Noticings, This is my new substack newsletter. While I’ve loved my little Ramblings blog here, I haven’t visited often enough. It has felt, well, neglect-full at best. My website is still running all the things: upcoming events, new projects, and freshly published art and programs.
Noticings will hold a theme: the little things I notice that contribute to my creative life.
I guess what I need and, maybe you might enjoy too, is a weekly glee-full rant. Think, avant-garde poetry salon mixed with analog methods, like vinyl records, long-hand writing, to-do lists, and home-baked bread. Think, gathering around a campfire and sharing stories, experiences, noticings. Think, postcards, hand-written Thank You’s, and a proper cup of tea.
Within weekly Noticings, I’ll share my thoughts, along with a creative call or prompt or tool. Something that you might find useful. Something to keep you inspired and your heart filled.
If you’d like to check out Noticings, subscribe, share, enjoy.
Yesterday I pulled my stent out. The surgeon instructed this post-op, though I barely remember her guidance. Blood. Warm bath. Meds. Pain.
The day before, I bled-peed all day. This too, expected. Still, when you witness your body pouring blood through an orifice that should not bleed.
Yesterday I prepped stent-pulling with a strong dose of Tylenol. I don’t ingest pain meds. More accurately, my body doesn’t cope with prescriptions. She—my body—cramps, vomits, shudders. Post-op pain management looks like an endurance test with heating pads, ice packs, and Tylenol. I also believe that pain is a symptom and masking a symptom often brings more complex challenges.
The day before, I joined friends at The Sandbar for live music. The band played 80’s tunes and a third of the crowd dressed the part—Cyndi Lauper-ish, neon jogging suits, hair poofed to sky. I knew the lyrics. I danced in a non-bouncing gentle way and realized that this was my first outing, my first witnessing of clouds outside my backyard. My body warmed with movement. I still peed blood.
(continue reading on my substack blog, Write2Heal)
Tomorrow brings surgery. My 17th or 19th while in this bag of skin. When I leave this world, I’ll leave lighter, fewer organs and rage than the state in which I arrived.
Today. I make a list of nourishing things: cool morning breeze, cricket choruses, fire pits and poetry, slow reading and even slower writing, pausing to push mundane tasks—dishwashing, dusting, laundering—into meditative moments of restoration.
Tomorrow they remove the infected kidney stone, too large to pass even with a stent. Perhaps tomorrow they will send the said-stone for analysis and determine what, within my body, helped build this beast. In a week, they will re-culture my blood and hopefully find the bacteria has flushed away. I won’t ask, Where did it go?
Today. I read pages of Tao Te Ching. I read this same book while serving in the military. A few pages every morning. Once I finished the book, I began again. I did this for four years and now, 40 years later, I see the way life shifts. I note the way we re-absorb story, language, another’s wisdom based on our ever-shifting lived experiences.
Wednesday, August 19th, my body fetaled, severe cramps spasming my lower abs and left flank. Probably a kidney stone, I thought. Maybe food poisoning. I dry heaved every ten minutes and thought, Manageable. Part of me feels like I could CLEP out of Med School after nurturing and nursing my son through 42 procedures, post-op home care, and over 60 hospitalizations. Then I add in my own disabilities and medical challenges.
This continued until four in the morning. I couldn’t keep a swallow of water or Ginger Ale throughout these six hours. I couldn’t pee.
Most likely a kidney stone blocking passage.
Still, I wasn’t worried until I stood up and couldn’t see, my legs boneless, my body numb.
Oh no, I thought.
I’m probably dying.
This is less than good.
Still, I waited. I mean, sometimes these little things work themselves out. Right?
Are writers who take years to publish better writers than those who publish frequently?
I’m asking for myself because I hear this fairly often. Because I hear this often, I assume the statement is targeted at me. I might be the target because over the last four years, I’ve published four books. (Thank you, Moon Tide Press). By some literary standards this looks like frequent publishing.
Maybe I’m just sensitive.
Maybe I’m feeling imposter syndrome.
Maybe I’m looking for another reason to doubt myself, my work, my worth.
Image credit: Howard Kinga
I want to dismantle the myth around “fast publishing.”
When I say, Publishing, I mean the traditional path: agents or indie publishers or university presses, etc.
Should it take a writer years between each major publication?
That depends.
How frequently and consistently a writer is published depends on how frequently and consistently a writer writes.
Let’s play with numbers.
I pen a poem or an essay every day.
EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
I do not claim to write a decent or even logical poem or essay each day. But if you write 365 poems or essays a year and you use basic stats with a five percent return, 18.5 of your pieces, about 20 poems or essay, should churn into something close to publishable.
And the number of pieces a writer submits will have a similar return rate, between 5-10%. If you submit ten poems a year or 220…well you do the math.
A few years ago, I joined Suzanne Roberts‘ Rejection Club. The goal of her club was to help writers commit to sending work out into the world. The number of rejections received indicated how much work the writer was submitting.
The first person in the group to reach 100 rejections within the year “won.”
The win?
Free dinner, compliments of the group.
One year, I reached over 200 rejections.
I can officially claim that I am the ONLY writer to ever out-reject Suzanne Roberts.
Literary publishing is a numbers game.
You might compare successful publishing to dating or gambling or job-searching. I compare it to high-level athletic training. To become a seasoned athlete, you show up, you push through the reps, you eat the science-based proportional meals, you rest.
When I was at the height of my “game,” competing on the national and international stages in SportAerobics, I trained six hours a day, six days a week. No matter. I did this for eight years.
There’s a science behind conditioning at high levels.
Maybe there’s a similar science behind publishing at high levels too.
Image Credit: Eric Prouzet
Naturally, athletic discipline transferred into my writing life. Into my life. Perhaps my time in service, eight years in the United States Air Force, also conditioned my mind-body approach to writing (and to life) as well.
Athletic and military training did not feel like punishment. I loved the challenges. I loved testing my body and brain. I loved discovering what I was made of.
Writing with discipline does not equate to harshness, torture, or punishment. At least not to me.
I love to write.
I love to journal.
I love revision.
I love mapping books, images, poems.
To this day, I still diagram sentences.
I love the the challenge of form, structure, genre-bending, and strange prompts.
I mostly love what writing offers me: self-understanding, self-awareness, healing, compassion, and empowerment.
I never write with the intention of publication. I never write thinking of an audience. My first draft is simply to write. To write for me. Only me. I write to sort through my life. I write to understand my wounds. I write to unbury pieces of me that I’ve hidden for years. I write to unleash my holy rage. I write to pour my gratitude onto the page. I write to find language so I can unsilence my silenced self.
Sorry, let’s return to numbers.
Say you write every day. Say that equals 365 pieces a year. Say you’ve been writing every day since the age of 19, when you believed every thought held both importance and truth (like many 19-year-olds). Say today you’re 59. That means after 40 years of daily writing practice, you’ve accumulated 14,600 pieces of writing. Say you’re an extremely organized writer and you’ve sorted these writings into categories: nature, body, world events, parenting, humor, spiritual, rage, love, desire, etc. Say one morning, you gather your file on childhood sexual trauma and notice you’ve collected 80 poems and even more essays. Say you tell yourself, This might be a book.
Say, a month later, while shaping and revising the childhood sexual trauma book, you sort through your files regarding your son and his medical challenges, and you notice, Oh! Here. This might be a book-length poem.
While working on the childhood sexual trauma book and the book-length poem, you still write a poem or essay every day. You still discover and challenge, flex and stretch your writerly self.
This.
My little writing life tucked in a small corner of Star, Idaho.
Image Credit: Radek Grzybowski
On the outside, it looks as if I’m churning out a book almost yearly or publishing poems or essays every few months. I mean, I am. That’s true. What you don’t see is the years of material accumulation. What you don’t see is the training of a seasoned writer. Let’s face it, when you train consistently, you improve your game.
This is true of dance, gymnastics, running the 400 (all events I fared well).
This is also true of writing.
On the outside, it looks like I’m new to the writing game. I guess I am with my first lit journal publication in 2017. But my publishing life launched while serving in that military, age 19, 1985. That equals 40 years of time working with editors, review boards, publishers. 40 years fueled with rigor, fact-checking, and editorial feedback.
During my time in service, I wrote a 12-month training program for my career field, Flightplanning and Airfield Management. I wrote this program on my own time, returning to work late at night where I had access to a computer. I wrote this program on WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. I taught myself how to map out a proper training program that might stand the test of time. I wrote this program because a gap existed in adequate training for my career field once we were reassigned to the European theater.
I was awarded the Inspector General’s Award of Excellence for this program.
This program is still in use today, 40 years later.
40 years later, and I still write into the gap, still ferociously and unflinchingly fight systems and methods to create magic: placing language where none existed.
I’m not the same writer.
I am the same writer.
