May 122025
 

“Where are you? I’m standing in front of your door, ringing the bell.”

“I don’t see you, Hannah,” I replied. Did you turn left on Sawyer Rd? I’m the third house on the left. White house with blue shutters and a pot of pansies out front. The address is 655. It’s on the post box. You can’t miss it.”

My sigh blew through the phone, clearly displeasing my friend.

“No, I turned right and now I’m at the third house on the right unless you’re standing at the end of your cul-de-sac. I see everything you’re describing, even your red Alset in the driveway. What I don’t see is you.”

“My what? Never mind.” I fought the urge to sigh again. So like Hannah to confuse even the simplest directions. “What’s the address where you ended up?” I asked. “I’ll direct you back to 556 Sawyer.”

“Girlfriend, I have your address at 655, and that’s the house whose porch I’m standing on this very moment. I’m not being a ditz, by the way. You put that address into my contacts ages ago. Oh, wait, hey. I see you in the window. See? I’m waving. Now, let me in.”
I went to open the door. Ten steps from the living room, and yet I could swear I walked through something first, a membrane or an invisible vortex that spun me around like a blindfolded kid in search of the piñata. I decided I’d been reading too much science fiction.

The vertigo disappeared, returning two seconds later as I stuck my head out the door. The path to my backyard was to my right. The one-car garage was to my left. That was backward. I glanced across the street. The houses in my development resemble one another, but homeowners add their touches. The Patels’ lilac bush was to their door’s left. That was new. The Conners’ car was parked in the driveway, which seemed to have switched from one side of the house to the other. Meanwhile, Sawyer Rd, the main drag, had also relocated, confirming that the view I expected, my view, had reversed.

I turned to look at the numbers above my door. 655. What the hell?

Hannah waited while I struggled to orient myself. She looked remarkably refreshed. No, more than that. Way more. Several decades younger, with tight skin, trim body, and perky breasts. Her dulled and silver-streaked hair had been restored to its former vibrant red.

“Do you plan to let me in or are you just going to stand there gawking?” she demanded.

“Sure,” I managed to stammer. “Did you go on a spa vacation or a time-travel adventure?”
Hannah giggled, even though the quip was not especially clever. I tend to use humor to mask my discomfort. In this instance, I was far beyond uneasiness and headed straight for anxiety. I took a deep breath and turned back into my house to see that it had changed.

My kitchen was now to the right, my sunroom to the left. The stairs to the second floor had moved over as if by magic. At least Alice, my sweet eleven-year-old ginger, was right where she always was, lying in the sun that came through the picture window, now repositioned to catch the morning light. If she noticed anything different, she wasn’t letting on.

Hannah walked into the living room and pointed to the couch. “Sit down, Em,” she ordered. “You look a little pale. Bet you missed breakfast again. I mean, I’m gone for ten days …never mind. Let’s get you something to eat.”

I plopped onto my familiar corduroy sofa. While Hannah fussed around in the kitchen, I thought about looking at my iPad. That promised to be a brain-buster. Instead, I headed to my bookshelf and yanked down my edition of Gray’s Anatomy. A cursory glance assured me that, at least according to this book, basic human anatomy hadn’t changed. Even better, the book read front to back, the sentences left to right.

I did notice that my copy of Goodnight Moon, a gift from one of my friend’s grandkids, had been renamed Moon, Goodnight. That was true of several other books on the shelves.

I sprinted back to the couch and collapsed onto it. Alice took the opportunity to make herself at home in my lap. At least she hadn’t changed.

“You okay in there?” Hannah called out from the kitchen. “Sorry, it’s taking so long. Looks like you moved some things around.
My stomach clenched. “Take your time,” I choked out. The words sounded strangled. My heart rate accelerated, and my brain went into overdrive. I think that was the order of events. What did I know anymore? Maybe time itself was running backwards. In which case, what did “take your time” even mean?

Calm down, I ordered myself. Breathe first, then think.

The admonition worked. My blood pressure dropped, my senses quieted. I needed to stay contained, observe only what was around me, at least until I could figure out what was going on. I hadn’t quite stepped or been tossed through the looking glass. That is, I wasn’t in an exact mirror image of my former reality. Some things were different—flipped, to be more precise. Some were not. I couldn’t yet tell what had been affected. The alterations could have been limited to a couple of book titles and street addresses, a house layout here and there. Or had entire cities been switched around and mountain ranges moved? What about concepts, ideas, or theories? Were those backwards? Had black become white and up down? Was I here temporarily or permanently? Why was any of this happening?

I started panicking again. Discipline, Emme, I chided myself. I could be bossy when the occasion arose, which has helped in my thirty-six years as a middle school teacher. I was no scientist or mathematician. I did pride myself on being intensely practical, however. I liked puzzles. I would figure this out.

