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New at Getting Old

Flannel shirts, faded jeans, Chuck Taylors, Doc Martens. For a few decades, I mourned the loss of my all-time favorite fashion trend. But now . . . it’s back.

I remember the first time I realized that fashion was cyclical. In middle school, I desperately wanted this blouse from Express with a Seinfeldian puffy-shirt-style fluttery and oversized ruffled collar and my mom chuckled and told me that those were in style when SHE was a kid. But when you’re 13, your mom is utterly ancient, and I was both amused at the idea of my mom wearing that shirt and horrified that she and I would have the same fashion sense. But the lesson stood: it all comes back around. Bell bottoms become boot cuts or flares. Platform shoes become stacked heels. 

The reintroduction of fashion is just another signal that you get older. Now, it’s my turn. Which leads me to ask . . . why the hell am I so freaking hot? I mean sure, I’m sexy in an overweight, nonobvious sort of way . . . but in this case, I mean physically roasting from the inside.

I’m hot, and sweating, and overwhelmed. You know how it feels to be outside on a super humid, 90-something degree day? This isn’t that. It’s as if a furnace has taken up residence in my abdomen, firing up and forcing heat throughout my body. 

At my age, this is a common symptom of perimenopause. However, the term “hot flash” is only accurate in that when I was pregnant, I was only sick in the morning. Once the heat kicks in, it can last for several minutes, but often it will increase and lessen over the course of a couple of hours. 

Getting older is full of contradictions, especially for women. You’re blessed with more days and years above the ground, rather than under it. But then there are the moments you can express the wisdom age has earned you, interrupted by brain farts. Eventually getting comfortable with and prepared for the fact that you’re always cold, then dressing in layers so you can strip almost to your underwear while outside in freezing temperatures when your body overheats. Understanding the wonder that is your body while aches and pains limit what that body can do. 

Sure, I’m more at peace with the shape and size of my body than I was when I was much younger, I wouldn’t want to give up the lessons I’ve learned over forty-odd years, and my marriage is in a great place . . . but let’s indulge in some more complaining!

I have facial hair now – not just a slight mustache, which I do have, or black hairs sprouting from moles – two to be exact – but a pale downy fuzz has grown over every square millimeter of my face. It holds on to my makeup and makes me look like a teddy bear. For this, I have purchased a “deplaning tool,” which is just an expensive way to say electric razor. 

As if gaining those hairs wasn’t enough, I’m losing the hairs from my scalp. It’s as if my follicles have decided to rebel and expel for a time, then relent and allow some to grow back. I go through good periods (like now) with fuller hair, then lose a lot. Once, after a vacation, I noticed that pictures my husband took from behind prominently showed bald spots. So I bought a wig. Then another. The pink one is my favorite. I don’t need them now, but they are put away, ready to be pressed into service when the time comes. 

The stiffness! My hands get stiff and sore when I hold the steering wheel. My hips get stiff if I sit too long, which makes me a chiropractor’s dream. But to see me attempt to stand and walk after sitting for a prolonged time is to see a cartoon of the theory of evolution: hunched over, taking small, tentative steps and gradually standing straighter and taking longer, surer strides. I’m a one-woman anthropological exhibit.

I would tell you about how, before a medical procedure, my periods resembled that hallway scene from “The Shining,” and how my doctor said that the cause was almost never hormonal, and I went through extensive and expensive medical testing, only to find out that the cause was, in fact, hormonal. But I won’t – that would be too personal, right?

And then there’s my foot. In my right foot, just where my big toe joint connects to the metatarsal, I began to experience a “clicking” when I would bend, then flex my toes. As if the toe got stuck, then popped out of a bubble. And it HURT. I thought it was broken, so I went to an orthopedic urgent care. The physician’s assistant informed me, after x-rays, that “at the very young age of 42,” I had arthritis. 

At the point I got this diagnosis, I had just finished my fourth half-marathon. As a runner who started in my late thirties, I looked to Jeff Galloway, a former Olympian whose event was the 10k, who now owns a running store and is the founder of the Galloway Run-Walk Method. At 78, he still runs marathons and half marathons – go to Disney World for a race weekend, and there he is. I hoped to keep on running into my much older years. But running is now in my rear-view mirror, way ahead of schedule.