I’m not writing the same story.
I’m forever writing that same story.
Am a I good writer?
I couldn’t say.
It’s subjective measure. And since it’s subjective, how frequently work is published should not be part of the equation. What should be part of the equation is the quest of writing. The why. The intention. Perhaps we pause and consider, The world of publishing for a writer is an “On the Outside,” story.
If I circle back to my original question, Are writers who take years to publish better writers than those who publish frequently?
After considering my 40-year journey, I wonder if anyone publishes anything “frequently.”
I taught a kintsugi art class in 2024. It went less than well, mainly because I nearly caught a few participants’ eyelashes on fire. I’ll come back to my fire-hazard moment. Let me back up: I’m not a kintsugi expert and this was my first and only kintsugi workshop.
For me, kintsugi began as a fascination and turned into a meditation, like many of my other artsy explorations. At my core, I’m a fixer. At my core, I long to help. My sons might tell you, She’s solution oriented, if you asked them how I manage challenges. I avoid words like “good,” “bad,” “problem,” and instead I auto-frame a situation as “opportunity.” Some of my most difficult experiences were truly opportunities for me to shine, to rise, to grow.
Kintsugi (and my, uhm, kintsugi workshop) turned into a great experience.
If you’re not familiar, kintsugi, kintsukuroi (金繕い, “golden repair”) is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. This form symbolizes embracing imperfections, finding beauty within the mending instead of hiding flaws or tossing away fractured items.
I found myself researching ways to make gold in my home to “fix” small items.
I felt like a magician.
I poured through a number of resin-based products with zero or little mishap, but the end result would often malfunction or fall apart.
I learned that what mattered most was not only the “content,” but the brand. Gorilla Glue and Let’s Resin worked best.
NOTE: You can download my instructions at the end of this blog.
I felt like a scientist (I may or may not have donned goggles) as I brushed on product, realigned edges, filled in gaps. The product always ended up less-than-perfect, but more interesting and, actually stronger, once finished.
Which felt a lot like life.
I love imperfections, accidental misspellings, one nipple a little lower than the other, a thick waist, a crooked tooth. I love pushing against social pressure to look a certain way, dress a certain way, act a certain way (especially “your age”) simply to feel a sense of belonging.
It took me a long time to arrive here, this place of love.
I struggled with approval-need-addiction a good amount of my life. I chameleoned into what my abusers demanded, what the military expected, what a husband desired to the point I lost myself. I spent the last five years purposefully isolating because I thought I needed to heal from so much damage.
What I needed was to time with myself.
Even though I’m no longer in “hibernation,” I now know that alone time for lengthy time is a necessary part of my growth.
I shared some of this experience, including my kintsugi practice, with my friend Esther. After, she asked if I would teach the art form to the Jewish Women’s Circle at Chabad.
No problem, I said.
We only need a few items, I said.
Lucky for me, my friend and colleague, Court Harler arrived (not for my class, but for Treefort) and offered to help me set up.
We needed 30 broken items. I bought bowls at a Dollar Store
Court and I may or may not have arm wrestled over breaking bowls because this part of the set up felt the most cathartic.
We placed extra products on a table, including small art files and baby wipes.
On a side, I could write a self-help book on the two thousand household uses for baby wipes.
I could also pen a sequel on the three thousand household uses for glue guns.
(Sorry. Different stories for different days.)
One of my favorite art appliance is a mini heat gun. If you’re also a watercolor artist, you know why.
These little pups are great for phone repairs, embossing, paint/seal drying, candle making, epoxy resin, and shrink wrap too.
We needed food, which Esther took care of in her usual brilliant capacity.
I began the workshop sharing all the great benefits of kintsugi and then invited the participants to gather ’round me as I demonstrated how to mix their resin with glue for best effect. At home, I used paper plates for my mix. For the workshop, I had purchased small plastic containers for each participant. Withing a minute, the mixture smoked and then the entire little container began melting in my hand.
Here’s where my military training combined with a lifetime of single-motherhood kicked in.
That’s unfortunate, I said.
At the time, I thought the “challenge” was the combination of the plastic container with the ingredients.
Do you have paper plates? I asked Esther. No. Only a plastic variation, which I thought would not work.
How about an old cardboard box? I asked.
We broke down the box and gave participants small sections to “mix” their potions on.
The resin burned through. Participants re-gathered.
No worries, I said.
Let’s brush on only the glue onto the crack. Add the powdered resin to the glue. Quickly push the chunks of bowl together.
