearby shelf before we left.

My daughter and I retraced our path eight miles back to the exit we wished we had taken the night before and dropped the van at an auto repair shop to get checked before continuing on. The whole world seemed swept clean, a glorious radiance and purity to the snow cover that extended to the horizon. The highway surface itself, plowed clean in the middle of the night, looked as well-maintained as if Martha Stewart had been running the road crew. We chowed down over pancakes and sausage and pondered the strangeness of fortune and the kindness of strangers.

It has been a good eleven years since that desperate night in the snow. A snow- covered road still frightens me more than it used to. When I look back, I know that I have never been closer to being dead than at that instant when our car spun out of control in blinding snow in a blizzard on the interstate. I wonder at the workings of fate, and the hand of God, and the presence of angels. There’s a lot that I’ll never know.

But I know for sure that every so often angels appear without wings or halos, celestial choirs or golden flutes or harps. Once in a while, they just show up wearing a watch cap and sturdy Sorel boots and a snowmobile suit.

Ten Tips for Reinventing Your Life

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Intrepid “girl reporter.” Truck stop waitress. Radio talk show host. Stay-home soccer mom. Freelance writer. Prosecuting attorney. Photographer. Essayist and award-winning author. (Okay, so I mixed up the order just a little!)

When I published my last essay collection, “When the Shoe Fits…Essays of Love, Life and Second Chances,” a women’s magazine I wrote for on occasion invited me to come up with a list of ten tips for reinvention for the magazine’s website. Editors, of course, have a habit of shortening things, and the original list of ten shrank to seven. But two years later, the magazine is no more…and I’m still standing! So I’d like to share my original thoughts on moving forward and, of course, “growing bolder.”

If there was an actual dividing line in my life that you can point to as a single “reinvention point,” it would be when I lay on the damp sand of a riding arena with a broken back (though I didn’t know it was broken at that exact moment). Once the pain lessened enough for me to think, I vowed that I would never again ignore my gut feelings as to a course of action in favor of somebody else’s advice. I changed direction and went to law school, balancing four children and a marriage on life-support while conquering a crippling fear of public speaking. And for a while it seemed as though I had made the leap to a whole new life.

But, as I eventually came to understand, life is a flowing stream, not a diving board poised above a single pool. So…here’s the list!

1. Take a deep breath. And do it again. And again. See a pattern forming here? “Reinvention” (or as I like to think of it, “evolving”) is life. If we’re really living, we’re always learning and doing something new. There’s rarely a “before” and “after” that are completely unrelated.

2. Know that you can do more than one thing well at a time. When I started law school, I was convinced that the creative side of my life would be gone forever, left behind in the wake of this new and demanding passion. Little did I know that what I had loved to do—write—was what I also still loved to do. And so I became a blogger, and then an author. And then took up digital photography. I can’t imagine giving up any of those three elements—law, writing and taking pictures—any time soon. I feel stronger with all of them.

3. Embrace the strength your past has given you. I wasn’t a “traditional” law student by any stretch. I was forty, and my youngest was just starting kindergarten. I was absolutely terrified at the outset. But when it finally came time for those all-or-nothing semester exams, I knew that I had more toughness and resilience than any three twenty-somethings tied together.

4. REVIEW THE SHOES! Dorothy had her ruby slippers in the Wizard of Oz, and Cinderella’s famous heels were made from glass. Neither pair of shoes changed the essential girl but they changed the way Dorothy saw the world, and they changed the way the world viewed Cinderella. The right shoes can boost confidence, catch your opponent off guard, or empower you to try something new. Trust me, leather work boots and a battery-operated chain saw can entirely change the way you look at Mother Nature.

5. Repeat after me…“WHY THE HELL NOT?” And again please, only louder.

6. Keep an open mind to encouragement from your friends. I wouldn’t be a lawyer, a blogger, an author, or a photographer if it weren’t for some dear friends who saw more potential in me at times than I saw myself.

7. With the exception of arguing cases to the Wisconsin Supreme Court—now there’s an audience that really expects you to “lean in”—my life and career path couldn’t possibly have been more haphazard. Sometimes the most incredible opportunities come at you sideways. So keep your sense of wonder and adventure wide open!

8. Get to the shore. Your inner voice can get drowned out by your job, kids, work, partner, pets, aging parents, daily commutes. Abscond to a quiet beach or a river bank once in a while with a cup of your favorite fancy coffee and a bag of chocolate. Sit and listen to the world breathe…and listen to the voice from your own heart.

9. Feed your passion. It took me several years to recognize that being a writer is who I am and being a lawyer is what I do. Fortunately, I love both!