The PA’s guidance was to wear sneakers, basically always. I love shoes. I collect shoes. When I got this advice, I had a collection of Old Navy one-dollar flip-flops that would coordinate with any outfit I owned. I had pairs of heels for every conceivable dressy occasion – job interview? Serious, beige heels. New Year’s Eve? Dressy heels. Black outfit? Black heels. Colorful outfit? Shiny, sparkly heels. Have you ever shopped for sensible women’s dress shoes? If you haven’t let me stop you: they’re ugly. They’are AAAAALLLLLL ugly. They’re black or brown and have comically rounded toe boxes and rubber soles, as if designed for nurses in mourning or for when a nun may feel just a little sexy.

Enter: The Chuck Collection. Specifically, low-top Converse Chuck Taylors, which I am happy are now fashionable (again), but I would wear them anyway because I love them, especially now that they have platform soles available with more support. I have six pairs and now I wear them with almost everything and to almost any function. They go with jeans and flannel shirts or even dresses. Of course, there’s always the smarmy, “Sneakers? With a dress?” which I am happy to answer with, “I have arthritis.” 

But still . . . heels. I miss them. I had this dream, a dream I was saving my spare change and any extra money to buy. Sleek, shiny, sexy Christian Louboutin patent leather kitten heels with that notorious red sole. My husband asked me where I would wear them, why I would want them, and how would anyone see the soles anyway? Oh, you simple, simple man. #1 – every occasion that even slightly required dress shoes. #2 – Because they’re Louboutins, duh. #3 – people would see the soles because every time I would wear them, I would sit with my legs crossed and my raised foot would be flexed so everyone could see that flash of red because, dammit, I earned these $800 shoes.

Oh, well.

I will break down and mention some of the great things I’ve discovered about getting older. I have the most amazing relationship with my kids, who are grown and flown. And because they’re adults now, my husband and I go on vacation alone. Half the people on vacation? Half the cost. And now the “empty nest” is more like a honeymoon suite. I get to indulge in better skin care at Ulta, so I get more points to spend on skin care at Ulta. My patience has improved so, so much, yet I’m less inclined to put up with others’ bullshit. And, of course, my favorite high school clothes are back and I can afford more of them now!

Getting older is like leaving your old life behind and becoming a new person. I remind myself that anyone who lives long enough is lucky to get old. So each time I discover something new – like a two-inch hair growing out of my mid-thigh, or a sore neck because I swallowed too hard (yep, you hear that right), I roll my eyes, then count my blessings. Top of which is that when every other woman is suffering in stilettos, I’m comfy in my sneakers.

Food & Family

I am a lover of food. I especially love exploring the many varieties offered at restaurants, parties, and in my own cooking. So of course, when seeking out a life partner, I found someone who enjoys culinary adventures as well.

HA! Just kidding.

My husband’s full name should be Mr. Steven Picky McPickerson. He comes from long, storied generations of McPickersons. His mother, Sally Choosy McPickerson, nurtured his love for staying the hell away from anything green, saucy, melty, or delicious. 

To illustrate: early in our relationship, he warned me of his predilection for turning up his nose at foods. I figured, “meh! How bad could it be?” Well . . . we went to a burger restaurant and after a few bites of his hamburger, he said to me, “You should be proud of me! I tried a  new food!” I began to worry that this meant that, at 25, he was eating his first burger. I tentatively asked, “What food is that?” He replied, “I forgot to tell the server to hold the cheese.”

Oh, Lord.

Months later, we were engaged. One busy day after wedding prep, we were back at my mom’s house and tired. We didn’t want to go out, so I decided I would cook. I boiled a box of frozen pierogi, and heated a pan of butter, onions, and garlic to saute them. Initially, I didn’t tell him exactly what was in the pan. But he asked! “What’s that good smell? Not the onions, there’s something else.” 

“Garlic,” I told him.

“No. No, garlic is too strong, and it doesn’t taste good. It can’t be garlic.”