This worked.
Sort of.
One significant aspect of kintsugi, as in many Japanese methods, is the slow and mindful process. We lost this because the resin “heated” and then hardened almost immediately. Still, the bowls re-fit and repaired.
Later, I’ll think about my reactions, my way of bringing a solution to the surface and when one way doesn’t work, I’ve two or five more ideas. This is not a super power. This is a mindset. A choice. A way of living.
Once home, I needed to sort out what happened. I wondered why I couldn’t replicate my home experience in a different setting. I soon realized that I’d purchased Gorilla Glue super glue for the workshop. Apparently, the super glue product is not the same as the plain Gorilla Glue and when it comes to science, one atom off makes a difference.
I felt lucky that no one lost a lash.
I re-did the workshop experiment in the privacy of my home and found success (and how much I loved a broken bowl with a “hole” to mend).
Court bought me flowers.
I placed them in a kintsugi-repaired vase on my kitchen sill.
I know I need kintsuigi in my life, in my attitude.
And I’m thinking about how much we need kintsugi in the world.
Kintsugi reminds us that we can transform difficult experiences into opportunities and resilience. Reminds us that each “break” is unique and, instead of replacing an item (or person), this 400-year-old art technique highlights our “scars” as part of the design. Reminds us that sometimes in the process of repairing broken things, we create something more unique and beautiful.
Disclaimer: I am not a kintsugi expert and if you use my ideas, techniques, methods and damage anything in the process, I am not held liable. In fact, I’m not an expert at anything and all that I share is simply that: a sharing.
I’m a single mom with three sons. I’ve taught them all the things, like turning off toilet water in an emergency, the care and upkeep of wool sweaters, and how to pee standing up (which involved aiming for Fruit Loops).
Of the three, Zach’s the oldest. He’s also the fuzziest. I’m not sure how his body manages, but it grows an impressive amount of hair and nails, like overnight. It also heals rapidly. Think, Wolverine. To date, Zach’s checked off 41 surgeries and almost double the hospitalizations. He’s a fairly high-functioning (and beyond creative) Williams Syndrome guy. One of Zach’s continuous medical challenges is visual impairment. At three months, Zach endured his first strasbismus surgery. At 18 months, he underwent intraocular lens (IOL) implants, restoring vision to both eyes. One of his many visual challenges includes depth perception. This means Zach struggles with up close work, like cooking, reading, and apparently, shaving, which I failed to think about until…
a few years back, Zach walked into my home office missing part of one eyebrow and half of a side-burn.
Hey, Mom, he said. Can you fix this?
You bet, I said, happy (and somewhat delusional) to help.
A week later, Zach asked, Can you make my face into a goatee?
You bet, I said, unaware of the training I would undertake.
I spent three days researching goatee styles.
Who knew the number of shapes one could make out of facial hair?
Zach had his own thoughts of how he wanted his goatee.
We opted out of this one.
We opted out of this one too.
I filled with deep gratitude that I held zero face-shaving experience, though my older female friends tell me I will need this skill someday, adding, You’re so lucky to have Zach’s help.
I like to think Zach continuously trains me in life and love.
I spent three more days researching perfect goatee-ing. Yes, there’s a goatee system. You need supplies, like a mustache comb, beard trimmer, and precision trimmer. I spent $252 on a variety of highly recommended (by Google) devices.
I developed a list of goatee-shaping steps:
Trim beard hair. This sounds easy. Do not be fooled. Zach’s folicles grow in every direction and super thick. The end result initially looked like a patch of wheat on top of a pile of dried grass. I worried. I ate a snack. I kept going.
Create an outline. I’m a writer. I’m a poet. I’m an artist. None of my own experiences applied. Apparently, the outline of the goatee needs to compliment the shape of the face. For example, wider goatees look better on longer faces. My brain blew up. I took a nap. I woke. I kept going.
Style around lips. If you’re unfamiliar, there are as many under lip styles for goatees as their are stars in an Idaho sky. Zach wanted a triangle. I made a triangle out of a tiny patch of hair. We immediately removed the shape because Zach didn’t like MY idea of a triangle. I stressed. I hugged a pup. I kept going.
Trim goatee to desired length. This required combing with a teeny comb made for Barbie (I didn’t tell this to Zach). We reduced the length of his goatee. He was happy. I was relieved. I ate another snack. I kept going.