10. Success is not just about money or power or influence. At some point you have to be having fun! And if you need a primer on that point, here’s my Adventures in Self Publishing essay about the intangible joys I discovered after forging ahead to self-publish my first book, “Running with Stilettos.” I am so glad I opted to make that leap. If I could measure the fun I’ve had along the way as a result, I’d be in the Fortune 500 of “what an amazing ride”!

Cheers! And here’s to new adventures in 2017!!

Red Shoes and the Rocky Steps

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Red high heels!

Red high heels!

Made it to the top!!

Made it to the top!!

The last time I’d been in Philadelphia was a long four years before. I’d been on a mad dash cross-country drive with my older son to get to Philly to see a contemporary circus arts show my aerialist daughter was involved in. We managed to squeak in a few tourist-y things while we were there, and one of those was to run the Rocky Steps. Can anybody visit Philadelphia and not try to recreate one of those scenes from Rocky and all the sequels where Sylvester Stallone caps off his grueling workouts by racing up the 72 stone steps in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art?

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Even though I was in jeans and sneakers, I think I needed a break or two to catch my breath before we reached the plaza where Rocky would turn and gaze out over the Philly skyline. Put another way, my son’s a smoker…and his lungs were still holding out better than mine! As I posed afterward for the obligatory photo with the bronze Rocky statue just east of the steps, I mulled the thought that the next time I came to Philly, I ought to try to run up the stairs in spike heels. It had only been a few years since I’d published my first book, Running with Stilettos, and it seemed like a cute idea.

With Rocky, 2012

With Rocky, 2012

Somehow the idea always contemplated a little pre-planning. Like spending some serious time on an elliptical machine. Or getting my bike out of the back of the garage and riding it more often. Or losing, say, twenty pounds. As a matter of fact, plantar fasciitis has been a major problem that has slowed me down over the past year. It’s finally getting better again, but I joke that I’ve become a master at secretly balancing on one foot in high heels when I go to court.

But until a week ago, another trip to Philadelphia hadn’t been anywhere on my horizon. I’d actually bought—and then sold—an elliptical machine in that time! And then suddenly, in a matter of days, my daughter and I were hastily planning a road trip to her former digs in Philly, intent on retrieving the rest of her belongings before winter. She’d moved as much of her stuff back to Wisconsin as she could fit in her boxy car a couple of months earlier, but her cold weather gear and untold other flotsam hadn’t quite fit.

And so, after a flurry of last-minute details such as lining up a kennel for the dog, and a friend to feed the cats, and driving to an author gig in Illinois the day before for Indie Author Day…I threw a few traveling clothes into a tiny bag. And tossed a pair of maroon spike heels in on top. They had been a fortuitous impulse buy just a couple of weeks before. I’d walked into a department store to get some makeup…and these shoes were exactly at eye level as I walked past. Somebody ought to be getting a marketing bonus for that.

And so the bat-out-of-hell drive began, with 800 miles under our tires that first day. We actually spent a total of only 29 hours in Philadelphia, during which we (1) retrieved her stuff, (2) hiked in the Wissahickon Gorge with the son I’d done the first road trip with,

Wissahickon Gorge

Wissahickon Gorge

(3) toured the Eastern State Penitentiary,

Cellblock at Eastern State Penitentiary

Cellblock at Eastern State Penitentiary

(4) visited the Museum of Art, and (5)  got together for dinner with my son at the Trolley Car Diner before heading back out on the road.

Doo-Wop Diner mural

Doo-Wop Diner mural at the Trolley Car Diner

And, of course, conquered the Rocky Steps.

I’ll admit to some trepidation as we parked the car and approached the staircase. Who wouldn’t? My spike heels were just a bit shy of three inches tall. Not the highest heels I’d worn since buying my first pair at the age of 48, but not exactly walking shoes either.

I kicked off the sneakers I’d worn from the car, and put on the high heels. Then I handed off my purse and the sneakers to my daughter, who promised to keep the video rolling. Good grief, I hadn’t quite thought this through. Not only could I have used a few weeks of cardiovascular work beforehand…I could have used some makeup! And hairspray! And earrings!

A buff young man roughly the age of some of my kids, in a T-shirt and jersey running shorts, rounded corner at the edge of the steps and flashed a big smile as he proceeded to bound up the stairs like a gazelle. “Hah,” I thought to myself. “No way you…or Sylverster Stallone…could do this in high heels!”

And so we began. As I neatly picked my way up step by step, one foot in front of the other, it felt like a slow but respectable jogging speed to me. Slow jog—brisk walk—I am not going to argue that I was at a run! And when I was on the flat sections that broke up the staircase, yeah, I walked!! So sue me.

But the fact of the matter is, I made it! By the time I got to the plaza—which is where Rocky traditionally jumped around and celebrated in the movies—I was finally winded at last. Even though I hadn’t first run through miles of Philly streets and jumped hurdles over park benches on my way there. I give Sly Stallone so much credit for those park bench hurdles!!!  So a couple of minutes passed before I caught my breath and headed off to conquer the rest of the steps. Yeah, I think they leave the extra steps out of the movies.