I rolled my eyes and laughed, “trust me, it’s garlic, it smells good, it tastes delicious, and you will love it.”

I could tell he was skeptical, but when the pierogi were done sauteing, I gave him a plate of them. He could not believe what he was eating. He LOVED them. “My mom told me – I mean, I thought – “ he stammered. 

“I know. You’ll be OK. Next time I’ll make you garlic bread.”

He’s a garlic convert now.

Over the years, I have witnessed – and participated in – family food avoidance rituals. Between almost every wedding and reception, McDonald’s drive through. Getting ready for a party, I’m often asked, “what kind of food will they have?” Uh, not my party, cowboy. But sometimes, if the party is hosted by a good friend, I’ll get a head’s up ahead of time. If the menu is a dinner, Steve can usually be selective and skip a sauce or a side he doesn’t like. If it’s what I call a ‘grazing party,’ where there are hors d’oeuvres set out to pick at all evening, McDonald’s drive through on the way. If we took our chances or mistakenly thought the food would be “Steve Friendly,” but it wasn’t – guess what?! On the way home, McDonald’s drive through. 

And in the grand family tradition, Steve has passed his disdain for the delicious to our daughter, Sydney. You can imagine how difficult it was for me to cook dinner over the years. Pasta? OK. My “passed down from goodness knows how many generations” tomato sauce? NOT OK. Rice? Sure! Rice mixed with cheese and a little broccoli? NO WAY – not just the broccoli, but mixing anything into the rice. Mac & cheese? Yes! But nothing mixed in, and no breadcrumbs on top. Noodles & cheese only. 

So as you can tell, dinner time was NOT my favorite time of day. Even our son, David, the “good” eater, doesn’t like potatoes. Samwise Gamgee would be so disappointed. 

Not everyone is picky in the same way. Steve and Sydney love my garlic smashed potatoes. Not David. David & Steve like burgers. Not Sydney. Here is the *brief* list of foods we all enjoy: Sausage & hot dogs, pizza (but not too much sauce!), ham, plain rice, and any bread-based breakfast food – but no syrup for Sydney and not butter for David. 

Eventually, I got into a cooking routine in which most of us were happy most of the time. I especially found ways to jazz up pasta with foods that could be picked around among the noodles & butter/garlic sauce. And that, dear listener, is where our story truly begins. 

When our kids were in their mid-teens, I walked downstairs and into the kitchen. There, at the table, sat my husband and children. They told me to sit with them. I asked what this was about. In short – it was an intervention. 

“We want to talk to you about something you’re doing that we can’t take anymore.” Said David.

“What’s that?”

“Pasta,” replied Sydney. I looked at Steve. All he did was nod. 

“What about the pasta?”

David looked like he couldn’t hold it in anymore, “We need you to stop putting peas in the pasta.” 

I argued. I bargained, I got angry – angry at these people who had backed me into a culinary corner which felt ever-shrinking. Eventually I relented. I agreed to only *sometimes* put peas in pasta. And because there’s no rehab center for good, if repetitive, cooks, I sat around and tried to plan that night’s dinner. 

It’s been several years since the intervention. There were always issues surrounding dinner, but that seemed to be the peak of the complaints about my cooking. We have since found some common ground. Steve’s tastes have broadened to include more vegetables, even asparagus, and some sauces, though still not tomato. And don’t try to figure out the pizza contradiction – somehow tomato sauce is great between bread & cheese, but not on spaghetti. 

And it’s been even easier to deal with the kids, they’re living on their own!!

Back Again

There I was, eight months pregnant, and squeezing myself into one of those student chairs with the desk attached. The admissions person at the campus tour offered me the instructor’s chair, but at this point, I was better off keeping my beached-whale body jammed within the desk than getting up in front of a crowd to move to the front of the room. Most of the other prospective students were teenagers and were visiting the University of Akron branch campus with their parents. I was in my early twenties and accompanied by my husband, my 11-month-old son, and my soon-to-be-born daughter. I had enough attention already.