Tidy. Clean all the non-goatee areas. This took the longest because, according to Zach, I kept missing hairs. I tell you, Zach could find a hair in a haystack. My wrist cramped. I paused. I stretched. I kept going.
All in all, it took four hours and 32 minutes for our first shaving experience.
If I’m honest (and I am), I’d tell you that Zach and I shave him four times a week. This does not include his eyebrow trim, the tops of his big toes (his kind of a Hobbit too), or his back (this will be shared in a part two blog at a later date). We play music. We laugh (which messes up my highly developed precision shaving). We bust out a dance move (also not great during shaving time).
I take my shaving job seriously.
This year, Zach underwent two heart surgeries. Both required shaving his chest. Zach asked me to do this the night before each procedure.
You know, the surgical team will do this again before your surgery, I reminded him.
I know, he said. But, I trust you.
This type of love breaks me. Every time.
Uncle Zach (with a decent shave) and Charlie, 2025
Say I told you that I spent a good, no, a great, part of my life in numbness training. Men thought me emotionally stable because I wanted nothing, asked for nothing, accepted even less. Women thought me a threat because men thought me well.
I was never well.
Say I told you that in my numbness training I learned to swallow pizzas whole, the thicker the better, anything to block my voice and keep my tongue pressed to the roof of my mouth. And say, in this training, I began to consider my ability to bring food back up an art, a talent, a superpower. Co-workers thought me hyper-productive and slightly masculine. My boyfriend, who watched me eat more and still dwindle to sinewy bone, thought me dying, Surely something terminal? he asked me over fish and chips and a pint of dry cider.
I was not terminal.
Say I told you that I paused numbing to grow a baby and the love that I felt nearly killed me. I didn’t know a body could hold anything outside of violence and buffets. And say, in this new holding, lived a desperate fear of losing all that was new—a boy inside of me because I planted him there. A boy inside me by my choice instead of through invasion. A boy inside of me nourishing off all that I would consume and keep. And say, I learned something new in this numb-pausing. I learned to allow food to settle on my lips, linger in my throat, move through the tracks in my body.
I thought I was nearing well.
Say I told you that after the baby, I returned to numbing because feeling—everything, anything—felt like a plastic bag over my head, felt like sucking air through a clogged straw. Anything good only reminded me that, once gone, the gape would be greater, the wound wider. Anything bad, let’s just say, I called this my norm.
I returned to unwell.
Say I told you that I’ve spent five years learning to sit with myself—mid-flame, midnight, mid-bite—and have tried to find the beauty in it. Whatever “it” might be. And say I realize how little I’ve learned in these five years except the way the body defaults to its earliest training. Say, I understand the way unholding a baby will do more damage than any war. Say, last night I went to an empty playground and sat on a rubber swing, kicking my feet into sky and, after, I laid wide on the ground and turned into a snow angel, gravel beneath my nape grinding into me, imprinting a memory that I hoped to later feel. To feel. To feel. I needed some echo or reverberation or even…oh, wait. I’m remembering.
Say, as I flapped and fluttered, I also howled and, after, fetaled myself into earth and watched the swings, empty, yet still swaying. Say that I wondered how they could hold all of me long after I stopped. I wondered if they felt me, if they feel me still.
My brother phoned me on June 13th, 2025. I was driving my oldest son to his weekly PT. I probably wore leggings and a soft tee. Maybe a loose sundress. I should tell you, my brother rarely calls. When I say “rarely,” I mean, like once or twice a year. I should also tell you that my brother and I love each other. We just don’t talk often. I should also tell you, I rarely talk on the phone.
I answer his call.
I’ve bad news, he says.
OK, I say.
Mom died.
I didn’t expect that, I say. I might’ve exhaled first. I don’t remember.
I do remember, pulling over into a gas station, worried that I would begin to cry. I didn’t. Cry, that is.
Her funeral’s next week, he says, and, I’m going.
I don’t know that I’ll attend, I say, and, Can you send me the details, just in case?
Sure. I’ll send you what I found on line.
Thanks.
I’ll call Ava (my mother’s sister), he says, and, I already told Julian (my mother’s brother).
Thank you, I say, and, I don’t know how I feel.
Understood, he says, and, I love you, Sister.
I love you, Brother.
I pull back into our drive, turn to my son, and say, Give me a minute, because he was in the middle of unpacking a new scene he’s writing when the call came.