So, all in all, was there progress made since the last time I visited Philadelphia? Yes! I can now say that I’ve both navigated the Rocky Steps in spike heels, and that my lungs were in better shape this time around.

With Rocky, 2016!!

With Rocky, 2016!!

But I’m also already plotting my return. Chief on my new goals are to quicken the pace up the staircase, and to actually make it all the way from the sidewalk at the bottom to those extra steps and all the way to the museum doors in one fell swoop without stopping to catch my breath.  Still in spike heels, of course.

In the meantime, we’re still working on unpacking the car with my daughter’s belongings in it. But I’ve certainly got a little extra spring in my step!

The Gluten Free Zone

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It’s been three and a half years since I went “gluten free.”

I remember the timing, because my first grandson was born three and a half years ago, and the idea started as a simple experiment while my younger daughter and I hung out at home and then at the hospital, waiting for her big sister to finally have the baby.

Going “gluten free” wasn’t exactly a lark, but it hadn’t been high on my bucket list either. Still, a friend with some auto-immune problems had switched her diet in that direction, and noticed some dramatic improvements in her health months before, and so it was somewhere out there on my list of stuff to try…one day. I had health troubles of my own to deal with, including pervasive exhaustion and fibromyalgia, and anything seemed worth a try.

That “one day” finally came, as noted, while we marked time waiting for the delivery date. My daughter also had health issues to deal with–Crohn’s Disease to put a familiar name on it–and so we thought, “why not?” We figured we could at least give it a try and be each other’s “diet coaches” for a few days. Also…it’s nice to have two pairs of hands ready to cook.

Within four days, we’d both noticed positive changes in how our bodies worked. In my case, I noticed more energy, a stomach that was less touchy, and the glimmerings of less pain from my fibromyalgia. This last was such a tenuous development that I even hesitated to claim with certainty that it was happening right then. Wishful thinking can be such a tricky placebo! But we both stuck with it for our own reasons, and now years later, we are converts. And YES, I have been able to say with certainty for QUITE a while that I live with less fibromyalgia pain on a daily basis. It’s been lovely.

In the “ripple effect” department, my sister-in-law, hanging out with us at the hospital and spurred on to try the gluten free diet by our own experience, tried it herself and noticed an improvement in her energy level and her diabetes soon after. Particularly, her A1C level plummeted. And it wasn’t for want of finding every tasty gluten free substitute pastry within a 50 mile radius for a while. Her health improvements happened while muffins and donuts continued. So she too has come over to this side of the divide and absolutely embraced living in what I call “The Gluten Free Zone.” And she now needs far less medication.

Folks sometimes ask me whether I feel “deprived” about my food choices now. Well…not really. I find that the things that I can eat without thinking twice about are still the things I’ve always liked…meat, fish, eggs, potatoes, rice, veggies, fruit, ice cream, potato chips, and, of course, chocolate. I need to look a little farther to find items like gluten free pasta and bread and cookies, but with the food industry embracing the gluten free trend with a vengeance these days, those are no farther than my local grocery store. Yes, the gluten free stuff is generally more expensive than the breads and pastas and cookies I used to eat. But the ability to turn my head from side to side while driving (or bending over to pick up the cat) and not think first about whether it’s going to hurt is priceless!!

I suggest it sometimes–gently–to folks I know who struggle with a combination of diabetes and obesity, since I’ve seen and heard just how much this change in eating helped my own family member. But some folks seem to have an automatic, nearly violent push-back to the idea. I’ve known a couple of people tell me flat out that they’d rather be thrown off a cliff to their deaths than make the switch. OK…to each his or her own!!

There has been a flip side to all this good news, which I absolutely had not anticipated. Within weeks of taking gluten out of my diet and my body, I found out the hard way that I couldn’t go back. Literally. For me, at least, “cheating” on eating gluten free and sneaking in a regular chocolate doughnut or a Cinnabon would start a downward spiral of misery that–in less than an hour–would commence with stomach cramps, and then get worse from there. Who knew?

For the record, my daughter and my sister-in-law have also experienced this, and so of out both determination and necessity (and a tremendous dislike of stomach cramps and worse), we forge cheerfully on in our gluten free lives. In past years, if a co-worker brought in a box of several dozen pastries to celebrate an anniversary or a birthday (we love to celebrate with food at my office!!) I could be counted on to eat two or three before noon. Not anymore. Now I walk into the break room and easily right past the box as if every sumptuous frosted long-john or Danish was branded with a skull-and-crossbones.

Three and a half years ago I got two great gifts at the same time–a wonderful grandson, and better health from going gluten free. And I am just so happy to have both!!!