I had gone to college when I was eighteen, but it didn’t keep. While at the University of Toledo, I spent so many days in bed, the weight of my depression holding me down. In those moments, I didn’t mind. Depression felt like a human-sized, furry kitty that laid on my chest and assured me that I shouldn’t get up; that there were too many scary things “out there.” She whispered in my ear, “it’s OK, honey, your bed and I are here for you. And we’ll never leave you.” I didn’t even realize it was depression, I thought I was just lazy. At night, I avoided panic attacks about homework (therefore avoiding homework), having no money for next quarter’s tuition, and my grades by hanging out with my crazy roommate, Brian, pulling pranks, playing euchre, or watching our favorite Australian movie about drag queens, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert for the hundredth time.

*By the way, if you haven’t seen Priscilla, watch it on Prime. Great movie, great soundtrack, great costumes, great comebacks. 

Not surprisingly, after two quarters, I dropped out. My mom thought I was out partying every night and sleeping in all day. I didn’t know how to correct her. So I didn’t.

My boyfriend was a little older than me and settled into his accounting career in Los Angeles. Since I stopped going to school, we got married. It’s not like I was doing anything else. 

FUNNY STORY – when I told him I was dropping out of school, over the phone because . . . LA, he came up with a plan. He would come to Ohio to introduce me to his parents Memorial Day weekend, then he would come back to Ohio AGAIN for July Fourth so we could get engaged, and then . . . I didn’t hear the rest. Something about long distance being easier while planning a wedding (????). All I could think was, “Did he just propose to me without actually proposing to me?!” Then I heard, “What do you think?” Um, okaaayyy?

So I was married at 20, a homeowner at 21, and a parent of two at 24. I decided that it was time to go back to school. What new mom doesn’t need stacks of descriptive astronomy homework? 

After being a part time student, then a full-time student with a partial honors scholarship, it felt like I was on my way to graduation. But halfway through my junior year, it happened again. My fat, furry kitty was back. She rode along in the car when I commuted to school. Some days she guided me to McDonald’s on the way to class, to comfort me with an apple pie, ice cream, and a Coke. Then I would sit in the car outside the buildings on campus and stare as other students went to class and all I could do was nothing. Sometimes the fat, furry kitty cooed gently while driving to campus that if I hit one of those telephone poles, and it looked like an accident, then my husband would get the life insurance payout and he and the kids would be much better off without me. 

I told my advisor that I was forfeiting my scholarship. Then a few months later, I just stopped going to school altogether. I was 28.

But my kids needed me. My husband needed me. I needed me – I needed to be my true self again. So I got help. Many people who have been on antidepressants have an experience like mine – trying one medication, learning it’s not quite right. Maybe it doesn’t work well for you, maybe it has terrible side effects. So then try another one. And maybe another one after that. I finally found the self I was looking for.

Life went on. The kids started school, my husband changed jobs, we moved to Orlando. I worked at Disney World and got screamed at by guests, and despite the abuse from strangers who told me their vacations were “less than magical,” my antidepressant kept me going. Eventually I left the front desk and got a real desk working for a friend at a new nonprofit. I tried to find other jobs later, but . . . no college degree. I had left that possibility behind me; after all, I was in my forties. But I really loved working in nonprofit, and I excelled at the work. After a few years, my friend left that organization. When she began working for a more established charity, she asked me to join her, and I did.

I realized pretty quickly at this new organization that if I wanted to get promoted, the only way to get there was to have a bachelor’s degree. Given my track record, I was unsure that it was the right thing to do. After a year of consideration, I learned that the local community college offered a bachelor’s degree for “working adults” who already earned about half of their college credits. And after dropping out of college twice, my only chance at finishing school was through a community college. So I applied and enrolled. My now 18-year-old daughter and I would start college at the same time.

Just like at Akron, it started smoothly . . . except for math class, which often devolved into fits of tears, even when my husband tried to help me study. But I got through it. And then accounting class. Then marketing. The pandemic came along and I transitioned to online classes. I could do that, too and still get As. Before I knew it, I was only one semester away from graduation. 

The pandemic was mostly OK to my family until the Delta variant (if you consider your two college kids moving back to your “empty nest-sized” home to ride out a global pandemic OK). But life, as it does, chose this particular moment to throw us a curveball. My husband got laid off; he searched for a job for months, we made the decision to move back to Ohio. 