I wait a day and send a text to some of my friends:
I’ve not shared this news with anyone. I’m still processing. My brother phoned to let me know our mother passed. As you know, I’ve had no relationship with her since I left home at 14. Still, the matters of our hearts are so complex. I will be sitting shiva for a week in hopes of healing, her and me. This means I will be home in reflective space. If you’d like to come with food or love or hugs, that is tradition. If I’ve not expressed my gratitude for you enough, my apologies. Much, much love. R
What I didn’t know, because I’d yet to talk to my Rabbi, is that I wasn’t going to sit shiva. Not traditionally.
What I noticed, were the friends who responded. Some with kind thoughts. Some with calls. Some came with comfort food of noodles and bread and wine. Some did not respond, which is a response. Maybe they didn’t know how.
If you’ve read Tangled by Blood, my first collection, a memoir in verse, you know the harmful impact of my mother’s non-protection of me as a child. It’s complicated to respond to me, I’m sure, regarding my mother, my childhood, my assaults.
It’s also very likely that it’s just complicated to respond to me.
When I talked to my Rabbi, he asked, When did she die?
I’m not sure.
We need to know. We need to know how long she’s been gone. We need to know if her body has been cremated or not. If it has, you cannot sit shiva.
I should mention, I don’t know how to sit shiva. I’ve never sat shiva. My mother did not raise me Jewish. I usually say, She raised me quite confused.
While serving in the military (forty years ago), I studied a variety of spiritual paths, including Taoism, Buddhism, and Christianity. Judaism, or more specifically the esoteric underbelly of Kabbalah, stuck. I’ve woven in other practices over time, like moon bathing and crystal energy. I’ve woven in methods to heal, ways to balm my heart.
It takes three more calls between my brother to learn that she died on May 23rd. To learn that no one knows if her body has been cremated.
I’ve probably sat shiva long enough, I tell my Rabbi.
He’s quiet. He holds space.
I continue, I mean, I think I mourned the loss of my mother before I entered the school system. When she witnessed her husband, my stepfather, sexually assaulting me. I was not even five.
Quiet.
Or maybe when I fled home at 14 or 15. And she told me that any man is better than no man, when I told her after ten years of rape, I could not stay anymore. I told her this at the diner she waitressed. I can’t remember if I had my lawn bag with me. The bag I filled with Levi’s and 8-tracks and my track spikes.
Quiet.
Or maybe later, at her mother’s funeral. I was 32 or 33 and hadn’t seen her since I left. And here, she waltzed around pretending she knew me, pretending she had some bond or something. I pulled her aside, told her that I’d love to have a mother but we would need to acknowledge the damage…
She held her hand up, Stop, it said. Then she said, If that’s what you need then I need to wash my hand of you.
That was it. The official, End.
Quiet.
Somewhere before the age of five and my grandmother’s funeral, I sat shiva over the loss of my mother. Shiva looked like eating disorders and dating and marrying inappropriate partners and drinking shots of tequila chased by Bloody Mary’s. I didn’t know I was sitting shiva. Didn’t know I was mourning. I thought I was living and nearly dying through starving and suicide attempts. I thought watching destruction during the war catapulted me into a deeper death.
Quiet.
How many times can you die? Or sit shiva for another? I ask my Rabbi.
Here, 29 years after my grandmother’s funeral, and now, she, my mother, has left her body.
You can be thankful she is no longer suffering, my Rabbi offers.
Now I’m quiet. Oh! How much she probably suffered. How much those who bring suffering are also in pain. I don’t know what to do with this thought. I set it aside. For now.
What do I do while sitting shiva? I ask.
IF you can sit shiva, he reminds, and, the goal is to find good memories. To allow her memory to be a blessing.
I have none. I have nothing, I say.
You’ll think of something, he says.
We never find out if my mother was cremated or not, so I sit un-shiva and pen in my journal.
I call my brother.
Do you have good memories of Mom? I ask.
We always had food. She worked hard as a waitress, he says.
At more than one place, I say.
Quiet.
Thanks, I say.
I love you, Sister.
I love you, Brother.
Someone, I still don’t know who, sent flowers.
When the flowers begin to wilt, but still hold color, I clip the stems and leaves and “stencil” watercolor onto pages.
I’ve not worked with foliage and watercolor. I’ve not turned foliage into art, unless you count my backyard, my fruit trees, my gardens. I’m not sure why I’m making art with flowers for my mother’s death from an unknown, yet caring, person.
I’m not sure why I don’t ask my list of friends, Did you send the beautiful flowers for my mother?