What was the same, I asked myself? The sun was still in the sky, cloudless today, and a lovely cerulean blue. I wore my usual day-off attire of leggings and an oversized sweatshirt. My watch appeared to work. The date was exactly as expected, which suggested I wasn’t in some future time. The house looked the same, except for the reversal part. Same furniture, same view, albeit not where I remembered it from the night before.

Hannah, too, seemed the familiar, if bizarrely de-aged. I clung to the notion that she’d gone for fairly radical and, I had to admit, top-quality surgery.

So far, the changes I’d noted seemed indiscriminate, random. Possibly a dream. I’d already pinched myself. A bruise was beginning to form, which suggested I was very much awake and here, wherever that was.

Maybe I’d been drugged, but when? I’d spent the previous day alternately cajoling and threatening students into learning. This was followed by an evening of middle-brow television and an early bedtime. I loved my work, and I felt privileged to be teaching at such a forward-thinking school. I just felt tired, a consequence of being within two years of retirement age. Sixty-three was supposed to be the new fifty-three, was that it? I couldn’t remember. It could have been the state of the world itself that made me soul-weary. An affliction common to my friends.

I decided to pursue the idea that this was a prank, perhaps engineered by an earthbound human with an AI partner. Unless the perpetrator was some sort of deep space entity. I’d always been a devout agnostic, reasoning that the universe contained untold truths it was unlikely to reveal to us. On the other hand, based on the little exploration we humans had conducted, I was persuaded that we were neither the largest nor the smallest life form out there.

I suddenly recalled a popular Stephen King book (please be Stephen King in this world, I prayed, and not Kingston Stephens) called Under the Dome. A single community suddenly found itself enclosed in a clear but thoroughly impenetrable dome, completely cut off from the outside world. No one and nothing could get in or out. People became ill. Some died, some went mad. In the end—spoiler alert—the more intrepid citizens and their scientist friends on the outside figured out they were part of a game conducted by a child-like figure.

What if a non-human equivalent of a young prodigy or a disaffected teenager had created this universe as, let’s say, a school project? The notion seemed equally fraught and whimsical.

If in this domain we were nothing but game pieces, would we have any choices, any agency? On the other hand, wasn’t the concept of free will overrated in the world I’d left? I sometimes believed so. I’d engaged in my share of arguments about how to best persuade people to higher moral ground—to vote, to participate, to show empathy, to be better. I’d begun to wonder, after so many years, how humans with good intentions could expect to prevail over humans inclined to give in to their base instincts.

Hannah emerged from the kitchen with a tray of tea and cookies I’d stashed on the top shelf so I could pretend they weren’t there.
“This should help,” she said, setting the tray on my coffee table. “Why are you looking at me like that?” She’d caught me staring.

“You must know you look amazing.”

“Thanks. I’m the same old me.”

“How old are you?” I suddenly asked.

“Same age as you, lady. No getting around it.”

“And that would be …”

“Um, thirty-six, as you well know. Which means we’re closing in on forty, but we have time.”

I jumped off the couch and sprinted to the mirror in my foyer. There I was in all my glory—or should I say former glory. Firm neck, clear skin, no wrinkles, only a very few lines around my bright hazel eyes. Dark, thick brown hair with a few highlights had replaced the dull gray I woke up with. My hands were smooth, my figure taut, my gut gone, my delighted smile wider and whiter. This was me, at thirty-six.

“Hello, gorgeous,” I said into the mirror and noticed my voice was clearer than it had been in a long time.

“You’re scaring me, Emme,” Hanna said, coming up behind me. “Should I call 1-1-9?”

I laughed. Laughed so hard that the tears ran down my face. Laughed with help from a still-strong body not yet halfway done collecting experiences.

“I’m fine,” I insisted, hugging my friend of forty-five, no, nineteen years. “I just need to change and we’ll go out.”

“No rush,” Hannah replied cheerfully. “We’ve got time.”

Jul 212024
 

These are unsettling times. Not the first time some of us have experienced unsettling times, mind you. But if age grants us a certain perspective, it also grants those of us who are older a feeling of vulnerability. Amidst all the talk of moving to another country or even another state, the reality is, we mature types have to consider how easily we can get proper healthcare or how easily we can expect to make and keep friends, the absolute sine qua non for getting old.

Early on, I developed a wariness about the world around me. I understood that people could and would do unspeakable things to other people. I learned that words could wound. I recognized events beyond my control could deeply affect me, even as I let myself get affected. I tried to protect myself with logic and fact, which only went so far. At my core, I was an emotional type.

I came up with an image of a house, i.e. my safe space. A cottage somewhere in Switzerland, I think, with comfortable beds, terrific views, and a dog. The windows were framed by heavy shutters I could close against discomfort, despair, or anything in between.