Through it all, I continued my classes online. I continued to be named to the Dean’s or President’s list every semester. In January of my final semester, I applied for graduation. In March, I ordered my cap and gown. In April, I turned in my capstone project. And in May, the previously unthinkable happened. I flew to Orlando to walk across the stage, hug the president of Valencia College, and collect my diploma. I was 45. 

Oh, and that fat furry kitty can go fuck herself.

I Want my Own Play-House

Paul Rubens died this week, marking the end of an era I had appreciated since childhood. As a kid, I was a huge Pee-Wee Herman fan, and to this day, I’m still a fan of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. Because of his death, I rewatched that movie for probably the two hundredth time. I love everything about it – the characters he meets on his wacky adventure to find his bicycle in the basement of the Alamo, the scenery, his iconic dance to Tequila. But today I thought a lot about one aspect of that movie that people often fail to mention – Pee-Wee’s house. 

Recently, I read an email newsletter by Anne Helen Petersen with an article entitled “How Your House Makes You Miserable.” The gist of it is this: we want to love our houses, and given the constant barrage of HGTV remodeling shows and other media telling how we need to remodel our homes, we won’t be happy until we remodel our houses. Then we make major changes that will make our homes more stylish or “marketable” should we need to sell them, but those changes don’t reflect our personal styles or what makes us joyful. So even our New-And-Improved houses make us miserable. 

I should mention that I read this article while in the process of making changes to my house. 

Watching Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure today, I was reminded of this article, then struck by the beauty of Pee-Wee’s house. Of course, it’s not beautiful in the traditional sense; his movie house wasn’t the height of 1985 style, or really any particular “style” at all. It’s brightly colored inside and out, full of toys, there is a massive Rube Goldberg machine in the kitchen that makes breakfast, a doghouse for his tiny pooch, Speck, and even a firefighter’s pole to whisk him downstairs. In other words, this house is full of what made the character of Pee-Wee Herman happy. This is the beauty of that house – it makes him happy.

“Marketable” houses are all neutral colors. They don’t have decor that reflects the interests of the inhabitants, they have decor that is fashionable. They have kitchens with professional-level appliances, whether the person living within likes to cook or not. They are bland shells in which to store your out-of-sight possessions.

I was thinking about the eclectic mix of things my husband and I have that would be the first to be hidden if we were going to stage our house for sale: the painting of the Marblehead, Ohio lighthouse that belonged to his grandparents, my small teapot & teacup collection, a print of Old San Juan from the days we lived in Puerto Rico, his collection of vintage beer cans. We’re still living with colors and fixtures left behind by the previous owners of our house: forest green carpeting (and dusty rose carpeting, and beige carpeting), old kitchen cabinets with groovy green and yellow floral contact paper on the shelves, multi-colored enamel light-switch plates. I doubt these people worried, in the over forty years they lived here, about making their house “marketable.” Everything about this house when we moved in reflected what must have made this family happy.

I have resolved to take a page from Pee-Wee and the former owners of my home. I will live in a house that is visually pleasing to me – a kitchen with nearly professional-level appliances (after all, I do love to cook and bake), and cabinets that I probably won’t get sick of looking at after just a couple of years. Flooring in a color I like. Teal tiles for an accent wall behind a bar. All of our decorations, proudly displayed so we can see them every day and remember the wonderful people and times we’ve known in our lives. I’m going to take a cue from Pee-Wee, the architect of zany, child-like humor, and live in a house that reflects me, and makes me happy.

Welcome Back, Koster

For my entire juvenile and early adult life, I lived in one city – Sandusky. If you’re not from there, chances are, you don’t know much about my town. Sure, there are an outsized number of pop culture references for a city of less than 25,000 – like the one spoken by Marilyn Monroe in the legendary film, “Some Like it Hot” –  “ . . . just imagine, me! Sugar Kowalcyk from Sandusky, Ohio!” Or almost every joke from “Tommy Boy” – no, we don’t go to 4H auctions to pick up chicks or guys (although many of us do take some measure of pride in the movie and own Callahan Auto Parts t-shirts), but the real Sandusky is in its people, its lakeside landscape, and of course, its world-famous amusement park. 