I save the flowers. I press them between wax paper and place in collected cookbooks: Moosewood, 52 Shabbats, and Fire + Wine. I don’t know why I’m saving them. I’m not sure what I’ll do with them. My plan was to cut the watercolor stem stencil pages into bookmarks and gift them.
I don’t.
I’ve tried to journal about un-shiva-ing each day since the call from my brother. This practice has churned into an interrogation of mothering. I wonder if I’m a good mom. I wonder how my mom felt (if she felt) about her mothering/non-mothering ways. I sort through this in my journal, in my garden, in my dreams.
By now, I’ve purchased modge podge and cheap brushes and art tweezers. I purchased these, not for the flowers, but remembering a friend’s dresser, circa 1999. She’d completely coated the furniture in cuttings and images and paint. I loved the whimsy. Loved the idea. I’ve thought about this type of curation a lot since then and have wished to apply this to my lessons with my high schoolers in the Juvenile system.
Last night, a friend visits. Our plan was to “work.” When I say work, I mean the business side of art. But I’m tired and I tell her, I want to create something beautiful. She smiles. She nods. She’s like that.
She works until her laptop battery runs dry.
I interrupt her.
I’m making some sort of modge podge collage from the bouquet of flowers for my mother when she died, I say.
I think I’ll make two. Use both sheets of watercolor prints, I say.
I’ll give one to my brother, I say.
I practice modge-podging on a smaller sheet of watercolor paper.
It works.
I like the way the flowers are dead and preserved at the same time. Like the way they’ve textured the paper. Like how there’s some fur-fuzz from my Newfoundlands who are standing by.
I podge. I modge. I need the tweezers to put flowers back together. I leave petals to fall where they will, like in my garden. Like in my heart.
I make one.
I’m surprised by the way the rose still holds her hue.
I make the other.
Here, my friend turns the rose for me. I didn’t see how I had the front face-down and I wonder how many times something in my life has sat this way without my noticing.
I don’t know if my brother will like the art. Here, my way of creating a soft memory where none exists. I don’t know if he’ll understand what I’ve tried to do. I do know that it doesn’t matter.
After my friend leaves, after the pups fall to sleep, I stand beneath the Full Blood Moon and empty my hurt and some anger I that I thought I’d already released. I understand that my mother never did wash her hands of me. I understand the way her non-protection and her abandonment has curated much of my narrative arc. I understand that there is no “end” in relationships. Only movement. Forward or backward. We decide.
On April 14th this year, my oldest son, Zach, underwent his 40th procedure. He’s 24. You might’ve kept up with this event through my social media posts. You might’ve thought me worried. You also might’ve believed me strong.
Let’s not be fooled.
If you asked me, How are you? those two months leading up to Zach’s procedure, I would’ve responded, Great. This is an easy one.
I would’ve believed this response to be true.
Today, now two months out from that surgery (yes, Zach is doing fantastic), and I’ve journaled about this experience in hindsight. I wanted to share a few of my entries.
We knew this surgery was coming.
We’ve known this surgery was coming for almost two years, probably longer.
We were ready.
Image: Zach at his pacemaker interrogation, Feb 19th, 2025.
At birth, Zach barely weighed four pounds. He had a heart defect and could not breathe on his own or eat. His limbs were twisted. By the time he was three months, I’d learn that he was visually impaired and deaf in one ear as well. And more.
Image: Zach only a few hours old, briefly held by me and the nurse before returning to his isolette and vent at St. Lukes NICU, Boise, March 27th, 2001.
Image: Zach in his isolette, St. Lukes NICU, Boise, March, 2001.
I wouldn’t know until Zach was nearing 18 months that he had a secondary heart defect, bradycardia. His heart didn’t just slow, it stopped, though I didn’t know his heart was stopping. His body trembled as if he were seizing.
It took months with monitors before I captured an “event” for the specialists to accurately diagnose him.
Image: This is Zach walking his little journey with all those monitors, Fall, 2003 and by now he’s endured nearly 20 procedures.
Zach endured his first heart surgery, a pacemaker implanted into his abdomen because his body was too small to “store” the device anywhere else. We’d flown to Chicago for this procedure. The “seizure-like” activity ceased within minutes of the pacemaker installation.
I didn’t understand then that with every “event,” Zach died. Over and over.
By 2013, we (Zach and me) traveled to Sacred Heart in Spokane, Washington for another pacemaker-related surgery. This, a simple battery change.
Safe Handling is a collection-length poem, but really, this poem is a love letter to Zach, to a surgeon, to my two other incredible sons.