I retain that image, even as I’ve grown to realize shutting oneself away only works until it doesn’t.

When my husband was killed on 9/11, I needed a plan to pull me back from the brink. The Serenity Prayer (minus the divine supplication) provided a key to peace, if only I could find the strength to accept what I could change, the courage to change what I could change, and the wisdom to know the difference.

A worthy goal but not a way forward. I needed hope. Not traditional hope with its dependence on guaranteed outcomes, but a more flexible version that might reconcile uncertainty with a cautious optimism. A version available to the spiritual and the skeptical, the wounded and the resilient. Me. All of us.

I called it hope in small doses, which is also what I called the book that came out of my journey to find what I named “reasonable happiness in unreasonable times,” which I then used as my subtitle. Cherie Siebert provided the beautiful photos.

Although plenty has changed in the years since the first edition was released, plenty has not. We still have so-called leaders claiming to have solutions for every problem. Certainly is comforting, absolute certainty even more so. You and I may know it’s a chimera, but enough people are buying into it—have always bought into it—that it has dangerous implications. The alternative is not to reject hope and close the shutters permanently but to look out and wonder, “What if?”

Hope in Small Doses doesn’t have all the answers. It does have questions, suggestions, discoveries, and plenty of anecdotes. I like to think there’s something in there for everyone, but of course that isn’t true. I’m okay with that, since I understand there are no guarantees. There is, however, the possibility that you will find something valuable to guide you through the tough times within and without. I certainly hope you do.


Hope in Small Doses: Reasonable Happiness in Unreasonable Times is on sale at various venues
in e-book and print. Both versions are deeply discounted on Amazon through the end of the summer.


 

Apr 042024
 

Well. March went out like a lion and so far, April hasn’t changed her stripes. Rain and wind have kept me mostly inside with my bored dog. Low evening temperatures have stopped buds in their tracks like deer caught in the headlights.

The weather hasn’t helped my mood. Neither has the long (by my standards) recovery period following my ankle replacement at the beginning of December. The process has been physically and emotionally draining. My entire body was affected. Being off my feet for six weeks was isolating. I couldn’t even play with my puppy. Pepper seemed happy with her assortment of caregivers. Still, I’ve wondered about all the chewed shoes, socks, towels, pants pockets, blankets, pillows, furniture…the list goes on.

Four months out, I’m up on my feet and walking, albeit with a lot less energy than I’d like. I do see green growth here and there, along with plenty of daffodils and forsythia. Despite grey skies, blustery winds, and flooded streets, April will eventually deliver the goods, along with my birthday. I’m now old enough to be firmly planted into the demographic journalists, script writers, and healthcare marketers describe as elderly. No way around it. To most people, age is not just a number.

By the way, it almost always rains on my birthday.

One early March morning that falsely promised an early spring, I decided I had to yank myself out of my post-surgery, pre-birthday slump. I started small, making the bed, doing the laundry, putting out the garbage, and walking the dog. A quick ride on the bike ended in ten minutes (it takes a fair amount of foot strength to pedal). One day I brought the back porch furniture up from the basement. My spine paid for that. I stained two wooden planters and earned several cramped fingers. Even a simple repair to my floor moldings (did I mention my dog chewed the moldings?) did me in.

At some point, I sat in my recliner with the heating pad at my back and an ice pack on my shoulder and decided I needed to retool. In a literal sense, that meant throwing out anything that was too heavy, too cumbersome or too challenging for me to use. Who uses a screwdriver anymore when there are lightweight power drills, not to mention fairly efficient electric can openers? Time for a quick trip to the hardware store.

It’s also meant retooling my attitude. I don’t need to become a fixer-upper at my age (there, I said it). I do, however, need to get back to the writing I’ve let slide. Future staining, painting, drilling, hammering, or lifting projects will have to be grouped together and offered to a handy person whose hands work better than mine.

Nor do I need to become the elite athlete I never was. I want to continue to walk my dog, throw her a ball, wrestle with her, ride my bike however far I can, take trips on occasion, and get back to Pilates. I want to eat, drink, and socialize in moderation and savor my alone time. I want to get better at meditating and better at both resisting and forgiving my nutritional transgressions. I’d like to wrestle my rage to the ground or at least push it into a sturdier container.

I’d also like to sharpen my skill set and add to it. Get back to writing, of course, maybe switch up the genres. Improve my French and my rudimentary Spanish. Start a couple of projects and see them through without worrying about their cost or chance of success in the wide world. Be more helpful to people who need help.

While I’m at it, I’m going to learn the Texas two-step. Beyoncé has a new song that’s got everyone kicking up their heels. All I need is some patience, some focus, and a hat.