Cedar Point has long been our best-known attribute, and for nearly 128 years, it’s the reason just about anyone knows where to locate my town. Once, in Dayton, I saw a local news station ask residents if they knew how to get to Sandusky. Blank stares. Then they were asked if they knew how to get to Cedar Point – and most of those interviewed began to give directions. The park’s shadow looms large over everything, and even though I can’t remember my birth, I imagine my mom, in the throws of labor, heard something like this from a nurse on duty:

For your safety and the safety of your baby, keep your hands and arms in the bed and your feet in the stirrups for the entire ride. Thank you and have a great day here at Providence Hospital, America’s Birthing Coast.”

No wonder I eventually worked there for four summers. But I digress . . .

In some ways, Sandusky was a lot like other towns. We were once the home of factories for all three big American auto companies, just about everyone’s Dad and some moms worked those jobs. Of course, like other places, those are gone. We have suburbs, including Castalia, home of the Blue Hole (which is now private land, so good luck visiting), and Huron, which still boasts that it was the world leader in steamship building – in the 1830s. There are a lot of chain restaurants and big box stores. 

Growing up, I could not wait to move away. Our city had a dying downtown, a tiny, lame mall, and, according to every teenager there, “nothing to do.” I was determined to move to New York City when I embarked on the adventure that was to be adulthood. Then, when I got married, I did move far away, to the big city – of Lakewood. Not long after, we moved temporarily to San Juan, Puerto Rico – talk about culture shock. The closest I ever came to Latin culture in Sandusky was my high school Spanish 1 class, and between that and living in San Juan, I still no hablo espanol. Then we moved close to friends in Wadsworth for ten years, then to Orlando – I thought living in Puerto Rico was culture shock, but that had nothin’ on Florida life. 

I worked at Disney World for almost four years, and my hometown was on my nametag. Sometimes, guests would recognize the name “Sandusky” and they’d start to ask me questions. A lot of times, it was about Cedar Point. One time, it was a guy who knew my sister. And often, and always with guys between about 25 and 45, it was about Tommy Boy. I always knew before they asked; they had this same smirking look in their eyes.

For the 13 years my family lived in Orlando, we would come to Sandusky to visit about once a year. And every time, I would notice that downtown got a few more businesses. And it wasn’t “devil’s ass crack” hot and humid all summer long, and it’s such a short drive to Cleveland sports, museums, shopping, and there are no terrifying predators like alligators . . . Then I would remind myself how terrible Ohio February is, and that Cedar Point is one park, and Orlando has SEVEN theme parks, if you don’t include water parks, and we were so close to cruise ports, and we had awesome friends and neighbors, and our jobs were great.

That was, until the coronavirus. My husband lost his job in the hospitality industry and got six months severance. And after over six months of searching, he had no luck in finding another job. The money, and our time in Sunny Florida, was running out.

So where do you look when you need to move? Home.

My husband applied for more than two hundred jobs in Orlando. He got nothing. He applied for two jobs in Sandusky, and got two offers. So, like Simon & Garfunkel wished they were, we were actually Homeward Bound.

It’s strange, moving back to your childhood hometown after being gone for so long. It’s old, but it’s also new. I had to re-learn how to get around town, had to pick new favorite bars and restaurants, learn how to form a new kind of relationship with my family, especially my Mom, from whom I now live only 5 ½ miles. But it’s more than just the tangibles. I had gotten to know how to be a visitor and how to exist in that space. Existing in resident space is entirely different. I had grown up and grown away from my home, found a new home where I was comfortable and felt I belonged. I had been, and got used to being, a stranger in strange lands; now I was a stranger again. But in a familiar land.