Fast forward. Here. 2025. We know the battery must be replaced. Every year at Zach’s heart interrogation, we are given the countdown. We are told how much life is left in the battery. We are told whether leads need to be exchanged. We are told how many “events” occurred and how long each one lasted.
We are informed.
We are prepared.
When I say “we,” I mean Zach, my other two sons, and me.
A heart like Zach’s means two different surgeons. One monitors his defect (back flow, aortic fusion, and more), while the other monitors his bradycardia and the pacemaker.
A heart like Zach’s handles life with love, with clarity, with complete tolerance and truth.
(I wish I had a heart like Zach’s)
Image: One of the many pre-op appointments before Zach’s 2025 procedure.
The size of it all.
This surgery is not a battery replacement, but is another very simple surgery.
I call these little operations “tune ups.”
They, the surgeon, will place a new pacemaker near Zach’s left shoulder.
This device (similar to the one that is soon to be installed) is much smaller than the one in his abdominal cavity.
Here, Zach is so excited to have his new pacemaker.
Perhaps because we’ve been counting down to this surgery for a few years, I countdown.
I countdown on social media.
I post, not for sympathy, but because these types of journeys are rarely shared. They are usually quiet, isolated, tests of endurance and faith.
Here, April 6th, and we are eight days out.
Much like most matters of the heart, this, Zach’s heart, has been clearly part of my own rhythm.
I penned a poem somewhere between his birth and 2022, “Life Lines.”
Here, seven days out in my countdown and I talk about Zach’s heart.
The responses on SM helped. I felt less alone. I was also managing a cleaning spree in my home.
I washed my cabinets and walls. I repainted base boards. I vacuumed between the concrete cracks on my driveway. I thought my frenzy simple distraction. Thought this a healthy way of managing stress.
Or maybe I thought, I’m just over-prepping the house for Zach’s return.
My neighbors did not ask. Some of them have started vacuuming their driveways and I feel I might’ve launched an unhealthy trend.
I’m cleaning. I’m counting. I’m counting down. I logically understand that though this is a simple procedure, there is risk.
I even correlate my brain to the last heart surgery, the battery exchange, where Zach ended up with a staph infection and nearly died.
…an excerpt from Safe Handling, from that 2013 experience with Zach, with his heart.
Oh…in the countdown…the list.
Here, all the pre-op needs.
…and the “other” pre-op preparations.
These are the things we rarely talk about, especially as a single parent with a special needs child.
Oh! the extra prep and planning.
By April 11th, three days out, I’d missed posting on social media. I feel bad. I feel like I’ve let someone down.
Perhaps I decided to do the countdown publicly for my own need. Perhaps I needed one more task to ensure the busy, distract the worry.
Though, I didn’t think I was worried at the time.
Here, the day before surgery and Zach has been receiving so many messages. I read the responses aloud each day.
All that out-pour of love.
I forget to say, Thank You.
I still need to say, Thank You.
How small Thank You feels right now, two months later.
We arrive.
We wait.
Zach is ready.
This new pacemaker will change his life. He will be able to operate (and be near) a microwave, which means more independent living. His old pacemaker, which brings him much discomfort, will eventually be removed (another surgery for another day).
Image: Zach at St Lukes, Boise, April 14, 2025.
I sit in the small waiting area, an open book on my lap that I don’t read.
The surgeon comes in, says, He’s in recovery. You can come back in five minutes or so.
And here, I crumble.
I did not know how much stress my body held. Did not know the worry I carried. I can’t even catch my breath and the other waiting families, concerned that I’d lost a child, gather `round to console me. It takes a minute before I can shape the words, He’s ok.
When I enter his room, my knees buckle.
Here, Zach, peaceful.
Here, a complete echo of his 2013 procedure, the one where he nearly died.
You see it, don’t you? The image for the cover of Safe Handling and here, 11 years later?
Image: Zach post-op and in recovery, St. Lukes, Boise, April 14, 2025.
Before Zach’s released, we ask his surgeon if we can see what the pacemaker looks like in his body.
Image: Zach’s new pacemaker, April 15th, 2025.
If you know Zach, you’re one of the lucky ones.
If you know me, you know how inter-woven my existence is with my sons.
You also know my gratitude.
You probably also knew my stress pre-surgery and with all your love, decided not to call me out, but instead, offered grace.
Image: Zach post-op check up, St Luke’s, Meridian, April 29th, 2025.