Because of this new perspective, I see everything now with a renewed sense of place. Looking at Sandusky through fully adult eyes, I can see the beauty of my town that I never bothered to notice before. We have a lot of parks. A LOT. Our weird masonic-symbol street layout (seriously, Dan Brown could have written a best-seller about this) led to tiny triangles of space that aren’t practical for more than anything ranging from a single fountain to a few little league fields. We’re not so small that everyone knows your business, but not so big that you don’t run into people you know sometimes. The small businesses here are AWESOME. We have great Vietnamese food, which we didn’t have 20 years ago, but have always had superior Italian food and – guys, guys – I have a locker for my own bottles of whiskey at our local distillery. What’s better than that? Well, the lake. The lake dominates our springs, summers, and autumns for beaching, boating and island hopping. And spring? Do you guys know how great spring is? I had totally forgotten in Orlando, home of eight months of green and four months of green-ish brown, that spring here is so freaking colorful and beautiful! And Sandusky is so cheap – our house here, with a huge yard and sits on a river, has 520 more square feet for $90,000 less than our house in suburban Orlando with basically no yard and absolutely no view of water – well, I guess we had some water. Hurricanes & summer rains would fill the retention basin across from our front porch. But in Ohio, we have no hurricanes, and NO. RON. DESANTIS.

I’ve been back in Sandusky for 18 months. On weekday mornings, I work out with my mom and then go to breakfast at this little diner, where we discovered that we’re distantly related to our regular server. I work from my home office raising money for a breast cancer charity. My kids are in their early twenties, launched, and living in nearby towns. My husband and I look forward to spending time on the islands, at Blossom Music Center, and at Cleveland Guardians games this summer. And as soon as it’s warm enough, we will kayak up the river, the rhythmic paddling and calling of birds as our soundtrack. We will enjoy the fall colors we missed so much in the south. And we know where we will spend Christmas this year, with our families, where we should be. We’re home.

Too Much

My career was going nowhere. I had moved to Florida with the idea that I would get a job at Disney, move up the ranks, and eventually find my place in a creative role. But that is not what was happening. Instead, I was sick of being screamed at by guests about how their vacation “wasn’t magical enough,” simply because they couldn’t get a dining reservation at their chosen restaurant or because THE attraction their four-year-old just had to ride was shut down for the day. I needed out. I needed a job that made me feel like I was contributing. I needed a career with meaning.

A good friend was taking a job leading a brand-new nonprofit, and knowing I had a little experience in that field before Disney, she offered me a position. The organization was funding immune-based research for children’s brain cancer, specifically medulloblastoma, by a woman whose son had recently died at 8. When my mom was 10, her sister died of brain cancer – her 8 year old sister. I knew this was where I needed to be, this opportunity had meaning.

I threw myself into the work, learning all I could about cancer in general, pediatric cancer, brain cancer, the history of cancer research, how research is funded and classified, and how exactly this immune-based research was to work at chipping away cancer cells. I did Google searches, I read “The Emperor of All Maladies” by Siddartha Mukherjee, I read the classic “Death be Not Proud,” a 1949 memoir by a father who had lost his son to brain cancer. I was finding meaning in every word I read. Later, though, I learned that for me, meaning had a price.

Several months into my new job, I went to a funeral – as part of my job. Which is to say, in a professional capacity, I went to a funeral for a young child. The church was filled with family, of course, but also the boy’s schoolmates – this was my first punch to the gut. His parents were at the front, they spoke about their beautiful boy, their much-loved son who would have no more baseball games, no more days of school, no more birthdays. Punch number two. At the end of the service, everyone filed toward the altar to greet the boy’s parents and offer their sympathies. At my turn, I held my hand out to the father to introduce myself. He gently smiled and said, “Oh, I don’t shake hands, I’m a hugger.” But I did not want to hug him. I did not want to embrace this man whose life had been on one track, but was now finding his way down a path he never wanted. I knew that a hug would make me cry, and I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to make my emotions his problem. But I had to hug him, he was hurting and this was what he wanted. I did my best to hold it together, then move on. The knock-out punch.

The same thing that drove me to work in a field that serves others, empathy, had become a liability. I don’t simply empathize with others, I experience and internalize their pain – I have hyper empathy, which, according to the website UK Therapy Guide, “occurs when you are too in tune with other people’s emotions and mirror them to the same intensity. In other words, you care too much. People with hyper-empathy may find it hard to regulate their emotions and may have a tendency to pick up on negative feelings.”

Meaning for me did, indeed, carry a steep price.

But I went on. I attended a weekend event each September for the next few years called CureFest, where organizations funding research and care for pediatric cancer would gather in Washington, DC, to meet, discuss common issues, and set up tents on the National Mall to inform passersby about our work, hoping it would inspire awareness and donations. It was also well-attended by families affected by pediatric cancer. I met children who were now cancer-free, but still carrying signs of their treatment – still bald and likely would be for the rest of their lives; kids with enormous scars from surgical procedures; children who survived bone cancer because they had a limb amputated; a 15-year-old I had mistaken for a child of about 8, because his growth was forever stunted by the radiation and chemotherapy that bombarded his brain to kill the invading cells; parents who had lost their children; children who had lost their siblings. 

I was learning that meaning had a price I could not afford.

Though each time I went home from DC spurred on to further promote the research we were funding, I would also be exhausted physically, mentally, and emotionally. These effects were tolls I paid to travel the road toward professional development. But the price was too high. The tolls nearly emptied my emotional wallet. Whenever I saw my own children, I was grateful that they were healthy, but the fear and knowledge that cancer could be hiding and growing in their bodies was always in the back of my mind. It was eating at me every day.

My family bore the brunt of my emotional fallout. I angered easily, I would sometimes lose focus on their needs, my language became more and more inundated with foul words. Then I was riddled with guilt for not being the present, joyful wife and parent they deserved. But I couldn’t move on, at least not yet. There were Facebook posts to write, there were runners to encourage in peer to peer fundraising, There were so many children still dying from cancer.

Did you know that every day in the US, an entire movie theater full of kids dies from cancer? Or that kids diagnosed with brain cancer before the age of five and make it to the other side may never learn to tie their shoes? Did you know that treatments for cancer can also cause cancer? The American Cancer Society underfunds childhood cancer. So does our federal government. So do pharmaceutical companies. They justify this because the number of children who get cancer is relatively small compared to adults. So it is left to devastated parents to take up the mantle and fight like Hell to get the disease some attention. But often, donors find the cause “too depressing.” They would rather fund vacations for dying kids than help those same kids live another day, another month, another several years. They would rather the kids get five days of Disney than a lifetime of memories of proms, graduations, college, and their own families. Charities that provide those brief respites from disease are worthwhile, indeed. But a cure should be held above all else. 

After about four years, I couldn’t take it anymore. My boss moved on to another organization, and I followed her. It was to an organization that focused on reproductive rights, so of course, I was angry all the time rather than sad, but at least I didn’t have to reckon with grief-stricken parents any more. However, I still harbor feelings of anger at the lack of support for these kids; I still feel incredibly sad when I think of the parents whose tables will forever have an empty seat; still wondering when the time will come for a cure. 

Recently I made a shift to working for a breast cancer organization. When I took the job, I internally reconciled the decision by acknowledging that while there is definite sadness in this field, as well, it couldn’t be as heartbreaking as meeting all of those parents whose children were gone forever. If I thought that the price of meaning was too high for me, then it was certainly too high for those parents.

Most of the time, my hunch was correct. But then . . .

I was at a gala a few weeks ago for work and seated at a table of donors. I introduced myself to my table-mates. The guest to my left, a well-dressed woman in her sixties, thanked me for what I do, which, when you work in nonprofit, is a pretty common occurrence. I thought that maybe she was a survivor. Then she told me about her daughter, Trish, who was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer at the age of 32. Trish died not long after, regardless of the fact that she was an employee at a world-class medical center and had the best oncology team possibly in the world. To remember and honor her daughter, the woman at my table carried Trish’s purse. Her beautiful pink purse. Here I was, in my “less sad” job, sitting next to a mother, ANOTHER parent, who had lost her child to cancer. Again, I was faced with the problem of wanting, needing, to cry, but having to hold it together so as not to infringe on that parent’s pain. 

Working toward solutions to the world’s biggest problems can be humbling, sad, sometimes joyful, even. It is not only meaningful to the employees, but also to those we serve. But then . . .

I don’t know how much longer I can do this. It’s just too much.